Boafo, a 32-year-old state delegate, received key endorsements from Hoyer, Gov. Wes Moore and other prominent Democrats, along with donations from tech firms and the cryptocurrency industry. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC also spent more than $1 million backing him.

In a nighttime speech to supporters, Boafo gave special thanks to Hoyer, whom he called a mentor and friend.

“Tonight the Democratic voters of the 5th Congressional District decided that it’s time to pass the torch to a new generation of leaders,” said Boafo, 32. “And it’s with great humility that I accept that responsibility.”

Also Tuesday in Maryland, rising party star Gov. Wes Moore won the Democratic primary in his bid for reelection to a second term. Republican voters hope to return the state to GOP leadership by picking a candidate they think can unseat him.

The primaries in the left-leaning East Coast state are set to have an outsize impact. In many cases they will determine who is likely to win in heavily partisan districts this fall. Seven of Maryland's eight congressional districts are represented by Democrats, and one by a Republican.

That dynamic and Hoyer’s departure attracted big spending and some familiar names to the most-watched Democratic primaries.

Among them was Harry Dunn, a former police officer who defended the U.S. Capitol from the riot on Jan. 6, 2021. He ran on a platform that included protecting democracy.

Boafo called Dunn a “brother” during his acceptance speech, saying “it takes a special level of courage and partial insanity to run for the Congress of the United States.”

Some races became proxy fights about how Democrats should behave in the current political climate. Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson won a primary challenge from a progressive who criticized his decision to block a midcycle redistricting attempt.

The lead-up to Election Day has had some hiccups. Last month the State Board of Elections had to resend mail-in ballots to some voters in the closed primary after a vendor error caused some to receive a ballot for the wrong party.

President Donald Trump seized on the issue, falsely claiming that Moore illegally sent the ballots to ensure victory for Democrats. The state administrator of elections derided him for spreading misinformation.

Two dozen candidates competed to replace a Democratic fixture

As the longest-serving House Democrat and the longtime party No. 2 in the chamber, Hoyer is nothing short of an institution.

His retirement gave voters in the 5th District a chance to reflect on that leadership, and they ultimately decided they wanted more of the same.

Natasha Greensword, 45, and her husband Rodrick Greensword, 58, both voted for Moore in the gubernatorial primary and for Boafo to be the nominee to succeed Hoyer.

“We know the governor is governed by the pillars on which his culture is built,” and he will work for the people, making moral and humane choices, Natasha Greensword said.

She said Boafo seemed to share the same values as Moore and Hoyer. She added that she thought Hoyer’s endorsement helped as well.

In all, 24 Democratic candidates were on the ballot, such as Dunn and progressive attorney Wala Blegay, proposed change. Both Dunn and Blegay, who are vocally pro-Palestinian, criticized Boafo for getting help from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC and other special interests.

The best-funded candidate in the race was Quincy Bareebe, a home healthcare CEO who funneled more than $3 million of her own money into the primary.

“I just love what she is doing in the community,” said Michelle Green, 59, who voted for Bareebe.

Boafo will face Republican Chris Chaffee, a business owner, in the November general election for the heavily Democratic district.

A freshman in Congress defeats a challenge from her predecessor

Democratic Rep. April McClain Delaney won her primary against former Rep. David Trone, who left his seat representing the sprawling 6th District in 2024 and was now trying to win it back.

The race was contentious — and expensive. Trone, the wealthy founder of Total Wine & More, lent his campaign some $25 million of his own money, while McClain Delaney lent herself over $7 million.

Trone criticized McClain Delaney on immigration. She was the only Maryland Democrat in Congress to vote for the Laken Riley Act, named after a Georgia student whose killing became an anti-immigrant rallying cry for Republicans.

The GOP still has no obvious heir to Hogan

Maryland used to have a moderately conservative governor in Larry Hogan. In the years since he left office in 2023, Republicans have yet to find a clear successor.

In Tuesday's GOP gubernatorial primary, Dan Cox, an attorney and former state delegate who unsuccessfully ran for governor four years ago, won the nomination.

Cox leaned the furthest right out of the nine candidates in the race. He has a photo of himself with Trump on his law practice’s website, and he pledged to slash taxes and beef up housing affordability programs if elected.

Jason Mangen, a lifelong Republican, said he backed Cox because he was concerned about the state's budget, which has seen shortfalls over the years.

“You look at the economy, and hopefully get a governor who can guide the legislature and get a good budget,” Mangen said. “I think Dan Cox is good on the budget.”

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Swenson reported from New York, and Kruesi from Providence, Rhode Island. Associated Press writer Gary Fields in Bowie, Maryland, contributed.

The mayor said it was a question of electing “better Democrats” who would "put working people back at the heart of politics.” The approach consternated some in Democratic leadership, but the outcome showcased Mamdani's rising influence.

Elsewhere Tuesday, two opposing factions of the artificial intelligence industry spent millions on a House race that became a proxy fight over tech regulation.

And President Donald Trump, after two of his chosen candidates for governor lost Republican primaries this month, ensured it wouldn’t happen again. The president endorsed both candidates in a South Carolina runoff — and one of his endorsed candidates inevitably won.

Mamdani successfully flexes his political power in House races

When Mamdani took the stage in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, the crowd chanted “DSA,” the initials for the Democratic Socialists of America.

It was just the latest sign of an ascendant political movement, and two of the candidates successfully backed by Mamdani are democratic socialists.

In the primary for retiring U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat, state Assembly Member Claire Valdez beat out Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Valdez was endorsed by Mamdani, and Reynoso was endorsed by Velázquez.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat lost his bid for reelection to Darializa Avila Chevalier, another Mamdani-backed democratic socialist. Avila Chevalier hasn’t held public office before and once helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.

A third candidate backed by Mamdani, former city comptroller Brad Lander, defeated U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman by running to his political left. The race partly revolved around the war in Gaza, with Lander assailing Goldman for not being critical enough of Israel.

All three victors are expected to win their blue districts, which would place three Mamdani allies in Congress come January.

Lasher won Manhattan House primary where AI regulation was debated

One crowded Democratic primary in Manhattan had become a proxy battle between two powerful camps in the artificial intelligence industry because of one candidate: New York Assemblyman Alex Bores.

But the victory by Assembly member Micah Lasher, a longtime government hand backed by Democratic leaders, settled little about the issue.

Bores, a former Palantir employee, had cited ethical concerns in leaving the company and pushed one of the more sweeping state-level AI regulation bills in the country. He pointed to that legislation, which faced some industry pushback, as a framework for how he’d approach regulation in Congress.

His entry in the race for retiring Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler’s seat prompted a political group financed by investors in OpenAI to spend more than $7 million in ads attacking Bores — only for an opposing industry group favoring regulation to ride to his aid with more than $10 million.

Lasher had attacked Bores during a debate, suggesting Bores would be beholden to the big tech players who supported him.

Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of former President John F. Kennedy, and former Republican lawyer George Conway rounded out the field.

Trump successfully hedges in South Carolina after endorsement record gets shakier

The president is proud of his ability to pick winners in Republican primaries, but he stumbled in governor's races earlier this month. First U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra lost to businessman Zach Lahn in Iowa, then Lt. Gov. Burt Jones fell short to billionaire Rick Jackson in Georgia.

So Trump took steps to ensure a victory for his endorsement in South Carolina on Tuesday. After initially endorsing Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette shortly before the primary, he decided to also support state Attorney General Alan Wilson in the runoff.

“I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!” he wrote in a social media post Friday. “It’s a Wealth of Riches – With either one you can’t go wrong.”

It appeared to be a prescient decision, and Wilson swiftly came out on top in the runoff.

“I was honored to receive his endorsement,” Wilson told his supporters of Trump in accepting victory Tuesday. “I think he saw the fight in our campaign, the energy in our campaign. And think he likes a fighter and I think that’s won him over. I want to thank you, Mr. President.”

In the end, Trump's endorsement was another winner on the night.

“Alan Wilson wins!” he posted on social media. “Endorsed by President Trump!”

Former U.S. representatives beats more progressive competitors in Utah's new Democratic battleground

It's unusual for Utah's Democratic primaries to draw much attention, but that's because the party hasn't had much of a shot in the staunchly red state. That is until redistricting last year created a lone Democratic island in the Salt Lake City area.

The new district had a dark enough hue of blue that primary candidates jostled for who was furthest left, a contest that former U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams — who won Tuesday — worked to adapt to.

When McAdams last ran in 2018, ousting a Republican, he described himself as pro-life and fashioned himself as a moderate. Now, in the new left-leaning district, he pledged to support abortion rights and said he’s only “moderate in tone.”

The more progressive candidates who challenged him included state Sen. Nate Blouin, who has said the electorate had grown accustomed to Democrats who will “play nice” with Republicans and who won support from Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Maryland Republicans sought an heir to Hogan

Republican Larry Hogan reigned as Maryland governor for eight years, standing on a more moderate conservative platform to keep his perch in the left-leaning, East Coast state.

At Hogan's departure, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore took over in 2023, and he won his party's primary Tuesday in his bid for reelection to a second term. Moore is widely viewed as a potential presidential candidate in 2028.

Republicans voted for Dan Cox, who leaned furthest to the right out of the nine candidates and had a photo of himself with Trump on his law practice's website. On the campaign trail, he had pledged to cut taxes and expand housing affordability programs.

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This story has been corrected to show Moore took office in 2023, not 2024.

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Bedayn reported from Austin, Texas.

Kennedy family scion and political novice Jack Schlossberg lost Tuesday to New York state Assembly Member Micah Lasher, in a closely watched and crowded Democratic primary for an open congressional seat in the heart of Manhattan.

Lasher has spent his career in politics, working for officeholders including the man whose seat he hopes to win in November, Democratic longtime Rep. Jerry Nadler. Flanked by another former boss, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and other politicians in New York City's Democratic establishment, Lasher said in his victory speech that he aimed to “revamp and recharge the Democratic Party in Washington" and to show it has "bold new ideas to improve the lives of struggling Americans and then deliver on them."

Lasher is well positioned for November's general election — Democrats make up two-thirds of the district's registered voters.

Before the race was called, Schlossberg had made an early appearance at his evening watch party at a Manhattan concert venue to thank his campaign workers and reiterate his message that Democrats need to put forward more frank, responsive and inspiring candidates "who are willing to speak plainly about the cost of living, about corruption and fearlessly about the Constitution."

“We don’t just need younger candidates. We need different people,” he said, adding, “unless Democrats learn from the signals that are being sent all across the country, we are going to keep on losing.”

About an hour later, deflated “oohs” rippled through the room of largely young supporters as they got news of Lasher's victory.

The campaign was colorful and hotly contested, partly because of Schlossberg's star power as the social-media-savvy grandson of the late President John F. Kennedy, but also because the race became an expensive proxy fight among artificial intelligence interests.

Schlossberg got plenty of attention in the race, as a member of a famous political family who delivered his own “progressive and aggressive” message in dynamic and popular, if sometimes wacky, social media posts.

Supporters “don’t just like me because I’m a Kennedy," Schlossberg told The Associated Press earlier this year. “They like me because of my experience, my ideas, and they trust me because they see what’s going on with their very own eyes.”

But he also faced questions about his limited professional resume and his seriousness as a candidate. The 33-year-old, who holds a joint law and business degree, worked briefly at the State Department’s environmental bureau and has written political opinion pieces for Vogue. He said that family money bought him independence from political fundraising.

Money cascaded into the race as some tech and AI companies lined up against candidate Alex Bores, a former tech company engineer and a state Assembly member who wrote legislation that many in the industry opposed. But some other, more regulation-friendly AI heavyweights counterpunched by trying to help Bores.

Voters in the district were deluged with mailers and ads, particularly about Bores and rival Micah Lasher, a fellow Assembly member and former Nadler aide. Lasher emphasized his long experience working in government for Nadler and others. Bores positioned himself as a fresher face who stood up to powerful interests.

