But picking the wrong one or skipping basic maintenance on the one you have can leave you hot, uncomfortable, and melt money right out of your pocket.

The experts at Consumer Reports tested air conditioners in extreme conditions and are sharing their advice to keep cool all summer long.

Consumer Reports’ Arianna Coger spent the winter months sweating it out in CR’s air conditioner test lab – designed to mimic a hot, sticky summer day.

“This is where we do our main performance test, where we try to cool off this room,” Coger said.

The best air conditioners cool CR’s test chamber quickly, quietly, and efficiently. And when it’s time to buy a new air conditioner, CR says the first step is matching the AC to the room. A unit that’s too small may never cool the space. One that’s too large can cycle on and off too quickly, leaving the room humid while also wasting energy.

For mid-sized rooms, this LG model scores well.

If you’re tired of installing and removing window units every year, there is another, more expensive option: a ductless mini-split. These systems have an outdoor unit and one or more indoor wall-mounted units.

“Mini-splits are a good option if you lack the ductwork for central air conditioning,” said Yasmeen Khan with Consumer Reports. “Mini-splits can cool large spaces. They’re very efficient, too, sometimes more than central AC. As a bonus, they can also heat rooms.”

In CR’s tests, this Mitsubishi earned top scores for cooling, efficiency, and heating, too. Keep in mind

Finally, CR says three simple steps can help your AC run better: vacuum and wash the filter, gently vacuum the coils, and keep the outside side of the unit free of leaves, dirt, and debris. CR recommends doing this about once a month during heavy use.

Blood donations are important year-round, but even more so in the summer.

“In the summer months, donations often decrease for multiple reasons. One, donations oftentimes happen at places like colleges or schools, and those are closed in the summer months with less people available to donate,” said Bryan Baskin, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic. “In addition, the summer months are busy. Kids are out of school, people are traveling, so donations naturally decrease for that reason. Also, some donors are disqualified due to dehydration occurring in summer months and defer to the fall, but the need for blood remains constant.”

Dr. Baskin said unlike medications and IV fluids, blood cannot be manufactured.

It has to come from a human.

Blood donations also have a short life span.

For example, red blood cells can only be stored for 42 days, while plasma can be frozen for up to a year.

So, how exactly does the blood donation process work?

Dr. Baskin said you’ll first fill out some paperwork and then be asked a series of questions before a technician draws your blood.

Altogether, it takes about 15 minutes.

“It’s natural to have some fear about a needle and the donation process. But it’s important to note the needle stick itself only lasts a second. You can distract yourself by looking away from the needle, squeezing your hand on the opposite arm, or thinking about something you enjoy,” he said. “And I think it’s important to note if you remember that the donation you’re giving, that singular donation, will save and help multiple patients and affect those patients, and their families, and their lives. It will keep you positive about the donation process itself.

Reports show a single blood donation can save up to three lives.

Currently, the average price of regular gas in Virginia is $3.88, according to AAA. Premium averages $4.77 per gallon, while diesel averages $5.12 per gallon.

Taking a closer look at our region, here’s a look at the average price of gas for localities in our area:

• Lynchburg:
• • Regular: $3.77
  • Mid: $4.32
  • Premium: $4.70
  • Diesel: $5.16
• Roanoke:
• • Regular: $3.87
  • Mid: $4.32
  • Premium: $4.74
  • Diesel: $5.11
• Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Radford (New River Valley area)
• • Regular: $3.87
  • Mid: $4.33
  • Premium: $4.72
  • Diesel: $5.04

Count on 10 News to bring you the latest price at the pump every morning.

To find out where the lowest fuel prices are near you, visit GasBuddy’s website.

Since the U.S. and Israel launched a joint war against Iran on Feb. 28, the cost of crude oil, the main ingredient in gasoline, has spiked and swung rapidly. That’s because the conflict has caused deep supply chain disruptions and cuts from major oil producers across the Middle East.

Trump has said multiple times in recent weeks that the warring parties have been on the cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition. A spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a live phone call on state television that mediators were active and nothing had been finalized to end the conflict that began Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel jointly attacked Iran.

Trump opened an Oval Office event Thursday afternoon saying: “We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran.” He offered scant details, other than to say he expects an agreement to extend a fragile ceasefire that started in April to be finalized “over the next few days.”

Extending the terms of the ceasefire gives U.S. leaders more time to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program, the main reason Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used to justify launching the war. Netanyahu’s office said Thursday that Israel is not a party to the emerging agreement between the U.S. and Iran.

The announcement came after two days of back-and-forth attacks between the U.S. and Iran had pushed the Middle East closer to the resumption of a full-scale war.

Trump had threatened further escalation earlier Thursday, posting on social media that the U.S. would hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and take “total control” of its oil and gas industries. A few hours later, Trump posted on social media that significant points in the negotiations “have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved.”

Esmail Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said in his phone call on state television that the text of a deal is “mostly finalized.”

"The problem is that the contradictions in America’s position have caused turbulence to this process,” he said Thursday night.

A major sticking point in negotiations has been Iran's nuclear program, which the U.S. and Israel fear could lead to an atomic weapon, but which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. Another key issue is Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane for transporting oil and natural gas.

Trump again moves quickly from threats to negotiating

Trump's rapid shift Thursday from dire threats to promoting peace negotiations again underscored his whipsaw approach to the war. He suggested on Monday that a deal to end the conflict could be reached in a matter of days.

Then back-and-forth strikes rattled the Middle East this week. The first involved attacks between Iran and Israel, followed by the two rounds of fire between the U.S. and Iran, which targeted countries where U.S. troops are based. The U.S. strikes began after Trump blamed Iran for downing an American attack helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. Both pilots were rescued safely.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the U.S. attacks had “effectively rendered the ceasefire ... meaningless,” without saying it was abandoning it.

After Trump threatened more attacks were to come on Thursday, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, responded on social media that “wrong strategies and impulsive decisions” would wreak havoc on energy markets and “create an endless quagmire that you will be stuck in for years.”

It wasn't the first time Trump threatened escalation before giving negotiations another chance. In April, he warned Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if it didn’t agree to his terms, before extending a ceasefire.

Trump threatened to seize Iran's main oil terminal

Iran’s monthslong disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has crimped global energy supplies, driven up fuel prices and made food and other basics more expensive well beyond the region.

Trump had threatened Thursday to seize Kharg Island, the heart of Iran’s oil industry, through which 90% of its exports pass.

But Trump himself soon voiced doubts about taking over the oil terminal, saying in an interview with Fox News: “I don’t know that America has the stomach for it, to be honest.”

“I don’t want to have boots on the ground," Trump said. "But if I wanted to, we could put a small group of soldiers and take over the place.”

Tensions persist over Iran's nuclear program, Strait of Hormuz

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post that the U.S. would extract funds from frozen Iranian accounts to offset the costs of damage to American allies and any tolls Iran imposes for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz.

Beyond the deadlock over the strait, the two sides also remain at odds over Iran's nuclear program. Tehran insists its nuclear efforts are peaceful. The U.S. and Israel fear Tehran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium could be used to build an atomic weapon.

Iran has insisted that any deal to end the war must also end fighting in Lebanon between its ally militia Hezbollah and Israel. But Netanyahu appears intent on pursuing his goal of destroying the militant group.

Iranian student says hope dwindles as attacks escalate

A 25-year-old student in northern Iran says Iranians are fearing “chaos” amid the war with the U.S. and Israel and multiplying crises at home.

The student, who lives in the city of Babol, said many Iranians are struggling to afford groceries in the face of mass job losses and triple-digit food inflation. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of security fears.

“Everything is going wrong and there is no hope among the people,” the student added.

The student first spoke to The Associated Press before the war when he participated in widespread anti-government protests. He now says his chief concern is that Iran “maintain territorial integrity and deterrence” in the face of attacks by the U.S. and Israel.

US fires on another merchant ship to enforce blockade

The U.S. military's Central Command said Thursday that it struck a Guinea-Bissau-flagged tanker attempting to evade the American blockade on Iranian ports. It said the M/T Jalveer was transporting Iranian oil when it was disabled late Wednesday after its crew failed to obey U.S. orders.

It's the ninth merchant vessel the U.S. military says it disabled to enforce the blockade.

Three Indian sailors were killed when American forces struck the Palau-flagged M/T Settebello on Tuesday, India's minister overseeing ports and shipping said Thursday on X.

U.S. Central Command said American forces issued warnings before firing on the ship, which it accused of trying to evade the blockade.

The leader of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, condemned the attack.

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Madhani reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Will Weissert, Collin Binkley, Michelle L. Price and Konstantin Toropin in Washington; Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi; Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Victoria Eastwood and Amir-Hussein Radjy in Cairo; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.

The Seoul Central District Court found Yoon and his ex-defense minister, Kim Yong Hyun, guilty of aiding an adversary and abusing their power, saying they sought to provoke North Korea into launching armed attacks or other serious retaliation against South Korea to manufacture a national emergency. It said the moves harmed South Korea’s military interests by exposing its capabilities, undermining its ability to conduct future operations and prompting North Korea to strengthen its defense posture. Yoon’s lawyers appealed the ruling.

The same court earlier sentenced Yoon to life in prison for a rebellion conviction over his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024.

North Korea accused Seoul of flying drones over Pyongyang to drop propaganda leaflets three times in October 2024. Kim, who was South Korea’s defense minister at the time, issued a vague denial before the Defense Ministry said it could neither confirm nor deny the allegations. Tensions rose sharply but did not lead to any military clashes.

Yoon’s lawyers criticized the latest ruling, saying the drone flights were a response to North Korea flying thousands of trash-carrying balloons into the South earlier in 2024. They argued that a guilty verdict would undermine South Korea’s security interests.

Investigators led by special prosecutor Cho Eun-suk had sought a 30-year prison term for Yoon, accusing him of trying to create a warlike situation between the Koreas while plotting an authoritarian push to remove his political opponents and “monopolize” power. They had sought a 25-year prison term for Kim, a key confidant of Yoon who helped plan and mobilize forces for Yoon’s martial law declaration.

Yoon proceeded with the declaration late in the night of Dec. 3, 2024, delivering a televised address in which he accused liberal lawmakers of being North Korea-sympathizing “anti-state” forces. He cited a range of grievances, but particularly the opposition’s impeachments of senior officials and cuts to his government’s budget bill.

Martial law lasted about six hours until lawmakers broke through a blockade of soldiers and police at the National Assembly and voted to overturn it, forcing Yoon’s Cabinet to lift the measure.

Yoon was quickly impeached, suspended from office, and formally removed by the Constitutional Court. He was arrested in July 2025 and several criminal trials are ongoing.

The verdict in the most serious case, of rebellion, has been appealed both by Yoon and prosecutors, who had sought a death sentence.

The future for the S&P 500 was 0.2% lower while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was nearly unchanged.

Investors in the U.S. and elsewhere were awaiting the debut Friday on Wall Street of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, which is set to become the largest IPO on record, raising around $75 billion.

In early European trading, Germany's DAX picked up 1.3% to 24,524.21, while the CAC 40 in Paris rose 1.4% to 8,312.87. Britain's FTSE 100 added 0.7% to 10,374.37.

Asian markets logged bigger gains.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 4.5% to 8,112.58, narrowing losses from earlier this month from sell-offs of shares related to artificial intelligence. The Kospi has roughly doubled over the past six months, with a record closing high of 8.801.49 on June 2.

Samsung Electronics, South Korea's most valuable company, advanced 7.9%. Computer chipmaker SK Hynix rose 2.3%.

Tokyo’s Nikkei’s 225 gained 2.8% to 66,020.04, also led by gains for technology stocks. SoftBank Group, a multinational investment holding company with a strong AI focus, was up 2%. Chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron jumped 10.3%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.4% to 24,585.93 and the Shanghai Composite index rose 1.1% to 4,031.51.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 closed 2% higher at 8,804.00.

Taiwan’s Taiex gained 2.4%, while India’s Sensex advanced 1%.

The renewed investor optimism came after Trump said Thursday he had called off military strikes against Iran. He asserted that the U.S. had made “a great settlement of the war with Iran,” adding that an extension of the shaky ceasefire between the two sides could be finalized in “the next few days.” Few details were offered.

Global markets retreated earlier in the week as tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated. High oil prices have added to inflationary pressures globally as the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the world's oil and gas transit, remained largely closed.

“Trump has said many times before that a deal is very close, only for hostilities to resume,” ING commodities analysts Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a note on Friday. “However, there does appear to be more positive noise around the deal this time.”

“(But) we would be cautious about assuming that the extension of the ceasefire is a done deal,” they added. “Even if it is, it could be fragile.”

Brent crude oil, the international standard, fell 2.2% to $88.37 per barrel early Friday. That was still much higher than the roughly $70 a barrel level it was at before the war began in late February.

Benchmark U.S. crude shed 2% to $85.92 a barrel.

On Thursday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 surged 1.8% to 7,394.30, back to where it was in early May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 1.9% to 50,848.75, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed 2.5% to 25,809.66.

Prices of AI and other tech stocks have been volatile the past week in part due to renewed worries that massive investments and soaring share prices are creating a bubble liable to burst. On Thursday, U.S. chipmaker Marvell Technology climbed 11.1%, but technology company Oracle lost 8.5% on worries over its high spending, despite strong-than-expected quarterly results.

In other dealings early Friday, the U.S. dollar rose to 160.35 Japanese yen from 159.93 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1571, down from $1.1578.

The 7.8 magnitude offshore quake, which struck Monday off Sarangani province, injured about 1,120 people and displaced more than 45,000 people, about half them still in emergency shelters, after the quake damaged more than 12,600 houses across farming towns and cities.

Many were still too traumatized to return home because of strong aftershocks, officials said.

Days after the earthquake hit, more videos of the chaotic moments have been posted on social media showing horrified crowds witnessing the collapse of small buildings, and flag-raising ceremonies turning chaotic when the ground started to shake on the first day of school after a long summer break.

Students are seen on videos screaming in panic, but staying seated or standing still outside school buildings, with some covering their heads with their hands as teachers admonished them to calm down.

One video, which has gone viral on Facebook with millions of views, showed dozens of grade-schoolers screaming and breaking into tears as they sat on a tree-ringed school ground, which visibly swayed them from side to side. A tin roof shed nearby later collapsed with a loud thud, prompting many to dash away, but were asked by teachers to return and stay seated.

The grade school in the coastal town of Malita in Davao Occidental province reported no injuries from the quake.

“This incident serves as a reminder of the importance of earthquake preparedness and the value of regular disaster response drills,” the Mahayahay elementary school said in a statement.

Teresito Bacolcol, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said years of disaster-preparedness drills helped people anticipate and brace for extreme events like Monday’s quake, one of the strongest to hit the archipelago in a half-century.

He said that it was also fortunate that the quake hit at 7:37 a.m., a few minutes before work and classes were to start indoors.

“It’s good that our efforts to educate people on what to do when earthquakes hit somehow paid off,” Bacolcol told The Associated Press.

He expressed concern, however, over the collapse of some buildings that he said should have withstood the powerful quake, if construction standards based on the country’s building code were followed.

Ednar Dayanghirang, director of the Office of Civil Defense in a quake-hit region of about 5 million people, said that regular disaster-preparedness drills helped reduce casualties in many ways, including by preventing deadly stampedes.

“We required all school principals to take one-day courses on incident management, then they appointed disaster-response teams among teachers to deal with earthquakes, tsunamis,” Dayanghirang said. “They listened and they learned.”

The Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.

As a large column of air descended on Merrillville, Indiana, a town about 33 miles (53 kilometers) southeast of Chicago, the city’s police warned residents to take cover. By the evening, downed trees and power lines blocked the streets, homes were torn up and part of a high school's roof was ripped off.

Meanwhile, emergency crews were in the nearby manufacturing and farm city of Streator, Illinois, as the community reeled from tornado damage. A reunification center for displaced residents was set up in its city hall and the Red Cross opened a shelter.

Streator Mayor Tara Bedei said there were no reported deaths. “We are incredibly grateful for the safety of our residents and the quick action of emergency personnel,” she said in a statement.

Strong storms delayed or halted flights at airports in some cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and New York on Thursday. Parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic also strained under high heat and humidity.

The tornadoes came after severe storms swept through the Midwest Wednesday, knocking out power, damaging buildings and canceling flights.

In Des Moines, Iowa, a 54-year-old man died at a homeless encampment in a park Wednesday after being hit by a tree that “broke apart and fell during strong storms,” police said in a statement. There were no immediate reports of other deaths or injuries from the storms.

Tree limb breaks through roof

Tornado warnings were also in place in Chicago and in parts of Indiana and Michigan Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. In Chicago, a series finale between the White Sox and the Atlanta Braves was postponed due to rain.

Jennifer Hall was in her garage in Elkhart, Indiana, as the winds and rain picked up Thursday evening. Suddenly, she said, she heard a loud crash and discovered a tree limb had gone through the roof of her rental home. She used buckets to catch the rain coming in from the hole.

“I’m just nervous because it’s just been one thing after another,” said Hall, explaining she just had surgery and her husband is out of town.

A home vanishes before residents' eyes

Shane Tipton stepped out of his truck in Unionville, Missouri, Wednesday afternoon to find a twister bearing down, said his daughter, Kylie Rouse. He rushed to get his 87-year-old dad out of his mobile home.

They made it back to the truck, drove just far enough away and watched as the tornado obliterated the home. Shattered cabinets, furniture and appliances littered the ground. Clothes hung in trees. They believe they lost one of their hunting dogs, who has been missing since it struck.

“Everything's destroyed,” Rouse told The Associated Press in a phone interview Thursday. “It was scattered clear for miles. If my grandpa would have been in there, there's no way that he would be alive.”

Storm damages animal shelter in Illinois

Residents of Springfield, Illinois, believe a tornado touched down in their area late Wednesday. Two buildings at the Animal Protective League shelter in Springfield were heavily damaged, but none of the nearly 150 cats and 28 dogs housed there were injured, said Deana Corbin, the group's executive director.

“It pretty much wiped out our shelter facility, took the roofs off both of our buildings,” Corbin said. “It’s a miracle. We were so blessed to not have any injuries of either people or animals.”

The community pitched in to take in all the cats and dogs temporarily, including a local animal control center, veterinarians and residents, she said.

Damage also was reported at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield.

Weather service meteorologist Frank Pereira said the system that produced the storms, including high winds and hail, was moving eastward Thursday, fueled by cool air from Canada clashing with warm, humid air from the South.

Record high temperatures expected along East Coast

Potentially dangerous heat and high humidity arrived Thursday and was expected to continue Friday for a swath of the East Coast from the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast, where daily high record temperatures could be broken in numerous places, the weather service said. Temperatures in the mid-90s Fahrenheit (mid-30s Celsius) were expected, but with the humidity it could feel like 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) or more, the service said.

Philadelphia declared a heat health emergency for Thursday and Friday, activating cooling centers, home visits by field teams, outreach to people experiencing homelessness and other services. New York City officials were also urging residents to take precautions, including drinking plenty of water and finding a cool place to stay if they do not have air conditioning.

Severe weather wreaks havoc on air travel and power

At various points Wednesday and Thursday, ground stops were issued at Chicago's O’Hare International and Midway International airports, and at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

The Pittsburgh International Airport experienced a temporary power outage after a storm produced an “extraordinary” power surge, the airport said.

More than 1,000 flights going into and out of Chicago had been delayed or canceled, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking website.

Commonwealth Edison Company, which provides electric service across northern Illinois, said the storms had downed poles and wires. On X, it wrote that it expected “80% restoration” by late Saturday.

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Associated Press reporters Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, and Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed.

"It was instinctual. No one taught me how to do it," she said of songwriting through a raspy voice she attributed to screaming along to the night's performances and Wednesday night's historic NBA game between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs.

She told the room about her family uprooting their lives to move her from Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee, as a tween.

“I will never be able to express my gratitude,” the singer-songwriter said while holding back tears — crediting their sacrifice for her career.

She offered young songwriters advice: “You really have to prioritize what you love, down to your very core. Because you'll need that."

Steven Spielberg introduced Swift with a surprise speech about the power of songwriting. “There is something undeniable about how songs imprint on our souls,” he said, before changing his focus to Swift. “Somehow Taylor knows us all too well.”

Swift started her speech by acknowledging Spielberg. “Because of examples like Steven's, I trusted my imagination," she said.

The Gen Z singer Sombr launched Swift's segment by performing “Cardigan” and “Dear John" in front of her.

Swift has brought new eyes to this year’s ceremony and undeniably shaped contemporary pop music trends with her songwriting. Swift is the youngest woman inducted, but Stevie Wonder, who started his recording career at 13, was the youngest ever inducted, it was announced on stage.

It was a notable moment in an evening full of them, where Swift, Kiss’ Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, Alanis Morissette, Kenny Loggins and more were honored.

A night of celebrating songwriters

Tamar Braxton opened the gala at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City with a spirted tribute to a new inductee — the game-changing R&B songwriter, producer and rapper Christopher “Tricky” Stewart — with one of the biggest songs he's known for: Beyoncé's “Single Ladies.”

He's also responsible for singer-songwriter Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Mariah Carey's “Touch My Body” and Justin Bieber's “Baby.”

Dallas Austin, a songwriter and producer known for work with Boyz ll Men and Madonna, introduced Stewart. “Think about that catalog,” he said, listing off those zeitgeist-shifting records. “Those are cultural moments."

Stewart thanked God, his family, artists he's worked with and mentors — giving a special shout out to Grammy award-winning music producer Antonio “L.A.” Reid and the iconic singer-songwriter Babyface. “I wanted to be like L.A. and Baby,” he reflected.

Kiss founders Simmons and Stanley — two and a half years after the band’s farewell — were also recognized for their glam rock classics “Rock and Roll All Nite” and “I Love It Loud.” The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan covered the former, a fittingly fiery introduction for the band. He was joined by Goo Goo Dolls’ frontman John Rzeznik for the latter.

Simmons wasn't present; Stanley said that he had a family emergency.

“Songs are the messenger,” he said — the foundation of “every show.”

Soft rock legend Kenny Loggins (“Footloose,” “Danny’s Song”) and the alt-rock icon Morissette were also inducted.

For the latter, Brandi Carlile performed “Uninvited” alongside SistaStrings, before introducing Morissette.

“Writing to me is not a hobby,” Morissette said, it’s critical. “It’s write or die.” Then she performed “Mary Jane” and "You Oughta Know" from her 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill.”

For Loggins, Gavin DeGraw performed “Danny’s Song,” before Loggins told the story behind the tune in his acceptance speech.

Acknowledging writers and their hits

Taylor Dayne and Madison Cunningham performed Tina Turner classics written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle in honor of their induction; John Fogerty was honored with the Johnny Mercer Award.

“I got my songs back!” Fogerty said, ending a nearly 30-minute speech, referencing the fact that he won the rights back to his catalog at age 80. Then he ran through a medley of his hits: “Proud Mary,” “Fortunate Son,” and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” among them.

The songwriter Walter Afanasieff (Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”) was also recognized, a segment that began with an introduction by actor Jeremy Renner and included a monster medley of his biggest songs by R&B singer Sheléa, kicking off with his Christmas classic six months early.

“I wanted to be The Beatles,” he said of falling in love with songwriting in his speech. “Sixty years later, I got to produce Paul McCartney.”

An established tradition

British singer-songwriter RAYE received the prestigious Hal David Starlight Award. She ended her speech by stating that songwriters deserve a cut of master royalties.

Last year's inductees included George Clinton, The Doobie Brothers, Ashley Gorley, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, The Beach Boys’ Mike Love and Tony Macaulay.

The Songwriters Hall of Fame was established in 1969 to honor those creating popular music. A songwriter with a notable catalog of songs qualifies for induction 20 years after the first commercial release of a song.

Some already in the hall include Gloria Estefan, Carole King, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Brian Wilson, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Lionel Richie, Bill Withers, Neil Diamond and Phil Collins.

After a lackluster first half in which both teams were jeered as they left the field, the Czech Republic took the lead in the 59th minute on a header by captain Ladislav Krejci after a long throw-in into the penalty area.

South Korea equalized in the 67th, when Hwang scored after faking a shot with a nifty move to clear two Czech players. The midfielder who plays for Dutch club Feyenoord then made the cross from the right flank for Oh Hyeon-gyu's decisive strike in the 80th in a match played in front of hundreds of empty seats at Guadalajara Stadium.

The South Korean squad celebrated with its fans behind one of the goals after the final whistle. Players later posed for a photo with the fans behind them.

“It was our first game and a very difficult one,” South Korea coach Hong Myung-bo said. “The win itself makes me happy, but what’s even more positive is that our boys won by not giving up. I knew that we were more than capable of winning, so at 1-1, I told the boys to keep playing the way we’ve been playing.”

It was South Korea's first opening World Cup win since it beat Greece in 2010 in South Africa. South Korea beat European opponent in the tournament for a third straight time, following wins over Portugal in 2022 and Germany in 2018.

Let by star forward Son Heung-min, South Korea controlled possession and outshot the Czechs, who were making their first World Cup appearance since 2006. The Koreans, ranked 25th by FIFA, had most of the significant scoring chances against the 38th-ranked Czechs but failed to capitalize early.

Son was looking to become South Korea’s top goal scorer at the World Cup and the Asian player with the most goals in the tournament. The 33-year-old former Tottenham star, who now plays for Los Angeles FC of Major League Soccer, entered Thursday having scored three goals over three prior World Cups.

Appearing in his fourth World Cup, Son had a couple of good opportunities to add to his tally but missed wide in the first half and had a close-range shot saved in the second.

The Czechs thought they had retaken the lead with another set piece in the 77th, but Tomas Soucek was ruled offside on his header.

Czech Republic coach Miroslav Koubek said “probably the better team won.” But he said his team could have had a better outcome if it weren’t for “some mistakes.”

“We played very well, it could have been a draw and we could have won as well,” Koubek said.

The announced attendance was 44,985 at the 45,664-capacity Guadalajara Stadium, a crowd that included FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Sections in the middle of the stands had many unoccupied seats and there were other empty seats scattered across the stadium.

South Korea is making its 11th straight World Cup appearance and 12th overall, the most of any Asian country. Its best result was a fourth-place finish at the tournament it co-hosted with Japan in 2002. Since then, the South Koreans have never gone beyond the round of 16.

In the other Group A match on Thursday, co-host Mexico defeated South Africa 2-0 in the tournament opener in Mexico City.

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

She died Thursday evening at a Bangkok hospital where she had been cared for since falling unconscious due to illness three years ago, according to the statement issued Friday.

“This loss is not merely bad news announced to the people, but an immeasurable grief in the hearts of the entire nation,” Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said in a televised speech. He said the princess was “a pride of Thailand,” and that “her commitment to building a society of kindness, justice, and equality, will forever remain as a moral legacy for the nation, a guiding light for generations of Thais.”

A small group of mourners gathered in an atrium at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, where the princess had been treated. Most held framed or laminated photos of her throughout the years.

Pattamaporn Kaewkityakorn said she had arrived Thursday and spent the night there to show her support for the princess, unaware that the announcement of her passing would come the following morning.

“I know she was sick, but I wished there were a miracle,” she said, her voice trembling. “I was saddened and shocked.”

Bajrakitiyabha was active in justice reform efforts and best known for her Kamlangjai, or “Inspire,” project to help rehabilitate incarcerated Thai women ahead of their release.

Bajrakitiyabha was hospitalized in December 2022 after falling unconscious while training dogs for an army exhibition. The palace said she had a mycoplasma infection, a bacterial infection usually associated with pneumonia.

Her father's New Year’s greeting card for 2023 showed King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida garbed in somber black, which many Thais saw as confirmation of the gravity of her condition.

The princess was born on Dec. 7, 1978, to Vajiralongkorn, who was the crown prince at the time, and his then-wife, Princess Soamsawali. Vajiralongkorn has seven children by three of his four successive wives. Bajrakitiyabha was also known by the royal name Bajrakitiyabha Narendira Debyavati, used in formal state settings.

Prince Dipangkorn Rasmijoti, the youngest of the king’s children, is the presumptive heir because sons take precedence in Thailand's line of succession. But Bajrakitiyabha's experience in public service raised speculation she was set to hold an important role in any future succession, perhaps as regent to a youthful monarch.

Bajrakitiyabha studied law at Thammasat University then went to Cornell University in New York state, where she earned a master’s degree in law in 2002. She earned a doctorate at Cornell in 2005 with a dissertation concerning the protection of the rights of the accused. Scholarships to Cornell Law School and a program for the exchange of legal scholars between Thailand and Cornell were later established in her name.

After working briefly at the Thai Mission to the U.N. in New York City, she returned home and worked as a public prosecutor. She renewed her diplomatic career with an appointment as Thailand’s ambassador to Austria from 2012 to 2014 before returning to her homeland to concentrate on criminal justice issues. In 2017 she was appointed a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

In addition to working for the rehabilitation of female convicts, she was involved in other projects including a campaign to enhance the living conditions of women prisoners and promoting efforts to stem violence against women as an honorary U.N. goodwill ambassador for women. Her efforts led to the U.N. General Assembly adopting the “Bangkok Rules” on care and conditions for female prisoners.

“Society cannot grow if there is instability and injustice,” Bajrakitiyabha said in a 2013 interview with The Associated Press.

“Without the rule of law, without a good justice system, it’s always chaos,” she said. “I think the rule of law is a very important pillar to development, to economic growth, and of course to human rights.”

Bajrakitiyabha is survived by her parents and siblings.

——

Associated Press journalist Anton L. Delgado contributed to this report.

And they had spent the first four games of the Stanley Cup Final being outplayed in critical second-period sequences.

On Thursday night, it all came together, aligning to bring the Hurricanes within a victory of winning the Cup.

Svechnikov scored twice and Aho added a second-period goal in a breakout offensive game for both, helping the Hurricanes beat the Vegas Golden Knights 4-2 for a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.

“I liked our effort for sure, and I hope we're getting better,” coach Rod Brind'Amour said. “I think there's certain areas of our game that are starting to look a lot like we need it to look. But I do think there's still another level that we're going to need to get to find that next one.”

Captain Jordan Staal found the net again for the fifth straight game in this series after Vegas had taken a 1-0 first-period lead, while Brandon Bussi finished with 23 saves in his second career postseason start.

Game 6 is Sunday night in Las Vegas, with the Hurricanes playing for the chance to hoist the Stanley Cup for the first time since Brind’Amour captained them to the title in 2006.

Aho's goal in the second period marked his first of the series, coming when Sean Walker found him cutting to the left side after Jordan Martinook — swapped with Seth Jarvis to work alongside Aho and Svechnikov on the top line — won a puck battle behind the net on the forecheck.

Then there was Svechnikov, who entered Thursday with four postseason goals before striking twice on the power play. On the first, he whipped the puck past Carter Hart on the right side for a 2-1 lead in the second period. On the second, he had a short putaway at the post off a sharp feed from Nikolaj Ehlers for a 4-1 lead, one of three assist for Ehlers on the night that included him having two delay-of-game penalties for putting a puck over the glass.

Before those second-period scores, Vegas had outscored Carolina 9-1 in the second period during the series.

And unlike most multi-goal leads in what has been a wild and thrilling series, this one held up with Bussi doing enough to stave off Vegas' late push to climb back in it.

“It required everything we have,” Staal said on the ESPN broadcast.

Pavel Dorofeyev scored twice for Vegas, finding the net for the first time since Game 1 of the Western Conference Final sweep of Presidents’ Trophy winner Colorado.

“I thought we were still doing some good things,” Vegas’ Jack Eichel said. “We had chances.”

Hart entered this one as the first goaltender in Stanley Cup Final history to give up at least four goals in each of the first four games, then did it again to continue a difficult series while finishing with 20 saves.

Asked if he considered swapping to backup Adin Hill, coach John Tortorella responded: “That could be the stupidest question I've heard.”

Vegas had twice before been in a 2-2 series in these playoffs, in the first round against Utah and the second round against Anaheim. Both times, the Golden Knights won Game 5 and closed out the series in Game 6.

This time, they’ll have to win on home ice to force the series back to Carolina for a Game 7 on Wednesday night. And they'll have to take two in a row against a Hurricanes team that hasn't suffered consecutive losses since mid-January.

Not that Tortorella was fazed.

“We'll be back here,” he said confidently, saying he would leave his clothes behind at the team's hotel in expectation of returning to North Carolina.

Vegas played much of the night without center William Karlsson, who was being checked out on the bench for an apparent upper-body injury. Karlsson skated to the tunnel midway through the second period and didn’t return. Tortorella said the center was “not going to be with us, probably" in the coming games.

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

With Karlsson knocked out of Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final because of injury, the Golden Knights took four penalties that turned into two power-play goals against. Carter Hart allowed four goals for a fifth consecutive game in the series, and now his team is on the brink of elimination after losing 4-2 to Carolina on Thursday night.

“When we lose Bill, it kind of screws things up," coach John Tortorella said. “We lost momentum when we went back to back in penalties. It was about the same time that we lost Bill. We’ve got to find a way.”

Karlsson appeared to injure his left arm or shoulder after getting knocked into the boards by Hurricanes defenseman Sean Walker a little over eight minutes into the second period. He got medical attention on the bench briefly, skated off and never returned and Tortorella foreshadowed that being the end of Karlsson's series.

“He’s not going to be with us, probably,” Tortorella said. "We’ve got to find a way to fill that void, not with just one guy but as a team.”

Karlsson making his playoff debut at the start of the second round changed everything for Vegas, shifting Mitch Marner to the wing and providing the kind of strong, reliable center depth needed to win this time of year. Karlsson had nine points in 14 games after missing the previous six months because of an undisclosed injury.

But the void left by Karlsson’s departure was all too clear, especially on the penalty kill. Carolina’s Andrei Svechnikov scored the first of his two power-play goals less than four minutes after Karlsson left, then added another in the third.

“He’s an important piece to us: up the middle of the ice, a penalty killer, power play guy," Tortorella said. “He’s a winner."

Fourth-liner Nick Dowd called Karlsson one of the team's best players. Defenseman Brayden McNabb, who along with Karlsson and Shea Theodore are the only players who have been around for Vegas’ entire nine-year existence, said Karlsson was a big leader in the locker room.

Karlsson is also nearly impossible to replace.

“He means so much," fellow center Jack Eichel said. "He’s a world class player. He plays in all situations. He’s extremely reliable in our own zone, and he creates a lot of offense. ... It's tough. You lose someone like Karl who’s so valuable to our team and playing so well. But it just means everyone else has to step up.”

Tortorella expects that to happen, promising there will be a Game 7 in Raleigh on Wednesday night.

“We’ll be back here. We’re just going to do it in a different order," Tortorella said. "I’m going to leave my clothes here, that’s for sure. They’ll be in the hotel.”

To do that, they'll have to win Game 6 back home in Las Vegas on Sunday. Hart is expected to be in net again despite a save percentage of .856 in the final.

Asked if he considered going to backup Adin Hill — who backstopped Vegas to the Cup in 2023 — in the third period, Tortorella scoffed and said, "That could be the stupidest question I’ve heard.”

___

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

The board voted Thursday to seek a stay of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper's May 29 ruling that said Trump's name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center, according to a person familiar with the move who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The formal request was filed late Thursday.

Cooper ruled that only Congress could institute a change to the Kennedy Center's name and ordered references to Trump be removed by Friday. He also blocked the administration from closing the cultural and arts venue for major renovations that had been planned to start in July and last for two years.

The board move marks a shift from a June 4 memo to staff from the Kennedy Center’s Office of General Counsel saying email signatures, letterhead and other documents must reflect the name as “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” or “Kennedy Center.”

The Kennedy Center's website has dropped the president's name. And an email earlier this week sent to members offering ticket packages for the June 28 Mark Twain Award for American Humor ceremony came from the Kennedy Center without including Trump's name.

“The Trump administration’s 11th hour gambit after waiting nearly two weeks evinces desperation," Norm Eisen, a board member at Democracy Defenders Action, and Nathaniel Zelinsky, senior counsel at the Washington Litigation Group, said in a statement. "That is what they should be feeling because they don’t have a legal leg to stand on. We will be vigorously contesting this latest ploy as we have throughout the case on behalf of Congresswoman Beatty and the American people.”

They represent Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center's board who filed the lawsuit seeking to remove Trump's name from the institution.

After ignoring the Kennedy Center for much of his first term, Trump has wielded tremendous influence over the venue during his return to office. Just a month into his second term, he ousted the center’s previous leadership and replaced it with a hand-picked board of trustees that named him chairman. He brought in Richard Grenell to serve as president, a position he held until March when Matt Floca assumed the role.

The center’s lineup has included more Trump-friendly programming, serving as the venue for events such as the premiere of first lady Melania Trump’s documentary, “Melania.”

The board also announced it had renamed the facility the Trump Kennedy Center, a change scholars and lawmakers say must be initiated by Congress, and physically added the president’s name to the building’s facade.

The fallout from the arts community was swift and intense. Actor Issa Rae, musician Bela Fleck and author Louise Penny were among the numerous artists who withdrew from appearances, while consultants such as musician Ben Folds and singer Renée Fleming resigned. Earlier this month, the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Jean Davidson, left to head the Los Angeles-based Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

In addition to voting on the stay on Thursday, the board backed a resolution recognizing Trump's “commitment to uphold this cherished American institution.”

But even then, there were signs of strain in their relationship — tensions that could be on full display during next week’s G7 summit in France.

Back in 2017, Trump was a brash businessman just elected to America's most powerful office, and Macron was an upstart politician who had won his race in a landslide. At a NATO summit in Brussels, they clinched hands far longer than most people do when they meet for the first time. Neither seemed to want to be the first to break a grip so tight that it exposed white knuckles.

Nevertheless, a friendship was born. And early on, Macron seemed to be the one European leader with a knack for managing his mercurial, three-decades-older counterpart.

Macron invited the Republican president to join him for Bastille Day celebrations in July 2017, including an Eiffel Tower dinner date with their wives. Trump reciprocated by making Macron the guest of honor the following year at his first White House state dinner, the highest diplomatic honor the United States can extend to an ally.

But by the end of Trump's first term, the bromance had faded. And in his second term, the leaders now openly trade barbs, disagreeing over tariffs, Ukraine and the Iran war. That dynamic will be scrutinized next week when Trump and the leaders of Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan join Macron in the French lakeside resort of Evian-les-Bains for the G7 summit.

Trump's long-simmering frustrations with US allies could be on display

There could be awkward moments between Trump and Macron, as well as among Trump and the other G7 leaders he's criticized for not joining him in Iran.

“But I also think European leaders are quite professionals when it comes to politics, and in some ways diplomacy at this point, and will maybe see it as an opportunity as well,” Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview.

Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said the Trump-Macron relationship has been further complicated by the Iran war and Trump's complaints “that Europeans weren't helping, when they hadn't been consulted, and their interests are very much affected by this.”

“I think that was a negative for Macron,” Volker said.

Trump joined Israel in a war against Iran over its nuclear program back in February without consulting other U.S. allies. He then complained publicly when European countries spurned his requests for their help.

Waning support for Ukraine in its war against Russia from the Trump administration “has really irritated the French,” Volker said. “They feel this is important and we're not paying attention to it.” Macron invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to join the leaders’ discussions on Tuesday.

Macron is the G7 member who has dealt with Trump the longest

In Trump's first term, Macron appeared confident that he could persuade and influence the U.S. leader, but the relationship increasingly has come to be defined by their disagreements.

Macron now says he is “careful” about Trump's statements, suggesting he no longer takes them at face value. Their relationship remains cordial as each calls the other “my friend.” But the relationship has also experienced some ups and downs.

As president-elect, Trump attended the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in late 2024 at Macron's invitation. After Trump began his second term in 2025, Macron was an early Oval Office visitor. The president wrote on social media that he was “delighted” to welcome Macron back to the White House and said the relationship with France has been “very special.”

But at one point during the meeting, the French president publicly corrected Trump after he wrongly suggested that Europe would recover the money it had provided to support Ukraine. With a smile, Macron touched Trump's forearm and replied, “We provided real money.”

Macron also condemned as “brutal and unfounded” new tariffs that Trump slapped on steel, aluminum and a broader range of European imports in early 2025.

But there have also been some lighter moments mixed with the tensions.

A documentary aired last year on French television showed Macron telling Trump during a phone call that Zelenskyy had agreed to a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal. Trump replied, “You’re the greatest.”

Macron has often said he can reach Trump directly whenever he needs to — and proved his point during last year’s U.N. General Assembly session in New York. After police officers blocked the French leader from crossing a street because traffic had been halted for Trump’s motorcade, Macron whipped out his cellphone and dialed the U.S. president.

“How are you?” Macron said. “Guess what? I’m waiting in the street because everything is frozen for you!”

‘This is not a show,’ Macron has said about Trump's NATO ambiguity

Macron has argued that Trump’s “America first” policies bolstered his case for a stronger European defense capability that would lessen reliance on the United States.

In April of this year, as Trump sent mixed signals about Washington's commitment to NATO after the start of the war in Iran, Macron delivered some of his sharpest criticism of the U.S. president.

“There is too much talk, and it's going in all directions,” Macron said. “We all need stability, calm and a return to peace. This is not a show.”

“You have to be serious, and when you want to be serious, you don't say the opposite every day of what you said the day before,” he said.

Trump, while mimicking a French accent, recently has taken to reenacting a conversation he says he had with Macron over drug prices and tariffs. Trump also poked Macron by telling a private luncheon in April that his wife, Brigitte Macron, treats her husband badly. The comments were in a video the White House had posted on its YouTube channel before blocking access.

Macron didn't see any humor in Trump's comments. “The remarks I heard were neither elegant nor appropriate,” he said. “They do not deserve a response.”

Still, Macron has tried to accommodate Trump's schedule to ensure his presence at the summit in Evian-les-Bains, knowing that he has a record of leaving such gatherings early.

Macron originally had set Sunday, which is Trump's 80th birthday, as the opening day of the summit, but he pushed the start back a day because Trump is celebrating the occasion with a UFC show staged on the White House grounds.

___

Corbet reported from Paris.

The World Cup returns to the U.S. on Friday for the first time in 32 years after Trump threw himself into winning the bid to co-host the soccer tourney during his first term. He’ll be feted Sunday, his 80th birthday, during a UFC fight night that’s expected to draw thousands to the White House grounds. Hours after the final bout, he’s scheduled to jet off to the G7 summit in the French Alps for talks with several world leaders he’s been beefing with over war and tariffs.

But Trump set expectations even higher for the coming days when he announced Thursday that the U.S. and Iran could come to terms this weekend on an agreement that would set the pathway to end the three-month-old war that's been broadly unpopular with Americans and has rattled global oil markets. He said he plans to dispatch Vice President JD Vance to the signing of the agreement.

Trump has said on several occasions in recent weeks that he's on the cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition. A spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry told state television following Trump's comments that mediators were active but nothing had been finalized to end the conflict.

Still, Trump is claiming this time might be different.

The breakthrough comes after he threatened to escalate the conflict with more intense bombardment of Iran and by seizing control of Iran’s oil industry, including capturing Iran's vital Kharg Island oil facility. The president's threats followed back-and-forth strikes this week that had rendered a temporary ceasefire agreed to in early April all but meaningless.

“They’ve taken a pounding like very few people could take," Trump said in an Oval Office exchange with reporters as he explained why he was confident that, this time, a deal would come through. "And they want to make the deal a lot more than I do.”

Trump offered scant details about the settlement he says is taking shape, but told reporters that he believed the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who is believed to have been wounded on the first day of the war and has not been seen in public since, is ready to sign off on the deal.

Trump is billing the deal as “very strong," though he says it remains “a little conceptual," and says it would ensure Iran is blocked from ever developing a nuclear weapon.

Trump's heightened threats are aimed at creating an off-ramp

With the conflict intensifying over the past week, Trump’s threat to escalate U.S. military action seemed in part aimed at demonstrating to the hawkish flank of his political base that he was willing to play “hardball” with the Iranians if they didn't come to a deal soon, said Ali Vaez, Iran director at the International Crisis Group.

Trump in March warned he would target Iran’s infrastructure and put American troops on Kharg Island before he ultimately backed down, and the two countries agreed to the temporary ceasefire.

Almost immediately after raising the idea again on social media Thursday, Trump appeared to back away. He called into a morning show on Fox News Channel and questioned whether Americans had the “stomach" for an option that would require putting U.S. troops in harm's way.

Hours later, Trump announced he had decided to cancel orders for “very hard” strikes on Iran and said a deal was close.

Vaez said even as Trump was posting on social media Thursday about escalating strikes, mediators from Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar had been making progress in their talks with Iran.

At the same time, Iran also may have reset the equation for Trump with its decision last weekend to attack Israel directly for the first time since the ceasefire after Israeli forces carried out military strikes on Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

With the move, Iran signaled that Israel could no longer bomb Lebanon without facing a meaningful reaction and in the process also raised the cost for the U.S. to follow through on its commitment to help safeguard Israel.

“It really does appear to me that Trump wants to bring this to an end, but his real challenge is that he’s looking for a victory lap and an exit ramp and those two things are not necessarily compatible,” Vaez said.

Trump expresses frustration with war narrative

Trump has been boasting since the early weeks of the conflict that he'd already won the war — much of the Islamic Republic's leadership has been killed in the bombings and the Iranian navy and air force have been severely degraded.

But Iran continues to effectively keep the Strait of Hormuz closed, choking a waterway through which about 20% of the world's oil supply passed before the war, and has yet to agree to restart negotiations with the U.S. over its concerns about Iran's nuclear program, the main reason Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave to justify launching the war.

But the real problem, Trump grumbled Thursday, was largely a public relations issue.

"They could wave the white flag of surrender. They could say: ‘We surrender, we surrender, we’re finished, we’ve had it. The United States is the greatest power, praise be to Allah,’" Trump said on Fox News. “They could say it loud and clear. And the fake news would say it was a great victory for Iran.”

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, a former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Trump has grown impatient with Iran and the renewed strikes and threats on Kharg Island and Iran's energy sector were intended to get the negotiations back to the “right place.”

Polls show that the conflict is largely unpopular with Americans. McCaul said he believes the Iranians want to “try to drag this out as long as they can,” closer to the midterm elections in November, because they see that as being to their benefit.

War will be high on agenda at next week's G7

Deal or no deal, the war will loom large during next week's talks at the Group of Seven summit in bucolic Évian-les-Bains, France.

Trump has frequently criticized some of the group leaders — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — for resisting his calls to aid the U.S. and Israeli war effort.

The four leaders have also angered Trump by criticizing how he's gone about executing the war and his lack of consultation with allies before jumping into a conflict that's hurt the global economy as oil prices have surged.

But Trump said he is optimistic he could have an agreement before his talks with leaders in France.

“The strait will officially open as soon as we sign, which could be soon, very soon — maybe over the weekend in Europe,” Trump said.

Defense attorneys for Tyler Robinson have accused prosecutors of going on a “media tour” to discuss expert reports about the bullet. The defense claims those statements violated restrictions imposed by Judge Tony Graf against speaking about the case outside of court.

But prosecutors said they had a right to correct misinformation from Robinson's attorneys about an inconclusive, preliminary finding by ballistics experts, who could not immediately match the bullet fragments with a gun allegedly used by Robinson. Details about the preliminary finding spurred stories speculating about Robinson’s possible exoneration.

“The rules expressly allow lawyers to set the record straight,” Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard wrote.

Robinson’s lawyers have tried to guard against media coverage that they say sometimes misrepresents their client, as his case has drawn tremendous public attention. The 23-year-old from southwestern Utah is charged with aggravated murder in the Sept. 10 assassination of Kirk, cofounder of the conservative Turning Point USA organization, on the Utah Valley University campus.

Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if Robinson is convicted. He has not yet entered a plea.

Robinson’s attorneys did not specify what sanctions should be levied against prosecutors if Graf agrees they violated his orders and holds them in contempt. But in court filings, the defense team pointed to another criminal case where prosecutors were accused of contempt and said one potential remedy was to bar the state from seeking the death penalty.

While the judge in that earlier case disagreed that an order barring the death penalty was merited, Robinson’s attorneys noted that, “the court did not conclude that such a remedy was beyond its authority where the facts support it.”

Graf has said he will issue his decision about the contempt allegation at a later date.

A key hearing in the case is scheduled for next month, when prosecutors must show they have enough evidence to warrant a trial. That would mark the most significant presentation of evidence to date in the case that has so far focused on matters of media access.

Robinson’s attorneys have asked Graf to halt the proceedings while they appeal a June 1 order in which the judge declined to bar cameras from the courtroom.

Constantino, a political newcomer and candidate in the June 23 Republican primary to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik, boasts a giant “Vote for Trump” sign atop his successful sticker business in the city of Amsterdam. He recorded a hip-hop album titled “Thank you President Trump." He even gifted Trump a big bronze statue of Trump himself last year at his West Palm Beach golf course.

Constantino's antics have not earned him fans among local party officials, who overwhelmingly support his opponent, state Assembly Member Robert Smullen, in the 21st Congressional District race. But Constantino has won over one powerful Republican who still has the power to sway primaries: Trump.

“Anthony is strongly supported by many of the most Highly Respected MAGA Warriors in our Movement, including Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Roger Stone!” Trump wrote in an endorsement of Constantino.

The president added: “The sign is still there!”

Constantino's battle against Smullen, a former U.S. Marine Corps colonel, is shaping up to be another test of Trump's pull at the ballot box, pitting the brash MAGA disciple against a more traditional conservative in the solid-red district.

Constantino has relentlessly attacked Smullen, calling him a “Trump hater” and giving him a derisive nickname out of the Trump playbook — “Slimebob.” He also doesn't miss a chance to feud with the state's Republican leadership.

“The New York GOP is a failing establishment, it’s a losing establishment,” Constantino said in an interview. “They reject outsiders. This happened with Donald Trump. The Republican Party tried to keep Donald Trump out, as well, because they knew he was going to reform things.”

Smullen has cast himself as the adult in the room, stressing his experience in the state Legislature, his military service, and his own ties to Trump.

“I think I directly represent the vast majority of the people in this district, their values, what they think about issues,” he said.

The district is 'not your country club Republican party’

The largely rural district sprawls across most of New York’s northern tip and includes the Adirondack Mountains, the U.S. Army's Fort Drum, dairy farms and dozens of small cities, towns and villages.

It's solid GOP territory — Stefanik won her last race by 24 points — with registered Republicans outnumbering Democrats 215,000 to 134,000. Voters there skew older and white, with many prison guards, police officers, farmers and devoutly religious people, according to Jack McGuire, an associate professor of politics at the State University of New York at Potsdam.

“It’s not your country club Republican party,” he said.

Stefanik shocked the New York political world when she announced late last year that she was suspending her campaign for governor and would not seek reelection to the House.

Her decision came after she didn't get full-throated support from Trump in the governor's race, and it followed an episode where Trump withdrew her nomination to be his ambassador to the United Nations over concerns about Republicans' threadbare majority in the House.

Local Republicans first began angling for the seat after she was tapped to head to the United Nations, only to begin circling again when she launched her run for governor.

A clash of candidates and styles

Smullen, who represents parts of the district in the state Assembly, is running a traditional campaign, chatting up voters at volunteer firehouses and community events.

He highlights a 24-year military career that included three tours of Afghanistan and combat experience, along with his more than seven years in the state Legislature. His 2018 appointment by Trump to serve in the White House Fellows program, along with attending both of Trump's inaugurations, was a go-to line when Constantino moved to cast himself as the Trump candidate during a recent debate.

“The idea that I have never been a supporter of President Donald Trump is a lie, it really is,” Smullen said during the debate. “And what's happening here is that if you say it long enough and if you say it hard enough then it's going to be true. But it's not true.”

Local GOP officials and committees are backing Smullen, as is the chair of the state Republicans. He also has the support of the state Conservative Party, which guarantees him a line in the general election even if he loses the GOP primary.

Matt Capano, who owns a hardware store in Gloversville, a small city in the district, said he knew Smullen as his local state lawmaker and had to “give him a lot of credit” because of his experience.

Constantino — who found success with his company Sticker Mule — is more of a showman. His style has forced his buttoned-up opponent to let loose. Smullen's campaign launched an anti-Constantino website that excoriates him for, among many other things, his past registration as a Democrat.

“I am the conservative Republican in this race,” Smullen said at the debate.

Constantino responded that he registered as a Democrat to vote for a childhood friend who was running for political office while calling himself a “lifelong conservative."

It didn't take long for him to steer the conversation back toward the president.

“I've always had his back through the whole thing,” he said of Trump. “In fact, in 2020, when he nicely exited the White House and a terrible person named Joe Biden entered, I went and I supported the president quietly by buying a Mar-a-Lago membership."

This afternoon kicks off our severe risk. The threats we are watching for include damaging winds, hail, flash flooding, and a very small tornado threat.

Hail, wind damage, and flash flooding are the most concerning of these threats. Power outages are possible because of the wind threat.

It is a good idea to plug in extra batteries and have the flashlight ready just in case of a power failure this afternoon or evening.

The slight risk from the SPC has been moved a bit further north. However, the entirety of the viewing area is included in at least that marginal or slight risk. The slight risk area will have the better chance to see those strong to severe storms this afternoon.

Futurecast shows these isolated strong storms pick up in speed around, I believe, around 5 PM. This futurecast model shows 8 PM. This particular model is typically around 2-3 hours late.

Be sure to stay weather aware today and download our weather authority mobile app for any updates and NWS alerts. These alerts will be sent out directly when hose watches and warnings are issued.

Wednesday Evening Update:

Some slight changes have happened in ,terms of our severe risk.

Heading into tomorrow, the level 2 of 5 risk has shifted more northward. This will mean that these areas will have a higher likelihood of having any storm cells that occur develop into severe ones.

Friday on the other hand, had the opposite effect. Now, the risk has shifted and expanded southward and includes all of our area in the 2 out of 5 risk. Between tomorrow and Friday, Friday will still have the most widespread of impacts, including a higher chance of seeing hail.

Alongside the storms, temperatures and humidity will be up. Areas in the Lynchburg and Southside could experience heat indices in the triple digits, with the Highlands and the Roanoke Valley toeing the line.

Wednesday Morning:

A Weather Authority Alert Day has been issued for June 11th and 12th for the risk of strong storms throughout the region.

The Storm Prediction Center has placed us under a slight and marginal risk for strong to severe storms both Thursday and Friday.

The main threats with these storms will be damaging wind, hail, and heavy rainfall; however, an isolated tornado can’t be ruled out entirely.

Portions of all 5 zones are included in the 15% probability of wind damage, with southern portions of NRV and Southside in the 5% risk area.

The hail risk will also be on the map for Thursday and Friday, with the entirety of the viewing area in that 5% risk zone for hail damage.

Some of these storms that pop up both Thursday and Friday will start out quite isolated. In this case, there is a better chance of rotation and the storm being able to quickly strengthen when these storms form as loners.

Thursday, as these storms fire off, a small tornado threat can not be ruled out for the Highlands Zone, especially. The threat is very small, but not zero.

Each day, storms will fire up in the afternoon and evening. The start time is looking to be around 1-3 PM on Thursday and 2-4 PM on Friday.

Be sure to stay weather aware and download the Weather Authority mobile app to have alerts sent directly to your phone when any warnings are issued.

Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark said the notice came shortly before the start of the league's executive board meeting to discuss its options in the Sorsby situation.

The temporary injunction issued Monday by a Texas district court prevents the NCAA from enforcing its permanent ban of Sorsby, a decision that sent shock waves across college sports. The transfer QB had been ruled ineligible after he acknowledged years of gambling that included at least 40 bets on his own team while he was a freshman at Indiana. Texas Tech said he has completed a month-long inpatient treatment program and will continue to receive treatment and support while being monitored.

What was the AG's warning to the Big 12?

The letter from the Texas AG's office was addressed to Yormark and Kansas Chancellor Douglas Girod, the chairman of the Big 12 board of directors. It specifically references a conference bylaw that, with a supermajority vote, could result in sanctioning a school that has "engaged in any action or a course of conduct materially adverse to the best interests of the conference taken as a whole.”

The AG's office said any sanctions against Texas Tech for “acting consistent" with the district court injunction “would be a per se violation of federal and state antitrust laws — a naked horizontal agreement among competitors to disadvantage Texas Tech by cutting off access to the resources it needs to compete.”

Beyond any antitrust exposure, the letter said, the Big 12 would also face liability for “breach of contract and tortious interference" for any sanction that results in the alteration of Texas Tech's scheduled games.

The letter was signed by Thomas York, chief of the antitrust division, and Kimberly Gdula, chief of the litigation division. The attorney general, Ken Paxton, is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate race in Texas this fall.

Yormark said the conference is taking time with its legal counsel to understand the concerns of the state.

Jeffrey Kessler, the attorney who represents Sorsby in his case against the NCAA, sent a separate and similar letter Thursday to the Big 12, according to multiple reports. That letter reportedly referenced the same Big 12 bylaw and warned the league that it is bound by the court's ruling this week.

The NCAA has said it will appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh District of Texas, seeking an accelerated decision to overturn the injunction and again make Sorsby ineligible.

Big 12 is still considering all options

Since NCAA rules call for a permanent loss of eligibility for any player who wagered on his own team, the judge’s decision brought sharp criticism from college sports leadership, including in Texas Tech’s own league. The executive board met as planned Thursday in preparation for a meeting Monday of the Big 12's full board of directors, which is made up of presidents and chancellors from the league's 16 schools.

“We had a good and informative discussion. Sentiment among the executive board was no different from what we heard from the ADs earlier this week,” Yormark said. "Our discussion with the full board will determine our course of action, and all options remain on the table.”

Big 12 athletic directors in a conference call Tuesday expressed strong opposition to Sorsby playing for the Red Raiders in what will be his final college season. Some of those ADs even suggested maybe not playing Texas Tech if he does.

Sorsby transferred to Texas Tech in January for a reported multimillion-dollar deal after playing the past two seasons at Cincinnati, another Big 12 school. The 22-year-old Texas native first spent two seasons at Indiana.

The warning from a big booster

The threat of legal action came one day after Texas Tech billionaire booster and regents chair Cody Campbell mentioned that possibility during a podcast appearance with Dan Dakich. Campbell was addressing reports of schools talking about boycotting the Red Raiders.

“I love when the Big Ten or the K-State AD comes out and says we’ve all gotten together and we’ve talked about how we’re not going to play Tech, because guess what? That’s collusion,” Campbell said. “That’s an antitrust violation. So have fun with that one, guys. You can’t do that.”

Campbell, a former offensive lineman at the school, has been a key figure in helping Texas Tech land top players over the past two years.

The Red Raiders, with one of college football's most expensive rosters, won their first Big 12 title last season, setting a school record with 12 wins and making the 12-team College Football Playoff. Sorsby was brought in to be the starting QB after hometown favorite Behren Morton exhausted his eligibility.

A message from Texas Tech leadership

The school posted a 21-minute video message Thursday night to Red Raiders fans that included school president Lawrence Schovanec, athletic director Kirby Hocutt and coach Joey McGuire talking about how the university is addressing the situation.

“I believe that every person at this table is looking at the student first. And that student is a football player. And that student is where he, I think, feels the safest and also feels to where he can deal with this the most is in this building at Texas Tech,” McGuire said. “And I think that’s where he should be and I’m glad he’s back. I know his teammates are glad he's back.”

Hocutt spoke about the NCAA twice denying Texas Tech's petition to have Sorsby reinstated. The AD also reiterated that the school wasn't a party in the quarterback's separate legal case and didn't pay any of his legal fees.

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AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts downplayed the significance of the injury.

Roberts said the move was precautionary because the Dodgers did not want to risk Ohtani being injured further.

Roberts also said he is optimistic that Ohtani will be ready to play Friday night when the Dodgers meet the White Sox in Chicago to open a three-game series between division leaders.

“We tried to be smart about it and get him out of the game,” Roberts said. “He told the trainer that he felt a little something behind his knee and I just didn’t see any sense in risking it.”

The reigning NL MVP hit his 13th homer of the season, a solo shot, in the third inning. He also had a single and walked twice, reaching base in all four of his plate appearances.

Ohtani was not made available to the media following the game. He is hitting .305 with 40 RBIs. As a pitcher, he is 6-2 with a 1.06 ERA and 73 strikeouts in 67 2/3 innings.

Starting pitcher Justin Wrobleski left the game in the fifth inning with a left hamstring contusion. The left-hander was hit by a line drive off the bat of Bryan Reynolds. The ball ricocheted off Wrobleski to first baseman Freddie Freeman. Wrobleski collided with Reynolds while taking Freeman’s toss at first base.

“I’ll get some treatment on it and I’ll be fine,” Wrobleski said. “I don’t think it’s a big deal. Just a little frustrating.” ___

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

The justices decided not to lift an injunction blocking Alabama from carrying out what would have been the nation’s ninth execution by nitrogen gas, rejecting a last-minute legal battle by the state as it sought to carry out the sentence in the evening. A spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Corrections said the execution was off for the evening and the state would not try another method.

The high court voted 6-3 and did not explain its reasoning. Three of the conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch — said they would grant Alabama’s request to lift the injunction and let the execution go forward.

In a statement the legal team for Lee, 49, hailed the decision and noted that his jury had voted for a sentence of life, which a judge overruled.

“His jury voted for life. Two courts ruled the method unconstitutional. Today, the Constitution prevailed,” the statement said. “Now Governor Ivey can finish what the jury started: restore the jury’s verdict of life without parole.”

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall promised the families of the victims that authorities will continue to seek justice, saying in a statement: “The State is prepared to do whatever is necessary to see Mr. Lee’s lawful sentence carried out.”

“Tonight’s ruling is a miscarriage of justice, not for us, but for Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, who Jeffery Lee brutally and senselessly murdered and left on the floor of their place of business,” Marshall said. Tonight I am also keeping their families in mind, many of whom were prepared to witness the final act of justice be served.”

Prison officials said Lee did not request a final meal Thursday but had potato chips, Skittles, water and a Sprite in the hours ahead of his possible execution.

The ruling was at least a temporary, rare victory for opponents of capital punishment in a state that has had one of the busiest death chambers in the country. And it capped an extraordinary legal back-and-forth over the humaneness of nitrogen gas as an execution method.

Legal challenge wended its way through the courts

Lee filed a lawsuit challenging Alabama’s protocol as a violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and U.S. District Judge Emily Marks ruled the method constitutional in May.

But a three-judge panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed her decision Monday, saying the three minutes it could take for an inmate to lose awareness is an “intolerable” time frame “given the suffering that would likely take place under Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia protocol.”

Marks reevaluated the case and ruled again Tuesday saying Lee had shown “that the protocol constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.” The state appealed to the Supreme Court.

“If that ruling stands, it would be unprecedented in American history. Not only does it portend the first-ever permanent ban on a legislatively enacted method, but it would expand the concept of cruelty well beyond the bounds of the Eighth Amendment,” lawyers with the Alabama Attorney General’s Office wrote.

Lee’s lawyers asked the high court to keep the execution on hold, saying in a response that Alabama was asking it to intervene at the eleventh hour “to allow an execution that has been found unconstitutional to proceed.”

The decision blocks Lee's execution in the immediate future, but it is unclear how long the reprieve will last. The state maintains that nitrogen is constitutional, and the lower-court order blocks only that method and other means of execution such as lethal injection and the electric chair, both of which are authorized in Alabama.

Nitrogen executions introduced in the state 2 years ago

Alabama began using nitrogen gas to carry out some executions in 2024. The method involves strapping a respirator to a person’s face and replacing breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death from lack of oxygen.

Nitrogen has been used in eight executions in the United States — seven times in Alabama and once in Louisiana. Lee was scheduled to be the ninth.

During the previous Alabama nitrogen executions, the inmates shook, pulled at the restraints and exhibited labored breathing. During the state’s last execution by nitrogen gas, 30 minutes elapsed between Anthony Boyd exhibiting signs of being impacted by the gas and state officials closing the curtain to the viewing room to signal the execution was complete.

The state has maintained that the method is constitutional and causes no more suffering than other execution methods.

Lee, who is currently housed at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, was convicted of two counts of capital murder for killing Ellis and Thompson while robbing a pawnshop on Dec. 12, 1998.

Prosecutors said Lee entered Jimmy’s Pawnshop with a sawed-off shotgun and shot Ellis, the owner, and Thompson, an employee.

Alabama no longer allows judicial overrides in capital cases

A jury voted 7-5 to give Lee a sentence of life imprisonment. However a judge overrode that and sentenced him to death.

Alabama ended the practice of judicial override in 2017 and no longer allows a judge to disregard a jury’s sentencing decision in death penalty cases.

Bestselling author John Grisham called on Gov. Kay Ivey to honor the jury's decision and commute Lee's sentence to life without parole.

“The practice of a judge overriding a jury was declared unconstitutional and so indefensible that Alabama itself abolished it in 2017,” Grisham said in a statement. “Jeffery Lee’s jury made its decision, the Alabama Legislature later agreed that juries, not judges, should decide life or death sentences.”

Ivey, for her part, said Thursday night: “While I am disappointed the Supreme Court did not allow the state to proceed with Lee’s chosen method of execution, I remain committed to ensuring that justice is ultimately served for his victims.”

Jurors found Alvin Campbell, 45, guilty of 21 out of 22 counts for sex assaults from 2017 to 2019, the Suffolk County district attorney's office said. He was found guilty of charges including aggravated rape, kidnapping and photographing an unsuspecting nude person.

The jury was deadlocked on one of the rape charges.

“We will determine our action, if any, at a future date on that charge,” the district attorney's office said in a statement.

Campbell faces up to life in prison for aggravated rape when he is sentenced on June 29.

Campbell posed as a rideshare driver to target women outside bars or other locations, prosecutors said.

His younger sister became the first woman of color to win statewide office in Massachusetts when she was sworn in as attorney general in 2023. A spokesperson for the attorney general's office didn't immediately return an email from The Associated Press late Thursday seeking comment on the verdict.

Andrea Campbell has spoken previously about her family's troubled history in the criminal justice system, including her brother's rape charges.

“One thing I do frequently is share my story because I think there are so many who carry their story with a sense of shame and don’t want to talk about it, including the criminal aspects of my family,” she said in a previous interview with the AP. “But there is no shame in one sharing their story. There is power in it.”

The attorney general is the chief lawyer and law enforcement officer in the state.

After the verdict, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden told reporters he hadn't spoken with the attorney general.

Alvin Campbell “deceivingly and calculatedly” preyed upon women in their most vulnerable moments, Hayden said. “I can't imagine what that horror must have been like for them.”

Campbell's defense attorney didn't immediately respond to a phone message and email from the AP.

Hayden expressed gratitude to the women who testified: “We’re happy that we were able to secure justice and accountability for them and so we thank them.”

Trump announced the nomination on social media amid pressure from Congress to name a permanent replacement for Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation last month. Trump faced intense pushback over his decision to name Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting director. The job oversees the coordination of 18 intelligence agencies.

The resulting uproar led to a standoff in Congress after Democrats said they would refuse to renew foreign intelligence powers unless Trump pulled Pulte’s nomination and named a permanent nominee.

“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump wrote. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”

Speaking later Thursday in the Oval Office, Trump said he still plans to keep Pulte in the role “for a little while” after earlier saying he wants Pulte to downsize the office. He called Clayton an “incredible talent” and said, “Nobody has better credentials.”

As the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Clayton oversees the most prestigious of the Justice Department’s prosecution offices, with a vast portfolio ranging from terrorism and espionage cases to security fraud and public corruption.

He took over from interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who resigned in February after refusing to carry out orders from the Justice Department to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. The case was eventually dropped after prosecutors from Washington submitted a request to a judge.

Republicans hope to move quickly on nomination

The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold a confirmation hearing for Clayton on Wednesday, according to a person who requested anonymity to discuss it ahead of an official notice.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters that the Senate hopes to receive Clayton’s nomination paperwork from the White House as soon as Thursday. “We will move quickly,” he said.

Democrats are holding up the renewal of a key surveillance law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in protest of Trump’s decision to temporarily tap Pulte. They say they won’t support an extension of the law, which expires at midnight Friday, until Trump withdraws Pulte’s appointment.

Trump previously said Pulte would take over on June 19. It is unclear whether the Senate could move quickly enough to confirm Clayton before that date.

“I don’t know what realistic is, but we’re gonna probe the limits of it,” Thune said.

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that he has “known and respected” Clayton for decades and that if Trump had named him as the DNI nominee last week, “lots of pain might have been avoided.”

“His intelligence, temperament and deep commitment to public service will make him a terrific DNI,” Himes said.

Asked about Clayton’s nomination, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Pulte has to go.”

“He cannot be in the DNI role,” Schumer said. “It’s too important.”

Trump's pick has led SDNY during a tumultuous period

Clayton navigated his way through a 14-month tenure in the Southern District of New York without clashing with the federal judges in the busiest court in the nation, unlike his counterparts in upstate New York and New Jersey. After his interim term expired after 120 days, the judges of the Southern District appointed him as U.S. attorney.

Clayton was sworn in April 2025 on the same day three prosecutors resigned, saying they felt pressured to admit wrongdoing or regret about prosecuting the case against Adams.

Then, weeks later, the office had to withstand controversy over the Trump administration’s firing of one of its most respected and successful prosecutors, Maurene Comey. She claims she was fired because of Trump’s dislike of her father, former FBI Director James Comey.

Under Clayton, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office facilitated the unsealing of thousands of pages of court records from the prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — documents that were made public as part of the Justice Department’s release of records related to the late sex offender and his longtime confidant.

Clayton filed documents with the court explaining the process the government followed in releasing the materials.

Clayton has also overseen the prosecution of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, on drug trafficking charges.

Clayton has overseen cases involving national security threats

Several recent terrorism cases brought by Clayton’s office touch on the global threats and influences that he’ll be navigating if confirmed as director of national intelligence.

They include the May arrest of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, an Iraqi and Iranian citizen accused of plotting 20 attacks in Europe and Canada and planning to attack a Manhattan synagogue and Jewish centers in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona, in retaliation for the U.S. war on Iran.

“There are foreign nations and terrorist organizations that see our success as a threat. A threat that they want eliminated,” Clayton said at a recent press briefing. “That is a stark truth.”

“And don’t take my word for it,” he added. “Take their words and their actions. When your enemies tell you something, and when they act, you should know that they mean it.”

The first Trump administration tried in June 2020 to install Clayton, then the chairman of the SEC, as U.S. attorney in Manhattan, but backed down and instead allowed Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss to serve in the post. The reversal came after then-U. S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman agreed to step down, following assurances that probes into Trump allies would not be disrupted and that Strauss could lead the office.

At the time, the office was looking into dealings by Rudy Giuliani, who was serving as Trump’s personal attorney, and was also investigating the actions of a state-owned Turkish bank.