“I didn’t get in this race to make a point about AI, but some of the most powerful people on the planet, a handful of oligarchs hell-bent on preventing any regulation of their industry whatsoever … decided they wanted to make an example out of this race. This was a huge and unprecedented fight, and we did not back down,” Bores said in a concession speech.

Alongside the AI battle, the race featured competing endorsements from Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, the fellow Congress member whom he defeated in a 2022 primary after their once-neighboring districts were largely combined by redrawn maps. This year, Maloney endorsed Bores, while Nadler endorsed Lasher.

Candidate George Conway had his own political connections, though not necessarily ones he embraced — a former Republican, he was married to Kellyanne Conway, a former adviser to Republican President Donald Trump before distancing himself from both of them. A veteran attorney, George Conway helped create the anti-Trump organization called The Lincoln Project.

Trump reveled in Conway's defeat, calling him “a Trump Deranged Loser” in a social media post.

Several other candidates also vied for the nomination.

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Associated Press journalist Emily Wang Fujiyama contributed.

The midterm elections in November will determine control of both chambers of Congress and will also see the election of dozens of governors and other state and local offices. Before then, voters must choose nominees for each of these offices, making their picks in primary elections throughout the spring and summer in all 50 states.

New York: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is reshaping the city’s congressional delegation through a series of successful endorsements in Democratic primaries in districts 10, 13 and 7.

Maryland: All eight of the state’s congressional districts held contested primaries. In a state that typically leans left (only one district is led by a Republican), the primaries often determine the general election winners. Gov. Wes Moore secured the Democratic nomination for a second term.

South Carolina: State Attorney General Alan Wilson won the Republican nomination for governor after President Donald Trump, who initially endorsed Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette for the job, said on Friday that either contender would be a good pick.

Utah: Voters cast ballots to nominate congressional candidates using a new map that created a Democratic-friendly district in Salt Lake City. Ben McAdams, a former Utah congressman who has sought to shed his reputation as a moderate, won the Democratic primary in that redrawn district.

Here's the latest:

Mamdani’s picks sweep New York City’s congressional primaries

All three candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their primaries, knocking off incumbents Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th District and Adriano Espaillat in the 13th District and winning the Democratic nomination for the open seat in the 7th District.

Opposing views over Israel were at the center of the clash between incumbents and their Mamdani-backed challengers. Brad Landers, who ran against Mamdani in the 2025 New York City Democratic mayoral primary, criticized AIPAC’s support of Goldman and promised to sponsor legislation that would put restrictions on military aid to Israel.

McAdams supporter says his campaign gave her hope

Donna Gunn says it’s “beautiful” to see former U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams win and to have an opportunity to send a fierce ally for LGBTQ+ rights back to Washington.

The longtime Special Olympics volunteer says she has been deterred from engaging in politics ever since Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election. But McAdams’ victory in the Democratic primary for Utah’s 1st Congressional District has given her hope, Gunn says.

“We are so happy and so lucky to get Ben, who’s going to stand up to that bully in the White House,” she said.

Democratic US Rep. April McClain Delaney advances in Maryland primary to defend her seat

McClain Delaney won her Democratic primary, fending off competitors in what became one of the state’s most expensive races.

Among her challengers was David Trone, the wealthy founder of Total Wine & More, who previously held the seat before stepping aside to make an unsuccessful Senate run in 2024. Trone lent some $25 million of his own money to his campaign.

McClain Delaney represents the 6th District, which stretches from the westernmost part of the state to the Washington suburbs.

She loaned her campaign more than $7 million.

Boafo gives a special thanks to Hoyer, his former boss

“Y’all, I gotta give a special thanks to my mentor, to my friend, Steny Hamilton Hoyer,” Maryland state Del. Adrian Boafo said after winning the Democratic primary for Maryland’s 5th District, which Hoyer has represented for decades.

“He’s been our Danish knight in shining armor, our rock,” Boafo said.

“Tonight, the Democratic voters of the 5th Congressional District decided that it’s time to pass the torch to a new generation of leaders. And it’s with great humility that I accept that responsibility.”

Valdez says democratic socialist victories in New York send a message

Speaking to supporters in Brooklyn after her Democratic primary victory, Claire Valdez said they hadn’t just won an election.

“We have declared that this movement is durable, that it is growing, and that it will not stop” until working people are not just offered a seat at the table, but “run the table.”

Valdez said that back when she was bagging groceries for work, “I couldn’t dream of running for office — I could barely dream of a day off.”

Utah Democrat says progressives will keep organizing after defeat

State Sen. Nate Blouin says the progressive movement “still has a long way to go” after former U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams prevailed in the Democratic primary for Utah’s 1st Congressional District. McAdams was considered a more moderate candidate than Blouin and the other two Democrats in the race, former Meta and TikTok employee Liban Mohamed and tax attorney Michael Farrell.

“This isn’t the end,” Blouin said in a statement. “It’s the beginning of a new era of organizing in Utah, one focused on progressive values that strengthen our communities instead of billionaire donors and special interests.”

A spokesperson for Blouin declined to immediately answer when asked by text if the lawmaker will get behind McAdams’ campaign.

Trump relishes in downfall of Democratic foes in New York primaries

The president delighted in the defeat of two of his Democratic foes in Tuesday’s congressional primaries in New York.

He slammed Rep. Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who served as lead counsel for Trump’s first impeachment, after Goldman lost his primary for a seat in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

“Weak and pathetic Congressman Dan Goldman just lost, BIG! I guess people didn’t like him illegally targeting President TRUMP,” the president wrote on his social media platform. “In any event, this jerk is finally GONE!”

And he took aim at George Conway, who lost his bid to succeed outgoing Rep. Jerry Nadler in a crowded race in Manhattan, calling Conway a “Trump Deranged Loser at the highest level.”

McAdams reminds supporters he voted to impeach Trump

Democratic primary winner Ben McAdams in Utah’s 1st Congressional District outlined his previous work in Congress to expand healthcare, invest in public lands and secure protections for LGBTQ+ communities.

But McAdams told supporters that his defining vote was to impeach Donald Trump, which was met with loud applause.

“I would do it again,” he said. “Character matters, courage matters and right now talk is cheap. Utahans deserve someone who has already shown the courage to stand up and speak with conviction when the pressure is real.”

Mamdani speaks in Brooklyn

The mayor celebrated all three of the candidates he endorsed winning their primaries on Tuesday.

“A year ago, it was not the end of a political movement,” he said. “It was the beginning!”

The crowd chanted “DSA! DSA!” after Mamdani took the stage, the initials for the Democratic Socialists of America.

“The old politics that got us to this crisis is not the politics that is going to get us out of this crisis,” Mamdani said.

Defeated Democrat says party will unite behind McAdams in Utah

Candidate Michael Farrell says he’s looking forward to working with Democratic primary winner Ben McAdams in Utah’s 1st Congressional District.

Farrell, a tax attorney, added that he isn’t worried about whether party members would rally behind McAdams following the highly competitive primary.

“Given the results, clearly folks are supportive of Ben pushing forward, so I don’t see an issue with that,” Farrell said.

Lasher hails the congressman — and ex-boss — he aims to succeed

After winning the Democratic nomination for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler’s seat in the heart of Manhattan, state Assemblymember Micah Lasher said Nadler has been a political presence throughout his life.

“When I was born, I was already Assemblyman Nadler’s constituent,” Lasher said, adding that he later “watched as Congressman Nadler led fights long before they were convenient.”

Lasher, who has also worked for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, says he wants to “revamp and recharge the Democratic Party” and to “show that Democrats in Congress shave bold new ideas to improve the lives of struggling Americans and then deliver on them.”

McAdams thanks supporters

Former U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams credited his supporters at his election party following what appeared to be a decisive victory in a crowded Democratic primary for Utah’s 1st Congressional District.

“Thank you, Utah Democrats, thank you from the bottom of my heart,” McAdams said. “Tonight this victory belongs to every volunteer who showed up on a hot June afternoon and knocked door after door.”

He also asked for their continued support for the November general election: “You ran hard. You ran with conviction, and this party and this state are better for it. The energy and the passion your campaigns brought to this race is exactly what we need headed into November.”

McAdams voters cheer his victory

Supporters of former U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams broke out in cheers as word of his victory spread at the Democrat’s election watch party in Salt Lake City.

People moved toward a podium surrounded by orange, blue and white balloons, where McAdams was getting ready to speak.

He prevailed in a highly competitive Democratic primary for Utah’s 1st Congressional District and enters the general election as the favorite in the newly drawn district.

Espaillat concedes New York’s 13th District Democratic primary

“Tonight wasn’t our night but I love you anyway,” he told supporters.

The New York congressman was up against Avila Chevalier, backed by Mamdani.

“When i came to this nation as a young immigrant boy, I could have never imagined that I would be a member of Congress,” Espaillat said. “That is the privilege of my life, to serve you the community, and I will continue to love and serve this community in the best way that I can.”

Mamdani-backed community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier defeats Rep. Adriano Espaillat

Avila Chevalier scored an upset in the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District.

The race pitted the community organizer backed by the city’s democratic socialist mayor against a five-term congressman.

Espaillat was the first person who had been an undocumented immigrant elected to Congress.

Avila Chevalier is currently a doctoral student at the City University of New York. Her victory underscores the influence of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s political movement as he builds allies in Washington.

Trump-backed US Rep. Celeste Maloy wins GOP primary for redrawn House seat in Utah

Maloy defeated former state lawmaker Phil Lyman, who embraced false claims of fraud following the 2020 presidential election.

The district, spanning most of southern and eastern Utah, emerged last fall from a legal battle over the state’s previous congressional map, dramatically altering its makeup. The shakeup left Maloy vulnerable to a primary challenge.

Under the new map, Democrats are expected to pick up one of Utah’s four Republican-held House seats in the Salt Lake City area this fall.

Maloy will face off against Democratic nominee Kent Udell, an engineer, in the November general election. The GOP candidate is heavily favored to win in the deep-red district.

Alex Bores concedes in Democratic primary for Manhattan-based House seat after candidacy dominated by AI

The New York Assembly member lost the Democratic primary in the state’s 12th Congressional District to Micah Lasher, who previously worked as an aide for the seat’s current holder, Rep. Jerry Nadler.

“I didn’t get in this race to make a point about AI,” he said, but said “some of the most powerful people on the planet” lined up against him.

“They set out to make people afraid of them,” Bores said. “Instead, they learned just how ready the people are to push back.”

Anthony Constantino wins GOP primary for an upstate New York district after Trump endorsement

The brash, Trump-backed MAGA disciple who owns a custom sticker business in upstate New York defeated state Assembly Member Robert Smullen in the Republican primary to replace outgoing Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Constantino, who drew national attention after he put a massive “Vote For Trump” sign on the roof of his company’s building, is expected to cruise to victory this fall in the heavily Republican district, which stretches across most of New York’s northern tip.

Smullen had heavy support from the state’s Republican Party but it was not enough to overcome the president’s still-strong hold over voters.

Stefanik late last year said she would not seek reelection to the House and that she was suspending her campaign for governor to spend more time with her family.

Goldman concedes to Lander in Democratic primary for New York’s 10th District

US Rep. Dan Goldman said it was a privilege to serve in Washington, adding that there was a silver lining to his loss to Mamdani-backed Brad Lander.

“I can’t wait to be a much more present father,” he said. Goldman has five children.

Former US Rep. Ben McAdams wins Democratic primary for redrawn House district in Utah

Ben McAdams, a former Utah congressman who has sought to shed his reputation as a moderate, has won the Democratic primary in a redrawn U.S. House district that Democrats are strongly favored to win this fall.

McAdams defeated several candidates to his political left, including a state senator and a former employee of TikTok and Meta who had insisted McAdams is too conservative to represent a deep blue district.

The seat in the Salt Lake City area is among the few anticipated Democratic pickups following a national redistricting fight started by Trump to try to help Republicans maintain their majority in the U.S. House.

The 1st Congressional District race could be crucial for Democrats, who need to gain only a few House seats in November to take control of the narrowly divided chamber.