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Neumeister and Sisak reported from New York. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.

No World Cup match has had that many players ejected since a 2006 game between Portugal and the Netherlands, when four players received red cards — a World Cup record.

The last World Cup in Qatar in 2022 had only four red cards in the entire tournament.

On Thursday at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, Sphephelo Sithole and Themba Zwane were sent off for South Africa while César Montes was shown a red card for the tournament co-host.

It’s the first time three players have been sent off in the opening match of a World Cup – and all three were straight red cards, meaning none of the ejected players were given two yellows.

Mexico won the match 2-0.

Sithole was red-carded after taking down Mexico’s Brian Gutierrez on the edge of the box at the start of the second half.

Things got worse for South Africa when Zwane was sent off following a video review for striking Roberto Alvarado in the face in the 84th minute. Finally, in stoppage time, Montes saw red for bringing down Khuliso Mudau.

The red cards mean the three players will be suspended for at least one more match. South Africa’s next match is against the Czech Republic and Mexico next faces South Korea in Guadalajara.

The match between Portugal and the Netherlands at the 2006 World Cup in Germany stands out with its four red cards – two for each team. That game in Nuremberg also had 16 yellow cards.

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

Italian prosecutors are investigating Montgomery, Alabama-based Caddell Construction, a major builder of U.S. diplomatic missions. Two of its managers in Italy were arrested this month on suspicion of labor exploitation, one while boarding a flight to leave the country and another planning to flee, prosecutors said.

The investigation is led by prosecutor Paolo Storari, who also has spearheaded probes into sweatshops supplying luxury brands. So far only Caddell has been named as a target, not any of its subcontractors.

The consulate probe was launched about six months ago and involves some 70 workers, mostly from India. Prosecutors allege Caddell illegally deducted room and board from wages and forced them to work 10-hour days, six days a week. Some were paid as little as 500 euros (less than $580) monthly after room and board were deducted, prosecutors said. Minimum wage for construction workers in Milan starts at 13.39 euros (over $15) an hour, according to the Cassa Edile benefits fund.

Caddell and the U.S. State Department said they are investigating the allegations and cooperating with Italian authorities.

The consulate project is part of a construction boom in Milan over the past two decades that has modernized the skyline and raised the international profile of Italy’s fashion and finance capital.

Workers describe unpaid wages and threats

The AP spoke to four workers from Kenya and one from India at a trade union center where officials were organizing assistance, including legal help and housing. The workers provided documentation and spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation and to protect the ongoing investigation.

The Kenyan workers said they had been hired by Caddell after working on a multi-million-dollar extension of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

Two showed employment letters on Caddell stationery signed by a company representative promising annual salaries topping 25,000 euros (nearly $29,000).

They said they were not paid anything close to that and were threatened by human resources personnel at the job site after they questioned management.

“When you go to the office to ask any question, you are being told, ‘Either you work or you will be returned to your country. That’s the amount you are supposed to be paid,’’’ one Kenyan electrician said. He added that he was paid just 800 euros ($925) a month after being promised 2,300 euros ($2,660).

Another Kenyan electrician said he was threatened with defamation after presenting an AI summary of Italian labor law and was told the 25,000 euros in the employment letter was “for visa purposes,” not a promise of payment.

US government and Caddell say they are investigating

The State Department said it is investigating the allegations made by prosecutors and that U.S. law enforcement is working with Italian authorities.

“The U.S. government does not tolerate labor exploitation,” the department said in a statement.

Caddell said it was “fully cooperating” with Italian authorities and conducting its own “comprehensive inquiry into this matter to ensure all our global subcontractors and consultancies are in compliance with all labor standards and legal requirements.”

“Caddell is committed (to) treating and paying workers fairly. We will continue to work with authorities in good faith to ensure the welfare of those who work on this important project,” the company said in a statement.

More than a decade ago, Caddell paid millions to the U.S. government to settle allegations it made false claims to gain access to government incentives. Caddell did not reply to a request for comment on that case.

Fired workers seek help

All five of the workers who spoke to the AP, ranging in age from their late 20s to early 50s, said they were fired without cause this year. One of them said he returned from visiting family in Kenya to find that he no longer had a job or place to stay.

Four of the workers were trained electricians, including the Indian worker whose resume showed he had more than a decade of experience working for other companies in Persian Gulf countries.

The Indian worker said he was promised a monthly salary of 2,500 euros (nearly $3,000). Instead, he had a pay slip showing his actual pay amounted to around 500 euros (less than $580) per month. It listed an hourly wage of 1.55 euros ($1.80).

The Kenyans said they reached out to authorities after learning of the investigation.

“I believe in justice,” one said. “Also the workers there should not be afraid. They should come and speak up.”

Two said they are currently sleeping in parks, while one is staying with a friend. One said he had been offered a job at a Caddell site in another country but declined after his treatment in Milan.

Caddell is a major diplomatic contractor

Caddell became a leader in building U.S. diplomatic missions when the State Department launched a major security upgrade after the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya killed more than 250 people.

“Very few contractors can meet the strict requirements to even bid on secure work necessary for diplomatic facility projects,” Caddell said on its website marking its 40th anniversary in 2023. At that point, the firm counted 39 projects in its embassy portfolio valued at $7.4 billion. It has added four projects since then.

The Milan consulate campus is being built on a 10-acre (40,000-square meter) site at a former shooting range. The current U.S. Consulate is in a high-rise building designed by acclaimed Italian architect Gio Ponti.

Plans for the campus called for about 500 “locally employed workers,” according to the U.S. State Department. The project includes restoration of a century-old building, along with a five-story consulate building, restored gardens, a reflecting pool and a large outdoor gathering area.

Work is continuing under court supervision. Workers no longer have their room and board deducted. They are limited to 45 hours and guaranteed two days off a week.

Pay records appear to bolster allegations

The pay stubs presented by the workers listed apparent charges of 510 euros (around $590) a month for housing and more than 300 euros (around $350) monthly for food. But those deductions only account for a portion of the difference between the promised wages and actual pay.

Unions intend to seek damages for the workers to recover at least what they earned “through hard work and commitment,” said Laura Malguzzi, a labor representative at the Fillea Cgil union federation representing construction workers.

Malguzzi said she was surprised that the pay stubs presented by the workers appeared to document the alleged exploitation. Union experts are still studying the documents, which do not conform to Italian standards, and could not verify their origins.

“They probably had in their minds the absolute certainty that they were untouchable,’’ Malguzzi said.

The Kenyan workers said they begrudgingly accepted a $200 monthly salary in Nairobi, where unemployment is rampant. But they expected better from a U.S. company operating in Europe.

“They can just hire you, and you just go running,” one worker said of the company. “Because you are poor you have nothing. And you have nothing you can do.”

The 7.8 magnitude offshore quake, one of the strongest to hit the Philippine archipelago in a half century, struck Monday off the southern province of Sarangani and has left at least 47 people dead and injured 688 with 31 still missing.

More than 45,000 people remained displaced, about half in emergency shelters, after the quake damaged more than 12,600 houses in farming towns and cities. Many were still too traumatized to return home due to aftershocks, provincial officials said.

Sarangani reported 20 dead from the quake, the highest toll from the affected provinces, mostly due to a landslide that buried houses in the coastal town of Glan, according to the government's Office of Civil Defense, which deals with major disasters.

Glan Mayor Victor James Yap said power has not been restored to his province and 10 of 31 villages in his town of more than 100,000 people remained inaccessible mostly due to landslides. He asked the government to immediately deploy air force helicopters to deliver food and other aid to the stricken areas.

“We need food and water but it’s difficult to transport them to some of our villages which remain isolated,” Yap told DZMM radio network. “Choppers are needed to transport food because people there are already very hungry.”

A key access road to the town has been reopened and will allow the delivery of fuel as early as Thursday, but the town remained without power and cellphone services were still spotty, according to Yap.

The Office of Civil Defense said more than 26 million pesos ($426,000) worth of food packs, cash and other aid have been provided so far and 180 government and military planes, helicopters, ships and trucks have been deployed to respond to the disaster.

About 3,400 government and military personnel were involved in search efforts for the missing, debris-clearing in roads, damage assessment and other disaster-mitigation work, it said.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Wednesday visited the hard-hit city of General Santos city, where he inspected damaged hospitals and schools and discussed recovery efforts. He ordered the release of 100 million pesos ($1.6 million) for the repair of the partly collapsed city hall and 50,000 pesos ($820) for the families of each of the victims who died in the quake.

Most of the deaths from the quake were caused by falling debris from collapsed buildings and landslides in Sarangani, the coastal city of General Santos, and the outlying provinces of South Cotabato and Davao Occidental.

Two swimmers drowned and one remained missing off General Santos after being swept out to sea shortly after the quake hit. Waves of up to 1.4 meters (4.6 feet) above tide level were measured in the country’s south and smaller waves washed ashore in Indonesia and Palau and as far away as southern Japan.

The earthquake was one of the strongest to hit the country since an 8.1 magnitude quake and tsunami on Aug. 17, 1976, that killed about 8,000 people.

The Philippines is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.

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Associated Press journalist Jim Gomez contributed to this report from Manila, Philippines.

Canadian journalist Lyse Doucet won the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction with “The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan.”

Both prizes come with a 30,000 pound ($40,000) purse and are open to female English-language writers from any country.

Evans wrote fiction for two decades before writing “The Correspondent" during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was released quietly in 2025. A story told through years’ worth of letters from retired lawyer Sybil Van Antwerp to friends, family and famous writers, it gradually climbed bestseller lists and became a book club favorite. A film adaptation starring Jane Fonda is in the works.

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who chaired the fiction judging panel, said the novel “captured our hearts” by “elevating an ordinary life in the most heartfelt of ways.”

Evans said she “developed a very thick skin for rejection and failure” during the years of writing without getting published.

“Why did I keep going? I didn’t know how not to, I guess,” she told The Associated Press.

“I was writing the book that I wanted to read,” she added. “I guess the book that I was wanting to read was the book a lot of people were wanting to read.”

She said “The Correspondent” is in part a cry against the loss of handwritten letters — “the real tale of history” — in our digital age.

“If you want to know what happened somewhere, you need to read somebody saying to their mom, ‘This is what happened to me today,'" she said. "And so I feel a grief about that. There’s something I probably was reaching for when I was writing the book, which was the preservation of the memory of that.”

Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, profiles staff and guests of Kabul’s once-glamorous Inter-Continental Hotel — scarred but still standing — to provide a microcosm of Afghanistan’s turbulent recent history.

Labour Party politician Thangam Debbonaire, head of the nonfiction jury, called it “a perfect work of narrative non-fiction” that is “informed by decades of excellent reporting.”

Doucet, who has been visiting Afghanistan as a journalist since the 1980s, said she wrote the book to provide a fuller picture than the “snapshot” of news coverage allows.

“My experience from decades of covering countries and people in the hardest of times is that people still have to get up every day and find an everyday courage to get through the day,” she said. "And even in the darkest of places … people find humor to bring light, they try to live with hope to bring some kind of relief and they try to live with humanity.”

Previous winners of the fiction prize, founded in 1996, include Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Barbara Kingsolver.

The sister prize for nonfiction was founded in 2024 to help redress a gender imbalance in publishing. In 2022, only 26.5% of nonfiction books reviewed in Britain’s newspapers were by women, and male writers dominated established nonfiction writing prizes.

Last year’s nonfiction winner was British physician Rachel Clarke’s account of an organ transplant, “The Story of a Heart.”

The 33-year-old Endo posted his decision on his X account in Japanese three days before his team's Group F opener against the Netherlands. The Japan team has been training in Nashville, Tennessee.

“Since getting injured and up till this point, I’ve done everything I could and I have no regret,” said Endo, who underwent surgery on his left foot in February. He came off at halftime on his return in Japan’s 1-0 warmup match victory against Iceland on May 31 in Tokyo.

“With this campaign, I will be retiring from the national team. So from here on, I’ll be cheering for the Japan national team as one of the fans."

National team director Masakuni Yamamoto said Ajax defender Ko Itakura has been named the new captain, while Borussia Monchengladbach forward Shuto Machino has been called up as a replacement for Endo.

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

In a new blow to the Kremlin's narrative that Moscow is winning the 4-year-old war in Ukraine, Kyiv's forces have targeted supplies to Crimea, triggering the worst fuel crisis on the Black Sea peninsula since it was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

The persistent attacks reflect the growing intensity and efficiency of Ukraine’s drone strikes and have caught Russia off-guard and struggling for a response.

As the country marks the Russia Day national holiday on Friday, signaling the start of summer vacations, the gas shortages are threatening to cause further disruptions to the tourism-dependent region with its beaches and resorts.

In a rare public acknowledgment, the Kremlin has recognized the scope of the problem and promised to address the issue quickly.

Ukraine's successes have highlighted its ability to inflict painful damage to Russia and change the course of the conflict while Moscow’s advances recently have ground to a near halt. On Thursday, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine reached its 1,569th day, surpassing the duration of World War I.

Crimea’s importance to Russia

Crimea has been a jewel in Russia’s imperial crown since it was seized from Turkic-speaking Tatars in the 18th century after Moscow defeated the Ottoman Empire.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 when both republics were part of the USSR. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the diamond-shaped peninsula became part of newly independent Ukraine.

Russia kept a naval base in Sevastopol, and when a Moscow-friendly Ukrainian president was ousted by a popular uprising in February 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent in troops to overtake Crimea. Weeks later, Moscow annexed the peninsula following a referendum that most of the world refuses to recognize.

Soon afterward, a Moscow-backed separatist insurgency erupted in eastern Ukraine, and fighting there raged with varying intensity until the February 2022 invasion. Russian troops concentrated in Crimea quickly seized large parts of southern Ukraine early in the war and secured the land route to the peninsula.

Since early in the war, Ukraine has fired missiles and drones to try to dislodge Moscow’s hold on the territory. The Ukrainian military sank several Russian warships in the Black Sea and at their Crimean bases, crippling Moscow’s naval capability and forcing it to redeploy its fleet to Novorossiysk.

Ukraine also methodically targeted munitions depots, airfields and Putin’s prized asset, the Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to Russia. The span was struck by a truck bomb in October 2022 that killed five people, blew up two sections of the bridge and required months of repairs. More attacks on the bridge followed in 2023 and 2025.

Ukraine's attacks on the land corridor to Crimea

Sine the Kerch Bridge attacks, Russia has channeled most fuel and other supplies along the highway and railroad via the occupied territories along the Sea of Azov coast. Those shipments were interrupted last month, when Ukrainian drones hit fuel trucks on the highway that Moscow once deemed to be safe, leaving behind dozens of burning vehicles.

Other relentless Ukrainian strikes hit refineries, oil depots and pipelines deep inside Russia, hurting its oil exports and causing domestic fuel shortages.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted the synergy between the longer-range attacks and those disrupting supplies to Crimea and other occupied regions.

“The long-range strike campaign is therefore reducing Russia’s production capacity, while the midrange strike campaign is hurting Russia’s ability to transport the gasoline Russia is still able to produce,” it said in an analysis.

Making maters worse, Ukrainian drones this week repeatedly hit the Chonhar Bridge, which links mainland Ukraine and Crimea over a shallow strait. Authorities deployed pontoon bridges.

The Ukrainian military said it struck the bridge to disrupt movement of troops, ammunition and fuel from Crimea.

Queues and gas rationing

It's not immediately clear how the fuel disruptions will affect Russian military operations, but residents of Crimea and other occupied territories are keenly feeling the blow.

The peninsula has had periodic fuel shortages from Ukrainian strikes before, but this crisis is the worst since its 2014 annexation.

At the end of May, authorities restricted the sale of gasoline to 20 liters (5 1/3 gallons) per vehicle owner per week using prepaid coupons. Those were snapped up immediately following their release on an official messaging app channel, and motorists lined up for hours, waiting to refuel.

Social networks have been abuzz with requests and advice on where to find fuel, and authorities launched a hotline for tourists who have found themselves trapped.

While fuel shipments over the Kerch Bridge long has been suspended for security reasons since the Ukrainian attacks, fuel also has been carried by ferries. Those shipments are expected to increase.

Some motorists bring their own gas over the bridge from the mainland, but they are restricted to carrying 100 liters (about 26 1/2 gallons) per vehicle. Some speculators are selling gas at double the market price.

Crimea attracted nearly 7 million tourists last year, and it had hoped to top that number this year. The business daily Kommersant reported that nearly 80% of hotel bookings were canceled in late May and early June.

Some hotels offered gasoline as a bonus for new bookings, offers that were quickly snapped up.

Some travelers were unsettled by a Ukrainian drone attack earlier this week on a passenger train traveling from Moscow to Crimea, injuring its driver and killing his assistant. That led to a brief suspension of service, with passengers taken by buses.

An earlier attack on a commuter train in Crimea killed one person and injured three others, forcing authorities to shift schedules to limit service during daytime hours.

Kremlin pledges action

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged the Crimean fuel shortages earlier this week and promised that “measures were being taken” to deal with them.

The Russian Defense Ministry has been silent about the Ukrainian attacks on the land corridor, while some war bloggers have harshly criticized the military for failing to anticipate the strikes and its slow response.

Some suggested military escorts for fuel trucks while others urged stepping up strikes on Ukrainian bridges, fuel storage sites and other infrastructure.

Amid the fuel crisis and the finger-pointing, Ukraine dealt another symbolic blow to Russia, striking a historic Sevastopol building that houses a huge panoramic painting that depicts the defense of the city during the 19th century Crimean War. The painting was effectively destroyed by fire during the attack, according to Mikhail Razvozhayev,, the Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea's largest city.

Given Putin’s focus on Crimea, military blogger Valery Shiryayev said, the attack would certainly anger the Russian leader.

“It’s hard to find another work of art, another part of national heritage, whose destruction would be as painful for Putin,” he said.

Ruggs, a former first-round draft pick and Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver, drove his sports car at speeds up to 156 mph (251 kph) in the city on Nov. 2, 2021, slamming into a vehicle that killed driver Tina Tintor and her dog, Max. Tintor was 23.

Prosecutors at the time said his blood-alcohol level taken within the required two hours after the crash was 0.16%, which is twice the legal limit for drivers in Nevada. Before the crash, he was at TopGolf, a sports entertainment venue in Las Vegas, according to prosecutors.

Ruggs pleaded guilty in May 2023 to felony DUI causing death and misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. He was sentenced in August 2023 to a three- to 10-year prison sentence. The earliest he was eligible for parole was August 2026.

Ruggs will go before the parole board again three months before Aug. 24, 2027, his mandatory parole release date, according to Kathi Baker, executive director of the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners.

“Mr. Ruggs, and our office, continue to feel the grief and loss suffered by Ms. Tintor’s family,” Ruggs’ attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said in a Thursday statement, adding that they were disappointed by the parole board’s decision to deny parole.

The attorneys said there is “overwhelming evidence” of Ruggs’ accepting responsibility for his conduct and engaging in community outreach efforts related to DUI prevention, including completing educational programs while in custody.

Tintor's family could not be reached for comment.

During the May parole hearing, Ruggs said he took full responsibility for the actions that led to Tintor and her dog's death.

“Not a minute goes by where I don't think of the pain I caused her family, her friends and the Las Vegas community,” he said during the hearing, of which the AP obtained a copy.

He said he used his time in custody to educate young people and others about decision-making and the dangers of drinking and driving. He also said he met with Tintor's family to apologize.

“I know I can never alleviate the pain that I caused, but if released I plan to continue to do my work to educate young people on the dangers of reckless behavior and hopefully avoid future tragedies,” he said.

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This story has been updated to correct the day that Henry Ruggs' parole was denied. It was on Thursday, not Friday.

Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher in a letter to challenger Dan Sullivan said her office had received two complaints regarding his eligibility and determined “that the preponderance of evidence does not support your eligibility for the office of United States Senator.”

She gave him a Thursday deadline to submit “any additional information and evidence" in response.

Sullivan, the challenger, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment about the letter from Beecher, a registered Republican who in the past has donated to Republican groups and campaigns. Her letter, dated Wednesday and published by the Anchorage Daily News, did not specify the evidence it found to potentially remove him from the primary ballot, and her office did not respond to requests for comment.

Sullivan's candidacy has caused a stir in one of the most prominent U.S. Senate races in the country. It's a seat Democrats have targeted as they try to regain the majority in the chamber in this year's midterm elections.

Sen. Sullivan has accused his namesake challenger of working with Democrats to try to trick voters and boost the chances of his top opponent, former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, a claim both deny. The challenger, who lives in the small fishing community of Petersburg south of Juneau, told The Associated Press earlier this week that the decision to run was “my choice." He said he had no contact with the Peltola campaign — “zero, none, zilch.”

This week, the challenger also pushed back in response to Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom's announcement that she was opening an investigation into his candidacy.

“The law forbids your office from denying me access to the ballot just because Senator Sullivan and the NRSC would prefer I not be allowed to run,” he wrote, referring to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

He called the investigation “an unprecedented affront to my rights as a candidate and the rights of Alaska voters to select their own representation in the U.S. Senate.”

It was not immediately clear whether he had retained an attorney to help him remain on the ballot.

Some attorneys also have raised questions about Dahlstrom's investigation, which among other things demanded that Sullivan explain his party affiliation, how long he had been going by the name Dan Sullivan, his affiliation with a consultant and any interactions he might have had with other candidates in the race or the Democratic Party.

Dahlstrom, who oversees elections, said in her letter to the challenger that the investigation pertained to “credible allegations” that he did not declare his candidacy “with a good faith purpose to seek office but rather with a purpose to confuse voters and have them mistakenly vote for you rather than the incumbent with the same name and same political party affiliation.”

The questions are in line with claims outlined in a letter to her and Beecher earlier this month from an attorney with the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The ACLU of Alaska, in a statement, said it is “unaware of any other instance where the Lieutenant Governor has investigated a specific candidate for reasons other than determining whether a candidate meets federal, state and local eligibility requirements.” The group said it was monitoring the situation.

Jahna Lindemuth, who was an Alaska attorney general under an independent governor, said investigating why someone would run for office “starts infringing on free speech concerns and other protections under the Constitution.” She said Dahlstrom could label the senator as the incumbent on the ballot if she were concerned about voter confusion.

The Constitution requires senators to be at least 30 years old, a U.S. citizen for at least nine years and live in the state they've chosen to represent at the time of election. Sullivan, who will turn 69 this weekend, told the AP he moved to Alaska in 1980 and worked for the U.S. Forest Service before switching careers and becoming a teacher. He's now retired.

The declaration that the elections division requires candidates to fill out asks for their name, the party affiliation they want on the ballot, their address and how they want their name to appear. In signing the declaration, candidates are asked to affirm they meet citizenship, age and residency requirements.

The division previously certified challenger Sullivan's candidacy, noting him on the candidate list as Dan J. Sullivan. The senator is listed as Dan S. Sullivan and as the incumbent.

At least one group running ads in support of the senator, One Nation, has begun referring to him as Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.

In a statement released before a scheduled Friday ribbon-cutting ceremony at the bridge, the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority said that “Canada and the United States have agreed to delay the opening of the bridge, taking the necessary time to resolve any outstanding issues.” It didn't elaborate on what those issues are or how long the delay would last.

The 1.5-mile-long (2.4-kilometer-long) Gordie Howe International Bridge spans the Detroit River and connects the Motor City with Windsor, Ontario. The bridge is jointly owned by Canada and Michigan and was expected to open to traffic later this month.

But the opening had been thrown into question after Trump in February demanded in a social media post that Canada turn over at least half of the bridge’s ownership to the U.S. federal government and agree to other unspecified demands in one of the Republican president's many salvos over cross-border trade issues.

Michigan officials and the White House had been in contact for months about the bridge following Trump's post, with the understanding that the opening would move forward Friday. Invitations for the bridge’s opening went out this week following a conversation between Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

“This project is a powerful example of bipartisan and international cooperation, and the governor looks forward to attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony when it happens,” a statement from Whitmer spokesperson Bobby Leddy said.

New bridge a “long-term play”

Internal disagreements within the Trump administration threw those plans into question, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pushed back on the opening, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss the private talks.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday evening, “At the request of the United States we agreed to delay the opening and take the necessary time to resolve outstanding issues.”

He added, "There are some things that have been raised, a series of technical aspects, which we will work through with the United States.”

Even with the delay, officials remained optimistic that the bridge — a roughly $4.4 billion project — is still expected to open.

“We need to keep this very much in perspective,” said Sandy Baruah, president of the Detroit Regional Chamber and former U.S. assistant secretary of commerce. “Our organization, the state of Michigan and others have been working on this bridge for 20 years. If it opens July 1, Aug. 1 or Sept. 1, I’m not going to get overly agitated about it. This is a long-term play.”

Named after the late Canadian Hockey great Gordie Howe, who spent 25 seasons leading the Detroit Red Wings, the bridge is expected to be another vital economic artery between Canada and the United States.

The construction project was negotiated by Rick Snyder, the former Republican governor of Michigan, and paid for by Canada to help ease congestion at the existing Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. Work has been underway since 2018.

U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, said she’s taking people at their word that the holdup is “a minor hiccup.”

“This is probably the most bipartisan issue in the state of Michigan, so it’s ridiculous that we can’t just seal the deal,” Slotkin said.

Commerce and border crossings

Detroit and Windsor have been neighborly for generations, with residents in both countries frequently crossing the shared river border for entertainment and shopping. Windsor's population in 2021 was about 230,000. Like Detroit, the Canadian city's economy has a strong focus on manufacturing and the auto industry.

Commercial trade between the two cities primarily has been across the nearly century-old and privately-owned Ambassador Bridge, which is closer to downtown Detroit than the Gordie Howe Bridge.

The Ambassador Bridge had been the busiest commercial border crossing between the United States and Canada until last year, when truck traffic along the Blue Water Bridge connecting Port Huron, Michigan, to Sarnia, Ontario, surpassed the Ambassador Bridge's numbers, according to the Bridge and Tunnel Operators Association.

In 2025, about 2.1 million trucks crossed the Blue Water Bridge compared to just over 1.8 million that used the Ambassador Bridge. About 3.5 million passenger vehicles used the Ambassador Bridge last year, while 1.6 million crossed via the Blue Water Bridge.

Combined, more than 9.2 million vehicles crossed the border on those two bridges in 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

More than 3.7 million cars and SUVs also traveled between the United States and Canada last year via the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

Both bridges and the tunnel are working at full capacity, and the new bridge will help improve the efficiency of commercial and personal traffic between the two countries, Baruah said.

“This is what government is supposed to do, make it easier for business to conduct commerce,” he said.

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Cappelletti reported from Washington.

On the girls side of Class 1, Bland County battled the defending three-time state champion Rappahannock. The Bears left no doubt from start to finish in what was a 5-1 victory--the first for the program.

Tinley Worley, Addison Myers, Kendall Worley, Alysia Lopez and Laiken Wolfe picked up the singles wins for the Bears. The Raiders lone win came from Ava Cleary who defeated Annabelle Rasnake.

“We haven’t had somebody in a state championship, state tournament even, in years,“ said Bland County senior Kendall Worley. ”So, this really sends a message to our county and to all the surrounding counties and all the surrounding schools that Bland isn’t somebody you can really just dismiss. We’ll always be there and it’s just so special to be here with this group of girls. We are all so close-knit and these are some of my best friends out here and I love them all so much and I’m so proud of us."

Bland County High School went without a girls tennis program for a decade until coach Jonathan Romano helped revive things just three years ago. The Bears victory on Thursday not only snapped Rappahannock’s championship streak but also a 73 game team win streak.

In Class 2 boys action, Floyd County put up a hard-fought battle but came up short to Bruton by a score of 5-2.

Individual scores included:

-Christoph Schweitzer (Bruton) def. Augie Biviano (FC), 6-0, 6-1

-Milo Grimes (FC) def. Bryson Jones (Bruton), 6-7(9), 4-6

-Forrest Radford (FC) def. Peter Henderson (Bruton), 6-3, 6-2

-Alek Rivera (Bruton) def. Nathan Metz (FC), 6-1, 6-4

-Noah Praszczalek (Bruton) def. Robert Disharoon (FC), 6-2, 6-2

-Tiernan Bradley (Bruton) def. Bryson Harrison (FC), 6-4, 6-4

-Doubles: Schweitzer, Rivera def. Biviano, Metz, 6-1, 6-1

Floyd County freshman Forrest Radford relished the opportunity to compete at the state level and even through a loss, sees the benefit of having a long season.

“Everything just helps us form stronger going into next year, no matter what happens this year,” Radford said.

Attorneys for former Republican gubernatorial candidate Duke Rodriguez and other plaintiffs had questioned the process used by Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration to eliminate an income cap and co-pays for childcare assistance before the Legislature had a chance to weigh in or approve funding.

Attorneys representing Lujan Grisham and the state’s childcare agency argued that lawmakers have since authorized and funded the program’s expansion, rendering the legal challenge moot.

District Judge Elaine Lujan agreed, tossing the lawsuit and allowing the state to continue footing the daycare bill for families regardless of income. She also found that Rodriguez and his co-plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.

Rodriquez's attorneys indicated they will appeal the judge's decision.

"Just because (Lujan Grisham) thinks she has a great idea doesn’t mean she gets to write the law and enforce the law,” plaintiffs attorney Jacob Candelaria said after Thursday’s hearing.

Thursday’s ruling prevented a financial headache for many childcare businesses and for families who have rebalanced household budgets around free childcare.

Lujan Grisham applauded the ruling.

“Today, Second Judicial District Judge Elaine Lujan dismissed a frivolous challenge to New Mexico’s universal child care program. This program is lawful, and it will continue to serve New Mexico families,” she said in a statement on Facebook. “New Mexicans deserved better than a lawsuit that put them through weeks of unnecessary anxiety over a program they count on. The judge’s ruling makes it clear: New Mexicans can plan their families, finances and careers with the confidence that universal child care is here to stay.”

The challenge came as New Mexico looks to cement its place as the first U.S. state to cover daycare bills for all families regardless of income, provided parents or legal guardians are working, in school or qualify for an exemption. The stakes extend nationwide as policymakers from New York to California look for models to reduce costs for families and expand public investment in childcare.

During the hearing, Candelaria told the judge that the governor's move to establish the program without the Legislature weighing in was "a fundamental perversion of the separation of powers” and that New Mexicans' constitutional interests needed to be protected.

Holly Agajanian, the governor's chief general counsel, suggested that the plaintiffs were asking the court to referee a policy disagreement on the merits of universal child care.

“We are not in a constitutional crisis,” Agajanian said.

Lujan Grisham signed legislation in February enshrining the program into law, provided state finances remain healthy.

New Mexico’s program, which is financed in large part with revenue from oil and gas production in the state, was among the nation's most generous before November’s expansion, waiving costs for families making up to 400% of the federal poverty rate or roughly $132,000 per year for a family of four.

Legislative analysts have raised questions about the sustainability of New Mexico's expanded program, noting earlier this year that the state’s Early Childhood Education and Care Department started overspending just weeks into the November launch.

This week, the state agency proposed new regulations aimed at shoring up the program’s sustainability. Potential guardrails include copayments for higher-income families in the event of a significant drop in oil prices or enrollment in free childcare surging beyond state projections.

The league announced the news Thursday prior to Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final.

Kucherov led all players with 1.71 points a game on 44 goals and 86 assists. With 130 points, he ranked second to only Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, who had 138.

McDavid was a close second by 10 points in voting by members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon was third and San Jose’s Macklin Celebrini fourth.

Kucherov had 42 more points than his next-closest teammate, Jake Guentzel. He was third in Hart Trophy voting a year ago and second in 2023-24.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL

Mexico's players understood the intense pressure and high expectations they were facing on Thursday in the opening match of the first 48-team World Cup tournament. But they embraced their role and got off to a winning start by beating South Africa 2-0 in a match that also produced three red cards.

“I made an effort to explain to them what a World Cup and an opening match on home soil meant, but they are young and had to experience it for themselves," said Mexico coach Javier Aguirre, who played for his team the last time Mexico hosted the tournament in 1986. "I can no longer talk about having played in a home World Cup, because they already know what it’s like.”

Julián Quiñones and Raúl Jiménez scored the goals for Mexico, which is co-hosting the 2026 tournament with Canada and the United States.

The Mexicans rebounded from the massive disappointment of being eliminated after the group stage four years ago in Qatar. That followed seven straight trips to the round the 16 — an achievement that became more of a curse for failing to reach the quarterfinals.

But there is hope this year. Mexico has reached the quarterfinals twice in its history, and both times it was the host country — in 1970 and 1986. Aguirre was on that team in 1986.

In front of a capacity crowd of 80,824, Mexico got working fast and took the lead in the ninth minute when Quiñones scored. Jiménez added the second goal on a header in 66th — his 46th for Mexico but first in three World Cup tournaments.

“We didn’t play well in the first half, but we could have gone into the break leading 3–0 and no one would have complained — we were far superior,” Aguirre said. “In the second half, it felt like we relaxed a bit, but starting with a win is good, and we can certainly improve.”

With his goal, Jiménez moved into a tie with Jared Borgetti for second place in scoring for Mexico's national team. He is six goals shy of leader Javier “Chicharito” Hernández.

Jiménez wears a protective headguard because he was seriously injured in November 2020 while playing for Wolverhampton Wanderers in a Premier League match against Arsenal. He fractured his skull and had to have surgery. He was out for eight months and returned in July 2021.

South Africa players Sphephelo Sithole and Themba Zwane were both given red cards, forcing the team to finish the match with only nine players. Mexico defender César Montes was then given a red card in injury time.

It was the first time there were three red cards given in the opening match of a World Cup tournament. And it’s the most in a World Cup game since four were handed out when Portugal played the Netherlands at the 2006 tournament in Germany.

“This level is much higher than whatever level we played before. We played a good team, and we played a good game. I saw a desperate Mexico,” South Africa coach Hugo Broos said. “We must improve in the next days. We’ll get over the disappointment.”

Quiñones, a 29-year-old forward who was born in Colombia, was the top scorer in the Saudi league this season. He was one of six starting players who made their World Cup debut for El Tri.

Mexico now has three points in Group A and will next play South Korea next Thursday in Guadalajara. South Africa will play the Czech Republic on the same day in Atlanta.

“It would be important (to win the group), but right now the only thing we’re thinking about is the match against Korea — being better than them and trying to win,” Aguirre said. “We’re going to take it step by step and see what the future holds.”

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

Shakira performed “Dai Dai,” the tournament's official song, with Burna Boy. The Colombian star had a hit with “Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)” from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and now seeks to score again.

A good World Cup song, Shakira earlier told The Associated Press, “needs to definitely have rhythm. It has to be rhythmic. It has to make people want to dance. And it has to be an anthem as well. It has to make people want to sing along in unison, sing out loud at the top of their lungs.”

Shakira has performed at previous World Cups, too: 2006 in Germany, 2010 in South Africa, and 2014 in Brazil.

In addition, she will perform at the first halftime show of a World Cup final on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey with Madonna and BTS. Mexico, the United States and Canada are co-hosting the 48-team tournament.

A welcome for all

Lila Downs welcomed fans and players in Spanish, English, and the indigenous languages Mixtec and Nahuatl.

“People of the world, welcome to Mexico,” said Downs, who wore a white indigenous huipil with a lilac edge. “Mexico welcomes you with smiles from our heart, we are a nation of diversity, heritage and pride in ancestral lands where movement and ritual spirit endure.”

Downs, who is a singer-songwriter, was born in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca. Her mother is Mixtec, and her father was American of Scottish descent. But her heart is green, white and red when it comes to the ball.