McAdams is strongly favored to defeat Republican Riley Owen, an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve who was chosen during the state GOP’s spring convention.

Republican Dan Cox will again face Democrat Wes Moore in Maryland governor’s race

Cox beat a crowded field of competitors to clinch the Republican nomination.

The 51-year-old ultraconservative former member of the state House of Delegates unsuccessfully ran against Moore four years ago.

Cox has promoted Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen and organized buses to Washington for the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021.

He has pledged to slash taxes and beef up housing affordability programs if elected.

Nate Blouin not getting his hopes up in Utah House race

The Democratic state senator said just before polls closed that he was feeling calm, “because I think I know what’s going to happen.”

Blouin, a progressive Democrat, said he thinks the progressive vote will be divided, and former U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams, a moderate, will prevail.

Blouin had urged another progressive candidate, Liban Mohamed, to drop out of the Democratic primary for Utah’s 1st Congressional District.

Polls have closed in Utah

In-person election day voting concluded in Utah at 8 p.m. local time, which is 10 p.m. EDT. Comparable past elections can offer clues about when to expect the first vote results and how long the vote count might take.

In the 2024 state primary, The Associated Press first reported results at 10:03 p.m. EDT, or three minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 2:07 a.m. EDT with about 74% of total votes counted. The tally surpassed 90% of the vote counted by June 27 at 6:32 p.m. EDT, two days after election day.

Micah Lasher wins the Democratic nomination for a Manhattan-based US House seat

Lasher is running to replace his former boss Rep. Jerry Nadler.

Lasher has worked as an aide for a wide range of New York political figures like Nadler, Gov. Kathy Hochul and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

He won a bruising primary battle for one of the richest and most Democratic House seats in the country. The large field included Kennedy heir Jack Schlossberg and former GOP lawyer George Conway.

Schlossberg calls for ‘different people’ in fight against corruption

Jack Schlossberg took the stage in Manhattan after polls closed in New York’s Democratic primary for the 12th Congressional District.

The grandson of President John F. Kennedy was the first of the candidates in the race to speak, but neither conceded nor suggested he had won. Instead, he repeated his message of a need for the Democratic Party to put forward more vigorous candidates.

“No matter what, if we win tonight, or if we don’t, we’re still in the midst of a corruption crisis,” he said. “We need to do things differently. We don’t just need younger candidates. We need different people, people who are willing to speak plainly about the cost of living, about corruption and fearlessly about the Constitution.”

Army veteran Cait Conley wins Democratic House primary in key New York swing district

Conley will face Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in the general election for New York’s 17th District.

Lawler, a two-term congressman, is considered one of the nation’s most vulnerable Republicans. Democrat Kamala Harris carried the Hudson Valley swing district in the last presidential race.

Conley earned the backing of national groups, including the American Federation of Teachers, VoteVets and the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund.

The 40-year-old Democrat topped a field that featured Beth Davidson, a county legislator who raised questions about Conley’s ties to companies involved with Trump’s immigration crackdown. Conley denied any connection to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Conley emphasized her military background, having deployed six times as an Army officer to combat zones including Iraq and Afghanistan. She later served in the Biden administration as the director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council.

Maryland state Del. Adrian Boafo wins Democratic primary in race to succeed Rep. Steny Hoyer

In choosing Boafo over nearly two dozen competitors, voters in the 5th District opted for a continuation of Hoyer’s pragmatic style of politics rather than a more progressive, antiestablishment approach promised by some other candidates.

Boafo, 32, is endorsed by Hoyer — his former boss — along with Gov. Wes Moore and other prominent Democrats. He also secured donations from tech firms and the cryptocurrency industry. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC also spent more than $1 million backing him.

Boafo worked as a field director and campaign manager for Hoyer before becoming a lobbyist and state delegate.

Mamdani-backed candidate Claire Valdez wins Democratic primary in New York’s 7th District

New York state Assemblywoman Claire Valdez, a democratic socialist, defeated Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso with the backing of Mamdani and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Both endorsed Valdez in hopes of giving the progressive left a greater foothold over the Democratic establishment in New York’s congressional delegation.

The primary victory also leaves Valdez in strong position for November in the heavily Democratic district that covers parts of Brooklyn and Queens. It also marked a stinging setback for Reynoso, who had the endorsement of the district’s retiring U.S. Rep. Nydia Velázquez.

Lots of voters in Salt Lake City despite wildfire smoke

Voters in the state’s most populous city were turning out in large numbers even as smoke from wildfires burning across Utah turned the skies hazy and produced some of the worst air quality on the planet.

Some voters at the Salt Lake County Government Center said they had been waiting for close to an hour as polls got busier later in the day. Some walked briskly to their vehicles after casting ballots, while others pulled up to drop boxes to avoid the lines and hazy air.

Seven large fires were burning across Utah, including a blaze that started over the weekend in the dry, grassy foothills just outside Salt Lake City. It had the 12th-worst air quality of any city globally on Tuesday, according to IQAir’s live ranking.

U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who leads the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and is serving his fifth term, was defeated by Mamdani’s most polarizing pick, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who once helped organize pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.

U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman, a two-term incumbent, was beaten by the Mamdani-backed former city Comptroller Brad Lander, a fixture among New York progressives who has often shown sympathy to the democratic socialist movement. And another Mamdani ally, democratic socialist state Assembly Member Claire Valdez, defeated the handpicked successor of retiring U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez.

Tuesday's primaries represented a major political gamble for the 34-year-old mayor, whose strength is surging, and a potential headache for Democratic leaders, who fear that the Mamdani and his loyalists may push the party too far left ahead of November's midterm elections — when voters across the nation will decide which party controls Congress for the last two years of Trump’s final term.

The sweep also sends an undeniable message to establishment Democrats in Washington, including House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who campaigned against Mamdani’s candidates and lost. Mamdani and his slate were openly fighting to push the Democratic Party further left on key issues, Israel's war in Gaza and economic populism chief among them.

“A year ago, it was not the end of a political movement. It was the beginning,” Mamdani charged at Valdez's celebration party in Brooklyn, reflecting on his mayoral victory last year, as the crowd chanted, “DSA! DSA!”

He continued: “The old politics that got us to this crisis is not the politics that is going to get us out of this crisis."

In Washington, Jeffries downplayed the influence of the Mamdani-backed candidates before polls closed on Tuesday.

“We have agreed to strongly disagree,” Jeffries said of Mamdani on Capitol Hill. “There are 215 members of the House Democratic caucus. A handful of primaries that go in one direction or the other, in a given state or two, aren’t going to reshape who we are as House Democrats.”

Meanwhile, Democrat Jack Schlossberg, the 33-year-old grandson of former President John F. Kennedy, failed in his bid to write his own chapter in Camelot lore as he competed in a crowded field for a seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler. Mamdani made no endorsement in that hotly contested race.

Establishment Democrats celebrated the victory of state Assembly member Micah Lasher, a longtime government hand backed by Democratic leaders, who prevailed in a field that also included anti-Trump activist George Conway and assembly member Alex Bores, whose proposals to regulate artificial intelligence triggered tech industry blowback.

Mamdani's insurgents sweep to victory

Mamdani, whose first six months in office have drawn praise from establishment Democrats and even President Donald Trump, had made a big push to promote the three congressional candidates who challenged Democrats supported by the party's leadership.

Two of Mamdani’s congressional slate identify as democratic socialists, while Lander has identified with the movement in the past.

In his celebration speech on Tuesday, Lander vowed to abolish the federal bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, described Israel’s war in Gaza as “genocide” and referred to “Trump’s fascism.” He has been especially outspoken against Trump’s immigration crackdown and was acquitted earlier this month on charges related to a protest inside a building housing an immigration court .

All three of Mamdani’s candidates have promised to “abolish ICE,” condemned the “genocide” in Israel and vowed to “tax the rich” if elected.

Mamdani's most polarizing pick was Avila Chevalier, 32, in her race against Espaillat, 71, who was the first Dominican American elected to Congress and represents a district in upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

Avila Chevalier has not held political office and casts herself as an outsider. Around an hour before polls closed, she was standing on a street corner in Harlem with controversial streamer Hasan Piker, chatting with voters in a final Election Day push.

On the next corner, a small truck displayed an ad attacking Avila Chevalier, highlighting a disparaging remark she made on social media about former Vice President Kamala Harris. Avila Chevalier had previously apologized for the post.

Espaillat’s allies have called Avila Chevalier unfit for office, pointing out a history of inflammatory and profane social media posts when she was in her 20s.

In East Harlem, 47-year-old voter Sara Hyler said she flip-flopped several times between Avila Chevalier and Espaillat in the lead up to Election Day, but eventually cast her ballot for Avila Chevalier after learning about heavy support for the incumbent by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“It was the breaking point, my last straw,” she said of the donations to Espaillat by the lobbying group, also known as AIPAC.

Hyler said it was important to elect a new crop of progressive Democrats who aren’t beholden to AIPAC and the Israeli government. “As much as I support Israel, I don’t think we should be paying for them,” Hyler said.

The war in Gaza was a dividing line between Goldman and Lander, both of whom are Jewish. Lander assailed Goldman for not being tough enough on Israel over its military action against Palestinians. Goldman has consistently criticized Israel's government and condemned settler violence but has stopped short of describing the conflict as a genocide, which Lander has done.

Mamdani had backed Valdez over Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, in the race to succeed Velazquez in a district covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Though Reynoso won Velazquez's endorsement, he failed to earn the mayor's backing.

Yvette Sanchez, a 30-year-old preschool teacher who voted for Espaillat, said she was put off by Mamdani's attempts to unseat the incumbent in her district and stifle Velazquez’s preferred successor, arguing that the established candidates are supported by Black and Latino communities.

“Do you just think you can insert anyone you want or do you actually want to listen to us?” Sanchez, who supported Mamdani last year, said of the mayor.

A Trump acolyte triumphs in upstate New York

In northern New York state, a Trump acolyte with no previous political experience prevailed over a conservative state lawmaker in the Republican primary for a seat soon to be vacated by U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik.

Anthony Constantino, head of the custom sticker company Sticker Mule, won the GOP nod in New York's 21st Congressional District, overcoming New York state Assembly Member Robert Smullen for the nomination.

Constantino had showcased his enthusiasm for the president by putting a massive “Vote For Trump” sign atop one of his company buildings. He also released a hip-hop album titled “Thank You President Trump," and commissioned a statue of Trump and gave it to the president in Florida. Trump has endorsed him.

Smullen, who had strong support from local Republicans, had argued that Constantino's antics, which include regular bashing of the state GOP, make him unfit to serve in the House.

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Associated Press writers Jake Offenhartz and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed.

That's not until Wednesday. Tuesday was a night for the NBA's No. 1 draft pick to party.

“Obviously this night is just a celebration of all the hard work I’ve done in the past, and so now I’m going to celebrate,” Dybantsa said.

So were a record number of one-and-done college stars who followed him, a trio of national champions from Michigan and fans of both New York teams on what sounded like an even more festive NBA draft than usual.

The Wizards started it by selecting Dybantsa, a forward who led the nation in scoring in his one season at BYU. He averaged 25.5 points, highlighted by a 43-point effort that broke BYU's freshman scoring record, and was the first of a record-tying eight straight college freshman taken to begin the draft.

That matched the record set last year. Morez Johnson Jr. at No. 9 was the first non-freshman.

“I think down the road we can continue to do this,” Dybantsa said. “They are comparing us to a certain amount of draft classes. Obviously we have to see how that plays out and how we do in the league, but if we talk it into existence, I think that would be pretty special.”

At 6-foot-9 and 217 pounds, Dybantsa has drawn comparisons to Kevin Durant, who happens to be his favorite player. Durant grew up in the Washington area, and Wizards fans can only hope Dybantsa can live up to the comparisons.

They certainly hope he will be better than center Kwame Brown, the pick Washington made in 2001, the first time it had the No. 1 selection after the NBA changed draft formats to eliminate territorial picks in 1966. The Wizards took John Wall in 2010 the other time, and he did turn into an All-Star.