“It’s a great honor for me to represent my beautiful and diverse country,” Downs said in an interview with The AP. “Of course I’m going to root for Mexico’s team, Viva Mexico!”

Maná thrills fans

Maná electrified the stadium with “Oye Mi Amor” surrounded by pre-Hispanic dancers who moved their head plumes to the rhythm of rock while tens of thousands of fans chanted.

The band, founded in 1986, has sold more than 40 million records.

Shortly before their performance, they announced that they will be touring in Latin America, including stops in Bogotá, Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City.

From Iztapalapa to the World Cup

The Mexican cumbia group Los Ángeles Azules performed “Por Ella” with Belinda, one of the most danceable songs of FIFA's official World Cup album.

The band, founded in the mid-70s by the Mejía Avante brothers, is originally from the district of Iztapalapa, a working-class area of Mexico City, so their battle cry is “From Iztapalapa to the world!”

J Balvin had a dynamic performance — he started driving a cardboard car with “Que Calor” and then he was accompanied by Ryan Castro for “Una A La Vez” before ending with “I Like It,” a hit he originally released with Cardi B and Bad Bunny.

The Colombian star has experience on world stages. In 2020, he participated in the Super Bowl halftime as a guest of Shakira and Jennifer Lopez.

Danny Ocean performed “Partidazo” — his collaboration for the FIFA album. Ocean was surrounded by dancers wearing a modern take on the traditional dresses of the Mexican state of Jalisco, modified to have hoodies on top.

Two Labubus could be seen wearing soccer jerseys after the presentation of Los Ángeles Azules and Belinda. One brown Labubu wore a jersey with the number 10 and the legend “The Monsters” and the other wore a shirt with the logo of the 2026 World Cup.

Hollywood power at the ceremony

Actress and producer Salma Hayek, a big soccer fan, gave a brief welcome speech during the first protocol parade of a World Cup in which the 48 flags of the participating countries could be seen.

“Mexicans are very honored that this is where the first match of this wonderful soccer tradition that unites us all begins,” Hayek, who is originally from the Mexican state of Veracruz, said in Spanish. “Long live Mexico and long live soccer!”

Hayek has been appointed an ambassador for the 2026 World Cup.

Opera and K-pop united

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and South Korean star EJAE performed “DNA,” the tournament's official anthem, with French DJ and producer David Guetta at the flag parade.

Bocelli has just performed for more than 130,000 fans in April at Mexico City’s Zócalo. EJAE is famous for being the voice of the character Rumi in the film “KPop Demon Hunters” and for being one of the composers of the Oscar-winning song “Golden” from the animated film.

South Africa and Mexico national anthems

Tyla and Alejandro Fernandez were the designated performers for the national anthems of South Africa and Mexico, respectively, before kickoff.

In 2024, Tyla won the first Grammy for best African music performance and, in doing so, became the youngest African artist to win a Grammy.

Fernández’s life has been dedicated to regional Mexican music. The so-called “Potrillo” is the son of the late star Vicente Fernandez. On FIFA's album” Fernández performs “Mi México Lindo."

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Associated Press writers Maria Sherman and Mallika Sen contributed to this report from New York

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

Trump had threatened major strikes on Iran and to seize control of its oil and gas industries as escalating attacks between the countries pushed the Middle East closer to full-scale war.

The threats to seize Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal came after the U.S and Iran traded strikes for a second straight day, pushing the Middle East closer to the resumption of a full-scale war. It was the third time this week that back-and-forth strikes have rattled the Middle East.

Here's the latest:

Trump touts Burt Jones, one of his 2020 alternate electors, for Georgia governor

President Donald Trump offered a last-minute boost for Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ bid for the GOP nomination for governor.

Trump spoke for about 10 minutes during a tele-rally with Jones’ supporters Thursday evening, much of it filled with recitations of his false claims of widespread voter fraud in U.S. elections.

Jones faces billionaire businessman Rick Jackson in a Tuesday runoff.

The president alluded to Jones being one of his alternate electors in the effort to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat in Georgia and nationally.

He said U.S. there are a “lot of rigged” results because of “corrupt” elections, and he said Jones was “fantastic when it came to election fraud.”

Jones, for his part, did not tout his role in the 2020 election fallout, though he praised Trump as “the greatest president this country has ever had.”

The runoff winner faces Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms in November.

Trump says US representatives made a ‘great deal’ with Iran

During a telephone rally on Thursday for Rep. Barry Moore, his chosen candidate in Tuesday’s Senate runoff in Alabama, Trump talked about Iran, about which he said U.S. representatives had “made a great deal.”

“Today we settled up with Iran,” Trump said. “People will start coming home very soon. ... We got everything we wanted.”

That mirrored some of Trump’s comments earlier Thursday during an Oval Office event, when he said a “great settlement.” Iran has not yet confirmed that it’s agreed to settlement terms with the U.S.

Trump started the day by again threatening to hit Iran “very hard” with new strikes, hours later returning to to social media to say he canceled escalation plans due to progress in the talks.

Trump has claimed multiple times recently that the warring parties have been on a cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition.

Trump calls on Alabama voters to back ‘terrific guy’ Rep. Barry Moore in Senate runoff

The president made those remarks during a telephone rally on Thursday afternoon.

Moore, a three-term congressman, is a member of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus. He advanced to a runoff for the Republican nomination last month, set to face off with former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson on Tuesday.

Trump’s initial endorsement gave Moore a boost in a crowded GOP field. As he has with other candidates this primary season, Trump went on to talk about how his own electoral success in Alabama.

Of outgoing Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor, Trump said he was “a little disappointed he left the Senate, but you can have a replacement that’s going to be phenomenal.”

Trump again threatens federal takeover of DC

The president’s comments came in response to a question about the possibility of Janeese Lewis George winning the District of Columbia’s mayoral primary next week.

“I wouldn’t like it,” Trump said. “And maybe we’d take back Washington, run it on the federal basis. We won’t put up with it. We’re not going to lose our businesses.”

George is one of the front-runners vying to replace Mayor Muriel Bowser and identifies as a democratic socialist.

Trump has claimed the US has essentially reached a deal with Iran before, so why is this different?

“Because they’ve taken a pounding,” Trump explained Thursday when asked why he was confident.

But his answer was vague as he described it as a “very strong memorandum of understanding,” that he described as “a little conceptual.”

He said of Iran, “They want to make the deal a lot more than I do.”

Trump believes Iran Supreme Leader has signed off on emerging deal

“I understand the answer is yes” Trump said when asked if Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has agreed to the deal.

Khamenei was wounded in the opening salvos of the U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Iran and has been in hiding since.

Iran has not yet confirmed that it’s agreed to terms with the U.S. on a settlement to end the war

Trump says Pulte will continue to be acting director of national intelligence

Trump is insisting that Pulte will stay in the temporary role despite the president’s announcement earlier Thursday that he’s chosen Clayton as the permanent nominee.

“He’s only there for a little while,” Trump said of Pulte. Pressed on Pulte’s lack of national security credentials, the president responded “but he’s intelligent, unlike a lot of other people.”

Trump was also vague on whether he’ll take any executive actions to address the potential lapse in surveillance authorities after midnight Friday.

“Congress wants me to do it, and let’s see what happens,” he said.

Trump opens up more protected ocean areas to fishing

Trump opened three marine protected areas in the Pacific Ocean to commercial fishing with a proclamation Thursday that he said will boost the U.S. seafood industry.

Trump has targeted marine protections created in the era of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush that he said stifle the country’s ability to compete in the global seafood marketplace. He moved to reestablish fishing in Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off New England in February.

Thursday’s move focused on portions of Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and Rose Atoll Marine National Monument. The monuments are protected zones in remote areas of the Pacific.

Environmental groups have criticized Trump’s moves to allow fishing in protected zones, which they said provide vital habitat for rare sea life.

US stocks jump and oil prices ease

U.S. stocks have rallied to their best day in two months and oil prices have fallen after Trump said he had called off new military strikes on Iran.

Trump’s comments raised hopes Thursday for a potential deal to get the global flow of oil going again.

The S&P 500 jumped 1.8%, coming off a back-to-back drop that had yanked it back to where it was in early May.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average leaped 1.9%, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 2.5%. Strong gains for chip stocks helped offset a slide for Oracle. Treasury yields eased sharply in the bond market.

Rubio says UFC fights are a great uniter for a polarized America as White House prepares for cage match

“There are only a handful of things that bring people together in one place at one time, united by their interest in one thing. We need more of those,” Rubio said.

He lauded the popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the diversity of fight audiences as he signed a sports diplomacy agreement with UFC president Dana White.

He said the White House event on Sunday could have been a concert or a “Shakespeare in the Park” production, “but this one will have people watching probably … a billion people over the world will be watching America celebrate its 250th birthday with the White House in the background.”

National Mall vandalism investigated

The U.S. Park Police is investigating after someone marked the numbers “86 47” on the grass of the lawn west of the Washington Monument.

“The cause of the discoloration has not yet been determined. Grass samples have been collected for testing,” Park Police said in an email.

The same numbers got attention after former FBI Director James Comey was indicted in April over a photograph he posted on social media of seashells arranged to say “86 47.” The Justice Department contends the numbers amounted to a threat against Trump, the 47th president. Comey has said he assumed the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence.

According to Merriam-Webster, 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.”

“The deranged vandalism on our National Mall will not be tolerated,” the Department of Interior said in an email. “Any threat against the President is taken very seriously by the Department.”

Trump claims he’s close to making a deal with Iran aimed at winding down conflict

“We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran,” Trump said at the start of an Oval Office event. “And we’re going to be, subject to finalization of documents, which should get done over the next few days, probably have a signing, maybe in Europe.”

Trump started the day by again threatening to hit Iran “very hard” with new strikes. Hours later, he returned to social media to say that he decided to cancel plans to escalate the fighting because progress had been made in the talks with Iran and suggested anew that a deal is within view.

But Trump on multiple occasions over the last several weeks has claimed that the warring parties have been on a cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition.

Taiwan’s opposition leader met US lawmakers

The leader of Taiwan’s opposition party met five U.S. lawmakers at a time when Washington is seeking to stabilize ties with Beijing despite their differences over the self-governed island, including U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

Cheng Li-wun, chairperson of Taiwan’s Kuomintang Party, is on a two-week trip to the U.S. to promote her party’s approach to peace in the Taiwan Strait through dialogue and to explain its stance on Taiwan’s defense budget and purchase of U.S. weapons. Her party opposes the formal independence of Taiwan.

Taiwan’s media reported that Cheng on Wednesday met with Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., Rep. John Rose, R-Tenn., Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla. Mast chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Fleischmann’s office confirmed the meeting.

Thune says Senate could move ‘fairly quickly’ to confirm Clayton

“I don’t know what realistic is, but we’re gonna probe the limits of it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said after Trump announced on social media that he would nominate Jay Clayton for director of national intelligence.

Democrats are holding up the renewal of a key surveillance law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in protest of Trump’s temporary pick for the job, federal housing regulator Bill Pulte. The law expires Friday at midnight.

Trump has previously said that Pulte will take over from the outgoing director, Tulsi Gabbard, on June 19. It is unclear whether the Senate could move quickly enough to confirm Clayton before that date.

Rubio signs sports diplomacy agreement with UFC ahead of cage fight at the White House

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has signed a cooperation agreement with the president of the Ultimate Fight Championship that will pair the two institutions in providing fight training, health and diet regimes and promote teamwork and leadership for youths around the world.

Rubio signed the agreement with UFC chief Dana White at the State Department on Thursday, just three days before the UFC will stage a cage match at the White House. Sunday’s match will be held in conjunction with Trump’s 80th birthday and the celebration of America’s 250th independence anniversary.

The partnership will be part of a broader sports diplomacy initiative that has been operating for decades. It has involved golf, tennis, figure skating, American football, soccer and other athletes. Under the program, program, UFC athletes and coaches will serve as U.S. sports ambassadors, leading training clinics for young international athletes.

Trump picks Jay Clayton, ex-SEC head and current US attorney, as director of national intelligence

Trump says he plans to nominate Jay Clayton, the former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as director of national intelligence.

Trump announced the nomination on social media on Thursday amid pressure from Congress to name Tulsi Gabbard’s permanent replacement. Trump faced intense pushback over his decision to name Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting director after Gabbard announced last month that she was stepping down because of her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

The situation led to a standoff in Congress as Democrats said they would refuse to renew a foreign intelligence powers unless Trump pulled Pulte’s nomination and named a permanent nominee.

“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump wrote. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”

Pentagon ends lockdown over ‘air quality’ issue

The Pentagon has stood down from a lockdown over what officials described as an “air quality issue.”

“Subsequent testing confirmed no hazard exists, and normal operations have resumed,” the Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a social media post.

The lockdown lasted for about two hours and prompted a response from hazmat teams of the Pentagon’s internal police force as well as the team from nearby Arlington, Virginia.

Trump calls off threatened strikes against Iran after indicating progress in talks

Trump says he’s called off new military strikes on Iran hours after threatening to escalate the 3-month-old war.

The president said in a social media post Thursday that he made the move “based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved.”

Trump also suggested that progress has been made in talks to extend the fragile ceasefire, writing that “discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail,” approved by United States, Israel, and other regional allies. He did not offer details.

Trump on multiple occasions over the last several weeks has claimed that the warring parties have been on a cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition.

Targeting Iran’s Kharg Island carries major risks

Kharg Island has emerged as a focus of the war launched by the United States and Israel. The Persian Gulf island is home to a terminal through which Iran exports most of its oil.

Strikes on oil infrastructure on Kharg — or a ground invasion — would severely curb Iran’s oil exports, a key source of revenue for the Islamic Republic.

An assault would also mark a major escalation that could provoke even heavier retaliatory attacks on Gulf infrastructure. That would further drive up oil prices that already threaten the world economy.

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A look at the scene on the White House South Lawn for Sunday’s UFC event

It looks from afar more UFO than UFC.

Maybe it’s the kind of contraption that has carried space aliens to the White House to force a meeting with America’s leader.

But come closer and you’ll see the contours of the eight-sided cage, 30 feet in diameter and shaped like the MMA league’s signature Octagon.

Overhead looms The Claw, a four-sided mass that arcs more than 90 feet into the air and features lights, speakers, thick snakes of wiring and four large screens so fans not seated right next to the Octagon can follow the fighting in the cage below.

And surrounding all that are risers filled with gray folding chairs forming a temporary arena expected to seat 4,000-plus for the seven UFC fights being staged on Sunday to celebrate the 80th birthday of President Donald Trump and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing.

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Iran’s parliamentary speaker responds

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned in a social media post Thursday that “wrong strategies and impulsive decisions” would wreak havoc on energy markets and “create an endless quagmire that you will be stuck in for years.”

Iran’s monthslong stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted global energy supplies, driven up fuel prices and made food and other basics more expensive well beyond the region.

Hazardous materials units respond to the Pentagon

The Pentagon Force Protection Agency’s hazardous materials team was responding to an unknown issue and parts of the Pentagon were under a shelter-in-place order while officials investigate.

“The Pentagon has sophisticated systems to ensure the safety of the building and its occupants. Those systems have detected an air quality issue necessitating precautionary measures until we determine its significance,” Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Thursday. “The Department is executing standard protection protocols, including a shelter-in-place order for the affected area.”

The Arlington County Fire Department also sent units, including its hazardous materials team, according to a posting on its X account. Questions to the media office were referred to the Pentagon.

Iranian student says hope dwindles as attacks escalate

A 25-year-old student in northern Iran says Iranians are fearing “chaos” amid the war with the U.S. and Israel and multiplying crises at home.

The student, who lives in the city of Babol, said many Iranians are struggling to afford groceries in the face of mass job losses and triple-digit food inflation. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of security fears.

“Everything is going wrong and there is no hope among the people,” the student added.

The student first spoke to The Associated Press before the war when he participated in widespread anti-government protests. He now says his chief concern is that Iran “maintain territorial integrity and deterrence” in the face of attacks by the U.S. and Israel.

— Amir-Hussein Radjy

Tensions persist over Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post that the U.S. would extract funds from frozen Iranian accounts to offset the costs of damage to American allies as well as any tolls Iran imposes on ships seeking passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Beyond the deadlock over the strait, the two sides also remain at odds over Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran insists its nuclear efforts are peaceful. The U.S. and Israel fear Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium could be used to build an atomic weapon. That was a main reason they cited for going to war Feb. 28.

Trump doesn’t back down on Bill Pulte

After bipartisan pushback to Pulte’s temporary appointment as director of national intelligence, Trump said last week that he would not permanently nominate him to the position. But Democrats, and some Republicans, want his appointment pulled immediately and for Trump to nominate a replacement that can be confirmed by the Senate.

On Tuesday, though, Trump announced that Pulte would not only take over as acting director — he’d also start earlier than expected, on June 19.

One of several possible replacements could be Pete Hoekstra, Trump’s ambassador to Canada and a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The White House has reached out to Hoekstra about the job and conversations are ongoing, according to a person familiar with the outreach who requested anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

— Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro and Seung Min Kim

GOP leaders lobbied the White House, to no avail

Congressional Republicans have lobbied Trump all week to quickly nominate a permanent replacement for director of national intelligence. But he said he needs more time to do so.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Republican leaders have “made our views known” to the White House.

Trump has said he’s interviewing five candidates for his pick to lead the agency permanently, after the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the president has made it very clear that Pulte will serve a “very short term — a sort of renovation role” to help the Office of the Director of National Intelligence be “renovated and downsized.”

But Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee led by Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut said in a letter to the president that Pulte is a “uniquely poor choice” to serve even in the acting capacity.

House vote to extend FISA spy tool fails and it could lapse as Friday deadline looms

A rare lapse in a law that allows the United States to gather intelligence abroad appears likely after the House failed Thursday to temporarily extend the program, in a protest of President Trump ’s refusal to name a permanent head of the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Trump has doubled down on his temporary pick for director of national intelligence, federal housing finance regulator Bill Pulte, even though Pulte has little experience for the job. Democrats say they won’t support the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, unless the Republican president withdraws Pulte’s appointment and nominates a permanent replacement.

The House vote collapsed in bipartisan fashion, with some Republicans and nearly all Democrats rejecting the temporary measure. The Senate may try its own vote later Thursday, but hopes are dimming to prevent what could be an unprecedented lapse in the surveillance tool. The law expires Friday at midnight.

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He has to take turns.

Committed to staging a legitimate competition for their starting quarterback position, at least during this less-urgent part of the offseason, the Vikings have divided the time in drills with the first team between Murray and incumbent J.J. McCarthy. That's the way they'll start training camp next month, too.

“You’ve got to put it together in a way that challenges those guys and see who responds, see who handles adversity well, and ultimately see who elevates the offense,” coach Kevin O'Connell said after the last practice of minicamp on Thursday. “It’s an open competition, and I want to see these guys in very unique and in many ways difficult circumstances elevate themselves and their games to help the Minnesota Vikings.”

There's no deadline for the decision, O'Connell said, though for the Vikings to be at their best for the Sept. 13 regular-season opener against the Green Bay Packers they'll likely declare their starter at least a couple of weeks in advance of that. The frequency and quality of repetitions during open-to-the-public practices in training camp will undoubtedly stoke the embers of speculation that fuel the popularity of this sport, but the coaching staff has a plan for putting both quarterbacks in as many meaningful situations as they can once the pads come on in camp.

“I wouldn’t read much into who gets what on which days,” O'Connell said, well aware of the intense scrutiny on this team's quarterback depth chart for a third straight year since McCarthy was drafted 10th overall in 2024. “I know me saying that was the waste of the time that it took to say it, but we’re going to put together a way where we can put them in the different aspects of situational football that they need to get.”

Murray, the first overall pick in the 2019 draft who was cut by the Arizona Cardinals and signed with the Vikings for the veteran minimum salary for this year so he can try to cash in as a free agent for 2027, has been the presumptive favorite for the job even if he’s newer to the system.

“Now having to split reps, me already being behind, not getting the amount of reps you would typically want a guy to get learning an offense, that’s probably the toughest part,” Murray said this week.

Offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said McCarthy's offseason has “been a continuous upward arrow or him.” From O'Connell to wide receiver Justin Jefferson, all of the Vikings who've been publicly asked about McCarthy's progress from his mostly rough 2025 debut have remarked about sharpened skills and fundamentals. But at some point if Murray becomes the team's long-term choice, McCarthy might well find himself playing elsewhere.

“I think I’ve made it very clear I wanted to be here, before I got here. I love this organization. I love the coaching staff. I absolutely love these players to death," McCarthy said. "This is where I want to be. I feel like I can thrive in this system.”

The Vikings clearly still believe that to some degree, at least if patience were not part of the equation.

“It’s probably going to end up being a difficult decision,” O'Connell said, “just based on where I know those guys are going to go.”

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

Only a handful of prominent players in the past few decades have faced this confluence of talent and timing. They include a selection of generational greats: Zinedine Zidane for France in 1998, Michael Ballack for Germany in 2006, Neymar for Brazil in 2014.

Pulisic's U.S. teammates recognize the extraordinary burden he is carrying while the Americans prepare for their World Cup opener Friday night against Paraguay. From the field to the back row of the stands, everyone is looking to Pulisic for leadership and goals, hoping his full decade of international success with club and country will propel a middling soccer nation to new heights on home soil.

“I can't even imagine the weight that's on his shoulders,” teammate Tyler Adams said. “From such a young age, he was the hope of American soccer.”

Pulisic does not shy from the spotlight that will glare more brightly than ever in the next few weeks. In fact, he repeated Thursday that this challenge is “what I've always wanted.”

Now 27 years old, Pulisic has enough achievement and enough faith in his teammates to focus on how far the Americans can go, not how far they might fall.

“I don’t feel a difference in weight,” Pulisic said at the U.S. training base in Orange County. “I’m not sure. Maybe less. I just feel like there’s so many good players around me. I genuinely don’t feel like I have to do anything on my own. I’m going to give it the best I can. I want to help the team, and they expect a lot out of me, but with the guys I have around me, it makes it a lot easier for me.”

Pulisic was already the center of the U.S. hopes and aspirations when this World Cup was awarded to North America eight years ago, and his status hasn't changed. A nation that had struggled to produce elite players finally created a star in this slick, creative midfielder from Hershey, Pennsylvania, who has gone on to a decade of European club success.

National team progress has been more difficult to come by during Pulisic's first decade, but he is still considered the most consistently dynamic player in the American program — despite his 18-month goal drought in a U.S. shirt that only ended May 31.

“Of course he needs to be an important player for us in the competition,” said coach Mauricio Pochettino, who took over the U.S. team in late 2024. “(But) I think what we’ve learned after a year and a half is that the badge of the national team and the culture with this country is more important than any name, any player or any coach. That is a principal thing that we (believe), and from there, if you have talent and quality, you can perform on that platform.”

Adams, the 27-year-old Bournemouth midfielder, has been right alongside Pulisic for most of this ride.

He watched in awe as the 17-year-old Pulisic made his senior U.S. debut in late 2016. Those Americans failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, but Pulisic quickly became a vital component of the group.

“(Pulisic was) the best player on the field at 17 years old, and the person that they rely on, (and) it’s been since then that they’ve relied on him,” Adams said. “Now, we have weapons around him to kind of relieve that, but he’s a star. Not just for the U.S. national team, but in world football. He’s that good. We rely on him in big moments, but that being said, I hope he doesn’t feel the pressure to carry it all. Just to be himself and grow into each game.”

Pulisic became known across the world when he moved from Dortmund to Chelsea in 2019. He was part of the Blues’ Champions League winners in 2021, becoming only the second American to claim the ultimate club trophy, before moving in 2023 to AC Milan, where he remains a vital player for another major club.

Pulisic finally made his World Cup debut four years ago in Qatar, contributing a big goal and an assist — but the U.S. scored just three goals in its four games before going home in the knockout round.

“It feels similar, but with a bit of that comfort of being in America,” Pulisic said of his World Cup return. “It feels great having the people you love around you. It makes it that much more special.”

Pochettino has strived to build an aggressive, attacking team around Pulisic’s talents, thereby minimizing its reliance on its best player. Prolific Europe-based strikers Folarin Balogun and Ricardo Pepi will make their World Cup debuts this month for the U.S., hopefully spreading out the scoring responsibility.

But with his past World Cup experience in mind, Pulisic knows the Americans must step up quickly at home — and their opening matchup against a solid Paraguay team will put him right in the spotlight again.

“It has that big-game feel, for sure,” Pulisic said. “But in some ways, I feel a little bit more relaxed because I've been there before. We've played in a match like this. I think the experience has calmed me down a little bit.”

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

The Lynchburg Police Department announced Thursday that the U.S. Marshals Service had taken 20-year-old Ke John McGhee into custody in the Richmond area early Thursday morning.

McGhee has been charged with:

• Second-Degree Murder 
• Use of a Firearm in the Commission of a Murder 

The Lynchburg Police Department would like to extend our appreciation to our partners, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Richmond Police Department, for their assistance.

This investigation is active and ongoing. Anyone with information related to this investigation is encouraged to contact Detective Hall at (434) 455-6155. Tips may also be submitted anonymously through Crime Stoppers at (888) 798-5900, online at http://p3tips.com, or by using the P3 Tips mobile app.

UPDATE

A man is wanted on a second-degree murder charge in connection with a shooting that left a 22-year-old man dead, according to the Lynchburg Police Department.

Officers responded to the Millwood Apartments around 8:30 p.m. on Monday after receiving a 911 call reporting multiple gunshots. When police arrived, they learned the victim, later identified as Daysun Wilson, 22, of Halifax, had been taken by personal vehicle to Lynchburg General Hospital. Wilson died shortly after arriving at the hospital.

According to investigators, Wilson and the suspect knew each other. Police say that during an altercation, the suspect, identified as Ke John McGhee, 20, of Richmond, pulled out a handgun and shot Wilson.

McGhee is wanted on charges of:

• Second-degree murder
• Use of a firearm in the commission of a murder

Lynchburg Police are actively searching for McGhee, who is described as 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing about 130 pounds.

Anyone with information about where McGhee may be located is urged to contact the Lynchburg Police Department or Crime Stoppers.

The investigation remains active and ongoing. Anyone with information related to the case is encouraged to contact Detective Hall at 434-455-6155. Tips can also be submitted anonymously through Crime Stoppers at 888-798-5900, online at p3tips.com, or by using the P3 Tips mobile app.

ORIGINAL STORY

The Lynchburg Police Department announced Monday night that it was investigating a shooting incident and that there is a heavy police presence near Milwood Apartments.

This is a developing story and information is limited at this time. 10 News will continue to update this story with information as it becomes available.

The Minneapolis-area attacks last summer by Vance Boelter, 58, sparked the largest police search in state history and reverberated across the country, with elected officials fearing that escalating threats and polarization could lead to more violence. Boelter pleaded guilty so that federal prosecutors would not seek the death penalty; instead, he agreed to serve two consecutive life sentences, plus 40 years.

Boelter, disguised in a tactical uniform and realistic mask, parked his police-style SUV with emergency flashing lights in the driveway of House Speaker Melissa Hortman's home at around 3:30 a.m. on June 14, 2025. He rang the doorbell, shouting: “Police, welfare check,” according to a plea agreement made public Thursday. Mark Hortman, her husband, answered the door.

Mark Hortman told Boelter that his wife was also in the home, and Boelter said he'd need to see her before he could leave, according to the plea agreement. When Mark Hortman asked, Boelter gave him a fake name and badge number and, when Hortman followed up for his jurisdiction, Boelter hesitated before naming a different Minneapolis suburb, the agreement states. Boelter then immediately took out his gun to shoot Hortman multiple times, according to the agreement.

Boelter then “rushed forward through the front door into the home” and shot Melissa Hortman repeatedly “as she attempted to flee upstairs,” according to the plea agreement. Both Melissa and Mark Hortman were killed.

Boelter had already been to the home of state Sen. John Hoffman that night, shooting and critically injuring him and his wife, Yvette, while their daughter was nearby.

There were brief sobs from the courtroom gallery Thursday where family members of the Hortmans sat alongside John and Yvette Hoffman as the attacks were described in detail. Again and again Boelter simply said “yes,” as his attorney questioned him about his actions, including whether he pressed a pistol to Melissa Hortman’s head and fired.

U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen told reporters after the hearing that the death penalty was only taken off the table after Boelter agreed to the longest possible prison sentence for the six federal charges.

“Political violence is a scourge plaguing America,” Rosen said. “Those that would commit political violence at any level should take heed: the Justice Department will seek and obtain the longest prison terms available for your crimes.”

A statement posted on John Hoffman's Facebook page said there is no justice for the Hortmans, and “there is not justice when our family and our state will never truly heal. While the legal process may provide accountability, true healing requires something more from all of us."

The statement called on Minnesotans and Americans to “treat people with respect, to stop de-humanizing each other, and to stop dividing our country with hate and rhetoric.”

Boelter also faces state charges, including two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder as well as charges of impersonating a police officer and animal cruelty. The Hortman family’s golden retriever was gravely injured in the shootings and had to be euthanized. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said Thursday that the federal plea agreement does not affect the state's case, which had been on hold pending the resolution of the federal case.

Boelter also stopped outside the homes of two other lawmakers in the Minneapolis suburbs that night. At one, he knocked but no one answered. At the other, he was apparently frightened away when a police officer, believing he was a fellow officer, approached him as he sat in his vehicle.

Boelter, wearing his orange jail sweatshirt and sweatpants as he sat in the courtroom between two of his attorneys, listened closely as U.S. District Judge John Tunheim talked through each of the six charges and their maximum sentences. Tunheim accepted the guilty pleas and said he would set a date soon for sentencing.

Boelter was captured near his home in rural Green Isle, about an hour's drive from Minneapolis, the day after the shootings, which prosecutors have said were politically motivated but which remain in many ways unexplained.

“Dad went to war last night,” Boelter messaged his family that morning. “Words are not going to explain how sorry I am.”

Boelter, an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views who had traveled to Congo as a preacher and missionary, spent much of his life in the food service industry. He had been struggling to earn a living before the shootings, after the failure of a security company he'd founded.

John Hoffman said in a lawsuit filed against Boelter in April that his left arm and hand likely would never fully recover and that he also had permanent injuries to his digestive and urinary systems.

Yvette Hoffman was left with permanent physical weakness, the lawsuit said, while their adult daughter, Hope Hoffman, who was there and called 911 but was not shot, suffered severe psychological trauma.

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Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

Attending a game in person, however, can be a bit pricey. It can cost thousands just for a ticket. That’s not including airfare and hotel prices.

So, for people looking to stay within Roanoke to enjoy the World Cup, where are some places to watch?

One is The Village Grill in Grandin. A local grill known for its food and atmosphere, owner Nathan Webster says this is why his grill is perfect to catch a game.

In fact, The Village Grill is already home to a rowdy group of soccer fans who take in as much action as they can.

“We have for the friendlies, for the matches, for everything,” Webster said. “We’ve also got a club team that comes out here and watches Arsenal for all their matches when they’re in season. So we’ve become quite the hub for like local soccer.”

Another local area is The Hotel Roanoke. Recently, they have done a complete makeover of their Peacock Alley, dubbing it “FIFA Alley” for the duration of The World Cup.

FIFA Alley is open to the public, and it comes with three TVs alongside an indoor bar and outdoor beer garden.

The hotel’s Director of Food and Beverage, Declan McGettigan, calls it a personal ambition and is opening it up for everyone to enjoy.

“I just wanted to create something a little beyond the atmosphere; we have the facilities here in the location both inside and out in terms of the sunshine,” McGettigan said. “We have the TV’s, and we basically wanted to create a month’s work of excitement and joy.”

Organ, brass and choral singing thundered inside a modern Orlando shrine during the service, a centerpiece of the spring assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Just before the liturgy, bishops and other worshippers knelt before relics of the 17th century St. Mary Margaret Alacoque, a French nun whose reports of visions of Jesus led to the modern devotion of the Sacred Heart as embodying the core of Christ’s suffering love. Since then, the devotion has spread worldwide, with many Catholic schools and churches bearing the Sacred Heart name and many homes and businesses displaying images of it.

The service celebrated the nation’s history, alluding to the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation of rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It also included prayers acknowledging national failures, including its “original sins of slavery and racism.” It's necessary to acknowledge the good with the bad, said Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the bishops conference.

“To consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart is ultimately to accept Jesus’ invitation to remain in his love and to allow that love to shape every aspect of our lives, public and private,” he said. “If we are honest, we must acknowledge that neither our nation nor the church has always reflected that love."

A Catholic history of Sacred Heart consecrations

It’s the first time such a service has been held in this country, although similar ones have taken place in several other countries since the 19th century. Such services, occasionally in conjunction with civil leaders, have taken on political and sometimes controversial overtones when it has been used in support of Catholic nationalistic movements.

Pope Leo XIII, the most recent namesake of the current pontiff, consecrated the entire world to the Sacred Heart in 1899.

Before the service, bishops heard devotional talks from some of their members, emphasizing Pope Francis’ final encyclical, or teaching document, in which he highlighted the Sacred Heart as an inspiration for service and justice.

The relics of St. Mary Margaret Alacoque were brought over from their permanent location in France and displayed in front of the church for the occasion. While scholars trace the roots of the Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart to ancient times, her reports of visions are credited with fostering the modern images, prayers and piety surrounding it.

Thursday's service took place at the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe. The strong afternoon Florida sun shone brightly even through the filters of stained-glass windows beside and above the worshippers.

Rows upon rows of bishops in their purple hats and white robes sat in front of the sanctuary, with other worshippers behind and beside them.

Small revisions made to US Catholic sex abuse policies

Earlier Thursday, in their twice-a-year gathering, the bishops approved minor revisions to their policies on responding to sexual abuse, adding some specifics about due process for accused priests while maintaining the ban on any priests from ministry who had been found to have abused children.

Some bishops called for a delay in adopting the revisions to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People in order to gain broader feedback on it, but they were outvoted. The final vote for approval was 176-22.

The revisions began five years ago. It was first approved in 2002 at the peak of the Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis, when reports by the Boston Globe about abuse and coverup in the Archdiocese of Boston ignited an explosion of similar revelations nationwide and beyond. The charter has been revised periodically since then.

The centerpieces of that document remain — including the banishing of priests from ministry for any confirmed episode of sexual abuse.

The revisions are “trying to do two things at the same time,” said Bishop Barry Knestout, who chairs the committee that revised it.

“One is to retain and also reemphasize the commitment of bishops to address the issue of potential for abuse, safeguarding of our children and young people in a way that’s both transparent and accountable,” he said. The other is to “recognize due process and presumption of innocence” of the accused while a case is being investigated.

“We’re trying not to lose any of the commitment to victim survivors yet still recognize that there is in fairness a process that should be undertaken,” he said.

The advocacy group BishopAccountability.org issued a statement calling the approval a “missed opportunity,” saying a delay would have allowed wider input into the document and produced a better and more “trauma-informed” charter. It called for close scrutiny of the revisions at the diocese level.

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

Trump had doubled down on his choice of Bill Pulte for acting director of national intelligence, even though the federal housing finance regulator has little experience for the job. Democrats said they would not support the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, unless the Republican president withdrew Pulte's appointment and nominated a permanent replacement as director of national intelligence.

The House vote collapsed in bipartisan fashion, with 19 Republicans and nearly all Democrats rejecting the temporary measure, 198-218. The Senate tried to approve its own versions, but also failed, dimming the chances to prevent what could be rare lapse of spy powers. The law expires Friday at midnight.

After those votes, Trump announced he was tapping Jay Clayton, a U.S. attorney who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as his permanent pick as intelligence director. But the president’s move did not seem able to break the standoff over Pulte before the deadline.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, when asked about Clayton, said, “Pulte has to go.”

“He cannot be in the DNI role,” said Schumer, D-N.Y. “It’s too important.”

The impasse could soon result in limitations on what intelligence the U.S. government can collect abroad just as World Cup games begin in cities around the country and ahead of celebrations for the nation’s 250th anniversary. While the provision has expired briefly before, this would be the first lengthy lapse, at a time when the U.S. and Iran have been engaged in missile strikes that are testing a fragile ceasefire in the war.

A lapse would not automatically deprive the government’s authority to conduct surveillance, but could open the door to court challenges of the program. That could lead to stale intelligence, lawmakers said, including the type of information included in the president’s daily briefing.

“We have done everything we possibly can,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, who blamed Democrats for the breakdown and said he would not be recalling lawmakers back to Washington as they left for a weeklong recess. “It is detestable, it is dangerous, it is going to jeopardize the security of the American people.”

Democrats said Trump and the Republicans are the ones putting national security at risk by installing Pulte to the job. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said Pulte has “weaponized” his position in the federal government to go after Trump's critics.

Jeffries said it was a window into the White House's thinking that Trump “could put Bill Pulte forward and the country wouldn’t react adversely to it.” He said the president must ”come to the table and demonstrate leadership so we can reopen good faith negotiations about how best to extend surveillance authority.”

Trump has said he wants Pulte to begin downsizing intelligence agencies.

GOP leaders lobby the White House, to no avail

Congressional Republicans have lobbied Trump all week to quickly nominate a permanent replacement.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Republican leaders had “made our views known” to the White House. But on Thursday he blamed Democrats for the FISA impasse. "This critical tool is set to go dark on Friday, and what the consequences of that will be, we cannot predict,” he said.

Thune praised Trump's choice of Clayton and said the Senate could move “fairly quickly” to confirm him.

Trump had said he was interviewing five candidates for intelligence director after the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard but he wouldn’t let Democrats “extort us” over the pick.

The president wants Pulte to serve in a "sort of renovation role,” Johnson said, to help the Office of the Director of National Intelligence be “renovated and downsized.”

But Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said in a letter to the president that Pulte is a “uniquely poor choice” to serve even in the acting capacity.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers skeptical of Pulte have pointed to his lack of intelligence experience and his record at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In that position, he has been linked with criminal referrals over allegations of mortgage fraud by public officials Trump sought to punish, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat; Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; and Lisa Cook, a board member of the Federal Reserve.

Himes also welcomed Trump's pick of Clayton as a “terrific DNI,” saying had he been nominated earlier, “lots of pain might have been avoided.”

FISA will lapse at midnight Friday

Section 702 of FISA allows agencies such as the CIA, National Security Agency and FBI to collect communications from foreign targets overseas without a warrant.

While members of both parties who cite privacy issues have long wanted to limit the authority, there was broad bipartisan support to renew it, especially after Republicans and Democrats recently worked out a compromise bill.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has worked with Republicans on the compromise legislation to renew the authority. But he called Pulte’s appointment to replace Gabbard “a live hand grenade” disrupting the process.

“Let me be clear -– while I am glad to see the president finally come to his senses, before the Senate can take up a FISA extension there needs to be a clear guarantee that Mr. Pulte will not serve as acting DNI,” Warner said in a statement.

Warner said either Gabbard must remain in place or the administration must designate her Senate-confirmed principal deputy, Aaron Lukas, as the acting head through any transition.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have warned the administration to prepare “for a potential significant gap in foreign intelligence collection.”

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Associated Press reporters Joey Cappelletti, Kevin Freking and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

European duo Nicole Broch Estrup of Denmark and Gemma Dryburgh of Scotland were the first team to post a 3-under 67 in the tough foursomes format. They were joined by Camille Boyd and Michelle Zhang, and Hira Naveed and Gurleen Kaur.

Juli Inkster, the 66-year-old Hall of Famer, played for the first time this year and teamed with her prodigy, Angel Yin, with a 69.

The alternate-shot format kept no team from being able to separate at Midland Country Club, and most teams stayed close going into the second round of fourballs.

“Legally Blonde” is the team name Korda and Cowan gave themselves in a week that is more about fun coming off a tough test at the Women's Open that Korda won for her second major of the year.

Boyd and Zhang went with the name “Baddies” and they were up to the task. The LPGA rookies had three birdies in their opening seven holes, survived some rocky moments and joined the top of a very crowded leaderboard.

Nine teams were a shot back at 68.

“Going into the event, we were both super excited,” Boyd said. “It’s a fun thing. The crowds were great, so I think we were just having good vibes out there and feeding off that energy for sure.”

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

Debbie Cohran, who lives about 500 feet (152 meters) from the aerospace facility in Garden Grove, wasn’t told to evacuate until several hours after the leak started, according to her complaint. Her suit said she experienced nausea and headaches for several days afterward.

Melanie Rose Burciaga of nearby Westminster had just given birth to her first child and had to leave the hospital when the evacuation orders came in, her lawyer said in a lawsuit.

And Juan Diego Orozco was part of a street repair crew working in Garden Grove on the day the overheating started. He said he suffered a headache and went to the hospital due to difficulty breathing and vomiting, his lawyer said.

More than 100 individuals — including some families with pets — as well as local businesses are suing GKN Aerospace, saying the U.K.-based company was negligent in maintaining a safe facility, especially since it’s located in a large population center.

Ten of the cases were filed as class actions in federal court, while 21 are in state court and cover one to 31 plaintiffs. The suits seek compensatory and punitive damages.

A spokesperson for GKN Aerospace told the AP in an email Thursday: “GKN respects the legal process and will respond to these lawsuits in due course.”

Adam Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law who is not involved in the litigation, said the federal cases will likely be consolidated and the state cases will likely be moved under one judge, to ensure they are handled efficiently. Some of those state lawsuits may be moved to federal court, he said.

Pressure on the company increased on Wednesday when FBI agents served a search warrant at the facility to collect documents and records related to the “storage, use, or disposal” of methyl methacrylate, the chemical inside the affected tank.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that it had joined the FBI to “search for and seize evidence of potential federal environmental crimes." The agency declined to provide more information, saying it doesn't comment on criminal investigations.

GKN Aerospace makes cockpit windows, canopies and windshields. The tank that overheated starting on May 21 contained 6,000 to 7,000 gallons (22,700 to 26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate, which is highly flammable. The liquid is used in the manufacturing of plastics and coatings, such as Plexiglas.

Health officials said no contamination or fumes were released, and they plan to monitor the air for several months. Exposure to the chemical can cause serious respiratory problems, neurological issues and irritation to the skin, eyes and throat, according to the EPA.

Although the tank did not explode, tens of thousands of residents were evacuated from the area for three to five days until crews were able to stabilize the tank.

Blodgett said that the company was cooperating with federal authorities.

GKN Aerospace senior vice president Steve Carlin spoke at a community meeting Tuesday, saying he was sorry that the event occurred, and that it was especially unsettling because the company has a long history with the community.

Many of the lawsuits say the company had a duty to maintain the tank, cooling system, valves and monitoring systems to keep the community safe.

The complaints say the residents were forced to leave their homes and had to pay for hotels, food and other daily needs, which created a financial burden. They also said they experienced anxiety during the evacuation process and continue to be concerned about exposure to chemicals.

Businesses in the area also suffered. The emergency happened over Memorial Day weekend -– a time when many restaurants and food service companies bring in some of their best revenue of the year.

“Our data shows approximately 3,000 businesses were forced to shut down because of the evacuation, and at least another 3,000 businesses right outside the evacuation zone while not forced to close, but had their revenue dropped considerably because of the tank failure and evacuation,” said lawyer Richard McCune, who has filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Big Rob’s Pizzeria and Fruit Caboose Concessions.

Lawyers say the FBI investigation will help their legal cases.

“We trust that the search will uncover important information and materials related to this crisis,” said lawyer Sean Litteral, who represents Jonathan Sanchez, a father of two children, including an infant born just days before the incident.

Later, she repeated her assertion that former President Joe Biden’s administration is responsible for the parasite’s return to the U.S. six decades after it was eradicated. Democratic leaders say cuts to the nation’s agriculture agency under President Donald Trump are to blame.

Screwworms are on their way to becoming a billion-dollar international problem, but can be contained if ranchers are vigilant, watch their herds and other wildlife, and quickly treat any infestations, Rollins said. She pointed to the calf where screwworms were found six days earlier in a wound where its umbilical cord had been attached.

“He couldn’t be happier. He’s bouncing around the pasture," Rollins said.

Screwworms are flies that lay their eggs in the wounds of warm-blooded animals and feed on living flesh rather than dead tissues. Scientists say releasing sterile flies to mate with females is the most effective way to control the population, a strategy that has worked for decades. A warming planet is complicating efforts by giving screwworms, which thrive in hot, humid weather, more places to spread.

Billion-dollar response planned to fight screwworms

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing an all-out assault on the screwworm, which had been contained in the narrow isthmus of Panama for decades.

No matter the cause, driving screwworms back south and keeping them out of the U.S. will be expensive. The USDA estimated it would spend over $1 billion on efforts to save cattle herds and other livestock.

About $750 million will go toward building and operating a plant capable of producing up to 300 million sterile flies a week. The technique has been used for decades, as female screwworms mate just once, and if they choose a sterile mate, their eggs don’t hatch, and the fly population dwindles.

The goal is to protect the U.S. cattle industry. Experts think the parasite shouldn't cause an immediate increase in near-record-high beef prices as long as it doesn't turn into an outbreak and large groups of cattle die. Screwworms don't affect food safety.

The parasite has already disrupted the Mexican beef industry. The U.S. closed its southern ports to Mexican livestock last summer.

Mexico has had more than 28,000 cases of screwworms since the flies returned two years ago, mostly confined to its southern states. The Mexican government stopped the importation of almost all live animals from the U.S. after screwworms were discovered here.

Scientists aren’t sure how screwworms emerged again

The U.S. had been almost entirely rid of screwworms for 60 years, with scientists in North and Central America eventually driving it down to the containment zone in Panama. But in 2023, the flies emerged and began heading back north.

Experts say screwworms are here to stay at least for this summer. Seven cases have already been detected in Texas and New Mexico. A 12-mile (20-kilometer) quarantine zone goes up around every place a case is found.

As they work toward a solution, scientists say they aren't sure exactly what led to screwworms leaving the area in Panama where they were boxed in.

“I don't have the answer to that one, and I don’t know if anyone does. It doesn’t help us to speculate,” said Jonathan Cammack, a professor of livestock entomology and parasitology at Oklahoma State University.

The key now is to ramp up the sterile fly program and get international cooperation to get the pests back down to Panama, he said.

Climate change is also helping drive the spread of screwworms, said Lee Haines, an associate research professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame.

"The fly is a creature of warmth as its entire life cycle, from egg to adult, can complete in as little as three weeks under tropical conditions," Haines said.

Even Canada has temporarily stopped importing cattle, horses or other livestock from Texas. The parasites prefer humid areas where temperatures are at least 77 F (25 C), and those days are increasing further north.

Democrats question cuts; Republicans blame immigration

As Rollins moves quickly to implement a billion-dollar response to the screwworm outbreak, she has also blamed the Biden administration, noting that it was in office as the parasite began moving north again.

She said without showing any evidence the flies were with animals that followed immigrants north as well as hitching rides with cattle and other animals being sold by Mexican cartels outside of regular markets.

“People moving north to America, bringing their livestock with them, the Mexican cartels with the illicit cattle traffic, we knew it was coming,” Rollins told the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday.

Nearly a dozen Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter to Rollins this week questioning whether job losses at the USDA have hurt food inspections and livestock safety programs.

Nearly 20% of the counties in the U.S. that started 2025 with at least one employee from the federal Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service ended the year with none, the letter said.

Rollins said she has moved over 100 USDA employees into the screwworm response. She said it has been one of her top priorities since Trump picked her to lead the USDA.

But Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of California said blaming Biden is shortsighted and again shows the Trump administration creates problems through reckless spending cuts.

“The life cycle of a screwworm is about 14 to 54 days, depending on temperature and humidity. The Trump administration has been in office for over 500 days,” Lieu said earlier this week. “This is on the Trump administration. They need to own up to it, and they need to apologize.”

The Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center in Roanoke is building a statewide reputation for rehabilitating Virginia’s only wildcat: the bobcat.

The center recently took in two orphaned bobcat kittens transferred from another rehabilitation facility in Lee County. Staff members say bobcats are among the most complex — and expensive — animals to rehabilitate, in part because the goal is to raise them without making them comfortable around people.

Read original story here.

“Luckily these guys are already really, really feisty,” said Katherine McGrath, the center’s director of operations. She’s become an expert on what it takes to rehabilitate bobcats. At about 5 weeks old, she said, the kittens are already growling and swatting — behavior the staff wants to encourage.

That means some unusual rules for anyone who gets close.

On an exclusive visit, 10 News was required to wear a KN95 mask (felids are highly susceptible to covid-19) and a bobcat mask to keep faces covered and remain completely silent to avoid imprinting the animals.

“We essentially don’t want them to associate people with food,” McGrath said. If the kittens learn that humans bring meals and attention, she said, “they lose that fear that they have of us.”

That fear is key to survival in the wild — and it has been a focus of previous bobcat releases the center has handled in recent years.

In April the SWVA Wildlife Center released two adult bobcats in Floyd County after successfully rehabilitating them. 10 Mews followed them during their entire journey. Watch their story here: Bobcats released into Virginia wild after nearly year-long rehab at Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center

The new kittens arrived underweight and dehydrated, said Executive Director Chester Leonard. The center believes their mother may have been hit by a car, leaving the kittens on their own for a day or two before a rescuer found them.

The good news: They are already gaining weight. Leonard said each kitten arrived a little over 500 grams, and within about three days had gained another 100 to 150 grams.

Many people ask about the markings on their foreheads or ears. This is something you’ll find on almost every mammal at the center. The kittens have colored dots on their ears, a system staff uses to tell them apart while tracking weight, medication and overall health. It is also one of the only times the bobcats will be handled by humans during their roughly 10-month rehabilitation.

McGrath said it is unusual to receive bobcat kittens in back-to-back years, but habitat loss and increasing development can push wildlife into closer contact with people.

“As their population declines, as urbanization increases and their habitat declines in size, there’s not really a lot of places where we can find these guys, where they’re getting into contact with people enough that they’re coming into us,” McGrath said. “So we usually get them every other year, so one year after another is sort of a surprise to us.”

Rehabilitating the kittens will be a lengthy and expensive process. The center estimates the total cost of rehabilitation to exceed $20,000 before the animals are released, likely sometime next spring — making it one of the longest and most expensive rehabilitations the center has ever undertaken.

That cost covers staffing, medicine, veterinary exams, enclosure maintenance and food. As the kittens grow, each will consume the equivalent of one whole chicken per day, at approximately $10 per chicken. In the final months of rehabilitation, staff will need to introduce prey the bobcats would naturally find in the wild, such as quail and rabbits. A single large rabbit costs $23, and each kitten may eat at least one per day — sometimes more.

What started as a small rescue, has grown over the past decade to a true wildlife veterinary hospital. Now, it’s clear they have earned a statewide reputation for their ability to successfully rehabilitate bobcats.

“It’s been a challenge learning to care for these guys, but it’s something we’ve actually become experts at doing and we look forward to welcoming them every year because it’s becoming a tradition it seems like,” Leonard said.

For now, bright blue eyes peek out from behind a carrier hole and an enclosure gate. If rehabilitation goes as planned, the next glimpse will be a fleeting one — disappearing back into the mountains.

How to help

The Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center is accepting donations to help cover the cost of the kittens’ care. Donations can be made online at swvawildlifecenter.org/make-a-donation or by mailing a check to:

Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center

5985 Coleman Road

Roanoke, VA 24018

Watch more about the bobcat kittens and other conservation work happening in SWVA in the Emmy nominated 10 News Special Vanishing Voices: Saving Virginia’s Wildlife.

In the lawsuit, Rocovich is asking the Montgomery County Circuit Court to declare Spanberger’s attempt to remove him from the board unlawful and to prevent the university from treating him as removed. He claims his due process rights were violated, that Spanberger lacked legal grounds for his removal, and that he still had more than a year left in his term.

This development follows Spanberger’s announcement on May 27 that she was removing Rocovich, citing code violations. While Spanberger’s letter referenced a Virginia code, the governor’s office has not provided details on the specific reasons behind Rocovich’s removal. In the initial letter addressed to Rocovich, Spanberger stated that his conduct “violated the Code of Conduct for Commonwealth Appointees to Boards, Authorities, & Commissions, the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors’ Code of Ethics, and the governing statutes requiring board members to act in accordance with the best interests of Virginia Tech.”

However, in his lawsuit, Rocovich argues that the removal violated the Virginia Constitution’s due process protections, stating he received no specific notice and no opportunity to respond before being removed. Rocovich is asking the court to declare the removal null and void, issue an injunction preventing the defendants from treating him as removed, and issue a writ of mandamus restoring him to his board seat.

“Governor Spanberger purported to remove Rocovich from the Board of Visitors on May 27. She had no power to do so,” the court documents state. “The law says that a Board of Visitors member can be removed only for ‘malfeasance, misfeasance, incompetence, or gross neglect of duty’ as detailed in a ‘written public statement’ of ‘reasons.’ Governor Spanberger provided no such reasons. That is because none exist.”

In a letter following Spanberger’s announcement, Rocovich called the decision “deeply offensive” and “legally unsupported,” stating that he will not resign and intends to serve his appointed term faithfully.

“Virginia Tech deserves better than to be made a political football,” he said. “I have given too much of my life to this institution to stand by silently while its independence is threatened — regardless of which party holds the Governor’s office.”

Spanberger’s Office issued the following statement to 10 News on Thursday:

Under Virginia law, the Governor is ‘the sole judge of the sufficiency of the cause for removal’ of a member of a university board of visitors. Former Rector Rocovich was lawfully removed from the board.

Gov. Spanberger's Office

Stay with 10 News as this breaking news story continues to develop.

Maybe it's the kind of contraption that has carried space aliens to the White House to force a meeting with America's leader.

But come closer and you'll see the contours of the eight-sided cage, 30 feet (9 meters) in diameter and shaped, with careful precision, like the MMA league's signature Octagon.

That is, a STOP! sign flipped on its edge, with wire-mesh sides and padded corners fitted with different sponsors' logos: Morgan & Morgan, Bud Light, Dodge Ram, Corona Extra and Polymarket, which identifies itself as the world’s largest prediction market.

Overhead looms The Claw, a four-sided mass that arcs more than 90 feet (27 meters) into the air and features lights, speakers, thick snakes of wiring and four large screens so fans not seated right next to the Octagon can follow the cage fighting below.

Think more of the four-sided, metal grabby thing that tries to grasp stuffed animals at a video arcade rather than what house cats have — hence the extraterrestrial vibes.

And surrounding all that are risers filled with gray folding chairs forming a temporary arena expected to seat 4,000-plus people for the seven UFC fights being staged on Sunday to celebrate the 80th birthday of President Donald Trump and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing.

‘Quite attractive to a lot of people’

For non-UFC fans, all of this might be disorienting under any circumstances. But the temporary arena is covering nearly the entirety of the White House's South Lawn, where Marine One usually lands to ferry the president to out-of-town trips and gobs of kids scramble in the grass during the Easter Egg Roll every spring.

More than $60 million and tens of thousands of hours of labor have been poured into building the arena, according to a court filing from the National Park Service, which oversees the South Lawn and is contesting a lawsuit meant to block the event.

The White House says the UFC is covering the costs, though the filing states that seven agencies — including the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Aviation Administration — have “allocated significant resources and manpower.”

Fighters, their entourages and assorted support staffers are expected to take over the driveway and part of the West Wing when they're not fighting. But they'll enter the arena via curtained-off walkways with access to the Octagon.

They, as well as ordinary attendees of Sunday's spectacle, will have picturesque views of the White House's Executive Residence and its storied Truman Balcony on one side and the Washington Monument towering in the distance on the other. All of it will be accentuated by swirling spotlights, and perhaps even sweat and blood pouring off the fighters pummeling each other.

A packed pre-event schedule includes a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial with UFC chief Dana White and the fighters on Friday night.

There's also a ceremonial weigh-in for combatants on Saturday at the Ellipse, a park near the White House, where organizers expect 120,000-plus visitors to watch Sunday night's proceedings on large screens after winning free tickets in a lottery.

Stunt athlete Travis Pastrana is also set to do a potentially death-defying backflip on a dirt bike on the White House lawn as part of the preshow extravaganza.

Trump has called the Octagon and its Claw “quite attractive to a lot of people.” He's even suggested that maybe the temporary structure could become permanent, like the Eiffel Tower, which he notes was originally built as part of the 1889 World's Fair but then was never taken back down.

Only the president knows how serious that suggestion really is.

The fights will go on rain or shine — despite a lack of covering

Work on the arena began May 20 and has continued for weeks. During a walk-through for reporters on Thursday, construction noises — particularly sanding and hammering — could be heard. Giant cranes were carrying materials around overhead, though that was for the $400 million ballroom that Trump is building nearby, not the UFC fight.

The remaining grassy lawn around the arena, on the other sides of the White House, has been fitted with supplemental spotlights. But the grass that normally grows between the White House and the start of the risers for the arena is now gone, with nothing but dusty dirt that will need to be resodded when this is all over — unless the president really does decide to leave the arena up permanently.

There's also a large Freedom 250 logo standing between the White House and the arena. Nearby, crews removed the tables and yellow patio umbrellas from Trump’s refurbished Rose Garden and were power-washing that space, as well as the colonnade to the Oval Office, in preparation for the fights.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a cooperation agreement with UFC that will see both institutions provide fight training and health and diet regimens, while promoting teamwork and leadership among youth around the world.

“We are so polarized,” Rubio said. “There are only a handful of things that bring people together in one place at one time, united by their interest in one thing. We need more of those.”

Later Thursday, crews began testing the sound system, unleashing a deep rumbling — and sometimes unsettling bass notes — throughout the West Wing. During a subsequent Oval Office event, the music from the lawn was loud enough that the 1970s hit "Boys are Back in Town” rollicked in the background as Trump spoke.

Sunday's event starts at 8 p.m. ET. As darkness falls, crews will illuminate The Claw in red, white and blue, and the mass of lights will offer projections that make it seem as though the entire structure has been enveloped in a twirling stars and stripes pattern.

The weather forecast calls for hot and muggy conditions with thunderstorms possible. The underside of The Claw's tower features an overhead cover that should keep the fighters reasonably dry should it rain — and Trump is also likely to watch from a protected, covered area.

But everyone else would almost certainly get wet.

White has vowed that even heavy lightning — when The Claw might make a conspicuous target for bolts — wouldn't stop the show.

“I don’t care if it snows," White said.

The increases come after city officials identified a roughly $4 million gap during the budget process earlier this year.

Former City Manager Rob Fincher previously told 10 News the shortfall was driven by the expiration of federal funding and rising operational expenses that had not been accounted for in previous budgets.

“What was budgeted before didn’t account for the future,” Fincher said. “Basically, to say that this funding is going to end one day.”

Under the adopted budget, the city’s real estate tax rate will increase by 9 cents per $100 of assessed value. Based on estimates, the average homeowner will pay about $67 more annually in property taxes.

Residents will also see trash collection fees increase by $5 per month, adding another $60 per year to household expenses.

Electric bills are expected to rise by an average of 47 cents per month through adjustments to the city’s electric rates.

Combined, the increases amount to approximately $11 more per month, or about $132 annually for the average household.

Not everyone agrees on what caused the budget challenges.

Councilman Aaron Rawls and Mayor LC Jones both voted against the budget. Rawls says he didn’t want to increase taxes again and believes political turmoil and infighting among city leaders contributed to the city’s financial problems.

“Corrupt people are going to cost you money,” Rawls said. “And so that’s where we’re at.”

Some residents say the additional costs come at a difficult time for many households.

“Ever since the election almost four years ago, we have had historic tax and fee increases,” said Martinsville resident Ural Harris. “We have the lowest income in the state and the lowest ability to pay of just about anybody in the state.”

Rawls said the city’s financial challenges may not end with this year’s budget. He said some equipment purchases and capital improvements have been postponed because of the deficit, potentially creating additional financial pressures in future years.

“All we’re doing is digging the hole even deeper,” Rawls said. “So it’s a guarantee there’s a tax increase next year.”

City officials have not announced any future tax increases yet.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 and the second-le

“Just by taking some lessons, a child is 88% less likely to experience a drowning,” Reedy said, citing a statistic from the National Institutes of Health.

The YMCA offers swim lessons year-round for children and adults, including adaptive swim lessons designed for younger children and those with disabilities or other unique needs.

Kathy Clubb, an adaptive swim instructor at the YMCA, said adaptive lessons focus on breaking larger swimming goals into smaller, achievable steps.

“That’s kind of the adaptive piece. It’s like we take the big skill that we want them to do and let’s just teach little skills at a time,” Clubb said.

Clubb said adaptive swim instruction can provide unique benefits for children with disabilities. For children who use wheelchairs, the water can offer a level of freedom and independence that may be difficult to achieve on land.

“If a child is in a wheelchair, once they have the chance to be in the water, they can use their arms, and they actually can experience freedom of movement, whereas typically that’s something that’s restricted for them,” Clubb said. “The water is a great way — it kind of evens the playing field.”

Lessons often focus on basic skills such as kicking, floating, arm movements and learning how to safely exit the water. Clubb said success is not always measured by how far a child can swim.

“Sometimes it’s about helping a child feel comfortable enough to get into the water at all,” she said.

While swim lessons can help build confidence and lifesaving skills, instructors say supervision remains critical.

“It only takes 10 to 30 seconds to experience a drowning,” Reedy said. “It’s important that parents, number one, keep their eyes up with their phones down.”

Instructors also recommend keeping young children within arm’s reach of an adult, using Coast Guard-approved life jackets in open water such as lakes and beaches, and teaching children what to do if they unexpectedly enter the water.

Clubb said practice outside of lessons is equally important.

“The biggest thing is for kids to practice,” she said. “For mom and dad to take the kids to the pool, to be with them in the water, teaching them, practicing what they’ve been learning in swim lessons.”

YMCA officials say swim lessons are available throughout the year, giving families opportunities to develop water safety skills before spending time around pools and open water during the summer months.

Other Places Offering Swim Lessons in Southwest Virginia

Families looking for swim lessons and water safety programs can also find opportunities at:

• Kirk Family YMCA — Roanoke
• Gainsboro Family YMCA — Roanoke
• Green Ridge Recreation Center — Roanoke County
• Aquatic Adventures Swim School — Roanoke County
• Christiansburg Aquatic Center — Christiansburg
• Downtown YMCA — Lynchburg
• Danville Family YMCA — Danville
• Radford Recreation Center — Radford
• Blacksburg Aquatic Center and Parks & Recreation programs — Blacksburg
• Salem Civic Center Aquatics programs — Salem
• Pulaski County Parks and Recreation swim programs — Pulaski County
• Virginia Gators Swim Club — Roanoke Valley
• Lynchburg Parks and Recreation aquatic programs — Lynchburg

Many local parks and recreation departments, YMCAs and private swim schools offer lessons for children, adults and individuals with special needs, as well as water safety courses, swim teams and aquatic fitness programs.

Summer brings more free time, and with it, more hours logged on phones, tablets, gaming consoles and laptops. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows roughly half of children under 17 average four or more hours of screen time a day — a number that climbs even higher in some communities.

For Lynchburg parent Lauren McQuallin, the challenge is both practical and emotional.

“It’s an interesting thought experiment to imagine life without tech. It’s such a big part of our lives now and for a lot of parents it’s completely emotionally debilitating to think through the threats and the risks,” McQuallin said.

Starting the conversation

McQuallin says one of the most effective things parents can do is talk openly with their children about why screen limits matter — and frame it in a way kids can actually understand.

“My advice is to open the conversation with your children and educate them about what the affects of large amounts of dopamine do to the brain because screens are addictive,” she said.

Screens today cover a wide range of activities — from gaming and social media to tutoring apps and video calls — making a one-size-fits-all approach difficult. That’s why McQuallin says clear, consistent rules work best: kids know exactly what to expect, and so do parents.

“It’s a constant negotiation. How much screen time do I give you today, do I have to work while you’re at home this summer, is it easier for me to work if you’re staring at a screen and quiet than it is if running around the neighborhood and I don’t know where you are?” she said.

Three tips to try this week

Parents looking for a starting point can try these practical steps:

• Use a timer. Setting a visible countdown helps kids transition off screens with less conflict.
• Make a family screen agreement. A shared set of rules — created together — gives everyone a stake in following them.
• Schedule tech-free activities. Build screen-free time into the day so devices aren’t the automatic default when kids get bored.

A Weather Authority Alert Day has been issued for June 11 and June 12 for the risk of strong storms throughout the region. As temperatures climb this week, health officials urge people to be aware of the signs and causes for heat-related illnesses.

Already this spring, the Virginia Department of Health reported a surge in heat-related illness. Last summer, Virginia recorded more than 4,000 heat-related emergency room and urgent care visits. The Northwestern Region alone reported 640 visits, or 15.8 visits per 10,000 people, in 2025.

The WSLS coverage areas are currently in a heat wave, according to WSLS meteorologists. A heat wave is defined as three or more consecutive days where high temperatures reach or surpass 90 degrees. That stretch is expected to run from Thursday through Sunday.

The CDC’s Heat Health Risk forecast shows a moderate risk of heat-related illness across the Roanoke City area Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Health Security, with a major risk expected Thursday.

Franklin County is listed under a major heat risk for both Thursday and Friday, according to the CDC HeatRisk Map. Most of Southwest Virginia falls under a moderate heat risk for the next four days.

Local cooling centers locations in Lynchburg can be found here.

Who is most at risk

Anyone can develop heat-related illness, but some groups are especially vulnerable. Adults 65 and older, young children, pregnant women, people with heart or lung conditions, outdoor workers and those without access to adequate cooling or hydration face the highest risk.

Heat stroke is the most serious heat-related illness. It occurs when the body can no longer regulate its temperature, causing body temperature to rise rapidly while the body loses its ability to cool down. Body temperature can reach 106 degrees Fahrenheit or higher within 10 to 15 minutes. Without emergency treatment, heat stroke can cause permanent disability or death.

Taking steps throughout the day can reduce the risk of heat-related illness. Drinking plenty of water, taking breaks in air-conditioned or shaded areas and avoiding strenuous outdoor activity during the hottest parts of the day can all help.

Symptoms of heat-related illness, such as heavy sweating, dizziness, nausea, confusion or rapid heartbeat, can help people recognize when to seek medical attention.

What to do if someone has heat stroke

If heat stroke is suspected, call 911 immediately for emergency medical care and stay with the person until help arrives, according to the CDC. Move the person to a shaded, cool area and remove outer clothing.

Begin cooling the person right away by applying cold wet cloths to the skin, soaking clothing with cool water or using a cold water or ice bath if one is available. Circulating air around the person can also help speed up the cooling process.

Consumer prices rose 2.1% last month compared with April, the government statistics agency INDEC reported — a rate hailed by Economy Minister Luis Caputo as the lowest monthly level in eight months.

But annual inflation rose marginally to 33.2% this May because monthly inflation in May 2025 hit a seven-year low of 1.5%. Since then, prices have climbed and stayed high, squeezing households and fueling public frustration with Milei's government as it grapples with a series of corruption scandals and struggles to respond to a slump in economic activity across the labor-intensive sectors of retail and manufacturing.

Last month, communications networks saw the biggest price increases with 3.4% on higher phone and internet bills, followed by education costs. Food prices accelerated by 2.5%.

Milei praised Minister Caputo, nicknamed Toto, on social media, posting the INDEC report with the comment, "Let’s goooooo Toto!”

Milei and Caputo also celebrated the news that S&P Global, one of the major credit ratings agencies, had upgraded Argentina's sovereign credit rating late Wednesday to a stable B- from the CCC category, which is considered most at risk of defaulting, citing the government’s success in meeting debt repayments.

Although the upgrade leaves Argentina several notches below investment status, the vote of confidence advances Milei's goal of bringing the crisis-prone economy back to global capital markets six years after Argentina defaulted on its foreign debt for the ninth time.

Milei came to office in late 2023 vowing to eliminate Argentina's sky-high price increases and reverse its chronic fiscal deficits.

More than two years later, his sweeping deregulation and austerity measures have produced a rare budget surplus, charmed investors and slowed inflation — the annual rate, now at 33%, topped 200% when he took power.

But the inflation that makes the cost of living here in Buenos Aires comparable to that in European capitals outpaces real wages. Unemployment has ticked up as thousands of workers are laid off from national industries that can't keep up with a flood of cheap imports.

Corruption scandals of the kind Milei vowed to eradicate upon taking office have struck a nerve against the backdrop of his efforts to defund education, health care and social assistance.

Most recently, Milei's close aide and cabinet chief, Manuel Adorni, came under investigation for alleged illicit enrichment over lavish travel — including an all-cash trip to Aruba — and real estate purchases despite his meager public salary. On Wednesday, he admitted to hiding $500,000 in undeclared savings and cryptocurrency investments.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

The S&P 500 jumped 1.8%, coming off a back-to-back drop that had yanked it back to where it was in early May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average leaped 929 points, or 1.9%, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 2.5%.

Stocks immediately veered higher in midday trading after Trump said on his social media network that “discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved” and that the time and place of a signing will “be announced shortly.”

A deal to end the war with Iran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow oil tankers to carry crude again from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. The price for a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude sank 2.6% to $87.71. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 2.9% to $90.38, though it’s still above its roughly $70 price from before the war.

Worries had been high because the United States and Iran launched attacks over the past several days threatening a more than monthlong tenuous ceasefire.

High oil prices caused by the Iran war have sent inflation painfully upward, and a report on Thursday showed that prices at the U.S. wholesale level increased by more in May than economists expected. The effect is worldwide, and the European Central Bank on Thursday became the first major central bank to raise interest rates in response.

Higher rates can keep a lid on inflation. But they also slow economies and undercut prices for all kinds of investments, including stocks and cryptocurrencies. They hit investments seen as the most expensive in particular, and some critics are calling the artificial-intelligence industry a bubble where investment inflated too far.

Big swings for AI stocks have been yanking the U.S. stock market up and down over the last week, as they went from roaring to records to suddenly turning lower. The big concern is whether such stocks shot too high, too fast because of AI mania, and their careening moves have sometimes reversed direction by the hour.

AI stocks had already been rolling back up their roller coaster early Thursday, before Trump made his announcement on Iran.

Marvell Technology climbed 11.1%. It’s coming off a manic stretch where it plunged 16.7%, soared 9.6% and then fell more than 5% for two straight days. Just before that, it had a one-day surge of 32.5% that was its best in history when Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested it could be “the next trillion-dollar company.” It was worth a bit more than $190 billion at the time.

Companies involved in the making of chips, meanwhile, jumped to some of the market’s biggest gains. Lam Research leaped 12.7%, and KLA climbed 12.9%.

They helped offset an 8.5% drop for Oracle. It reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected, but it also said it expects to raise $40 billion in cash this fiscal year through borrowing and sales of its stock. That comes after it raised $48 billion last fiscal year to help pay for AI investments.