Dybantsa — who was called by his full name, Anicet Dybantsa Jr., in tribute to his father — appeared to say a quick prayer after his name was announced, then went on stage to greet Commissioner Adam Silver and slipped on a black Wizards hat that matched nicely with his black suit.

Dybantsa beat out fellow freshman Darryn Peterson of Kansas, who was taken at the No. 2 pick by Utah. While some thought Peterson had the most talent in the class, the guard missed 11 games during the season because of injuries and illness, potentially creating some questions that Dybantsa didn't have.

“I can’t go back and change anything now,” Peterson said. “Obviously I wanted to be the No. 1 pick, but I went No. 2. So now I’m prepared to go to Utah and get to work.”

Cameron Boozer, the college player of the year in his one season at Duke, was taken at No. 3 by Memphis. Caleb Wilson, another freshman forward from rival North Carolina, went to Chicago with the next pick.

Those players were the expected top four throughout the pre-draft process, though there was certainly a case for Peterson to go first with his promise. Or for Boozer, with his body of work after he put up 22.5 points, 10.2 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game for Duke, where his father, Carlos, also played before becoming a two-time NBA All-Star.

The uncertainty was expected to begin at No. 5. The Los Angeles Clippers acquired the rights to it after a trade with the Indiana Pacers and used it on Illinois guard Keaton Wagler. The host Brooklyn Nets then went with Louisville guard Mikel Brown Jr.

Michigan's men make their mark

Darius Acuff Jr. to Sacramento at No. 7 and Kingston Flemings to Atlanta at No. 8 continued the run of scoring guards before Dallas went back to the bigs — and created a reunion in the process — by taking Morez Johnson Jr. from Michigan. Johnson was congratulated by national champion Michigan teammates Yaxel Lendeborg and Aday Mara, who were also in the green room, and then hugged his old and new coach. Dusty May left the Wolverines to coach the Mavericks on the eve of the draft.

Lendeborg and Mara didn't have to wait long for their turn. The Golden State Warriors took Lendenborg with the No. 11 pick and the Oklahoma City Thunder followed by going for the 7-3 Mara.

“We got our ultimate goal of winning the national championship and we just got drafted together, all lottery picks,” Johnson said. “I’m proud of my brothers, and I’m very excited to see what our future has for us.”

Cheers for the New Yorkers, but not for the Spurs

The draft is always a celebration, when all teams have hope, but the cheers seemed even more frequent than usual. They began when Silver opened his remarks by hailing the NBA champion Knicks and NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson, with a number of fans in Barclays Center wearing Knicks jerseys. Nets fans, who endured a miserable season watching the home team in the arena, applauded the selection of Brown, who had a 45-point performance to highlight his season that was cut short by a back injury.

The Nets also acquired the rights to Iowa State forward Joshua Jefferson, the No. 28 pick, from Minnesota through a three-team trade agreed to Monday in which the Nets will get Julius Randle from the Timberwolves.

Beyond some brief jeers for Silver that pro sports commissioners often get at the start of their drafts, there weren't any until it was announced that the San Antonio Spurs, who lost to the Knicks in the finals, were on the clock. Loud boos broke out that continued when it was announced that the Spurs took forward Jayden Quaintance, who played in just four games for Kentucky last season because of a knee injury.

From Milwaukee to Mexico

The Milwaukee Bucks, who are losing two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, picked up two rookies. They took Arizona guard Brayden Burries with the No. 10 pick and are acquiring the rights to Tennessee forward Nate Ament, who was taken at No. 13 by Miami but is part of the package the Heat are sending to Milwaukee in the trade for Antetokounmpo that was agreed to Monday.

Karim López became the first Mexican-born player drafted in the first round. The 6-8 forward, who spent the last two seasons playing with the New Zealand Breakers, was taken by Detroit and his rights were acquired by Memphis.

The second round will be held Wednesday night.

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

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1. Washington Wizards — AJ Dybantsa, forward, 6-9, 217, BYU

Scouting report: First-team Associated Press All-American and national scoring leader (25.5) as a sturdy-framed freshman. Pressured defenses by creating his own shot and getting to the line, where he led the country in made free throws (229) and attempts (296). Synergy rated him as “Excellent” as the ballhandler in pick-and-rolls (87th percentile, 27% of possessions) and post-ups (94th, 10.9%). Averaged 6.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists. Shot 51%. Scored BYU freshman-record 43 points against Utah. Must improve his 3-point shot (33.1%).

2. Utah Jazz — Darryn Peterson, guard, 6-5, 199, Kansas

Scouting report: Scoring playmaker thrives off the dribble, in halfcourt and in transition. Freshman averaged 20.2 points, 4.2 rebounds and 1.6 assists. Shot 38.2% on 3-pointers, hitting six 3s in a win at Oklahoma State. Made 82.6% of free throws, logging six games with at least eight attempts. Biggest questions centered on availability. Dealt with a preseason full-body cramping issue requiring hospitalization, then missed 11 games for injury or illness. Frequently had limited minutes for uncertainty with his day-to-day status.

3. Memphis Grizzlies — Cameron Boozer, forward/center, 6-8, 253, Duke

Scouting report: Fifth freshman named AP men’s national player of the year. Averaged 22.5 points and 10.2 rebounds. Shot 55.6%, routinely finishing through contact and physical play. Made 39.1% of 3s. Rated “Excellent” by Synergy against man defense (94th percentile), on post-ups (86th) and spot-up shots (95th). Strong passer (4.1 assists) out of double teams or in initiating offense. Son of former Duke and NBA player Carlos Boozer. Lacks explosive athleticism, relying more on strength and positioning than above-the-rim play.

4. Chicago Bulls — Caleb Wilson, forward, 6-9, 211, North Carolina

Scouting report: Second-team AP All-American as a freshman with explosive athleticism, go-go-go motor, 7-foot wingspan and spotlight-embracing personality. Averaged 19.8 points and 9.4 rebounds. Thrived at the rim and in transition. Stood out in marquee wins against Kansas and rival Duke. Needs to add strength and hone his 3-point shot (25.9%). Had a national-leading 66 dunks when he suffered a broken left hand in mid-February, then broke his right thumb in practice when on the verge of returning in March.

5. Los Angeles Clippers (from Indiana) — Keaton Wagler, guard, 6-5, 188, Illinois

Scouting report: Freshman four-star recruit became a second-team AP All-American in Illinois’ first Final Four run since 2005. Can play on or off the ball. Averaged 17.9 points, 5.1 rebounds and 4.2 assists. Shot 39.7% on 3s, hitting nine 3s in a 46-point outburst against Purdue. Rated “Excellent” by Synergy as the pick-and-roll ballhandler and with his jumper in off-the-dribble and catch-and-shoot opportunities. Lacks elite athleticism. Needs to add strength.

6. Brooklyn Nets — Mikel Brown Jr., guard, 6-5, 180, Louisville

Scouting report: Freshman offers scoring punch with combo-guard size. Averaged 18.2 points and 4.7 assists. Erupted for 45 points and 10 3-pointers in a blowout of N.C. State to break the Atlantic Coast Conference freshman scoring record set by 2025 No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg. Needs to add strength. Battled back issues that sidelined him for eight midseason games and then resurfaced to sideline him for the last six.

7. Sacramento Kings — Darius Acuff Jr., guard, 6-2, 186, Arkansas

Scouting report: First-team AP All-American with standout offensive skills. Freshman ranked third nationally in scoring (23.5) and 14th in assists (6.4), leading Razorbacks to first Southeastern Conference Tournament title in 26 years. Had program freshman-record 49 points in a double-overtime loss at Alabama. Thrived as the pick-and-roll ballhandler (rated “Excellent” in the 89th percentile by Synergy) and in isolation (rated “Very good” in the 74th percentile). Defense is a question.

8. Atlanta Hawks (from New Orleans) — Kingston Flemings, guard, 6-3, 183, Houston

Scouting report: Third-team AP All-American as a freshman with potential to be disruptive defensively. Averaged 16.1 points, 4.1 rebounds and 5.2 assists. Pressured opponents in transition or off the bounce. Had program freshman-record 42 points in a loss to Texas Tech. Posted a nearly 3:1 assist-to-turnover ratio. Ranked in the top six at combine in lane-agility time, shuttle run and three-quarter-court sprint. Needs to add strength and refine shot mechanics.

9. Dallas Mavericks — Morez Johnson Jr., forward/center, 6-9, 251, Michigan

Scouting report: Versatile and physical presence as a sophomore transfer from Illinois, helping Michigan win its first NCAA title since 1989. Averaged 13.1 points, 7.3 rebounds and 1.1 blocks with potential to play forward or a small-ball 5-man. Thrived as a cutter, in post-ups and in finishing at the rim. Ranked ninth at the combine with a better than 7-3 wingspan.

10. Milwaukee Bucks — Brayden Burries, guard, 6-4, 215, Arizona

Scouting report: Freshman combo guard offers potential to impact both ends of the court. Averaged 16.1 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.4 assists for 36-win Final Four team. Shot 49.1% overall, 39.1% on 3-pointers and 80.5% on free throws. Averaged 1.5 steals, including nine games with at least three. Ranked fourth at the combine in standing vertical leap (35 inches).

11. Golden State Warriors — Yaxel Lendeborg, forward, 6-9, 241, Michigan

Scouting report: First-team AP All-American for NCAA champion. Has a strong frame and better than 7-3 wingspan. Shot 37.2% on 3s at career-high volume compared to 34.9% through two seasons at UAB. Showed toughness by gritting through ankle and knee injuries in the Final Four and title game. Older prospect (23) who spent three years in junior college.

12. Oklahoma City Thunder (from Los Angeles Clippers) — Aday Mara, center, 7-3, 260, Michigan

Scouting report: Junior from Spain projects as a defensive force after helping Michigan win the national title. Averaged 12.1 points, 6.8 rebounds and 2.4 assists in 23.4 minutes. Ranked sixth nationally in blocks (2.6). Shot 66.8% overall. Led all combine players in standing reach (9-9) while ranking second in wingspan (7-6). Must improve at the line (56.4%).

13. Miami Heat (traded to Milwaukee) — Nate Ament, forward, 6-10, 211, Tennessee

Scouting report: Freshman offers intriguing versatility and athleticism as No. 2 scorer (16.7) for Elite Eight team. Illustrated long-term potential while averaging 22.8 points on 45.2% shooting from Jan. 10 to Feb. 20, including 39.1% on 3s. Must fill out his game with spot-up shots accounting for 18.7% of his possessions, according to Synergy. Needs strength to handle physical play.

14. Charlotte Hornets — Hannes Steinbach, forward/center, 6-10, 248, Washington

Scouting report: German freshman averaged 18.5 points and national-best 11.8 rebounds. Had a 24-rebound game against USC and five other games with at least 15 boards. Also had 10 games with at least six offensive rebounds. Shot 57.7% overall. Showed inside-out potential by hitting 18 3-pointers (34.5%). Averaged 1.2 blocks with better than 7-2 wingspan.

15. Chicago Bulls (from Portland) — Dailyn Swain, guard/forward, 6-7, 211, Texas

Scouting report: Junior transfer from Xavier averaged 17.3 points, 7.5 rebounds and 3.6 assists. Most of his work came as the ballhandler in pick-and-roll scenarios and in transition. Showed active hands by averaging 1.6 steals. Must improve 3-point shooting after shooting 34.4% last year and 29.3% through three seasons.

16. Memphis Grizzlies (from Phoenix via Orlando, traded to Oklahoma City) — Bennett Stirtz, guard, 6-3, 186, Iowa

Scouting report: Senior point guard who climbed from Division II to Drake, then led Iowa to its first Elite Eight since 1987. Averaged 19.8 points, 4.4 assists and 1.4 steals. Synergy rated him as “Excellent” as the ballhandler in pick-and-roll scenarios (91st percentile), working in isolation (84th) and finishing at the rim (90th).

17. Oklahoma City Thunder (from Philadelphia, traded to Detroit) — Ebuka Okorie, guard, 6-1, 186, Stanford

Scouting report: Four-star prospect who became a surprise freshman star. Ranked seventh nationally in scoring (23.2). Posted eight 30-point games, including 40 points in a win against Georgia Tech and 36 in a win against North Carolina. Showed the burst to score in transition and the halfcourt despite being undersized.

18. Charlotte Hornets (from Orlando via Phoenix) — Christian Anderson, guard, 6-1, 180, Texas Tech

Scouting report: Third-team AP All-American as a sophomore. Averaged 18.5 points and ranked fifth nationally in assists (7.4). Projects as a scoring playmaker despite being undersized. Shot 40% on 3-pointers over two seasons. Thrived as the ballhandler in pick-and-roll scenarios (93rd percentile in Synergy) and as a spot-up shooter (90th).

19. Toronto Raptors — Allen Graves, forward, 6-8, 226, Santa Clara

Scouting report: West Coast Conference’s freshman and sixth man of the year for program that reached first NCAA Tournament since 1996. Averaged 11.8 points and 6.5 rebounds in 22.6 minutes. Shot 51.2% overall. Showed range (41.3% on 3s) and defensive potential (0.9 blocks, 1.9 steals).

20. San Antonio Spurs (from Atlanta) — Jayden Quaintance, center, 6-9, 253, Kentucky

Scouting report: Physical tools stand out but sophomore’s health is a question. Suffered torn ACL in right knee in February 2025 while playing for Arizona State, then played just four games at Kentucky due to lingering swelling. Ranked fourth at the combine in wingspan (better than 7-5) and has big hands (tied for combine lead with 11-inch width, tied for second with 9.5-inch length).

21. Detroit Pistons (from Minnesota, traded to Memphis) — Karim Lopez, forward, 6-8, 222, New Zealand Breakers (Australia)

Scouting report: Versatile forward with athleticism and a nearly 7-foot wingspan. Native of Mexico. Spent two seasons in Australia’s National Basketball League’s “Next Stars” developmental program that produced lottery picks LaMelo Ball, Josh Giddey and Alex Sarr in recent years. Averaged 11.9 points and 6.1 rebounds last year. Turned 19 in April.

22. Philadelphia 76ers (from Houston via Oklahoma City) — Labaron Philon Jr., guard, 6-3, 176, Alabama

Scouting report: Third-team AP All-American as a sophomore after averaging 22.0 points and 5.0 assists. Made a leap in shooting efficiency at 50.1% overall (up from 45.2% as a freshman) and 39.9% on 3s (up from 31.5%). Thrived as ballhandler in pick-and-rolls (94th percentile in Synergy) and repeatedly beat man defenses in the halfcourt (90th).

23. Atlanta Hawks (from Cleveland) — Zuby Ejiofor, forward/center, 6-8, 245, St. John’s

Scouting report: Senior offered a physical presence in St. John’s Sweet 16 run, averaging 16.3 points, 7.3 rebounds and 2.1 blocks. Made 18 of 59 3s (30.5%) for some inside-out range. Has defensive potential with high motor, strong frame and 7-2 wingspan allowing him to tussle in the paint and move his feet to handle switches.

24. New York Knicks — Cameron Carr, guard, 6-5, 184, Baylor

Scouting report: Transferred from Tennessee and blossomed as a redshirt sophomore in a lead role with the Bears. Averaged 18.9 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.6 assists. Shot 49.4% overall and 37.4% on 3s. Ranked among combine leaders in standing vertical leap (second at 38 inches) and max vertical leap (third at 42.5 inches).

25. Los Angeles Lakers — Sergio De Larrea, guard, 6-6, 205, Valencia Basket (Spain)

Scouting report: A 20-year-old playmaker with size and range. Posted modest numbers (4.2 points, 2.2 assists in 11.2 minutes) in 31 games of top-level EuroLeague competition, but shot 39.6% from 3-point range and had a 1.8 assist-to-turnover margin. Has a 6-9 wingspan and good passing touch.

26. Denver Nuggets — Tarris Reed Jr., center, 6-10, 260, Michigan

Scouting report: Interior force who powered UConn’s NCAA title-game run. Senior had career-high averages of 14.7 points, 9.0 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 2.0 blocks. Had 31 points and 27 rebounds in first-round NCAA win against Furman as first player since Houston’s Elvin Hayes (1968) with a 30/25 game in March Madness. Has a better than 7-4 wingspan.

27. Boston Celtics — Chris Cenac Jr., forward/center, 6-11, 240, Houston

Scouting report: Freshman and McDonald’s All-American with rangy skills. Started 36 games and led top-10 team in rebounding (7.9). Hit 30 3-pointers. Settled into a complementary role (9.5 points) and had three or fewer baskets in 18 of 37 games. Didn’t get to the line often (58 attempts in 37 games) and shot poorly when he did (62.1%).

28. Minnesota Timberwolves (from Detroit, traded to Brooklyn) — Joshua Jefferson, forward, 6-8, 246, Iowa State

Scouting report: Second-team AP All-American. Senior playmaker with a strong frame and size. Averaged 16.4 points and 7.4 rebounds. Passing is a standout skill (4.8 assists) with his ability to initiate offense. Had four games with at least 10 assists. Posted a nearly 2-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

29. Cleveland Cavaliers (from San Antonio via Atlanta) — Alex Karaban, forward, 6-7, 225, UConn

Scouting report: Tested and versatile redshirt senior with range (career 37.4% on 3s) and 6-11 wingspan. Held career averages of 12.5 points, 5.0 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.0 blocks. UConn won two NCAA titles and played for a third with him as a full-time starter.

30. Dallas Mavericks (from Oklahoma City via Washington and Philadelphia) — Koa Peat, forward, 6-7, 245, Arizona

Scouting report: Sturdy-framed freshman who averaged 14.1 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.6 assists for Final Four team. Scored primarily in transition, on post-ups or as the roller in pick-and-rolls. Made seven 3s with a jumper rated as “Below Average” (27th percentile) by Synergy. Tied for fifth at the combine in standing vertical leap (34.5 inches).

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

Gen. Christopher Donahue, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, will relinquish his command on July 2, according to an Army statement provided to The Associated Press. He is the latest in a line of nearly two dozen top military leaders to either retire or depart their jobs early under the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has undertaken an effort to thin the ranks of the military’s top brass with the mantra “less generals, more GIs.”

Donahue's deputy, Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, will perform his duties in the meantime, the statement added.

A West Point graduate and a career special operations commander, Donahue commanded Delta Force units in Iraq and Afghanistan before leading the 82nd Airborne division from July 2020 to March 2022.

It was during that period that he oversaw the security at Hamid Karzai International Airport during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country in 2021. On Aug. 30, 2021, Donahue became the last U.S. soldier to depart the country after nearly 20 years of war sparked by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The moment was documented in an iconic photo taken through night vision goggles that showed the general boarding the last C-17 cargo plane to depart the country.

Hegseth and President Donald Trump had made the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan — an operation that was set in motion by a treaty negotiated with the Taliban by the Trump administration in its first term — a regular political punching bag and the subject of a new Pentagon review.

Last May, Hegseth ordered the new examination of the withdrawal despite there having already been multiple reviews of the operation by the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command, the State Department and Congress, which have involved hundreds of interviews and studies of videos, photographs and other footage and data. It’s unclear what specific new information the new review is seeking.

Donahue’s leadership during the evacuation had nonetheless drawn bipartisan praise. Within the Army, he was widely seen as a top officer who could have led the service or been chosen to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

An Army official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to talk about sensitive discussions told The Associated Press that Donahue’s departure comes as the Army is discussing downgrading U.S. Army Europe and Africa from four-star to a three-star command.

This move would come amid ongoing criticism from Hegseth about European allies.

Last week, Hegseth told NATO allies he would be conducting a six-month Pentagon review of American forces in Europe that is “designed to ensure that NATO is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading, stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defense of Europe.”

“It’s a review that some countries will fail and others will pass with flying colors,” he added.

The Pentagon did not immediately comment on the news of Donahue's departure, which was first reported by The Atlantic.

As high pressure establishes over the area, we will have a bit of a breeze this afternoon. Wind gusts will reach up to 20-25 MPH this afternoon. It will be a great afternoon to get outside once the skies clear around 2 PM.

Futurecast shows the bulk of the rain gone by 12 PM, and any stray showers gone by 2 PM. Clouds will clear rapidly as high pressure establishes over the area, this pattern will last through Thursday before we resume with another active pattern.

Our highs will reach into the 80s and 90s this week. Have a great day!

Chico Police Chief Billy Aldridge said gunshots and screams could be heard on a 911 call Monday evening from the Butte County Library's branch in Chico — a city of about 100,000 people about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.

“From the first 911 call to having him in custody was less than four minutes,” Aldridge said, praising officers for stemming the loss of life.

The suspect shot a man at the entrance of the library in the leg and then shot him in the head before firing multiple shots inside and shooting another man in the head, said Sid Patel, special agent in charge in the FBI’s Sacramento office.

“Yesterday’s violent attack was horrific,” Patel said. “The full force of the FBI is assisting this investigation.”

Details emerge on the victims and the arrest

Authorities identified the men who died as 46-year-old Jacob Hull, who his brother said went by the name Cody, and 74-year-old Robert Johnson.

The 7-year-old daughter of Hull's girlfriend fell during the shooting and was taken to the hospital with a minor injury, Benjamin Heneberry, Hull's brother, told The Associated Press.

The suspect fled out the back of the library as officers entered, but additional law enforcement personnel behind the building took the man into custody, Aldridge said during a news conference after the arrest.

Officers recovered a shotgun from the floor of the library and two other guns from the suspect’s car. The weapons were registered to the suspect’s family, the police chief said, without providing any other information.

Heneberry said his brother had just gotten to the library with his girlfriend's daughter and was sitting on a bench just outside when he was shot. He said his girlfriend’s daughter is physically OK, but she saw everything.

“We’re just devastated and shocked," he said, explaining that a fundraiser had been set up for Hull's girlfriend and her daughter. "Nobody would imagine that this would happen to their own brother.”

Heneberry described his brother as a very smart, quiet and low-key man who loved 1990s hip-hop. He was a father figure to his girlfriend's daughter and was supporting them, Heneberry said.

Police surround the library

A video from the scene shows police patrol cars surrounding the one-story brick building and officers pointing their rifles. Another video shows a man face-down on the ground being handcuffed by a police officer who then picks him up and hands him to another officer who walks him away from the building.

Jeannie Lee Schroeder was on a city bus that stopped near the library when she noticed a lot of police. As officers carrying guns marched toward the street, the bus driver started driving away.

"I see a person in a light-colored shirt running toward the street, toward where the bus was at,” Schroeder said. “And then there was an officer behind him, and another officer coming at the side of him, and that’s when they tackled him down.”

Police later determined the suspect acted alone and identified him as Bradley Scott Sayer of Chico. Sayer had recently graduated from Chico High School, Patel said.

He was booked into the Butte County Jail on suspicion of two counts of murder. There was no indication he had any prior relationship with or connection to the victims, police said.

Officials said Tuesday that Sayer's family has retained an attorney, but didn't release the lawyer's name. A search Tuesday of Butte County court records did not show Sayer’s name.

Suspect demonstrated an affinity for Columbine shootings

At the time of the shooting, Sayer was wearing a white T-shirt inscribed with the words “natural selection,” mimicking a T-shirt with the same slogan worn by Eric Harris, one of two shooters in the 1999 Columbine massacre in Colorado, Patel said.

“He had been a fan, and a fan for a long time” of the Columbine shootings on social media, Butte County District Attorney Michael Ramsey said.

Sayer is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday, he said.

Joseph Vasquez had English classes with Sayer at Chico High School. He said Sayer was liked and accepted by most of his peers, but he didn’t seem to have close friends.

“He was very smart. He cared a lot about his grades,” Vasquez said. “He was kind of talkative but very anti-social.”