Other companies’ stocks have also been punished recently for announcing heavy spending on AI, as the question remains whether such investments will produce the profits and productivity that AI proponents are promising.

All told, the S&P 500 jumped 127.31 points to 7,394.30. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 929.97 to 50,848.75, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 640.16 to 25,809.66.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased sharply as falling oil prices meant less upward pressure on inflation. The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped to 4.45% from 4.55% late Wednesday, which is a significant move for the bond market.

A sustained drop in oil prices could allow the Federal Reserve to keep its main interest rate on hold this year, instead of hiking it as many traders suspected it may have to because of high inflation and a solid U.S. job market. Following Trump’s announcement, traders ratcheted back their bets for a possible increase to the federal funds rate this year, according to data from CME Group.

The Fed could even resume its cuts to interest rates under its new chair, Kevin Warsh, if inflation pressures subside enough. Trump appointed Warsh, and Trump has been loudly calling for lower interest rates.

Stocks of smaller companies can feel the biggest benefit from easier interest rates because many need to borrow money to grow, and the Russell 2000 index of the smallest U.S. stocks jumped a market-leading 3%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose modestly in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia.

London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.5%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.7% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

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

The announcement comes after LCS announced April Goff as the school’s next Principal on Wednesday.

Lynchburg City Schools said that it respects the individual’s decision and privacy and to ensure continuity, Dr. Susan Badger will serve as interim principal beginning July 1.

Dr. Badger has served as an assistant principal at E. C. Glass since 2023. She has previous administrative experience in Danville Public Schools as an assistant principal and in Franklin County Public Schools as a division coordinator.

Additional information regarding the process for selecting a permanent principal will be shared later in the fall, LCS said.

Golf Digest cited multiple sources as saying Mickelson is no longer welcome at The Farms Golf Club in Rancho Santa Fe, California, where the six-time major champion has played and practiced for decades. The unwanted contact was said to have happened earlier this spring.

Mickelson, the chief recruiter in the launching of LIV Golf, has only played once this year because of a serious family health matter that has not been disclosed. He did not play the Masters and PGA Championship, and is no longer exempt for the U.S. Open.

Golf Digest said it verified the identity of The Farms employee and was withholding her name to protect her privacy. It said she declined to participate in the reporting of the story.

A spokesperson for Mickelson told Golf Digest, “Any misunderstanding has been cleared up. Phil continues to attend to a family health matter and is uncertain when he will be able to return to professional golf.”

Golf Digest cited sources in reporting Mickelson approached the woman in the clubhouse and made nonconsensual and inappropriate physical contact with her. The woman rejected his advances and reported it to her supervisors.

Officials at The Farms reviewed and investigated, Golf Digest reported, and then confronted Mickelson on the course. Mickelson, 55, was told to leave the premises.

The Farms said in a statement to Golf Digest, “Following a staff member report of member misconduct, the club provided immediate and ongoing support to the staff member, conducted a thorough independent investigation of the incident and took decisive action. This individual is no longer a member of The Farms Golf Club.”

“To protect the safety and privacy of our staff and member, we are unable to speak further on the matter.”

Golf Digest cited multiple sources in confirming the member was Mickelson.

The Farms, located about 10 miles from Torrey Pines, is a private club where several top players are members such as Annika Sorenstam and Xander Schauffele, both of whom have primary residences in Florida.

The development adds to what has become a dark chapter for Mickelson, who is married with three children and was once one of the most beloved public figures in golf for his bold and creative game, and for the time he spent after rounds signing autographs.

Mickelson was a relief defendant in an insider trading scheme in 2016 in which he was not criminally charged but agreed to repay nearly $1 million he made in a single trade. Noted gambler Billy Walters was involved in that case and sentenced to five years in prison.

Walters wrote an autobiography in 2023 in which he claims Mickelson has wagered more than $1 billion over the last 30 years, including one day in 2011 in which Mickelson was said to have placed 43 bets on Major League Baseball that resulted in $143,500 in losses.

Mickelson became the oldest major champion in golf history when he won the 2021 PGA Championship. A year later, he was a central figure in helping to launch Saudi-funded LIV Golf. He lost major sponsorships when he was quoted in early 2022 as calling the Saudis “scary mother (expletives)” and that he was only thinking of joining the league to gain leverage over the PGA Tour.

The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia is ending its financial support of LIV after this year.

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

As previously reported, Mahoney was convicted by a Roanoke City Jury for the murder of Jaleel Tate which occurred in May of 2023.

The Virginia Court of Appeals initially overturned these convictions, but that decision was reversed Thursday by the Supreme Court of Virginia.

“I am thankful that the Virginia Supreme Court has upheld the convictions in this senseless killing. Mahoney was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of his peers, and that decision should not be taken lightly. The family of Jaleel Tate deserves to see justice for his death and today’s decision ensures that Mr. Mahoney will be accountable for his actions,” Roanoke City Commonwealth’s Attorney John McNeil said.

Healey told Starmer in a letter that the government’s Defense Investment Plan falls “well short of what is required at this dangerous time.”

Publication of the plan has been delayed amid reports of disagreement between the Defense Ministry and the Treasury.

Healey was followed out the door several hours later by Al Carns, a decorated war veteran who served as a prominent junior minister in the defense ministry. He said he could not defend “a level of investment I know to be inadequate to the task." Carns has been suggested as a possible contender in the anticipated contest to challenge Starmer’s leadership.

Starmer said in a letter to Healey that he was sorry to see him go, but insisted that the funding plan would provide “sustainable and fair” spending increases that would keep the U.K. safe.

Late Thursday the prime minister appointed Dan Jarvis, formerly the security minister, to the defense secretary post.

Critics say too little, too late

Starmer has pledged to boost U.K. defense spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027 and 3% by 2035. But many in the military say that isn't fast enough.

“You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats,” Healey wrote in his resignation letter.

He said that the spending plan put forward by the Treasury, and presented to him on Monday, would see defense spending rise to just 2.68% in 2030, after hitting 2.6% next year.

Healey said that isn't enough with growing demands on defense and British military commitments, citing the Iran war, Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine and threats from Moscow.

“I am now left with no other option than to submit my resignation,” he said.

Gen. Richard Barrons, who helped lead a defense review that underpins the investment plan, said the government is “actively going backwards” by refusing to fund its own review.

“It diminishes the U.K.’s standing within NATO, weakens our credibility with allies, and increases our vulnerability to the realities of 21st-century conflict,” he said. “Allies and adversaries alike will be paying attention.”

The government said that it was delivering “the largest sustained boost to defense spending since the Cold War.”

“This country is safer because of the decisions Keir Starmer has made and we will continue to act in our national interest,” it said in a statement.

Healey is considered a safe pair of hands

Healey has been U.K. defense secretary since the Labour Party government was elected in July 2024, and he's regarded as a capable and serious minister.

He has played a key role in bolstering international support for Ukraine and assembling a multinational coalition to help guarantee security if a ceasefire is reached. Healey also has helped spearhead a maritime security force that would help keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping if the Iran war ends.

The United Kingdom and other NATO member nations have faced pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to increase military spending. Trump has long questioned the value of the military alliance and complained that the United States provides security to European countries that don’t pull their weight.

The U.K. military is also seeking to reverse years of decline in the face of an increasingly assertive Russia, which fully invaded its neighbor Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and increasingly tests the defenses of European nations with overt and covert activity.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, informed of Healey's resignation by The Associated Press during a news conference in Brussels, said that Healey is someone “I respect very much.”

“What we are seeing all over the alliance is countries increasing their defense investments, and of course it is not easy, because in the end there is always a trade-off with other expenses, which are also important,” Rutte said.

Healey’s resignation is likely to further stoke talk that Starmer’s days as prime minister are numbered. Already bruised by a series of missteps since Labour returned to power less than two years ago, Starmer has faced calls within his party’s ranks to stand down.

In a sign of his waning authority, Starmer appears to have been unable to bridge the gap between Healey’s department and Treasury chief Rachel Reeves over defense spending.

Olivia O’Sullivan, head of the U.K. in the World program at the Chatham House think tank, said the resignation “significantly undermines Starmer,” especially since the prime minister has had “a relatively assured track record on defense and foreign affairs.”

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is widely expected to challenge Starmer for the leadership, if he returns to Parliament in a June 18 special election.

Justin Crump, a former British tank commander who heads security consultancy Sibylline, said that Healey's resignation “should not have been allowed to occur in a well-run government.”

“It just further underlines a lack of control here, a lack of clarity, a lack of resolution, a gap between words and delivery,” he said.

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Mark Carlson in Brussels, and Pan Pylas and Brian Melley in London, contributed to this report.

The Justice Department highlighted cases against three Guatemalan nationals that they say underscore the dangers of improper vetting of sponsors in a program that seeks to unite kids with relatives or family friends after they enter the U.S. Officials said they are investigating numerous other so-called super-sponsors — those who gained custody of more than three unrelated children — to determine whether the sponsors took the kids in fraudulently.

“We will not accept half measures when it comes to securing the border, protecting American lives and saving children from exploitation,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters.

Taking custody of multiple unrelated migrant children is not a crime. The sponsors may be caring and well-intentioned, but senior administration officials calling them out suggests that authorities harbor suspicion about them and may subject them to deeper scrutiny.

Under the Biden administration, officials tried to release children to eligible adult sponsors within 30 days, reuniting many families quickly. But the approach also yielded errors, with some children being released to adults who forced them to work illegally, or to people who provided clearly false identification and addresses.

Under Trump, the administration tightened rules aimed at preventing traffickers from illegally bringing children into the country and that has also led to a dramatic increase in federal custody times for kids. As of May, children are held in federal custody for an average of 206 days before they’re released, compared with an average of 37 days when Trump took office. At the same time, the number of total children in custody has steadily dropped.

Striking a balance to release children to vetted sponsors and shielding them from danger has proved a contentious partisan disagreement.

Democrats “want to claim that Republicans, because we’re enforcing the laws, it’s inhumane, somehow,” Blanche said after criticizing the vetting procedures under the Biden administration. "What’s inhumane about taking care of our kids?”

The cases announced Thursday include charges against a woman who, authorities say, was living in the U.S. illegally, schemed with others to smuggle kids across the border, then used fake identities to gain custody of them in exchange for money. Her attorney, Michael J. Goldberg, said “the only comment I can make is that the case will be tried in court and not in a press conference.”

In another case, a woman is accused of falsely claiming that she was siblings with a teen who had entered the U.S. illegally in her application to become the teen’s sponsor.

Critics of the Trump administration have raised concerns over wellness checks carried out by immigration officers at elementary schools, immigration officers showing up and detaining sponsors at reunification meetings with children, and newly required documentation that's created a “paperwork barrier” and led to a recent lawsuit.

Shaina Aber, executive director of the Acacia Center for Justice, which provides legal services for unaccompanied migrant children under contract with the government, said the administration has not acknowledged the harm it has caused to kids by “subjecting them to indefinite detention and eroding nearly every avenue for legal relief.”

Aber added: “If the administration is concerned with the well-being of unaccompanied children, the answer can’t be to take them away from loved ones, try to undermine their representation, and detain them in group facilities with well-documented risks of isolation, abuse, and mental health deterioration.”

Even sponsors willing to undergo the new vetting procedures have been forced to wait through unnecessary delays.

A Chicago father who is a U.S. citizen and had a valid birth certificate for his child was kept waiting for five months before the government could schedule a fingerprinting appointment. During the wait, his toddler daughter was sexually abused in federal custody, a lawsuit claimed. The government did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the case.

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Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas.

Two orphaned bobcat kittens have found refuge at the Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center in Roanoke after their mother was hit and killed by a vehicle in Russell County.

The two female kittens were found beside their deceased mother on the side of the road and were transported to the center, where staff estimated them to be about 5 weeks old. At intake, they weighed 505 grams and 510 grams respectively.

“So when they arrived here, they were a little over 500 grams a piece, and within about three days, they’d already added another 100 to 150 grams of weight a piece,” said Chester Leonard, Executive Director of the Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center. “This goes to show you the A, how dehydrated they were, and B, how hungry they were. That said, though, they are in good condition now, and they are gaining weight, which is what we want to see in the rehab setting. And they are quite feisty.”

Since arriving at the center, the kittens have already grown — now weighing 640 and 685 grams respectively. They are currently on a formula diet, with staff expecting the transition to solid foods in the coming days.

Rehabilitation brings challenges — and big costs

Rehabilitating the kittens will be a lengthy and expensive process. The center estimates the total cost of rehabilitation to exceed $20,000 before the animals are released, likely sometime next spring — making it one of the longest and most expensive rehabilitations the center has ever undertaken.

That cost covers staffing, medicine, veterinary exams, enclosure maintenance and food. As the kittens grow, each will consume the equivalent of one whole chicken per day, at approximately $10 per chicken. In the final months of rehabilitation, staff will need to introduce prey the bobcats would naturally find in the wild, such as quail and rabbits. A single large rabbit costs $23, and each kitten may eat at least one per day — sometimes more.

Preventing imprinting — a critical concern

Because felids are highly susceptible to COVID-19, staff wear full personal protective equipment during all interactions with the kittens. To prevent the animals from imprinting on humans, staff also wear a homemade bobcat mask — or sometimes a leopard print pillowcase — while feeding them.

Imprinting at such a young age is a serious risk. If a bobcat begins to associate humans with food, it could jeopardize its chances of surviving in the wild — undermining months of work and thousands of dollars in care.

Virginia’s only wild cat

The bobcat is Virginia’s only wild felid. Adult females can weigh up to 30 pounds. Known predators, bobcats feed on rabbits, squirrels, birds, rats and snakes in the wild.

In April the SWVA Wildlife Center released two adult bobcats in Floyd County after successfully rehabilitating them. 10 Mews followed them during their entire journey. Watch their story here: Bobcats released into Virginia wild after nearly year-long rehab at Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center

How to help

The Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center is accepting donations to help cover the cost of the kittens’ care. Donations can be made online at swvawildlifecenter.org/make-a-donation or by mailing a check to:

Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center

5985 Coleman Road

Roanoke, VA 24018

Watch more about the bobcat kittens and other conservation work happening in SWVA in the Emmy nominated 10 News Special Vanishing Voices: Saving Virginia’s Wildlife.

Work Location: GMG Headquarters (Detroit, MI)

Description

The Senior Director of Sales is responsible for driving multiplatform revenue growth, advancing digital transformation, and shaping enterprise sales strategy across Graham Media Group. This leader partners with executive leadership and local market teams to strengthen sales performance, expand digital and integrated advertising opportunities, and support long-term business growth.

The Senior Director develops and executes enterprise revenue strategies across digital, streaming, branded content, and advertising while fostering a high-performance, accountable sales culture. This role requires a strategic, data-driven leader who can identify growth opportunities, align local execution with enterprise priorities, and build scalable frameworks that drive consistent results across markets.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a comprehensive multiplatform revenue growth strategy aligned with enterprise business objectives and evolving market opportunities.
• Serve as a strategic advisor to station leadership, helping local markets identify, prioritize, and capitalize on revenue opportunities across digital, linear, streaming, sponsorship, branded content, and emerging media solutions.
• Lead enterprise sales transformation efforts that drive digital confidence, innovation adoption, and strategic selling capabilities across markets.
• Partner with station management teams to create scalable growth plans that balance local market needs with corporate priorities.
• Identify whitespace opportunities, emerging verticals, and new revenue streams to expand market share and accelerate long-term growth.
• Establish performance frameworks and KPIs to evaluate revenue effectiveness, sales productivity, pipeline health, and customer outcomes.
• Provide strategic oversight for digital sales initiatives, ensuring strong alignment between product capabilities and market demand.
• Drive enterprise understanding of advanced digital marketing solutions, including SEO, SEM, social, OTT/CTV, streaming, mobile, display, branded content, audience targeting, and performance marketing.
• Guide market leaders on integrated sales strategies that maximize customer value and revenue potential across platforms.
• Stay ahead of emerging digital trends, competitive shifts, technology innovations, and consumer behavior to continuously evolve go-to-market strategies.
• Champion a culture of consultative, strategic selling that grows the capabilities, confidence, and digital fluency of local sales organizations.
• Develop a high performing team of direct reports through clear expectations, accountability, and measurable outcomes.
• Serve as a trusted coach and subject matter expert to market sales leaders, elevating enterprise sales effectiveness.
• Understand skill gaps and work with appropriate internal teams and external partners to close through best-in-class sales methodology training.
• Lead advanced customer growth and retention strategies through performance reporting, cross-channel attribution insights, and conversion optimization recommendations.
• Partner with market teams on key client relationships, executive presentations, and strategic growth opportunities to improve retention and expand wallet share.
• Provide thought leadership around marketing effectiveness, customer ROI, and integrated campaign performance.
• Support high-value client retention efforts through strategic consultation and executive-level engagement.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree preferred; advanced business or marketing education is a plus.
• Minimum of 10 years of progressive sales leadership experience, including digital media, integrated advertising, agency leadership, or multiplatform revenue environments.
• Proven success leading enterprise or multi-market sales strategies with measurable revenue growth outcomes.
• Deep expertise across digital marketing solutions, including SEO, SEM, social media advertising, OTT/CTV, streaming, mobile, display, branded content, audience targeting, attribution, and performance marketing.
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior leaders, drive organizational change, and build alignment across geographically distributed teams.
• Strong executive presence with exceptional communication, presentation, and storytelling skills across in-person and virtual environments.
• Expertise in leveraging data, analytics, and technology platforms to inform strategic decision-making and sales performance optimization.
• Proficiency with Salesforce, Microsoft Office Suite, Google Marketing Platform, Google Ad Manager, Meta/Facebook Ads Manager, and related sales enablement technologies.
• Strong understanding of data-driven advertising technologies, attribution models, and conversion optimization strategies.
• Ability to thrive in a dynamic, evolving environment while balancing strategic priorities and executional excellence.
• Willingness and ability to travel regularly across Graham Media Group markets.

To apply, please submit your resume to: careers@grahammedia.com

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

According to officials, the shooting occurred at 5:52 p.m. in the area of Owens Ave. in the Town of South Boston. When officers arrived, they spoke to multiple residents in the area, stating they heard several gunshots.

A 43-year-old Halifax County man was taken to the hospital after suffering a gunshot wound and is expected to make a full recovery.

Police say the investigation is still active and the department is asking for anyone with information to reach out at 434-575-7203.

The woman, who may have been exposed to the virus while aboard the Dutch MV Hondius cruise liner in April, had gotten off the ship and then flown to San Francisco before traveling to the isolated British territory of Pitcairn Island through Tahiti, according to two U.S. officials and an internal government document obtained by The Associated Press.

The exact amount of the total evacuation payment is still being assessed because the operation is still underway. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a medical case covered by U.S. privacy laws.

The costly effort to pick up the woman has added to the expense of rapid evacuations for diplomats and private U.S. citizens from the Middle East since the start of the Iran war as well as preparations for possible evacuations from Ebola-stricken countries. All have stressed the State Department budget for unforeseen emergencies, known as the “K Fund,” and brought its balance to the lowest level in seven years.

State Department emergency budget strained by multiple evacuations

Another internal document said the State Department is looking at transferring as much as $50 million into that emergency fund from other accounts — $35 million from the budget for embassy security, construction and maintenance and an additional $15 million from an account that pays for broader diplomatic programming. No decision on the transfers has yet been made.

One of the officials said the State Department has another option, to ask Congress to replenish the fund. However, the official said the department is expected to be able to handle payments for both ongoing and “emerging contingency needs.”

The official would not say what the potential shortfall is but insisted that the department is “well positioned" to support diplomats, other U.S. government employees and private Americans who have been forced to leave the Middle East because of the Iran confict, as well as U.S. citizens who may need assistance due to developments such as the Ebola outbreak in Africa.

How the US is evacuating an American exposed to hantavirus from a remote island

The State Department declined to comment on the specifics of the woman’s case on Pitcairn Island but said that “when an American is at risk abroad and unable to access commercial transportation, the Department of State seeks to provide appropriate assistance to get them home to the United States or to another safe location.”

After the woman departed the cruise liner where the hantavirus outbreak occurred, the ship continued to other destinations in the South Atlantic, with some passengers falling ill and at least three dying. The unidentified American woman was stuck on Pitcairn, an island with only about 50 inhabitants, no airport and infrequent maritime options to depart.

Pitcairn is well-known as the island on which Fletcher Christian and other British mutineers from the HMS Bounty took refuge after the 1789 events that toppled Capt. William Bligh, which have entered into the public lexicon with books and films about the “Mutiny on the Bounty.” Their descendants make up most of the island's current population.

Complicating matters, British authorities had sought urgent American assistance in evacuating the woman from the island, which is their territory, according to the government document about the cost of the evacuation and the second U.S. official.

But initial attempts to send her to Tahiti, a French dependency, about 1,350 miles (2,160 kilometers) — or a 30-hour sea journey — from Pitcairn, were rejected by French Polynesian authorities. They did not want to allow her in because she had not disclosed her exposure when she transited the island on her way to Pitcairn.

The U.S. is transporting the woman, who was not symptomatic, from Pitcairn to Easter Island, another remote location in the Pacific about 1,400 miles (2,253 km) away, which is a territory of Chile and has direct flights to Santiago, so she can return to the United States for any necessary treatment.

All of those factors mean the process of getting her moved from Pitcairn to Easter Island took many weeks to arrange, the officials said.

The government document, which was confirmed as accurate by the two officials, said moving the woman from Pitcairn eventually was arranged via the “Titaina Explorer” trimaran yacht owned by a wealthy Frenchman, who uses it for personal exploration in the South Pacific. Pitcairn has no airport and only limited sea access.

The officials said the woman had no political or celebrity connections and they did not know exactly when she will return to the U.S. Maritime tracking sites show that the Titaina Explorer departed Pitcairn Island on June 5. The voyage to Easter Island can take up to 10 days depending on the speed of the boat and the weather.

The government of populist Prime Minister Janez Jansa also lifted a ban on imports from Jewish settlements and ended an embargo on the export and transit of military weapons and equipment to and from Israel, the official STA news agency reported.

Jansa's government took office earlier this month following a parliamentary election in March. Jansa has said he would seek to improve ties with Israel, in a contrast to the policies of his predecessor, Robert Golob.

Under Golob, Slovenia was one of the most vocal critics of Israel in the European Union. The small Alpine nation recognized a Palestinian state in 2024, before imposing the entry bans in 2025 on National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Netanyahu.

Ben-Gvir was banned also by France last month. He has sparked global outrage after promoting a video of himself taunting the activists from a flotilla to Gaza who were detained by Israeli police.

The new Slovenian government said in its statement that it was scrapping the punitive measures to open political communication, the official STA news agency reported. The Defense Ministry said that weapons trading is already sufficiently regulated by existing national defense laws and the EU arms export criteria, the same report said.

Political dialogue and quiet diplomacy will help “strengthen the role of the Republic of Slovenia in the efforts to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East,” the government said. It cited “active cooperation” over “actions that limit and close off channels for direct communication.”

Last year, Slovenia linked the entry ban for Netanyahu to an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.

Shortly after taking office, Jansa's government removed a Palestinian flag from the government building, also symbolically marking the policy shift. Slovenia's liberal president, Natasa Pirc Musar, then raised the flag on the presidency building.

Also this month, Israel announced that it would open an embassy in Slovenia. The country's embassy in Austrian capital Vienna has previously covered Israel's diplomatic interests in neighboring Slovenia.

Jansa is serving his fourth term in office. The political veteran is an admirer of U.S. President Donald Trump and was a close ally of former populist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who was defeated in a landslide election in April.

The March 22 election was marred by allegations of foreign influence and corruption. The population of around 2 million in the Alpine nation are deeply divided between liberals and conservatives.

Claude Corps, named for the company’s popular AI chatbot, will hire and embed 1,000 fellows trained in the use of Claude at a wide range of organizations for a year. Anthropic President Daniela Amodei told The Associated Press the company hopes the program will expand and become a pillar of its strategy to help humankind realize the benefits of AI while also managing its risks.

Amodei said Claude Corps will be evaluated after its first year to see if it should continue and expand.

“We’re hoping it’s a good idea that can take root and that other people can build on and learn from, whether that’s public or private,” Amodei said in an interview at Anthropic headquarters in San Francisco. “But I think my hope is that we’ll learn, the people who do it will learn, and we’ll be able to come back and do it again next time even better.”

Anthropic's commitment includes paying the Claude Corps members and providing at least 400 host organizations with a $10,000 grant and free credits to use Claude.

Anthropic says it wants to balance profits and social impact

Philanthropy is built into the way Anthropic’s co-founders believe the company should be run, Amodei said. Amodei, her brother Dario, who is Anthropic’s CEO, and the company’s five other co-founders have already pledged that they will donate 80% of their wealth. They established Anthropic as a public benefit corporation, a designation that for-profit companies select to balance financial goals and social impact.

Anthropic, which is valued at $965 billion, is moving toward going public on Wall Street, announcing earlier this month it submitted a confidential filing for an initial public offering.

Amodei, interviewed before the SEC filing, said she could not comment about IPO plans but said the company’s values are very clear to anyone looking to invest in it.

“There’s decisions and choices that we might make that might feel in conflict with just the pure commercial interests of the business and we’re going to be really open about that,” she said. “I think we have been very well served by our inclination to just be very honest about who we are because people who like that really like us. And for people, if it’s not what they like, they don’t work with us. And I think that’s actually better for everyone.”

Anthropic has been outspoken about the risks inherent to the breakthrough technology. It warned last week that companies should coordinate a way to pause development of advanced AI systems if humans risk losing control of the self-improving technology. It collaborated with Pope Leo XIV as he developed his encyclical on AI and the need for increased regulation. And it found itself in a high-profile fight with President Donald Trump’s administration when Anthropic refused to allow the U.S. military unrestricted use of its AI technology.

Amodei said Anthropic is an “unusual” company because its business teams and research teams are run separately.

“Sometimes research says things like ‘AI is doing bad things’ and we really want to be open about what those things are,” she said. “Because I don’t think there’s a way for the broader community that is the world to adapt to these changes if we don’t understand the challenges.”

Bella DeVaan, director of the Charity Reform Initiative at the progressive research organization the Institute of Policy Studies, said she is skeptical that any AI company will willingly set aside enough of its profits to support all the people affected by the adoption of AI.

“The fox can't guard the henhouse,” said DeVaan, who has studied the donations of the ultra-rich. “They can’t be responsible for their own regulation or for their own definition of what their altruistic mandate is. That has to be determined by the public.”

Like Pope Leo outlined in his encyclical, DeVaan is calling for more stringent government regulation of AI companies. Without government intervention, she worries AI will create a permanent underclass of workers. She said governments also need to do their own research about the potential benefits and harms of AI rather than leaving it up to the AI companies.

Anthropic announced separately Wednesday that it will donate $200 million to support an economic framework to help workers displaced by AI. It will start with investment into studying the issues created by AI adoption.

“We can’t understand what the societal disruption might look like if we don’t study it, publish it and talk about it,” Amodei said.

Claude Corps aims to enlist AI-minded people early in their careers

To create Claude Corps, Anthropic partnered with CodePath, the San Francisco-based nonprofit created to help first-generation and low-income students enter the tech workforce through higher education courses and career support.

CodePath CEO Michael Ellison said he had long been thinking about redesigning AmeriCorps to account for AI adoption. The federal agency for volunteer service was gutted by Trump administration cuts last year.

“I think we need programs that are meeting folks where they are when you’re looking at the traditional late adopters — from nonprofits to governments, to schools,” Ellison said. “We’re putting humans into the organizations that serve the majority of Americans as a way to bring them along and bring our communities along.”

He said CodePath will manage the initiative, which will accept fellowship applications through July 17. Ellison said the fellowship will be available to a wide range of young people early in their careers.

“We are intentionally trying to be extremely accessible,” he said. “We’re not requiring that you have a certain degree. We want the initial group of fellows to be representative of a broad section of the population in this country.”

Jennifer Blatz, CEO and president of StriveTogether, a Cincinnati-based nonprofit network that helps prepare young people for better economic opportunities, said she was thrilled her organization was chosen to host two Claude Corps fellows.

Though her nonprofit already uses AI to analyze some of the data it gathers on the impact of its programs, she hopes that Claude Corps can help standardize its usage in her organization and throughout its network, which spans 27 states. Blatz said she wants both her network and the people it supports to understand “AI is a tool – not the whole strategy.”

“AI can help us work smarter, but trust building and community collaboration, that’s a deeply human part of the work,” she said. “And that’s not going away just because we use this tool.”

_____

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Building on her work helping foster children, Trump said the new federal guidance will give child welfare agencies the ability to act as a guardian for children in foster care for the purposes of opening an account.

The first lady, speaking at a news conference at the Treasury Department, said the move “gives foster children the same chance at asset ownership and long-term wealth as every other child.”

The accounts will be open for contributions on July 4. To qualify for an account, a child must also be a U.S. citizen born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates that a Trump Account balance for a baby born in 2026 will be $5,800 by age 18 and $18,100 by age 28 if no other contributions are made.

The first lady said 23 governors, all Republicans, have pledged to allow state agencies to begin the process of enrolling children in the program. “I urge every governor and business leader to help fund these accounts," she said.

There are roughly 330,000 children in the U.S. foster care system, according to the National Council for Adoption. One in 5 of them is at risk of homelessness after aging out of foster care, and only half gain employment by the time they are 24, the National Foster Youth Institute says.

“Those outcomes are unsettling, but we refuse to accept them as inevitable,” Bessent told the news conference. “We are affirming that the American dream belongs to every child.”

A provision of President Donald Trump’s tax and spending legislation that he signed into law last summer created Trump Accounts. Under them, the Treasury Department gives $1,000 to babies so long as their parents open an account. That money is then invested in the stock market by private firms, and the children can access the money when they turn 18.

Employers and billionaires across the country have pledged to make matching Trump Account contributions for employee benefits. Among them are Michael and Susan Dell, who announced a $6.25 billion donation, and hedge fund founder Ray Dalio and his wife, Barbara, who pledged $75 million for kids under 10 in Connecticut, where the Dalios live.

The anticipation builds as the public address announcer begins to reveal the second starter, a 6-foot-7 forward from Indiana. When he finally reaches the player's name, the fans scream it right along with him.

“O! ... G! ... AN-UN-OBY!!!!”

Early Thursday morning, fans again chanted Anunoby's name, this time in a bar outside the arena as they celebrated one of the most memorable moments in New York Knicks history.

Anunoby's tip-in with 1.2 seconds remaining in Game 4 put the Knicks on the verge of a title and moved him into the discussion for NBA Finals MVP.

Anunoby is not the kind of player who usually wins awards, and he might be the least-known of the Knicks' starters. But his teammates understand Anunoby's value far exceeds his reputation.

“So regardless of what the outside world thinks of him, we know what we have in our locker room, and we have a superstar in that locker room,” guard Jalen Brunson said.

Anunoby is the only player on the Knicks' postseason roster who has won a ring, but he was injured and didn't play for Toronto in the 2019 NBA Finals. But there's no way New York would have a chance at its first championship since 1973 if he wasn't front and center now.

From scoring to stopping, Anunoby might to be asked to do more than any Knicks player. He not only finished with 33 points in Game 4 but also made the biggest defensive play of the game when he chased down De'Aaron Fox to block his shot with 11 seconds left and the Spurs leading 106-105.

Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns said that's what he expects from a player who seems to save his best for the biggest moments.

“Every time I talk to him, I say, I already know what OG Anunoby is going to do in the fourth quarter, and he did exactly what I thought he would do,” Towns said. “He gave us a chance to win, and that’s all you could ask for from the best two-way player in the NBA.”

The Knicks couldn't believe Anunoby was only voted to the All-Defensive second team, certain there aren't five better defenders in the NBA. It was those defensive skills that made him most attractive when the Knicks acquired him from the Raptors in 2023, giving up two of their most promising players on a developing team in RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley.

Anunoby was also known as a reliable 3-point shooter from the corners, and he made one as time expired to give the Raptors a victory over Boston in the 2020 playoffs. He hardly celebrated after the shot went through, just as he was one of the few people inside Madison Square Garden who appeared completely calm after his basket in Game 4.

“Just, the game wasn’t over,” Anunoby explained. “I looked up to see the time. If it would have been 0:00, I would have been more excited, but it was just 1.2 left. So just knowing, get a stop now, just stay with it, staying present, not getting too happy because the game is not over yet.”

Anunoby is averaging 23.8 points in the series, shooting 58% from the field and 55.6% from 3-point range. He finished 10 for 15 in Game 4, including 7 for 9 behind the arc.

When Anunoby limped off the court with a hamstring injury late in the Knicks' victory over Philadelphia in Game 2 of the second round, there was concern this run could be in jeopardy just as it was picking up steam. When Anunoby was hurt at the same time in the 2024 playoffs, the Knicks blew a 2-0 lead against Indiana and ultimately lost the series in Game 7, when Anunoby gamely tried to return after missing four games but it was clear he could hardly move and was yanked after five minutes.

This injury was not as bad. Helped by extended time off when the Knicks swept the 76ers, Anunoby was able to return in time for the start of the Eastern Conference finals.

Having him on the floor now — and soaring through the air in the final seconds of Game 4 — could be what it takes to end a 53-year title drought.

“OG, he’s been amazing since he’s got here,” fellow forward Josh Hart said. “This whole playoff run, he’s been amazing on both ends of the ball. He’s a winning player and he made a winning play.”

___

This story has been corrected to show that Anunoby returned from injury at the start of the Eastern Conference finals, not semifinals.

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

Though her body has never been found, police believe Harmony Montgomery was killed in 2019, nearly two years before she was reported missing. Her father, Adam Montgomery, was sentenced to a minimum of 56 years in prison in 2024 after being convicted of second-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, falsifying evidence, witness tampering and assault.

The Supreme Court, however, reversed the most serious charge, agreeing with Montgomery that the lesser assault charge should have been prosecuted separately. It sent the second-degree murder charge back to the lower court while letting the other convictions stand.

In their unanimous ruling, justices said combining the cases jeopardized Montgomery’s right to a fair trial because jurors may have used the stronger evidence about the assault to conclude, based on weaker evidence, that he killed her months later.

“There was a significant risk that the jury would draw the impermissible inference that because the defendant assaulted the victim before by striking her in the head, he must be the one who fatally assaulted her in December by again striking her in the head,” the justices said.

The second-degree murder conviction accounts for 45 years of Montgomery’s 56-years-to-life sentence, which was imposed on top of an earlier 32 ½-year sentence he already was serving on unrelated gun charges.

The attorney general’s office said Thursday it will pursue a retrial on the second-degree murder charge.

“We remain confident in the facts of this case, the evidence presented, and the exceptional work of our prosecutors, investigators, and law enforcement partners,” said spokesperson Michael Garrity. “We will continue our efforts to seek justice for Harmony Montgomery and all those who knew and loved her.”

Montgomery's attorneys did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Last year, the state agreed to pay $2.25 million to Harmony Montgomery's mother to settle a lawsuit accusing social workers of ignoring signs that the girl was being abused by her father after he was awarded custody in early 2019. Crystal Sorey went to police in 2021, and in 2022 authorities announced that they believed Harmony was dead.

Adam Montgomery did not attend his trial in February 2022, and his lawyers called no defense witnesses. His attorneys acknowledged he was guilty of falsifying evidence and abusing a corpse, but they said he did not kill Harmony and instead suggested the girl actually died while alone with her stepmother, Kayla Montgomery.