Vasquez said he and his friends were very surprised about the shooting.

Shooting leads to plans for library security

The shooting in Chico shocked the community in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and led authorities to say they will add security personnel at each library location.

“A library should be a place of joy,” said Misty Wright, director of public libraries in Butte County. “Most of all it should be a place that feels safe. Yesterday that safety was shattered.”

Wright said that before the shooting, the libraries were visited by “mobile patrols” and that she wasn’t sure if they are armed.

All Butte County library branches were to be closed Tuesday, officials said.

There have been at least three fatal attacks at libraries in the last nine years.

A man in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to fatally shooting a man in a library and another man in a convenience store in 2023. In 2020, a suspect was sent to a mental health facility after he pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing a library security guard in Spring Valley, New York. A teenager who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting two public library employees in Clovis, New Mexico, in 2017 was also sentenced to life in prison.

___ This story has been updated to correct that two men were killed, not a man and a woman.

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Associated Press writers Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, also contributed.

The project includes a more than 50,000-square-foot grocery store with a pharmacy drive-thru, situated on nearly six acres at the corner of Route 220 and Glebe Road.

While planning documents do not identify the retailer, discussion during the meeting pointed to a grocery chain many residents have been anticipating.

“I’m not opposed to a Publix,” one Botetourt County resident said.

Board of Supervisors member Tim Snyder, who represents the Amsterdam District, highlighted why the development matters for the area.

“A lot of reasons why having large shopping opportunities and multiple opportunities at that help create a vibrant community,” Snyder said.

The special exception approval clears the way for the project to move forward as county leaders continue reviewing details related to traffic, infrastructure and site development. County leaders say they will continue working through planning and traffic issues as the project advances.

Nori, who spent the past five seasons with the Timberwolves, has interviewed for multiple head coach vacancies, including the Chicago Bulls earlier this month, the New York Knicks last year, and the Los Angeles Lakers in 2024.

Nori, 52, was the lead assistant under Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch when the club made the playoffs each season, won five series, and reached the Western Conference finals in 2023 and 2024.

During the Timberwolves' 2024 playoff run, Nori took on a greater role during games while Finch recovered from a knee injury.

“It’s a great opportunity and certainly speaks to all the success that we’ve been able to have here,” Finch said of Nori. “He’s ready for it. He’s elite in his relationship building. I know he’ll fit right in in a situation where it’s really promising. I think it’s going to be a perfect match.”

Nori, who began his NBA career in 1998 as a scout with the Toronto Raptors, has also been an assistant for the Raptors, the Sacramento Kings, the Denver Nuggets, and the Detroit Pistons. His son, Dante, is a minor league player in the Philadelphia Phillies organization.

"After an extensive search process, it became clear that Micah embodies the qualities we are looking for in the leader of this franchise,” Blazers general manager Joe Cronin said in a statement. “He has been a key contributor to successful organizations and brings a wealth of expertise, a proven ability to develop players and an authenticity that aligns with the culture we are building. We are excited about the future under his direction and look forward to what we can accomplish together.”

Splitter, who was hired last week as head coach of the Chicago Bulls, was promoted from assistant to interim coach when then-head coach Chauncey Billups was arrested in October in a federal takedown of a sprawling gambling operation. Billups has pleaded not guilty to charges of wire fraud and money laundering.

The Blazers went 42-40 with a five-game loss to NBA finalist San Antonio in the first round of the playoffs, the first postseason appearance and first time they finished with a winning record in five years.

It is the first major hire for the team under the Blazers' new ownership group led by Tom Dundon. The group bought the NBA franchise from the estate of Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft who died in 2018. The NBA’s Board of Governors approved the sale, worth a reported $4.25 billion, in April.

“From my conversations with Tom and Joe, it was evident that there is a strong commitment to building a culture that values accountability, development and team success," Nori said. "This is a team with tremendous talent, and I’m excited to begin working with our players and staff.”

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AP Sports Writer Dave Campbell in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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

The team will still be required to leave after Friday's match in Seattle, a department spokesperson said. A spokesperson for the Iran Football Federation confirmed that the team will leave its base camp in Tijuana, Mexico, on Wednesday for Seattle.

“This was planned on our end,” Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House FIFA Task Force, told The Associated Press. “We were going to look at how the first two movements went, and if they went smoothly, we would extend the extra day in light of the longer travel time.”

The policy change was first reported by NBC News and comes as officials from both countries negotiate over how to end the war in Iran.

Iran's squad has complained about the travel restrictions levied on the team, and the challenges it has faced since the outbreak of war. Iran in March sought to move its group-stage matches to Mexico, with which it has diplomatic ties. Its request to move its base camp from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana was granted two weeks before the team's arrival. Several team officials and members of the support staff have been barred from traveling into the U.S. with the team.

For the first two matches, near Los Angeles, the team was not permitted to travel until the day before. Iran coach Amir Ghalenoei repeatedly said that restriction disadvantaged the team, especially when it had less than 24 hours on the ground before its noon match Sunday.

“Right now we need recovery more than anything,” Ghalenoei said through an interpreter after the 0-0 draw against Belgium. “The conditions have been extremely hard for us.”

It's not uncommon for teams to travel a day before the match, and it's in line with FIFA regulations, which state that “each team shall travel from its team base camp to the match venue one day before matchday (MD‑1) and in exceptional cases on MD‑2, and shall return to their team base camp after the match (on MD/MD+1).”

But Iran had asked for more time to acclimate to host cities and recover after matches, especially for the 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) trip to Seattle. The team is scheduled to train on Thursday at the University of Washington.

“We don’t ask for much. We just ask for the same procedure as for all the other 47 teams,” Iran captain Alireza Jahanbakhsh said Sunday. “Hopefully we can bring everyone who is involved and help us with us.”

The Iran team has also said it experienced difficulties entering and exiting the U.S. each time it made the 127-mile (204-kilometer) flight between Tijuana and Los Angeles. The typically short trip took five hours the day before its first match against New Zealand, team captain Mehdi Taremi said.

Hours before Sunday's match against Belgium, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News the Iranians had “tried to get somebody in yesterday” who had direct ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. In a statement, the soccer federation vociferously pushed back, calling the claim “an outright and undeniable lie.”

Iran's players and coaches have mostly steered clear of outright commentary on the war. “We are here for football, not politics,” Ghalenoei said Saturday. But the team hasn't shied from highlighting the victims of a deadly missile strike on an elementary school at the start of the war in the Middle East, likely launched by the U.S.

Players wore gold-colored pins with the number “168” on their jackets when they disembarked in Mexico on June 7, referencing the number of people killed in the attack, mostly young girls. They left a goodbye note in the locker room at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, after their match Sunday, calling for peace “among all nations” and with the hashtags #168 and #minab, the school’s name.

At Iran's last training session Tuesday in Tijuana before departing for Seattle, four small flags had been stuck into the turf, each bearing the number 168.

It's unclear whether Iran's upcoming opponent, Egypt, will also be allowed to arrive in Seattle two days early. After its 3-1 victory against New Zealand in Vancouver Sunday, Egypt asked to fly directly to Seattle. FIFA denied that request, citing a lack of security resources to accommodate the last-minute demand. Egypt returned to its base camp in Spokane, Washington, a 45-minute flight from Seattle.

Egypt's national team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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AP Sports Writer John Marshall contributed reporting and AP video journalist Javier Arciga contributed reporting from Tijuana, Mexico.

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

A Bedford County mental health and substance abuse business is at the center of a neighborhood zoning dispute — and the fight is far from over.

Mainstream Mental Health Services was issued a zoning violation by Bedford County, ordering the business to stop operations. The county opened an inquiry in late March after neighbors raised concerns about the business and its clients. Following a review of zoning records, officials determined the activity on the property conflicted with the area’s agricultural and residential zoning.

But Mainstream pushed back, filing an appeal.

On Tuesday, Bedford County’s Board of Zoning Appeals held a public hearing where concerned parents voiced their opinions. The board voted to allow Mainstream to remain fully operational for 30 days while the appeal works its way through the court system.

According to its website, Mainstream Mental Health Services offers temporary housing, substance abuse counseling and mental health counseling.

Michael Morris, Mainstream Mental Health Services president and CEO, described the nature of the program.

“It’s temporary housing, as soon as we get them clean, a job, and a permanent place to live, they graduate,” Morris said.

The dispute began months ago when a neighbor contacted 10 News with concerns about the business and its clients, alleging that residents had approached his children asking for alcohol. The neighbor also raised concerns about the distance from local law enforcement.

Original:

A zoning dispute over a mental health services business operating in a Bedford neighborhood has escalated to a formal violation — and the property owner is expected to appeal that decision before the Bedford County Board of Supervisors Tuesday evening.

The issue centers on Mainstream Mental Health Services, which has been operating in an area zoned for agricultural and residential use. A local viewer first brought the situation to 10 News’ attention in early March, expressing concern about a so-called camp running in his neighborhood — and alleging that some patrons had approached his children.

Months in the making

The viewer took those concerns directly to the Bedford County Board of Supervisors via email. At the time, 10 News reached out to the board, which indicated it was looking into the matter.

After further investigation, 10 News identified Mainstream Mental Health Services as the organization operating out of the space. 10 News then spoke with Michael Morris, president and CEO of Mainstream Mental Health Services, Inc., about the facility’s purpose.

“It’s temporary housing, as soon as we get them clean, a job, and a permanent place to live, they graduate,” Morris said.

Violation issued, appeal filed

Weeks later, toward the end of March, Bedford County initiated a formal investigation into the operation. The county’s Board of Zoning Appeals subsequently issued a zoning violation to Mainstream Mental Health Services, citing the area’s agricultural and residential zoning designation as incompatible with the business’s operation.

Mainstream Mental Health Services is now appealing that violation. The matter is expected to be front and center at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, which begins at 6 p.m.

10 News will be on the ground at the meeting to report on the latest developments.

It was the 10th time the Senate has tried to stop the war, and the outcome, on a vote of 50-48, was a stunning turnaround from past efforts. While the resolution is largely symbolic, and does not carry the full force of law, it reflects the growing concerns from a number of Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate over both the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran to end it. The House approved the resolution earlier this month.

Trump responded angrily Tuesday night on his Truth Social platform, calling the vote “poorly timed and meaningless” and saying it "provided aid and comfort" to Iran.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said, “Time after time, the vast majority of Senate Republicans sided with Trump and his war instead of the American people.”

Schumer said Americans have paid the price for “Trump's historic blunder in Iran. It'll go down in the history books as one of the worst foreign policy forays America has ever made.”

In the past, as many as four GOP senators have voted for the war powers resolutions, and they did so Tuesday — Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. One Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voted against.

Trump bashed the four Republicans as losers, saying, “These senators have made my job more difficult.”

On this vote, the absence of two Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who was admitted to the hospital recently for an undisclosed matter, left the GOP without a full majority to halt the effort. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., also missed the vote.

The vote comes as the Pentagon is seeking $80 billion from Congress mostly for the Iran war as it backfills munitions and stockpiles.

Trump to meet senators as Republicans balk at Iran deal

Trump himself is headed to the Capitol on Wednesday to meet with GOP senators after Vice President JD Vance was overseas working to negotiate with Iran to end its nuclear ambitions — which had been among the stated rationales for the war.

The president is not pleased with the Republicans who have been critical of the deal he struck with Iran, according to one GOP senator granted anonymity to discuss the private dynamics.

The terms of the Iran deal are spelled out in a memorandum of understanding that Trump signed last week, starting a 60-day clock for the sides to reach a broader agreement over ending Iran's nuclear program.

But Republicans have particularly objected to the $300 billion fund to help Iran rebuild, which is far greater than the $1.7 billion then-President Barack Obama refunded the country under his administration's 2015 Iran deal.

"I believe President Trump is getting very poor advice on Iran," Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said last week on his podcast after the deal was made public.

Democrats have repeatedly forced Iran votes

Over and again, Democrats have been forcing votes on the Iran war, almost since the U.S. and Israel launched missile strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

Nearly each week they're in session, the Senate Democrats have put forward war powers resolutions, but they have failed to amass the majority needed for passage in the narrowly split chamber, where Trump’s Republican Party holds the majority. Trump would almost certainly veto any measure that passed.

The House pushed its own version to passage earlier this month, with four Republicans joining all Democrats in approving the war powers resolution, over the objections of House Speaker Mike Johnson and the GOP leadership.

While the House- and Senate-passed resolution does not go to the president for his signature, passage stands as a powerful, if symbolic, statement from Congress and a rebuke of the administration’s military actions.

Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democrat from Virginia who has led his party’s efforts, said the pause in warfighting, as Trump’s team works to shore up a fragile ceasefire, provides the perfect time for Congress to step back and assess “what should the next chapter be.”

Hegseth seeks $80 billion from Congress for the Iran war

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is on Capitol Hill this week, seeking roughly $80 billion in supplemental funding to shore up defense supplies in the aftermath of the Iran war, which is drawing scrutiny when many Americans are reeling from high gas prices and costs of living.

The Pentagon early on had estimated the war cost $11.3 billion during its first week, and senators said experts put the overall price tag of Operation Epic Fury higher, at some $100 billion.

The Defense Department's funding request is part of a broader beef-up of military money the White House wants as part of its budget request this year.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday, “We should not spend another dime of taxpayer dollars on Operation Epic Failure."

The Trump administration is seeking $1.5 trillion in defense funding this year — a nearly 50% increase — including $350 billion that it wants in a so-called budget reconciliation package. Johnson and GOP leaders are working to pass that package on their own, over the objections of Democrats, much the way they approved Trump's big tax cuts bill last year.

The 2025 tax cuts package also included a sizable increase for the military.

Prosecutors called the crime an act of terrorism and said the eight were linked to the leftist militant group antifa. The defendants' attorneys denied any antifa ties and family members expressed shock and anger over the stiff sentences.

Benjamin Song, the Marine reservist who was convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment. The seven others sentenced in Fort Worth courtrooms received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.

“I am livid,” said Lydia Koza, whose wife, Autumn Hill, was sentenced to 50 years in prison. “The government wants to take her entire life away because she attended a protest. Nobody died.”

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.” All but one of the eight defendants sentenced Tuesday were convicted on terrorism charges.

“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.

The case drew attention beyond Texas as critics warned it could have wide-reaching impact on protests and First Amendment free-speech rights. The Justice Department called it the first sentencing of “defendants affiliated with” antifa after President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating it as a domestic terrorist organization.

Prosecutors link protesters to antifa

Trump issued the order even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

“The sentences handed down today make clear that Antifa terrorists who attack law enforcement and federal facilities will face swift and uncompromising justice,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

Prosecutors told jurors during the trial that the group’s actions — including bringing firearms, first aid kits and wearing body armor — were signals of nefarious intent.

Attorneys for the defendants have said there was no planned ambush and that protesters who brought firearms only did so for their own protection. They argued the gathering was planned as a late-night demonstration with fireworks to show support for immigrants being held at Prairieland before gunshots broke out.

Prosecutors have said Song had yelled, “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.

Some defendants say they weren't part of the planning

Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, rejected characterizations that the protesters were extremists and said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.

“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”

Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.

“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”

Defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency.

Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”

Hill’s attorney, Cody Cofer, told the judge that there was no evidence she had a gun, nor that she believed in violence to achieve change. He said that after fireworks were set off, she was so conscientious that she made sure to pick up the trash left behind before leaving.

Chris Tolbert, defendant Savanna Batten's attorney, has said that his client didn’t bring a firearm, spray paint or fireworks to the center, nor did she participate in the planning of the demonstration.

Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.

Another defendant, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, was not at Prairieland the night of the shooting or involved in the planning, his attorney Christopher Weinbel said. Sanchez Estrada, who is married to another of the defendants, was convicted only on charges of concealing documents.

Weinbel said his client just moved a box of his own belongings of artwork, poetry, journals and zines after the shooting. Nothing in the box was illegal, Weinbel said.

Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.

Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 people with impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.

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Marcelo reported from New York. Associated Press journalist Kendria LaFleur contributed.

In a social media post, Trump claimed without supporting evidence that there had been a “350-foot gash” in the paint as the administration faces a self-imposed deadline to fix the botched renovation before the nation's 250th anniversary celebration next week. He has also said, including again on Tuesday, that the federal government would release images to substantiate his claim.

Trump pledged to beautify the century-old Reflecting Pool ahead of the anniversary celebrations, draining its water and having the bottom painted a color he dubbed “American flag blue.” But since the site was restored, its water has been plagued with algae bloom and pieces of the new coating appeared to be peeling off the bottom.

Trump, without evidence, has repeatedly blamed the peeling paint on vandalism.

“It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night, to create such a condition,” Trump wrote Tuesday, adding that another seven people were cited for allegedly damaging the pool.

The U.S. Park Police and the Interior Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the arrests or Trump's claim of vandalism.

The Associated Press verified that one man was arrested after touching the already-peeling paint. He said he wanted to examine the new coating, touching a still-attached chunk briefly then letting go shortly after a park worker told him to.

A maintenance problem morphs into a law enforcement issue

National Guard members and Park Police have been patrolling the deck around the pool after Trump insisted over the weekend that vandals were responsible for damage to the liner, without providing evidence.

Crews were seen adding fencing near the area late Tuesday. An Interior spokeswoman said the Reflecting Pool “was always set to be fenced off ahead of the 4th of July," noting that one of the launch pads for the fireworks is near the pool.

“With the increase in vandalism by leftist activists, the fencing is going up earlier than originally planned to ensure no more damage is done to this historic site," spokeswoman Katie Martin said in an email. She did not provide evidence of her claim about the political leanings of possible vandals.

Trump said Tuesday that the Interior Department will release images of alleged vandalism at the pool. Pressed by reporters after Air Force One landed in Pennsylvania for a visit to a trucking company, Trump said Interior is “going to share” photos and videos of the alleged vandalism, which remains unverified.

The president had said on Monday that the images existed and the federal government would provide them. No photos were made public as of Tuesday afternoon.

The arrests highlighted what’s expected to be tightened security in the capital ahead of and during the 250th anniversary celebrations, which are set to draw large crowds to the National Mall and other tourist sites.

Trump also said Tuesday that “some of the water” will be drained from the pool “either immediately before or after the Fourth of July, to do the permanent repair.”

It was unclear from his post what the scale, scope or cost of the permanent repair would be.

Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a contractor on the pool project, said it has identified some areas in the Reflecting Pool that require repairs. “These areas are a very small part of the massive 7-acre project, and do not indicate a failure of the liner,” the company said in a statement. The company said it expected to make the repairs to the pool once it is drained, as part of the warranty.

Environmental group wades in after duckling found dead

Adding to the controversy swirling around the pool, an environmental group called on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to investigate after a Mallard duckling carcass was photographed floating in the algae-filled pool, and two other ducks were found dead nearby. The Center for Biological Diversity said Tuesday that the Wildlife Service must enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which protects migratory birds.

“Wasting taxpayer money turning the reflecting pool into a giant duck death trap just in time for America’s 250th birthday party is as Trump as it gets. Cruel, stupid and selfish,” said Tara Zuardo, a senior campaigner at the Arizona-based group.

City Wildlife, a Washington-based rescue and rehabilitation non-profit that also conducts necropsies on birds found in the city, said they could not comment on the cause of the death of the duckling because its carcass “wasn't recovered for examination.”

Renovation project plagued ahead of the 250 celebrations

Trump pitched the original improvements as intended to clean, beautify and reinforce an iconic site that he said had become dilapidated and dirty because of previous presidents’ neglect. Algae has plagued the pool for a century, and Trump insisted that the newly installed “American flag blue” coating, which he selected himself, would turn the pool into a gleaming expanse along the National Mall.

Yet within weeks of Trump declaring the rehabilitation completed in time for Independence Day, the water was plagued by a vivid green algae bloom that clouded the pool’s coating. A piece of liner, about 4 square feet, was observed on Friday, partially floating in the pool. The Associated Press saw additional pieces in the water on Monday.

Workers were seen in recent days pouring hydrogen peroxide into the pool in an attempt to kill the algae. Hydrogen peroxide can act as a paint remover.

Experts say the dark lining can add to algae growth by absorbing more sunlight than lighter surfaces. That raises the surrounding water temperature, allowing algae to thrive.

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Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this story.

Wilson defeated Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, whom Trump backed in the closing days of the primary campaign. The president later said he supported both candidates, hedging his bets in the race after his candidates for governor lost in Iowa and Georgia earlier this month.

Wilson, the son of longtime U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, has served as the state’s top prosecutor since 2011. His victory sets up a November general contest with state Rep. Jermaine Johnson, who won the Democratic nomination outright two weeks ago.

As news spread of Wilson’s win, scattered whoops went up around the downtown Columbia ballroom, where supporters had only begun to fill in for his Election Night party. Later joined on stage by his wife, children and other relatives including his father, the newly minted nominee pledged to be a “transformational governor.”

He also reached out to Evette’s backers, calling them his “kinsmen,” for whom he promised “to fight as hard for you as you fought.”

At her election party, Evette said she was disappointed her run ended in a loss, but she threw her support behind Wilson.

“It’s OK to be disappointed," she said. “Lord knows that I am. But in just a few months, there’s going to be a general election, and the choice in that general election is going to be between conservative principles and a Democratic Party that wants the exact opposite for South Carolina.”

Trump at the center of the campaign

The Republican primary to succeed Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited, largely centered around candidates’ proximity to Trump, with nearly all of the contenders expressing hope of securing his endorsement.

That achievement initially went to Evette, 58, who has served alongside McMaster for two terms, in the primary’s closing days. Long before that, Evette often featured photos and video of herself with the president in campaign ads and other materials. She also hired a campaign team that includes Trump’s longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio.

But as Wilson seemed to gain momentum heading into the runoff, Trump on Friday said he was endorsing both candidates, throwing a curveball to voters looking to the president for guidance.

Wilson, 52, also boasted support from sheriffs and solicitors across the state, law enforcement officials with whom he works often as South Carolina’s top prosecutor.

Immediately following Trump’s double endorsement on Friday, Wilson began boasting about it, too. Moments after Trump posted on social media, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said he was also supporting Wilson. A person familiar with the senator's thinking but not authorized to speak publicly said Scott had been making calls in support of Wilson, helping raise money and lobbying Trump to back him as well.

On Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz, another Wilson backer, came to South Carolina to stump for him.

Other primary candidates who failed to make the runoff, including U.S. Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, endorsed Wilson. Although Mace had fiercely feuded with Wilson, he said they had “buried the hatchet.”

Republican runoff was South Carolina primaries’ last major contest

The only runoff debate between Wilson and Evette was heated. Because each was given time to issue a rebuttal whenever their name was mentioned, the debate’s first half-hour swiftly devolved into a ping-ponging, back-and-forth over allegations of mudslinging and taxpayer-funded salary increases. The audience provided a soundtrack of thunderous jeers and hoots.

While Democrats also had multiple candidates running in some primary contests earlier this month, they’re not dealing with runoffs in the top races.

Johnson, seen a rising star among South Carolina Democrats, defeated two other hopefuls to win his party’s gubernatorial nomination outright,

And Charleston physician Annie Andrews also cleared the Democratic field in her challenge to Graham.

Winning statewide in November remains tall order for Democrats

While South Carolina Democrats hope their primary momentum helps propel them to general election wins, they have lots of ground to make up on that front.

McMaster notched double-digit victories in 2018 and 2022, defeating Democrat Joe Cunningham by nearly 18 percentage points. Democrats haven’t won a governor’s race in the state since 1998.

As for U.S. Senate seats, no Democrat has won one of those here in decades either. When he last ran in 2020, Graham defeated his Democratic opponent, Jaime Harrison, by a 10 percentage point margin. That contest was the most expensive in state history, and among the country’s most expensive congressional races ever.