Kayla Montgomery, who served an 18-month prison sentence for lying to a grand jury about where she was when Harmony was last seen, was the star witness for the prosecution. She testified that her husband killed Harmony on Dec. 7, 2019, while the family lived in their car. Montgomery was driving to a fast-food restaurant when he turned around and repeatedly punched Harmony in the face and head because he was angry that she was having bathroom accidents in the car, she said. He then hid the body in the trunk of a car, in a ceiling vent of a homeless shelter and in the walk-in freezer at his workplace before disposing of it in March 2020, she said.

Kayla Montgomery said she tried to stop her husband from hitting the girl but was scared of him and that he beat her as well as he grew paranoid that she would go to police.

A video shared online showed at least one egg tossed in the direction of the San Antonio Spurs superstar as he entered his hotel, flanked by security, following the team's game 4 loss to the Knicks.

It was not clear who threw the egg. The video showed taunting fans swarming the hotel, a few blocks south of Madison Square Garden.

A few seconds after the egg cracks on a street sign, Wembanyama turns around and confronts a person standing near the hotel's entrance, before continuing inside.

The Spurs did not immediately respond to a request seeking clarity on whether the object struck Wembanyama.

The confrontation followed a historic collapse by the Spurs, who now find themselves on the brink of elimination after blowing a 29-point lead to the Knicks. Wembanyama missed two key free throws in the game's final minutes.

The Knicks victory prompted scenes of bedlam and jubilation across New York City, as ecstatic fans packed the streets, set off fireworks, scaled lampposts and at times clashed with police.

According to the New York Police Department, 56 people were taken into custody for charges that ranged from assault to disorderly conduct.

“Once again, there were large crowds of people who engaged in incredibly reckless and dangerous behavior last night both during and after the game,” the police department said in a statement.

An NYPD spokesperson said they had nothing on file about the egg incident.

Experts said the El Nino, a natural warming cycle, should further heat a globe already warming from fossil fuel pollution and will likely turbocharge extreme weather across the planet. Meteorologists forecast it will rival — or exceed — a record El Nino that began in 1997 and helped trigger billions of dollars in damage from heat waves, floods, droughts, tornadoes and wildfires.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officially confirmed the existence of the El Nino, which is a warming of the Pacific near the equator that affects weather patterns across the globe. NOAA's announcement said there's a 63% chance that the El Nino will get so intense this late fall and early winter that it “would rank among the largest El Nino events in the historical record going back to 1950.”

The warm, deep waters of an El Nino affect weather patterns by bringing “a lot of extra heat to the surface, fueling a lot of extreme events for a lot of places around the world,” said Clark University climate scientist Abby Frazier.

She said, especially in the Pacific, “it can get dire very quickly.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described El Nino as an “urgent climate warning.”

“El Nino conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world,” Guterres said in a video message.

El Nino's impacts spawn winners and losers

The weather pattern's effects vary by region. El Nino often dampens — but doesn't eliminate — Atlantic hurricane season activity, but increases it in the Pacific. So while the U.S. East and Gulf coasts may get a break, Hawaii and other islands are more in danger, Frazier said.

The drought-stricken Middle East could benefit, climate scientists said. Other places are looking at more danger. Parts of western South America — where the first El Ninos were noticed decades ago — often get heavy rain and floods, along with an extra warm summer. India faces more intense heat waves, while drought, wildfires and heat threaten Australia.

Northeastern Africa is likely going to get weather whiplash from intense drought to dangerously heavy rains, said Columbia University climate scientist and El Nino expert Muhammad Azhar Ehsan.

In the U.S., El Ninos can cause more intense storms with heavier rainfall in the South, but they also tend to generally benefit the U.S. agriculture industry, said Jon Gottschalck, operational branch chief at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.

Michael Ferrari, meteorologist and head of research at the investment research firm Moby, said conditions for grains and seed, especially soybeans, look favorable in 18 major growing states, but are more mixed when it comes to dairy and cattle.

The northern Rockies and Southwest — where there’s an “off the charts” snow drought — could get some strong summer rains, Gottschalck said. The biggest effect in the U.S. is often in the winter, when the south can get wetter and the Pacific Northwest warmer and drier.

But overall, temperatures raised by the weather pattern can dampen American economic growth, said Stanford climate economist Marshall Burke. Several climate scientists forecast that 2027 will be the hottest year on record because of lagging effects of this El Nino, which is expected to peak in the fall or winter.

“We have pretty clear evidence that the U.S. economy grows more slowly when temps are above normal,” Burke said.

Strong early signs

The weather extremes caused by an El Nino also depend on when it develops.

Usually El Ninos form in the summer, peak in the late fall or early winter, and peter out the next spring, scientists said.

However, Ehsan's team forecasts that this El Nino will peak a month or two earlier based on strong early signs from recent weeks. Princeton University climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi said large El Ninos like these also tend to last longer.

The early indications — including warmer water pushing toward the surface of the Pacific — have been so strong and noticeable that forecasters have all been predicting the same ultra strong El Nino, Vecchi said, adding that El Nino forecasts often are all over the place at this time of year.

Scientists predict stronger El Ninos as the world warms from the burning of coal, oil and gas, Frazier and others said. But she said it is too early to say if this El Nino is part of that.

Even before it officially formed, this El Nino has gotten nicknames ranging from “super” to “Godzilla.”

“Instead of scared, we can ask people to be prepared,” Columbia's Ehsan 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.

The benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate rose to 6.52% from 6.48% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. Despite the increase, the average rate remains below 6.84%, where it was a year ago.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, often sought by borrowers refinancing a home loan, also rose this week. That average rate climbed to 5.84% from 5.79% last week. A year ago, it was at 5.97%, Freddie Mac said.

When mortgage rates rise they can add hundreds of dollars a month in costs for borrowers, reducing their purchasing power.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

Rates have been mostly trending higher since the conflict between the U.S. and Iran began in late February, disrupting the flow of crude oil from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. That’s sent oil prices sharply higher, helping drive up inflation.

Expectations of higher oil prices as the war drags on have kept long-term bond yields elevated, causing mortgage rates to mostly trend higher.

The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note was at 4.53% in midday trading Thursday on the bond market, up from 4.47% a week ago. It was just 3.97% in late February, before the war broke out.

As recently as late February, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage had slipped just under 6% for the first time since late 2022. It’s hasn’t fallen below that threshold since. Two weeks ago, it climbed to 6.53%, its highest level since August 28.

While average long-term mortgage rates remain lower than they were at this time last year, their mostly upward trajectory and uncertainty over how much higher they may go has kept many would-be homebuyers on the sideline.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes declined in the first three months of the year compared to a year earlier, extending a nationwide housing slump that dates back to 2022 when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Sales were essentially flat in April, but accelerated in May to their fastest pace since December.

Still, sales of existing U.S. homes continue to hovering close to a 4-million annual pace, far short of the historic norm that is closer to 5.2-million.

The latest mortgage applications data suggest home shoppers who can afford to buy at current rates are not holding out for them to move lower.

After declining in recent weeks, mortgage applications, which include loans to buy a home or refinance an existing mortgage, jumped 10.8% last week from the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Applications for both home purchase and refinancing loans rebounded.

The increase in mortgage applications is an encouraging sign for the housing market heading into the second half of the year after a lackluster spring homebuying season.

“However, if inflation continues to outpace wage growth, eroding purchasing power alongside still-elevated mortgage rates, household budgets will come under increasing pressure, posing a meaningful drag on housing demand heading into the summer,” said Jiayi Xu, an economist at Realtor.com.

Each one of the 49 people killed, now known as the 49 angels, on June 12, 2016, left behind a legacy.

To honor their memories, News 6 journalists compiled stories learning about every victim through interviews, news articles and social media. All 49 articles can be found at ClickOrlando.com/Pulse49.

[WATCH: News 6 special on Pulse]

Before they were victims, the 49 were mothers, fathers, recent graduates, veterans, breast cancer survivors, dreamers, artists and so much more.

Those stories include 33-year-old Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala’s who was known as “Rody” by friends. Ayala served as the platelet supervisor at OneBlood, the center that collected blood donations for many Pulse shooting survivors.

“He was the sweetest, most genuine person. (He) cared for everyone and would do anything for you, and he’ll be sorely missed here,” Kelly Gollert, the director of manufacturing for OneBlood, said after his death.

Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49, was a mother to 11 children, beat cancer twice and often went dancing at the Pulse nightclub with her son. She was at the nightclub with her son, Isaiah Henderson, on June 12, 2016.

More than anything, Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19, dreamed of traveling the world after he finished a degree in accounting.

“He would just look at you and laugh,” his mother, Myrlande Bébé, said. “He loves to smile. He was just fun.”

Two days after the shooting Luis S. Vielma’s co-workers and friends at Universal Studios Orlando raised their wands near the Hogwarts castle in the 22-year-old’s honor. He was studying to be a physical therapy assistant at Seminole State College.

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35, was at home on stage. A video on YouTube viewed thousands of times shows Rosado gracefully gliding across the stage of Orlando’s Parliament House in a leather cape and top hat, to the delight of the audience.

In the five years since the shooting, the OnePulse Foundation was formed to honor the victims and assist the survivors, as well as their families through a variety or means.

The 49 Scholarship program works with the families and loved ones of those killed, to award scholarships to those who “embody love, hope, unity, courage and unconditional acceptance.”

The scholarships honor the victims’ legacies.

The healthcare scholarship was named in honor of Stanley Almodovar III, who was a devoted advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, and a nursing scholarship was named for Amanda Lizzette Alvear, who dreamed of becoming a nurse.

This week the U.S. Senate voted to make the former nightclub site a national memorial. The OnePulse Foundation has plans for a reflection area, memorial and museum in the SoDo area of Orlando.

To read about all 49 angels click here.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that its producer price index — which captures inflation before it reaches consumers — jumped 6.5% from May 2025. It rose 1.1% from April, as it did the previous month. Wholesale gasoline prices surged by more than 23% from April to May, and nearly 70% from a year earlier.

Inflationary pressures, intensified by the energy shock caused by the Iran war, are frustrating Americans five months before midterm elections that will determine whether President Donald Trump's Republicans keep full control of Congress.

Gasoline prices have been falling in recent days, but the cost of a gallon of regular gasoline has been above $4 since March, according to motor club AAA. And the U.S. driving season, which pushes prices higher each year, has just begun.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core wholesale prices rose 0.4% from April and 4.9% from May 2025.

The wholesale inflation numbers came out a day after the Labor Department reported that consumer prices rose 4.2% in May from a year earlier, most in three years. Gasoline prices were up nearly 41% from May 2025. Airfares were up almost 27%.

Inflation is running well ahead of the Federal Reserve's 2% target. The central bank is expected to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged as its meeting next week. But financial markets expect the Fed could raise rates by the end of the year in an effort to curb price increases.

Wholesale prices can offer an early look at where consumer inflation might be headed. Economists also watch it because some of its components, notably health care and financial services, flow into the Fed's preferred inflation gauge — the personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, index.

Stephen Brown, chief North America economist at Capital Economics, wrote that the producer prices “that feed into the PCE price calculation rose by much more than we expected ... It supports our view that the Fed will hike interest rates toward the end of the year.’’

After the United States and Israel attacked Feb. 28, Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz, causing the biggest disruption in oil supplies in history. Energy prices rocketed. S&P Global Energy warned Thursday that U.S. crude oil inventories are drying up as the summer driving season approaches.

“The bottom line is that U.S. inventory levels remain above estimated minimum operating thresholds,'' said S&P Global Energy's Aaron Brady. “However, with continued disruption to Middle East flows, draws are likely to extend into the third quarter, even in the event of a near-term diplomatic resolution.'' More big, sustained drops in inventories ”would likely signal entry into a ‘danger zone’ for the U.S. refining system.”

Some of them aren’t too enthusiastic.

“I think they’re all a waste of time,” said Shirley Prior on the choice of candidates in Makerfield, where a special election on June 18 has drawn interest from journalists around the world. That level of attention is all-but unheard of for a midterm by-election to fill one of the 650 seats in the House of Commons.

If Andy Burnham from the center-left Labour Party wins, there’s a strong chance he will replace embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer as leader of both party and country. He's up against Reform UK, a hard-right party hoping to prove that this longtime Labour stronghold is fertile ground for its anti-immigration message, with potentially seismic consequences for British democracy.

This district has elected Labour lawmakers for 120 years, but Burnham is not a shoo-in. Reform, led by the veteran anti-immigration politician Nigel Farage, won 24 of the 25 council seats up for grabs in local elections in this area last month.

“I always voted Labour because my dad, my grandad, everybody voted Labour then,” Prior said. “I’ve never done that for a lot, a lot of years.”

Immigration is a top issue

The election is taking place amid heightened tensions over immigration. A stabbing in Belfast this week, for which a Sudanese man has been charged with attempted murder, triggered violent protests in Northern Ireland in which cars and houses torched.

In the constituency’s main town of Ashton-in-Makerfield, 200 miles (320 kilometers) northwest of London, some voters echo Reform claims that recent arrivals are straining housing and public services.

“Immigration’s too high, all the services are being put under pressure and Labour just keep inviting more and more people into the country and it’s the taxpayer who has to pay for them,” said retiree Phil Arrowsmith.

Annual net migration to the U.K. reached more than 900,000 in 2023, under the previous Conservative government, before falling to 171,000 last year.

That decline has done little to boost a Labour government that has floundered since winning election in July 2024.

Starmer has struggled to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living, and been hamstrung by repeated missteps, including his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson, a scandal-tarnished friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as Britain’s ambassador to Washington.

A dismal performance in local elections last month sparked a clamor from Labour lawmakers for Starmer’s resignation. He has refused, but Cabinet minister Wes Streeting quit so he can run in a leadership contest that could come soon.

Burnham, the popular mayor of Greater Manchester, also harbors leadership ambitions, but needs a seat in Parliament if he wants to challenge Starmer. An opening emerged when Josh Simons, the Labour lawmaker for Makerfield, stepped down to trigger a special election.

Burnham said he understands that voters are “fed up” and calls the large Reform UK vote “a cry for real change” that Labour must heed.

The ‘King of the North’ eyes power in London

The Makerfield constituency is a capsule of British history, a collection of former coal-mining communities turned commuter suburbs. The slag heaps and slum housing in the area described by George Orwell in his 1937 book “The Road to Wigan Pier” have been replaced by suburbs of tidy modern houses amid Victorian workers’ cottages, interspersed with farmers’ fields.

Though far from the city center, it is part of Greater Manchester, and Burnham gets honks and thumbs’ ups from passing drivers as he walks down the street in his smart-casual uniform of dark jeans with a navy blue shirt and jacket.

The 56-year-old has been mayor of the region of 3 million people since 2017, a period that has seen central Manchester boom, with skyscrapers blooming on postindustrial sites. Many residents praise him for championing the city, and for taking a piecemeal public transport system under municipal control as the Bee Network.

For a decade and a half before that he was a lawmaker in Parliament, and a minister in Labour governments. He doesn’t emphasize that part of his CV, preferring the outsider status that has seen him nicknamed the King of the North.

“What we’ve built in Greater Manchester needs to go national,” Burnham told reporters during a campaign event this week. “I know what it is to turn places around.”

Many predict a close contest

The campaign is an odd mix of the local and the international. Some voters cite immigration as a top concern. Others mention struggling main street shops, potholes and petty crime.

Burnham’s main rival is Reform UK candidate Rob Kenyon, a 41-year-old plumber and local councilor who came second to Labour here in the 2024 national election. He says he’s an unpolished regular bloke, though opponents have criticized him over crude, sexist and anti-vaccine comments on social media.

Reform voters are also being targeted by Restore, an even more hardline anti-immigration party.

Michael Poultney, a retired teacher and Labour supporter, thinks the unpopularity of Starmer’s government means Burnham faces a stiff challenge.

“Without his personal vote, I think we would struggle,” he said. “Keir Starmer has done reasonably well on the international stage, but the government are yet to be in control of the economy.”

Burnham insists he is running for the people of Makerfield, not his own ambition, and is not taking victory for granted.

“I am making no assumptions beyond the 18th of June,” Burnham said.

But he stressed that “this is a change byelection.”

“I will take the fight for the changes I want to see in politics as far as I can take it,” he said.

Bruel, 67, denies the allegations.

He was brought Wednesday before four investigative judges at the court in Nanterre, in the western suburbs of Paris, following a two-day police custody.

The Nanterre prosecutor’s office said the formal investigation concerns allegations of rape in 2008 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, west of Paris, attempted rape in 2010 in Brussels, and sexual assault and sexual harassment in Perpignan, in southern France, and Ajaccio, Corsica, both in 2019.

The judicial investigation also continues into other allegations of rape, attempted rape and sexual harassment between 2010 and 2019 in three French cities and in Nyon, Switzerland, according to prosecutors.

Some allegations that had previously been dismissed without further action were reexamined and included in the case, the prosecutor’s office said.

Bruel was released under judicial supervision and barred from leaving France. He was ordered to surrender his passport, undergo psychological treatment and post bail of 500,000 euros ($576,760). He is also prohibited from contacting his accusers or members of their families and from entering massage parlors, where some of the alleged offenses are alleged to have occurred.

Bruel’s lawyers said in a statement the singer would cooperate fully with the investigation and remains available to the judicial authorities.

In recent weeks, a series of media reports, notably by French investigative website Mediapart, brought into public attention allegations by multiple women spanning several decades against Bruel, prompting additional complaints to be filed.

Prosecutors said accusations by other women that appear to be barred by the statute of limitations have nevertheless been attached to the case file so investigating judges can gain a broader understanding of the allegations. Complaints filed in other jurisdictions could later be added to the Nanterre investigation.

Bruel became one of the biggest stars in the French-speaking world in the late 1980s and 1990s. His popularity was so intense that French media coined the term “Bruelmania,” drawing comparisons with Beatlemania.

Hit songs from his 1989 second album have became part of French popular culture, addressing universal themes including love, heartbreak, nostalgia and childhood and bringing together generations of fans. Bruel later built a parallel acting career, appearing in dozens of film and television productions.

Last month he canceled all shows planned this summer in France, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium and at the end of the year in Canada.

— San Antonio wins and extends the series.

— New York wins and becomes NBA champions.

That's it. It's one or the other. After 1,321 games — 1,230 in the regular season, 84 in the playoffs, six more in the play-in tournament and one between the Spurs and Knicks that decided the NBA Cup — it really is that simple. If Wembanyama and the Spurs win in San Antonio, the season lives for at least one more game. If the Knicks win, all that'll be left in this season will be a parade.

The Spurs trail the series 3-1 and Wembanyama understands the reality. Of the previous 38 teams that trailed 3-1 in the NBA Finals, 37 wound up watching the other team celebrate the title. And if that bit of history didn't look daunting enough, the Spurs will try to climb out of this 3-1 hole after the biggest collapse in NBA Finals history — wasting a 29-point lead in a Game 4 loss at New York.

“I think it’s going to go one of two ways,” Wembanyama said shortly after Wednesday's 107-106 loss in Game 4, a game where the Spurs were outscored 55-25 in the final 21 1/2 minutes. “One of two ways. A bad one and a good one. The bad one would be giving up. The good one would be getting stronger through this, getting more together. I know this is what we’re going to do.”

Thursday was an off day for the teams, at least in terms of formal practices. Both sides are scheduled to practice in San Antonio on Friday, and then Game 5 is there on Saturday night — with the Knicks one win away from what would be their first championship in 53 years.

New York won Games 1 and 2 of the finals in San Antonio — rallying from double-digit deficits in both games — to take command of the series. The Knicks, with a win Saturday, would become the first team since Houston in 1995 to go 3-0 on the Spurs' floor in a single postseason series.

“Our mentality has to be 0-0, the way it’s been,” Knicks guard Jalen Brunson said, repeating the mantra he's cited time and time again in this postseason run. “It has to be that way, and I feel like us moving forward with that mindset can really benefit us. There's nothing to celebrate. It’s not over yet, not even close.”

It's common sense for the team with a 3-1 lead to hold off on celebrating. But in this case, there's also some truth to what Brunson is saying.

Yes, the 3-1 deficit has been proven to be virtually insurmountable in NBA history; the only team that successfully escaped its grip in the finals was LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016, when they rallied to beat the Golden State Warriors for that title.

This series, however, isn't exactly a statistical runaway.

The Knicks have outscored the Spurs by a total of eight points over the four games. Shooting is basically even; the Knicks are at 44%, the Spurs at 43%. The Knicks have made 52 3-pointers, the Spurs 49. Free-throw percentage, Knicks 79%, Spurs 78%. The Knicks have three more rebounds and both teams have exactly 90 assists through four games.

“Just take this one game at a time,” said Spurs guard De'Aaron Fox, who took heavy criticism for electing to try a layup — which was blocked — in the final seconds of Game 4 instead of taking time off the clock with a one-point lead. “It obviously looks like a steep hill, but this is something that’s happened before. Take this thing one game at a time. We’ve been in a position to win all these games. We’ve been up double digits. We have to figure out what we need to do to be able to put some of these games away.”

It has been a baffling problem for the Spurs.

They led Game 1 by one with 1:51 left, then lost after the Knicks finished on an 11-0 run.

They had the ball in a tie game with 11 seconds left in Game 2, then lost after Wembanyama threw a pass that Stephon Castle never saw and became a turnover that led to Brunson's game-winning free throw.

And now, this — a 29-point lead wasted in Game 4, and they still led by one until Anunoby's tip-in with 2.1 seconds left.

"We have to try to put this behind us," Fox said.

If they don't, the Knicks' 53-year wait for a title could end Saturday night.

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

The FDA last month gave its first OK to fruit-flavored vapes — essentially endorsing them as a less-harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes. The decision came despite the agency’s longstanding position that such flavors appeal to children and must show extra health benefits to warrant approval for adults.

Health groups and Washington lawmakers quickly condemned the decision and have called for an explanation.

A six-page FDA memo released this week provides more details about the agency's rationale. In it, FDA regulators appear to sidestep previous statements about the risks of sweet vaping flavors while acknowledging shortcomings in the data submitted by vape manufacturer Glas Inc.

To meet federal standards, companies must show that their products benefit public health. In practice, that means demonstrating that their vapes help adult smokers switch or quit cigarettes, while not attracting underage use by teens.

Smokers who tried Glas vapes were much more likely to completely switch from cigarettes over the course of a three-month study, according to the memo.

But the data did not show “statistically significant differences” between adults using the company's mango and blueberry flavors and those using a tobacco-flavored e-cigarette.

That means the new vapes failed to meet the same bar as a handful of other flavored products previously sanctioned by the FDA, including menthol-flavored vapes from Juul and NJOY. Those companies showed that adults who used menthol were significantly more likely to cut down or quit cigarettes compared with those vaping tobacco flavors.

Elsewhere, FDA regulators explained that the Glas flavored vapes “did not have to demonstrate added adult benefit,” because young people were unlikely to use them. Glas requires users to unlock each e-cigarette with an age-verifying cellphone app.

The agency's authorization also runs counter to recent FDA guidelines advising companies that fruit and dessert flavors would have to meet “a high evidentiary burden" for adult use, given their risks to children. Tobacco-flavored products are not popular with teens and generally face lower regulatory hurdles at the FDA.

The FDA document is also unusual in its brevity.

Previous FDA memos on new vaping products typically run dozens of pages. For example, last year’s document authorizing Juul’s menthol e-cigarettes was more than 90 pages and included detailed scientific data from research involving 50,000 people.

The short memo on Glas does not include key details, such as how many smokers the firm studied.

Previously, the FDA almost always posted such memos immediately after announcing an authorization. The document on Glas appeared on the agency's website more than a month after regulators OK’d the products.

The agency has faced questions from members of Congress about the decision. Last month, 10 Democratic senators sent a letter to the agency requesting more information about the authorization, calling it a “shortsighted and reckless decision.”

The application from Glas, which also included menthol and tobacco-flavored vapes, followed a winding path to authorization. The small, Los Angeles-based company submitted a marketing request to the FDA in 2021.

In February, FDA scientists authorized several of the flavors. But that decision was blocked by a senior official reporting to then-FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, according to internal memos later released by the agency.

The mango- and blueberry-flavored products were finally OK’d during Makary’s last full week leading the agency. He resigned the post after months of criticisms from industry stakeholders, including tobacco companies that have lobbied President Donald Trump's Republican White House for looser regulations on vaping flavors.

A spokesperson for the company could not immediately provide comment when reached Thursday morning.

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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.

In May, Amazon deforestation was 61.4% lower than in the same month in 2025, according to officials from the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, and the Ministry of Environment.

Still, 370 square kilometers (nearly 143 square miles) of the rainforest were cleared. Deforestation over the same period fell 12% in the Cerrado, a savanna in central Brazil that has long been under pressure from the powerful agribusiness sector.

Environment Minister João Paulo Capobianco said that the figure is the lowest ever recorded for May, and that Brazil is on track to reach its lowest annual levels once the data is consolidated next semester.

He said that the month typically sees higher deforestation, because it marks the start of the Amazon’s dry season. In the 10 months from August 2025 to May 2026, deforestation in the Amazon already fell by 37.5%, compared with the same previous period.

On June 2, the Trump administration proposed 25% tariffs on imports from Brazil, saying that the world’s 10th-biggest economy engages in trade practices that are “unreasonable” and that “burden or restrict U.S. commerce.” The announcement came after an investigation by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that accused Brazil of illegal deforestation and unfair tariffs of its own, among other things.

Capobianco said that the deforestation figures “debunk the unfair and unfounded accusation by the United States, which cited deforestation to justify imposing tariffs.” President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva nodded as he listened to the remarks.

Lula said that the Trump administration lied when they first imposed additional tariffs on Brazil last year, saying that the U.S. had a trade deficit.

“And now they raised questions about deforestation. They don’t understand the work we are doing to bring deforestation down to zero by 2030. This is not a decision by any COP or by the United Nations. It is a decision of our government,” the Brazilian president said, using the acronym for U.N. climate conferences.

“It’s a matter of justice, of Brazil’s contribution to the planet, fulfilling our obligation to avoid deforestation as much as possible. Preventing deforestation benefits Brazil, benefits the Amazon and benefits the world,” he said.

Deforestation is the leading driver of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming.

The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, also plays a critical role in regulating the climate far beyond South America. Scientists warn that forest loss could accelerate global warming and disrupt agriculture as far away as the U.S. Midwest and parts of Europe.

After reaching record levels in the 1990s and 2000s, deforestation declined until the 2019-2022 term of then President Jair Bolsonaro, whose government was widely criticized for weakening environmental protections. Under Lula’s administration, deforestation has fallen again, reaching its lowest level in a decade last year.

Despite gains in keeping forest standing, however, many other threats, ranging from climate change to potential legislation on the horizon, are putting the forest at risk.

Forest degradation, driven by wildfires, logging and drought, affects about 40% of the Amazon and has outpaced clear-cutting in recent years. All of this could be exacerbated this year with a strong El Niño, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, which causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.

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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.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell issued a statement Thursday morning, saying: “The Pentagon has sophisticated systems to ensure the safety of the building and its occupants. Those systems have detected an air quality issue necessitating precautionary measures until we determine its significance.

He continued, “The Department is executing standard protection protocols, including a shelter-in-place order for the affected area. Response teams are in place and ready to support building occupants.”

In a social media post, the Arlington County Fire Department said emergency units, including its hazardous materials team, were “operating at the Pentagon in support of PFPA’s Hazmat Team during a hazardous materials incident.”

At this time, it is unclear what may have caused the incident.

The Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, the new name for the race held outside Barcelona, won’t be staged in 2027 as it starts being held every two years.

“It is probably going to be my last Barcelona race in Formula 1,” the 44-year-old Alonso told reporters at the track on Thursday.

Alonso quickly added he was not announcing his retirement, but the fact that the next Barcelona race will be in 2028 made it less likely he will take part.

He said in the coming months he will think hard about whether he is willing to keep racing next season while Aston Martin gives him a car that struggles to get him even near the top.

“I don’t have anything in mind, and after the summer I will take the decision to continue or not,” the Spaniard said. “But Barcelona is not happening next year, and if I don’t know what I am doing next year it is near impossible to know what I will doing two years from now.

“Every race I go to could be my last.”

Alonso is an icon of Spanish sports thanks to his world championships in 2005 and 2006, and he has remained one of the series' best drivers, even though he has never had the car to match his skills for several years.

His last F1 victory, No. 32, came in 2013 at this track in Montmelo. Few racing fans would then have imagined that Alonso, who remained sharp behind a wheel, would not stand atop a podium again.

Still, tens of thousands of his fans flock to the Spanish race to cheer him on each year.

This season he has just one point and was 18th out of 22 drivers.

And while Alonso said he was “at peace” with his career, it hurt not to be competitive.

“The hardest thing is to not win races and not be competitive,” he said. “If (this season) is the last, it is not affecting me. I am at peace now with myself and my career. I achieved a lot more than I ever dreamt when I was a kid."

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

SpaceX is likely to become the biggest IPO ever, with proceeds of around $75 billion. SpaceX hopes to become the first company to send people to Mars. In fact, part of Musk’s future compensation depends on SpaceX eventually establishing a colony of at least 1 million people on the red planet.

Why SpaceX is going public now

In a video conference on Musk's social media platform X, he told JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon that people have suggested for the last 10 years that he take SpaceX public. He's doing it now because the company plans to put 100,000 next-generation Starlink satellites into orbit. Deploying AI data centers in space is a “massive new growth base and you need capital for that,” he said.

Going public provides access to the capital that SpaceX needs. But it also exposes it to more scrutiny from shareholders and more regulatory oversight. That includes filing quarterly financial reports, which critics say incentivizes short-term thinking over longer-term planning and creates unnecessary costs for a company. Securities regulators are currently soliciting public comment on a proposal to require public companies to file the financial reports only twice every year.

How the IPO impacts the company

Musk will hold the majority of a special class of shares, giving him control over decisions related to company strategy, finances and personnel. On the latter, because of his ownership of most of these Class B shares, the only person who can fire Musk as CEO ... is Musk.

The company credits Musk with being the “driving force” behind its growth, innovation and success. But what happens if Musk is no longer in the picture? SpaceX warns that the loss of Musk could disrupt its ability to execute its strategy as well as hurt its “reputation and relationships with customers, partners and other stakeholders.”

The company also warns that finding a replacement with the same skills and experience as Musk would be time-consuming, if not nearly impossible. As Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote Wednesday, “At the end of the day Musk is SpaceX and SpaceX is Musk.”

Some big investors are unhappy. Officials from pension funds for firefighters, teachers and other workers in California and New York sent a letter to SpaceX last month decrying some of the provisions in its IPO, including the “super voting shares,” mandatory arbitration of shareholder claims instead of the possibility of lawsuits and how much power Musk will hold over the company.

They said they could become owners of SpaceX stock because they hold index funds, which automatically buy stocks after they get included in certain indexes.

What could make or break SpaceX

Currently in the test phase, the gigantic reusable Starship rocket is key to SpaceX realizing Musk's ambitions. Much of the commercial space business hinges on SpaceX developing Starship’s capability to be fully reusable and hearty enough for a quick turnaround between flights. If that doesn't happen, SpaceX warns that putting data centers and satellites in space will take longer and cost more money, meaning it risks customers bailing on the company.

Analysts say that by pioneering reusable rockets, SpaceX has established a clear lead on competitors such as Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The Starlink satellite business competes with, among others, AST SpaceMobile – which is relying on a SpaceX rocket to send its latest generation of satellites into orbit next week.

The prospectus filed last week says SpaceX’s biggest potential market is the sale of business-oriented artificial intelligence products designed to transform how people get work done. It’s an opportunity SpaceX predicts would be worth $22.7 trillion if it could somehow dominate rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft in a highly competitive industry. But the prospectus shows no clear path to profitability for the xAI business, which merged with SpaceX earlier this year.

Why Wall Street is paying attention

If the SpaceX IPO is as successful, the stock could quickly join the Nasdaq 100, a widely followed index that tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies in the composite. That's important because some popular funds, such as the $460 billion QQQ exchange-traded fund, mimic the index and will automatically buy whatever is listed in the index.

Nasdaq recently changed its rules to allow select companies to enter the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 trading days.

S&P Dow Jones Indices, on the other hand, is sticking to established and more traditional thresholds that will not allow SpaceX or other companies with gargantuan IPOs faster entry into its S&P 500 index. That means even high-profile companies will still need to wait for their stocks to trade a full 12 months before they can enter the index.

Companies want to be in the S&P 500 in particular because it's arguably the most important index on Wall Street, with trillions of dollars either mimicking it exactly or benchmarked against it. Vanguard's VOO fund that tracks the S&P 500 has roughly $950 billion invested in it, for example.

The event will be held on Saturday, June 13, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. While the SML Songwriters Festival is free, the Brady Seals concert is ticketed.

Entering the sweepstakes is simple and always free. All you have to do is fill out the form below. Don’t see it? Try clearing your cache!

Here’s how it works:

• Contest starts at 12:15 p.m. on June 3, 2026
• Contest closes at 11:59 p.m. on June 10, 2026
• Five winners will be selected on June 11, 2026

Here’s a breakdown of the prizes:

• 5 Winners will receive a 2-pack of concert tickets valued at approximately $13 each
• Overall value is approximately $130

You can find the official rules for this contest here

Leo issued an impassioned plea to recognize the dignity of migrants from the port of Arguineguín, in the Canary Islands. In 2020, the port was dubbed “dock of shame” because of the squalid conditions migrants were forced to live in for months during a spike in arrivals.

“Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border,” Leo said, with rescue ships docked behind him and a simple wooden cross made from a shipwrecked migrant boat nearby.

Leo is spending the final two days of his weeklong trip to Spain in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago closer to Africa than the Iberian Peninsula and a key point of entry for migrants who make the perilous Atlantic crossing from West Africa.

He is fulfilling a wish of Pope Francis to visit the islands to commemorate the thousands of lives lost at sea.

With two migrants standing by him, Leo threw a bouquet of flowers into the sea. The gesture recalled one Francis made in 2013, at the start of his pontificate, when he visited another migration flashpoint in Lampedusa, Sicily and denounced the “globalization of indifference” that the world showed migrants.

A visit to the ‘dock of shame’

The Canary Islands have long been a stepping stone for migrants trying to reach Europe from West Africa and Morocco. Some experts consider the Atlantic route they take to get here more deadly than the more well-known central Mediterranean smuggling route from Libya and Tunisia to Italy.

Migrant arrivals in the Canary Islands peaked in 2024 at nearly 47,000. Following pressure and deals between the European Union, Spain and the governments of several West African nations, arrivals have fallen dramatically, with just over 3,000 people landing there in the first five months of 2026.

Upon his arrival, Leo went straight to the port in Arguineguín, where in 2020 arrivals reached such numbers that migrants were forced to sleep on the dock in makeshift camps in the open air.

Many spent weeks just a blanket and no showers. Potential asylum seekers had no proper access to legal advice and some people were held for weeks, much longer than the three days that the law allowed. The ombudsman later forced the government to shutter the makeshift camp and relocate the migrants in hotels that had been emptied by COVID-19.

A challenge to uphold dignity

At the port on Thursday, Leo sat under a shaded platform while a fierce midday sun baked down on the migrants and aid workers. He heard testimonies from rescue workers, humanitarian workers and the personal story of a Nigerian victim of human trafficking. Nearby a banner, recalling the port's former nickname, rebaptized it “Dock of Hope.”

“Dear migrants, before saying anything else to you, I want to bow before your dignity,” Leo said to them, bowing his head slightly.

Addressing the Nigerian woman and other women who have been trafficked and forced into prostitution, Leo assured them: “If others have put a price on your body, know that God has never ceased to recognize your inestimable worth,” he said.

He urged countries of origin to create the security and economic conditions so people are not forced to flee, and for transit countries to protect migrants so they don’t fall prey to smugglers. And he appealed to the “conscience of Europe, which cannot claim to uphold human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming unmarked graves.”

In one of the most powerful speeches of his pontificate, dedicated entirely to migration, Leo listed the rights of migrants to flee or remain. But he didn't mention the right of nations to control their borders or limit asylum requests as he has done in the past. And significantly, he insisted that if one is Christian, one cannot ignore the plight of migrants.

“May history not accuse us of turning the pain of those who suffer into a common sight along our shores,” he said. “Today, here by the sea, every individual that arrives asks us what remains of our humanity. Sooner or later, it will be known whether we protected life or whether we yielded to indifference.”

Among the migrants waiting for Leo was Mame Amandou Neang, a 56-year-old who arrived in the Arguineguín port from Senegal earlier this year.

“This is a great honor,” said Neang. “We hope that if we see him, all our problems will stay behind us, we will forget our problems, because we have many things to forget for the moment.”

The International Organization of Migration’s Missing Migrants Project has recorded some 6,600 deaths on the Atlantic route from West Africa since it began keeping record in 2014. But it admits their estimate is a vast undercount due to the lack of information on the route and the phenomenon of “invisible shipwrecks.”

Since 2020, Spanish migrants rights group Walking Borders estimates more than 25,000 dead or missing trying to reach the Canary Islands.

Leo follows in Francis' footsteps in prioritizing migrants

Francis had made the plight of refugees a hallmark of his papacy, following the Gospel mandate to “welcome the stranger.”

Leo has followed suit, insisting especially on the dignity of migrants in his native United States amid the Trump administration’s crackdown and mass deportation program.

Next month, on July 4, the American pope will spend U.S. Independence Day on the island of Lampedusa, where Francis in 2013 first denounced the “globalization of indifference” the world shows migrants.

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Winfield reported from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. Brito contributed from Barcelona, Spain.

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

“Did you realize that none of the characters look like our children?” he asked his wife, Arlene Gordon-Hollingsworth.

Instead of simply pointing out the problem, the couple set out to change it. That observation eventually led to “Gracie’s Corner,” the educational music series inspired by their daughter Graceyn Hollingsworth that has attracted more than 6.3 million YouTube subscribers and nearly 10 billion views.

Now, “Gracie’s Corner” is headed to Disney+.

Disney announced Thursday that it has acquired the global streaming rights to the popular preschool series and will develop new original content with the Hollingsworth family. The deal includes global linear and streaming rights to more than 120 shorts and 18 themed compilations from the existing series.

Graceyn, 13, said she was “really ecstatic” when she learned Disney would become part of the show's next chapter.

“Disney, Disney. The one that makes all the princess movies and everything,” she recalled thinking. “It was really surprising.”

When will ‘Gracie’s Corner' premiere on Disney+?

“Gracie’s Corner” will debut Monday on Disney+ in the United States and select international markets, with 68 shorts and seven compilations available at launch. Additional shorts and compilations will roll out globally through 2026.

The acquisition adds “Gracie’s Corner” to Disney Jr.’s preschool lineup, which includes “Bluey,” “Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends,” “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” “SuperKitties” and the recently launched “Sofia the First: Royal Magic.”

“‘Gracie’s Corner’ has made a real connection with families by meeting kids where they are, while still delivering the kind of joyful, enriching experience parents are looking for,” said Ayo Davis, president of Disney Branded Television. “It feels very at home alongside the Disney characters and stories families already love, bringing together music, learning and participation in a way that really resonates with today’s preschoolers.”

The inspiration for ‘Gracie’s Corner'

The journey began in 2020 when the Hollingsworths, both university professors, were juggling virtual work and parenting from home during the early days of COVID-19. Arlene Gordon-Hollingsworth, a licensed clinical psychologist, and her husband were teaching classes remotely while helping their children navigate online learning.

Like many parents, they relied on educational videos to keep their children entertained and engaged. But they quickly realized many of the characters their children watched did not reflect their own experiences.

At the time, Graceyn was in elementary school. The couple’s younger children were toddlers.

“We were like every other parent, putting them in front of what we could to entertain them,” Arlene Gordon-Hollingsworth said.

The conversation sparked an idea that would eventually become a family business.

Sing-along show blends hip-hop, R&B and learning

The Hollingsworths created “Gracie’s Corner,” an animated sing-along series that reimagines nursery rhymes while blending literacy, math, science and social-emotional lessons with music inspired by hip-hop, R&B and other contemporary sounds. It features animated versions of Graceyn and her family. The show is designed to provide educational content that children can enjoy while also giving parents something they won't mind hearing repeatedly.

Success did not come overnight.

The family’s earliest videos attracted only a few hundred views, mostly from relatives and friends. But a phonics-focused song helped the channel gain traction, eventually transforming the project into one of YouTube’s most successful educational brands.

“It didn't always look like it would be successful in the beginning,” Arlene Gordon-Hollingsworth said. “What we set out to do, we’re seeing it’s important for other families too.”

The channel’s growth eventually attracted attention from across the entertainment industry including Disney.

Javoris Hollingsworth recalled receiving a LinkedIn message several years ago from a Disney executive expressing interest in the series.

“I thought it was a prank,” he said. “There’s no way Disney is reaching out to us.”

The partnership marks another milestone for a family-built brand that has won four NAACP Image Awards, landed a book deal with HarperCollins and expanded into live entertainment through its sold-out national tour.

Why ‘Gracie’s Corner' appealed to Disney

For Disney, the deal also reflects the growing influence of creator-led programming in children’s entertainment and the ways young audiences increasingly discover content outside traditional television channels.

“Disney has always created stories and characters that families trust, and kids genuinely connect with,” Davis said. “As the ways preschool audiences engage with content continue to evolve, we see an opportunity to work with creators who understand the kinds of music-driven, participatory experiences kids return to again and again, and bring those voices into the Disney ecosystem in a way that is thoughtful, curated and true to our brand.”

Unlike many traditional acquisitions, “Gracie’s Corner” will continue to live on YouTube while expanding to Disney’s platforms.

Javoris Hollingsworth said maintaining ownership of the brand and ensuring its accessibility were important considerations as discussions moved forward. The arrangement also includes a development agreement that will allow Disney and the Hollingsworth family to create new original content together.

“We always wanted to make sure that our content is accessible and available to those who may not have access to some of the things that others have,” he said. “Disney respected that.”

Brandon, who lives in Rockwell, North Carolina, is worried that new Medicaid work requirements starting next year could jeopardize her health coverage. She had expected to qualify for a medical frailty exemption, but new guidance introduced by President Donald Trump's administration last week has thrown that into question.

The interim final rule released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services means being sick with extreme exhaustion and memory challenges related to her treatments may not be enough for Brandon to evade the new work requirements. She will have to attest and later prove that those symptoms “significantly impair” her ability to fulfill the mandates.

If the government doesn’t accept her case, she could lose her coverage and the twice-monthly maintenance chemotherapy that keeps her multiple myeloma in remission. Working is “outside of the realm of possibility for me,” she said in an interview.

“I was always a push-through-it person — you know, ‘Oh, you’re tired. Push through,’” Brandon said. “It’s hard to explain to people you can’t push through it.”

Health analysts have sounded the alarm about the Republican Trump administration’s newest guidance, which differs from what states had been expecting. Experts said it will put more Americans at risk of losing health insurance and force states to scramble in their already harried efforts to implement the changes on time.

“This will mean more paperwork for Medicaid patients — specifically for the sickest Medicaid patients,” said Adrianna McIntyre, a professor at Harvard University’s school of public health. That, she said, "is going to push in the direction of more people needlessly losing coverage.”

Medical frailty rules may mean paperwork nightmares for sick people

The new Medicaid restrictions, which Democrats have criticized, were part of Trump’s big tax and policy law in 2025. The change affects those covered through an expansion in most states that gave more lower-income people access to the government’s safety net healthcare program.

Expansion enrollees age 19 to 64 will have to show that they work or do community service at least 80 hours a month or are in school at least half the time. There are exceptions for those considered medically frail or in addiction treatment programs, among others.

Last week’s announcement from CMS caught states off guard with a new definition of medical frailty. The law had said medically frail people include those who have substance use disorders, disabilities or serious medical conditions. But the CMS rule went further, saying someone’s condition must “significantly impair” their ability to work, volunteer or attend school at the rates required in the law for them to be granted an exemption.

In 2027 and once in 2028, the patient can attest that they meet this definition. But when they try to renew coverage in 2028, they’ll need to prove it.

Advocates said it is unclear what kind of documentation could prove that point. They said doctor notes may be required — something some providers don’t feel comfortable writing. Medicaid enrollees fighting disease may carry the bureaucratic burden.

Brandon, who tried to prove she couldn’t work to access disability benefits during her active cancer treatment and failed, said she’s worried about the hoops she and other patients may need to jump through.

“It’s not that easy — you may have to go through four doctors,” Brandon said. “If you’re already battling an illness like this, you don’t have the physical or the mental or the emotional energy to do that all the time.”

States and advocates are confused by the government's approach

States have been planning to use Medicaid claims data and other data sources to automatically exempt eligible enrollees whenever possible.

On a call with reporters last week, the CMS administrator, Dr. Mehmet Oz, endorsed that approach, saying he hoped most people would be helped "without ever having to talk to anybody.”

Asked to clarify how the rule should be implemented, the agency told The Associated Press in an email that it “chose not to allow states to categorically exclude individuals from work requirements based solely on a diagnosis or condition type.” For renewal in 2028, it said, “verification through claims data or other documentation will generally be required.”

But state Medicaid officials and consultants said Medicaid claims data doesn’t prove someone is significantly impaired from working, and they don’t know of any existing data that does. That has left them confused about how to honor the government's rule.

“States are going to be asked to make a determination using information that doesn’t exist in their systems,” said Kinda Serafi, a partner at the legal and consulting firm Manatt Health who is working with states to make the changes.

One state, Nebraska, started the new Medicaid work requirements ahead of schedule. But it used diagnostic codes to identify people who are medically frail, and therefore will likely have to rework its system, said Sarah Maresh, healthcare access program director at the advocacy group Nebraska Appleseed.

Maresh said she was concerned doctors in the rural state who are already reluctant to take Medicaid patients may stop.

“They’re already drowning in paperwork, so to require them to do an additional step of certifying whether someone is able to work, I think is concerning,” she said.

Preparing for the Jan. 1 kickoff of the new policies is an immense and expensive task. A $200 million federal allotment is flowing to states to help, and CMS has partnered with technology companies to provide free and discounted services, but the tab for the additional technology requirements and more staff is likely to exceed $1 billion, according to an AP analysis. That extra cost will be borne by a mix of federal and state tax dollars.

Republicans say the rules will save Medicaid for those who need it most

Democrats have slammed the Medicaid work requirements as attacks on healthcare coverage for struggling Americans.

Republicans promoting the new rules, though, say they are commonsense measures to eliminate government freeloading and preserve benefits for people who need them most. Oz last week, citing a report by the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, said able-bodied people on Medicaid spend an average of 6.1 hours a day “watching TV or just hanging out.”

“This is a concern, not a criticism,” he said. “Work requirements are going to turn this around, we hope."

Current enrollees who don’t meet the work requirement threshold said that’s a misrepresentation of their experience.

Mids Meinberg, a 42-year-old freelance writer from New Jersey who lives with chronic depression and diabetes, said that even with his health issues, he’s proud to have found a meaningful career. But his conditions make him unable to work 80 hours a month. He said he thinks there are many people with disabilities who are “too disabled to work but not disabled enough for the state to think they can’t work.”

Brandon, in North Carolina, said she wants the government to understand that she’s “not just sitting around wasting time or being a drain on society.”

“I’m pouring into my grandchildren,” she said. “We’re valuable, and we can still contribute to our communities even if it’s not working.”

The billionaire owner of the Head sports goods business lost a 65-64 vote to Alexander Ospelt, a lawyer from Liechtenstein who got a four-year term to lead the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS).

Eliasch also loses his membership of the International Olympic Committee, one of the most exclusive clubs in world sport. The 100-plus invited members include royal family members, former government leaders, industrialists, sports officials, athletes and Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh.

In his concession speech, Eliasch aimed an allegation at the Olympic body and urged FIS to protect its independence before congratulating Ospelt.

“The IOC tried to influence the outcome of today’s vote. Against this we must stay firm,” Eliasch said.

He also stood in the IOC presidential election won by Kirsty Coventry 15 months ago.

In a statement on Thursday, the IOC congratulated Ospelt on his win without directly addressing Eliasch's claim, adding: “We thank Mr. Johan Eliasch for his work as FIS president and IOC member.”

The FIS congress in the Serbian capital Belgrade started with shows of power by 75 member federations; the votes hinted at problems ahead for Eliasch.

The agenda was changed on an 88% vote to bring the presidential election forward as the first item of business. The weighted voting used by FIS gives two or three votes to established ski nations instead of a one-member-one-vote system by other federations such as soccer body FIFA.

Then there was a 60% vote to use paper ballots instead of electronic voting, which seemed to reflect some mistrust in the FIS administration.

The 64-year-old Eliasch served as FIS president for five years that were marked by constant sparring with ski nations including Austria and Switzerland over issues such as his management style and spending of the ski body's cash reserves.

A dual citizen of Sweden and Britain, Eliasch was not supported by either of those national federations to stand for re-election. He complied with FIS rules by getting a passport and nomination from the country of Georgia.

The new president

FIS rules mean Ospelt becomes president officially one day after the election, leaving Eliasch to oversee the rest of the congress business of what was now his last day in office.

“It’s been a great privilege to serve you,” said the outgoing president, who had said the election would be a win-win as he could “get my life back” if he lost. “Either way I am very happy.”

Ospelt, who has been a member of the Eliasch-chaired FIS council, said he would start his new job with “great joy and humility.”

“I will be the president for all of you. Let’s be united,” he said.

Ospelt does not immediately become an IOC member, though he would probably be invited to join as head of the sports body that oversees about half of the medal events at each Winter Olympics.

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AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing

The jersey, by Colombian sportswear manufacturer Saeta, originally included a depiction of the final battle of the Haitian War of Independence in 1803 on its front. The image was rejected during FIFA’s approval process.

Saeta said in a statement Wednesday that it would comply with the ban even though the design “was not intended as a political statement,” but rather as a “tribute to the men and women who contribute every day to Haiti’s future.”

The jersey featured blue to mirror the sea and red for the nation's “strength and passion,” the sportswear maker said. Players wore the now-banned jersey in a warmup match against Peru last week. The original design was currently marked as sold out on the SaetaUSA online shop.

Similarly, the International Olympic Committee required the removal of an image of Haitian founding father Toussaint Louverture from Haiti’s opening ceremony uniforms for the Milan Cortina Winter Games, ruling that it violated Olympic rules barring political symbolism.

Haiti gained independence in 1804 and is widely regarded as the world’s first independent nation founded by formerly enslaved people after a successful slave revolt.

Italian-Haitian designer Stella Jean, who designed the Olympic uniforms, came up with a creative solution: Painting over the figure, leaving just a horse against the background of tropical foliage. The designs were so much in demand that Jean later created a production version featuring the original Louverture image.

“Either way, Haiti has to be setting a record: Two rebukes from the highest international sports authorities in just a few months,” Jean told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Haiti opens World Cup play on Saturday against Scotland in Foxborough, Massachusetts, then plays five-time champion Brazil on June 19 in Philadelphia and Morocco on June 24 in Atlanta.

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

By Thursday afternoon, the court had not yet released a decision, said Naji Abbas, director of prisoners and detainees at Physicians for Human Rights — Israel, a nonprofit group.

Hussam Abu Safiya, who served as director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, became of the face of health workers struggling to treat patients throughout the Israel-Hamas war. He led the facility through an 85-day siege by the Israeli military, releasing videos in which he pleaded for help. Fourteen doctors from Gaza are still being held in Israeli prisons, PHRI said.

In a screen grab from his brief appearance on Wednesday, Abu Safiya, 53, was shown handcuffed and sitting in white prison garb. His face was pale and gaunt and he had lash-like marks on both arms. Multiple clips circulating on social media from the court showed Israeli officials quickly turning the video off as people jostled to see the doctor.

His lawyer, Nasser Odeh, can be heard in the video telling Abu Safiya that onlookers cannot see him, saying guards turned off the monitor and they are waiting for the judge to enter and decide whether to allow his image back on screen.

“Many people are present to show solidarity and support. The media is also both inside and outside the court,” Odeh said in the video.

Journalists' footage of the brittle doctor spread on social media, prompting renewed calls for his release. The Israeli military has said Abu Safiya is being investigated on suspicion of cooperating with or working for Hamas, the militant group that rules Gaza. Medical staff and international aid groups that have worked with Abu Safiya have denied those claims.

According to PHRI, he was recently placed in solitary confinement, a move his son, Elias Abu Safiya, said in a video posted on social media was made shortly after his appeal. Israel has yet to charge Abu Safiya with a crime.

“How can a person be punished for seeking to know why he was detained?” the younger Abu Safiya asked.

A son of the doctor was killed earlier in the war

Israel’s Justice Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. The Israeli Prison Service denied claims that the doctor, a trained pediatrician, was being mistreated. In a statement, it said all detainees receive professional medical care and any allegations of abuse or mistreatment made through official channels are examined.

After the hearing Wednesday, Odeh said he had a message from the doctor.

“I am a pediatrician who provides medical care to patients, the wounded, and the most vulnerable in the Strip,” Odeh said, relaying the doctor’s words. “I carried out my work in accordance with international law and humanitarian standards. My detention is unjust and arbitrary.”

In the weeks leading up to his imprisonment, Abu Safiya fought to maintain his composure as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital, releasing grainy video dispatches from the facility under siege. When a drone strike killed Abu Safiya’s son near the hospital, the doctor spoke with tears in his eyes.

“Everything we have built, they have burned,” he said, his voice cracking. They killed my son. ... I buried my son in the hospital yard.”

The war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 7, 2023, after the Gaza-based militant group led an attack on southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage. Since then, nearly 73,000 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. The ministry is staffed by medical professionals and the United Nations and other independent experts view its figures as the most reliable count of casualties.

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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

At the opening of his trial at Newry Crown Court two weeks ago, Jeffrey Donaldson, 63, pleaded not guilty to one count of rape, four counts of gross indecency and 13 indecent assault charges involving two alleged victims from 1985 to 2008.

Both the alleged victims have given evidence at the trial that they were abused as children. The two told police that Donaldson groped them when they were around primary school age, and the older of the two, referred to in court as Complainant B, said she had been raped.

Donaldson denied any wrongdoing in testimony Thursday. About the rape allegation specifically, Donaldson said: “It just didn’t happen, I am absolutely crystal clear about that."

“It is not something I would ever have done, it is just simply not true," he said.

Donaldson was the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, a conservative party dedicated to maintaining the region’s historic ties to the United Kingdom, when he was arrested in 2024.

He was emotional at times during his testimony, and spoke of how his head was “in a spin” after his arrest. At the time he resigned as leader of the DUP and quit as a lawmaker in the U.K. Parliament.

Donaldson’s wife, Eleanor Donaldson, 60, has denied several charges of aiding and abetting her husband’s alleged offending. She faces a fact-finding hearing on those charges but will not face a criminal trial on mental health grounds.

Donaldson denied any suggestion that his wife had witnessed the abuse but did not intervene.

“She would have been very angry, she would have intervened immediately," he said. “I am absolutely clear, there is no situation where that happened.”

As leader of the DUP from 2021 to 2023, Donaldson was the most powerful figure in Northern Ireland’s unionist movement.

The trial is expected to last another couple of weeks.

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European soccer body UEFA said Artan will referee the Aug. 12 game between Champions League winner Paris Saint-Germain and Aston Villa, the Europa League winner. The game will be in Salzburg, Austria.

“Football is made to connect people and UEFA wants to show its respect to Omar and his outstanding officiating skills,” UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin said in a statement.

Artan got a hero’s welcome returning to Somalia on Wednesday, days after he was refused entry in Miami and questioned for 11 hours by U.S. authorities despite being picked by FIFA for World Cup duty. He was sent away on a flight to Turkey.

U.S. officials claimed Artan had connections to terror organizations, though without providing proof.

Artan's treatment heightened concerns about U.S. immigration policy around the World Cup that was criticized by the United Nations ' top human rights official on Wednesday.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino said on Wednesday it was powerless to prevent Artan's ordeal, and "we need to respect that we are not the kings of the world who can rule over governments and police forces.”

The 34-year-old referee was judged the best in Africa last season and worked the decisive game in the continent's Champions League final last month.

Čeferin said UEFA worked on the plan with the Confederation of African Football and its president Patrice Motsepe. Čeferin and Motsepe both are FIFA vice presidents.

"Omar Artan has made Somalia and the entire people of the African continent extremely proud," Motsepe said in the UEFA statement.

"This is a great honor for Omar Artan and for African referees and is also an excellent example of football bringing together and uniting people from Africa and Europe and worldwide,” Motsepe said, hours before his native South Africa opened the World Cup against co-host Mexico. They play at the storied Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

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

The 189-country anti-poverty agency expects the world economy to grow just 2.5% this year, its weakest performance since the COVID-19 pandemic upended global commerce six years ago.

The bank downgraded its forecast for growth in two-thirds of the world's countries.

But the United States, which started the war by joining Israel to attack Iran on Feb. 28, is being spared a downgrade. The World Bank still expects the world's biggest economy to grow 2.2% this year, unchanged from a January forecast and up a tick from 2.1% in 2025.

As a major energy producer, the world's biggest economy is more resilient than countries that import their oil and natural gas, and the U.S. economy is benefiting from big tax cuts and booming investment in artificial intelligence. But ordinary Americans are still frustrated by higher gasoline and other prices.

Other economies are getting hit harder. The World Bank is slashing its 2026 growth forecast for developing and emerging market countries by 0.4 percentage points to a post-pandemic low of 3.6%. In those countries, the bank said, "the disruption in energy supplies and sharp increase in energy prices caused by the conflict have dampened confidence and weakened broader economic activity.''

China, the world's No. 2 economy, is expected to register economic growth of 4.2% this year, down from 5% in 2025 and from the 4.4% the bank had forecast for this year back in January. India is once again expected to be the world's fastest-growing major economy, expanding 6.6% this year; but that's down sharply from 7.7% in 2025.

The 21 European countries that share the euro currency are collectively expected to eke out 0.8% growth this year, down from 1.4% in 2025.

Iran responded to U.S. and Israeli attacks by closing down the Strait of Hormuz, through a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas passes. Energy prices rocketed. The World Bank expects the price of the benchmark Brent crude oil to average $94 a barrel this year, up 36% from 2025 and 50% more than the bank had forecast in January.

The war has also disrupted trade in fertilizer, much of which is exported through the Persian Gulf. That could lead to food shortages as farmers skimp on fertilizer to avoid higher costs.

The ECB’s rate-setting council raised its benchmark rate to 2.25% from 2%, where it had been for a year. The move comes ahead of rate-setting meetings next week at the Fed, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England.

Oil prices have risen sharply due to Iran choking off the flow of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz, the sea passage for a fifth of the world’s oil and fuel products during normal times. Raising rates aims to dampen the consumer price inflation fed by higher costs for products made from crude such as gasoline, diesel fuel, cooking gas and heating oil.

International benchmark Bent crude was trading at around $93 per barrel on Thursday, up from around $73 on the eve of the war. That has helped push inflation to 3.2% in May in the 21 countries that use the euro currency, above the ECB’s target of 2%.

But ECB policymakers must also consider the impact of higher borrowing costs on an economy showing only mediocre growth. That has led analysts to think Thursday’s hike will be a one and done affair, aimed mainly at signaling to financial markets that the bank is determined not to get behind the curve if inflation spirals higher.

The bank's future decisions depend to a great extent on how long energy prices remain elevated and how high they go, ECB President Christine Lagarde said at a post-decision news conference. She said the bank was “well positioned to navigate the uncertainty caused by the war” and would “closely monitor the situation and follow a data-dependent and meeting-by-meeting approach.” She said the bank was “not pre-committing to a particular rate path.”

She said oil prices were expected to “lift inflation further over the summer” and that inflation was expected to remain “well above target” into the first half of next year. The Strait of Hormuz has been closed to most ship traffic for 103 days now.

Central banks in Australia and the Philippines have raises rates since the start of the war, and attention is focusing now on decisions in larger economies. For its part, the U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to keep its key interest rate unchanged when it meets next week with new chair Warsh, appointed earlier this year by President Donald Trump.

Warsh advocated for rate cuts last year and Trump repeatedly attacked Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, for not cutting borrowing costs deeply enough. Yet with inflation jumping to a three-year high as gas prices have spiked in the wake of the Iran war, even Trump and his officials have started to shift their focus more to a push to keep rates unchanged.

The Fed is likely to change the statement it issues after each meeting by removing language that had suggested that its next move would be a cut. That would open the door for a rate hike down the road. Many Fed officials have warned that if inflation doesn’t begin to cool soon, a rate hike may be necessary by the end of the year.

Raising benchmark rates influences what lenders charge throughout the economy, increasing the cost of borrowing money to buy things and thus dampening demand for goods. Higher central bank rates can send interest costs higher for home purchases, investment in new factories, and government borrowing.

The ECB may be able to get by with only one or two increases because the inflationary surge may be milder than feared, said Carsten Brzeski, global chief of macro at ING bank.

That is because consumers burned by the post-pandemic spike in inflation are in no mood to pay higher prices, leaving businesses little choice but to swallow higher energy costs: “The pass-through of higher energy and input prices to final consumption will be limited due to a lack of ability and willingness of consumers to actually pay for these higher prices,” he wrote in an emailed comment.

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Rugaber reported from Washington.

But what if people have qualities both unmistakably human and essential to career success that AI could not easily replace them?

Some workplace experts argue that with more businesses adopting AI tools, soft skills such as empathy, critical thinking and ethical decision-making are worth cultivating to help employees become indispensible.

Across industries and occupations, “the skills that are most resistant to displacement by AI are the ones that are the most distinctly human,” Maria Flynn, president and CEO of Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit focused on workforce development, said. “Some of those things are relationship building, conflict resolution, the ability to guide and motivate other people and ethical judgment.”

Even in job listings for technical roles such as IT support, organizations say they're looking for candidates who communicate well and take leadership initiative, Flynn said.

“We started to use the term ‘durable skills’ and think about them as capabilities that really are durable, in that they hold their value across economic shifts and technological change and labor market disruption,” she said. “And we think, especially now, in this time of AI advancement, that it’s the durable skills that really make a worker genuinely valuable at work, regardless of what tools and technology are available.”

Here are five skills to cultivate based on the areas where experts say humans still hold an edge over artificial intelligence.

Empathy

Interpreting body language and reading between the lines to decipher what wasn’t explicitly communicated are skills that many people find are best performed by humans. They also inform the ability to show empathy, and being sensitive to the feelings of others is a sought-after trait in workers.

Marco Iansiti, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, said he saw that firsthand during a hospital stay.

“A nurse has incredibly human impacts. Feeling, relating to the patient, the type of care that is so important,” Iansiti said. “I remember times when I was sick in the hospital and the nurse was like the godsend. Would I have let a robot do the same thing? No. There was a human connection there that I found very valuable.”

Where AI could be helpful in a hospital setting is by taking on mundane tasks such as paperwork, freeing up time for nurses to provide compassionate patient care, he said.

“There’s a lot of systems that are being deployed now that I think are very effective in doing this and essentially release healthcare workers to do the things that they should be doing and do best.”

Nurturing relationships

Building strong personal ties with colleagues, clients and stakeholders remains a prized skill that experts say artificial intelligence models have difficulty replicating. Salespeople, for example, have files or databases with information they've learned about their clients from interacting face-to-face.

"You have people that have trusted you and have bought products from you for the last 10 years. That has value and that’s hard to transfer to artificial intelligence,” Iansiti said.

Interpersonal skills also are invaluable when conflicts arise. “Having that human in the loop to manage those expectations, to ease any ruffled feathers, to build the type of relationships that are needed, to expedite good work, is still going to be critical,” Flynn said.

Conflict resolution is a must-have quality for managers, said Colleen Adler, director analyst in the human resources practice at the Gartner consulting firm.

“People do still have managers, and managers and leaders impact the way they feel, and co-workers impact the ways we feel as well," Adler said. "There is still a tone to AI that does not yet mimic human connection. That could change; I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Work environments are rapidly changing and many employees feel like they're lurching from one difficult dynamic to another, Adler said. While AI agents can't help workers feel better about that uncertainty, strong leaders can help their teams, she added.

Critical thinking

Artificial intelligence models collect information and produce responses but can generate inaccuracies, so it's important to second-guess its output. Developing deep knowledge about your field can help you notice when the AI-generated results on topics from your industry are incorrect, said Amalia Kaufman, course developer and instructor at the University of California, Irvine Division of Continuing Education.

“You have to have the cognition and the critical thinking and the subject matter expertise to make sense of it, and to know when it’s wrong,” Kaufman said. “You have to check your facts.”

In a study published in the journal Science, researchers at Stanford tested 11 popular AI systems and found that artificial intelligence chatbots were prone to flattering and validating the feelings of users, affirming a user's actions 49% more often than humans did. Taking a step back and applying critical thinking skills when reading results generated by AI can help combat the tendency for it to be overly agreeable with its users.

Having a conscience

The ability to distinguish right from wrong, or listen to one's inner conscience, is a skill that is innately human, experts said.

Sometimes, people rely on sensations in their bodies to help guide their decision-making. “Gut feelings are something you feel in your gut," Iansiti said. “It’s not just a pattern of information that’s going through your brain. It is actually an emotional reaction that is intrinsically different from the way that AI operates. At least this generation of AI.”

When life-or-death decisions have to be made, such as when to use lethal military force, “do you want something that does not have human emotion, it does not have a body attached with the intelligence?” Iansiti asked. “AI can fake having a conscience because it’s read about what a conscience is, but it doesn’t have a conscience.”

People can build parameters, or guardrails, into artificial intelligence models to help AI agents make ethical decisions, he said. But human input is still required.

“It’s very hard to design a model that’s ethical for everything. It’s much better to build it around a specific use case. Say hiring,” Iansiti said.

Judgement calls

Ethical questions aren't the only ones that AI is less equipped to handle for now. The capacity to come up with creative ideas and make decisions in ambiguous situations — while mapping out strategies or developing a brand identity, for example — is another important human skill, experts said.

"We don’t believe that’s something that’s going to be replicated by artificial intelligence,” said Heather Stefanski, chief learning and development officer at management consulting firm McKinsey. "If we’re all just using the AI answer to problem-solve, how are you really going to be distinctive?”

Humans make judgment calls based on a constellation of knowledge and lived experiences, Flynn said. Artificial intelligence draws from a lot of data but doesn't necessarily work well in gray areas, Flynn said. For now, the ability to see all angles of an issue and add context remains a form of intelligence that people possess to a greater extent than AI, she said.

“The things that make us uniquely human to me are going to continue to be the things that help our society thrive in productive ways,” Flynn said. “And making sure that we are calling those things out, paying attention to them, making sure those are attributes that folks can name and articulate and feel good about, is going to be key as we all navigate a rapidly changing future.”

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Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at cbussewitz@ap.org. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well

The number of Americans filing for unemployment aid for the week ending June 6 rose by 4,000 to 229,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s the most since early February, before the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran, but still considered a healthy level. It's also more than the 216,000 new applications forecast by analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet.

Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are considered a proxy for U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

Despite concerns that the conflict in the Middle East could further squeeze a flagging labor market, hiring has picked up in recent months following a miserable 2025 that saw fewer than 200,000 job gains. For comparison, about 1.5 million jobs were added in 2024.

U.S. employers delivered a surprising 172,000 new jobs in May and the economy is averaging 188,000 job gains in the three months since the Iran war began in late February. That’s the best three months of hiring since early 2024. The unemployment rate remains historically low at 4.3%.

Job openings also rose in April as employers posted 7.6 million vacancies, up from 6.9 million in March and the most since May 2024.

The government reported Wednesday that rising gas prices — triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s southern border — pushed U.S. consumer inflation in May to 4.2%, its highest level in three years. Despite recent declines, prices for oil and gas remain elevated, which can squeeze consumers’ budgets and make businesses think twice about hiring.

With inflation well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, most analysts expect officials at the U.S. central bank to stand pat on its benchmark interest rate when they meet next week. That meeting will be the first with new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who replaces Jerome Powell after his eight-year run as the U.S. central bank’s leader.

Lower interest rates can boost the economy and hiring, but also tend to stoke inflation, leading a number of Fed policymakers to say they are actually willing to consider an interest rate hike this year. That could potentially help bring inflation down, but higher borrowing costs generally make businesses more reluctant to hire.

Optimism over artificial intelligence has also injected a degree of uncertainty about the job market due to the investment required to develop it and because the powerful technology could alter or even replace some jobs.

Among the companies that have cut jobs recently are Verizon, UPS, Amazon, Disney, Starbucks and Walmart.

Weekly jobless aid applications have stabilized in a range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. economy emerged from the pandemic recession. However, hiring began slowing about two years ago and tapered further in 2025 due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates meant to control inflation.

The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that the four-week moving average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, rose by 4,250 to 219,000.

The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending May 30 jumped by 24,000 to 1.8 million, slightly more than analysts predicted.

But is time finally up for the BBC science fiction series that has entertained generations of fans?

The British broadcaster has canceled a Christmas special previously announced for later this year, and showrunner Russell T. Davies has confirmed his exit.

Davies had been due to write the Christmas episode, announced when the last season ended in May 2025.

The BBC said Wednesday that it, Davies and production company Bad Wolf “have collectively decided not to go ahead” with the Christmas episode. The broadcaster said it was determined “to push forward to invest in the long-term future of the show.”

It said it would put out a tender for production companies to work on the series. A deal between the BBC and Disney+ to co-produce and distribute the show ended in 2025 after two seasons.

First broadcast in 1963, “Doctor Who” follows the adventures of a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels in the Tardis, a time-and-space machine that from the outside resembles a mid-20th century British police telephone box.

Its longevity is due in part to its premise: the central character can regenerate into a new body when the old one wears out, so the show can outlive any individual star. More than a dozen actors have played the role, most recently Ncuti Gatwa.

Davies, who revived the show in 2005 after a 16-year hiatus and returned as showrunner in 2022, said the Christmas episode had not been written and no actor had been approached to play the central role of the Doctor.

Davies, who has also written dramas including “Queer as Folk,” “It’s a Sin” and the recent “Tip Toe,” said the show’s future was “unpredictable” in an Instagram post.

“You’ll have to wait a bit longer for new Doctor Who … but you’ll be waiting for MORE Doctor Who than a one-off. So it’s worth it!” Davies wrote. “It’s all up for grabs, which is so Doctor Who — exciting and unpredictable and new! Here comes the future.”

That’s why 10 News anchor Brittany Morgan wants to hear from you! She’s on a mission to highlight the “everyday heroes” who make our communities feel like home. Whether it’s a first responder, a teacher, a caregiver, or anyone working to make a difference, we want to know about the special people who inspire you.

So, who are the everyday heroes in your life? Nominate them using the form below, and they could be featured on WSLS 10! Just include their name, the area where they live, and a brief description of about 150 words explaining why you think they deserve to be recognized.