The last time a Democrat won any statewide-elected seat in South Carolina was 2006. And in recent history, Republicans have typically taken statewide seats in the state by double-digit margins.

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Collins reported from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

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

Miller was arrested June 6 in eastern Idaho, according to court records, and pleaded not guilty to possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia the following week.

Miller said in a post on Instagram that he was pulled over after accelerating to pass a vehicle on the highway. His friend had a small amount of cannabis and a cannabis pipe, which Miller said he didn't know about.

“We fully cooperated with the officer,” he said. "I am hopeful the misdemeanor charges will be dropped once the facts are reviewed.”

The court documents don't include any details about the circumstances surrounding Miller's arrest. But in a probable cause statement, Fremont County Sheriff's Deputy Jacob Hurt wrote that he found Miller with a white dispensary bag containing 4.1 grams of the psychedelic mushrooms.

Idaho has some of the strictest drug laws in the nation. But Colorado and Oregon have both legalized the use of psilocybin for therapeutic treatments, and the substance has become increasingly popular with some health advocates who believe that microdosing it or using it in therapeutic settings can help ease anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Food and Drug Administration and other federal agencies to speed up research and loosen restrictions on psychedelics, and in response the FDA said it would offer ultra-fast review to three psychedelic drugs being developed to treat mental health conditions.

The 48-year-old Miller took a gambler’s approach to ski racing. His high-risk, high-reward style resulted in six Olympic medals, including gold in the super-combined at the 2010 Vancouver Games, and numerous crashes.

His last major race was at the 2015 world championships in Beaver Creek, Colorado, when a bad wipeout knocked him out of the super-G. He cut a gate too close and hooked his left arm, sending him spiraling out of control. His skis popped off, and he began to somersault down the slope before righting himself. He slowly got up and waited for someone to bring him his skis. Once he clicked back into the skis, he went down the slope and waved to the fans. Miller later underwent surgery to fix a torn right hamstring tendon caused when his ski sliced him.

Miller won 33 World Cup races and a pair of World Cup overall titles. He also captured four gold medals at world championships.

___ Associated Press journalists Pat Graham and Jake Seiner contributed.

Now, AJ Dybantsa's arrival represents a potential turning point for a franchise that could really use one.

The Wizards took Dybantsa with the first overall pick in Tuesday night's NBA draft. The 6-foot-9 freshman averaged 25.5 points at BYU last season. Born in Boston, Dybantsa played at Utah Prep in high school before staying in state for his one year in college. When Washington won the draft lottery, there was speculation the Utah Jazz might try to trade up from No. 2 to take Dybantsa, but ultimately the Wizards kept the pick and selected him.

“I was just super confident. I've been betting on myself for a while now,” Dybantsa said. “Since about ninth grade I've been No. 1, so I didn't really plan on dropping in the draft.”

The Wizards won an NBA title in 1978, back when they were called the Bullets. But they have not won 50 games since 1979, and that was also the last time they so much as reached the conference finals. In between periods of total futility, they've occasionally had entertaining players and interesting teams. But a true superstar capable of delivering a championship? That's been for other franchises.

Washington blew the top pick in 2001, taking Kwame Brown. The Wizards fared better in 2010 with John Wall at No. 1 overall, and he at least helped them get past the first round of the postseason.

That era eventually ran its course, and not even a brief visit from Russell Westbrook in 2020-21 could make Washington particularly relevant. Recently, the Wizards have embarked on a significant rebuild that yielded a record of 50-196 over the past three seasons.

Washington drafted big man Alex Sarr at No. 2 overall in 2024, and the roster also includes recent first-round picks Tre Johnson, Bub Carrington, Bilal Coulibaly, Kyshawn George, Will Riley and Cam Whitmore. Even before they won this year's lottery, there were signs the Wizards would be a lot more interesting in 2026-27. They traded for Trae Young and Anthony Davis last season, and although Davis didn't play at all for Washington and Young barely did, Dybantsa is joining a team that has some intriguing talent around him.

“Obviously they have a great young core, and the potential is there,” Dybantsa said. “Them adding me, I think I can help them a little bit. Them re-signing Trae Young, them having A.D. and having good vets along with our young core. I think we can do big things.”

Dybantsa has drawn comparisons to Kevin Durant, his favorite player. That's fitting, because Durant has been a white whale of sorts for Wizards fans, since he's from D.C. but hasn't played there while in college or the pros.

Dybantsa's full name is Anicet Francois Dybantsa Jr. He wore flag pins Tuesday for Jamaica and the Republic of Congo, where his mother and father are from.

___

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

Then they selected one of their new coach's players with the No. 9 overall pick in the first round Tuesday night.

“The Michigan Mavs,” forward/center Morez Johnson Jr. said moments after the selection was announced in New York — and less than two hours after Mavericks president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri said he wasn't concerned about the timing of May's hiring as it related to the draft. Ujiri added that of course the club would welcome the new coach's input.

“He’ll be involved because he’s a college coach,” said Ujiri, whose team also had the final pick of the first round at No. 30. “He has interaction with his players. We want to know as much information as we can on these players.”

The Mavericks officially announced the hiring of May a few hours before the draft. Dallas also has the 48th overall pick in the second round Wednesday night.

May is making the jump to the NBA less than three months after leading Michigan to its first NCAA championship since 1989. He had a 64-13 record in two years with the Wolverines, including a 34-3 season that ended with a 69-63 victory over UConn in the national title game.

The Mavericks made their choice to replace Jason Kidd official on the same day they added Johnson in the next step of building around 2025 No. 1 pick and reigning Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg, who turns 20 in December.

The 20-year-old Johnson averaged 13.1 points and 7.3 rebounds as a sophomore with Michigan after spending his freshman season at Illinois.

“It’s a different ballgame with NIL in college. It’s like a professional league,” said Ujiri, who let Kidd go about two weeks after getting hired by the Mavericks in May. “Many things I think translate in some kind of way. I look at the style of play, big players, how he sees the game. And then I look at the person. Incredible person.”

The 49-year-old May's title with Michigan came three years after he led Florida Atlantic to its only Final Four appearance. The Wolverines won the Big Ten Tournament in his first season after he inherited a team that went 8-24 under Juwan Howard. It was the school’s lowest win total since going 7-20 in 1981-82.

“While we are disappointed to see Dusty leave Michigan, we are deeply grateful to the May family for the lasting impact they have made on our program and our university,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said in a statement announcing Mike Boynton as May's interim replacement.

May’s record in his last four college seasons was 124-26, an .827 winning percentage that was third best in all of major college men’s basketball over that span behind Houston’s Kelvin Sampson (.861) and Duke’s Jon Scheyer (.832). His overall college record is 190-82.

“This is one of the most respected franchises in professional sports, with passionate fans, a talented roster, and a clear commitment to building a championship organization,” May said in the news release announcing his hiring.

May spent 21 years in the college ranks after the Indiana native first served as a student manager for the Hoosiers and coach Bob Knight while he was in school there from 1996-2000. Florida, UAB and Murray State were among his stops as an assistant before debuting as a head coach with Florida Atlantic in 2018-19.

“He's somebody who came up in a really tough way, video coordinator, assistant coach, and how he's developed himself,” Ujiri said. “He's worked everywhere. He's coach small teams, big teams.”

Moving on from Kidd was the last part of putting the ill-fated Luka Doncic trade behind the Dallas franchise for good.

Nico Harrison, the engineer of the trade that brought the oft-injured Anthony Davis from the Los Angeles Lakers, was fired as general manager in November after the team started slowly in 2025-26. The Mavericks missed the playoffs for the second year in a row since reaching the NBA Finals and losing to Boston.

Doncic and Kyrie Irving were the key players in that deep playoff run in 2024, two years after Doncic also reached the Western Conference finals with a mostly different supporting cast.

Irving remains on the roster amid lingering questions about his future after missing all of last season. Irving tore the ACL in his left knee in March of last year, a month after the Doncic trade.

Ujiri, who is also the team's alternate governor, hired Mike Schmitz as GM soon after his arrival. Schmitz, a former draft analyst for ESPN, had been the assistant GM in Portland. Now Ujiri and Schmitz have teamed up on the coaching change.

___

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

Trains were held at stations and would-be travelers stood in long lines at information desks as they tried to figure out how to get to their destinations.

The main national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, said shortly before 1 a.m. — nearly 2 1/2 hours after it first reported the outage — that the problem had been resolved and service was resuming “step by step.”

The company said there was a nationwide problem with the GSM-R digital communication system, which is used for internal communication on the railway network. It later said that the cause had been identified, but didn't specify what it was.

The Bild newspaper quoted Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla as saying that they "were able to stabilize the situation with an emergency system.”

Deutsche Bahn said during the outage that it was giving taxi and hotel vouchers to passengers and, where possible, making available trains at stations for travelers to sit in. It apologized for the situation.

At Berlin's central station, Reyna Ghoshal and a friend were trying to get back to Munich after a trip to the German capital and saw "unhappy faces” as they arrived at the station.

“The train conductor was very nice, but he was just like, ‘we don’t know,’” said Ghoshal, who is from Atlanta. She said that “we booked a bus for 8 a.m. just in case, but generally we don’t know what’s going on."

In recent years, complaints about train delays and disruption in Germany have become increasingly frequent.

Government-owned Deutsche Bahn has started conducting thorough but disruptive overhauls of major routes after years of underinvestment in a bid to improve its performance.

The German railway system has on rare occasions in the past halted all or most trains, but because of storms rather than for technical reasons.

GSM-R, short for Global System for Mobile Communications–Railway, offers voice and data services needed to operate railways, including communication between train drivers and control centers.

According to the European Union Agency for Railways, it has been introduced across Europe since 2000 as a common standard for railway operations.

For years, the Brown family in Floyd County has survived on a well that produces just 40 gallons of water a day — not enough to run a farm, bathe without a schedule, or run the dishwasher and washing machine at the same time.

That changed Tuesday, when Xylem Inc., the Water Well Trust, and the Chris Long Foundation partnered to drill a new well on the Brown family’s property in Willis.

A burden carried every day

The Browns moved to their Floyd County property with cows, sheep, pigs, and more than 100 birds. They were growing their own food and sustaining their family. The well had other plans.

“We said we can only use the water for us,” Tristan Brown said. “So we have since either sold or butchered all of our animals at this point.”

Inside the house, the family of five developed a system — staggered showers, laundry at midnight, and gallon jugs staged near toilets for when the well ran dry mid-flush.

“It happens in the middle of showers,” Brown said. “It happens when we have church friends over and we’re having dinner and the well runs dry.”

His wife, MerriLynn, said the sleepless nights added up.

“I can’t wait to not have to wake up through the night to start the dishwasher or get the clothes washed,” she said.

Tristan Brown is a Purple Heart recipient. The family also has health concerns that make consistent water access especially critical.

“It’s a huge thing,” Brown said. “It’s a heavy burden on me to know that MerriLynn and our children were having to truly ration this water — which is an unbelievable thought in the United States of America in 2026.”

How four organizations came together

The Water Well Trust, a nonprofit, connects homeowners who lack access to safe water with low-interest loans and other assistance. The Brown family applied, and the trust reached out to Xylem, a water technology company. Xylem then brought in the Chris Long Foundation and its Hometown H2O water initiative.

“The Water Well Trust reached out to Xylem. We reached out to our other corporate partner, which is the Chris Long Foundation,” said Alex Rodriguez, Xylem’s senior market development manager. “That’s why we’re here. That’s how we got on property.”

Elizabeth McClain, program director for the Water Well Trust, said the Brown family stood out.

“With Mr. Brown being a Purple Heart Vet and the health concerns within the family, they just really needed to have access to that clean, safe water to support the entire family,” McClain said.

Crews from Rorrer Well Drilling Inc. drilled the new well and the owner Eric Rorrer was a major donor and contributor to the project.

Rodriguez said the need for projects like this goes far beyond rural communities.

“It’s not a middle of nowhere problem,” he said. “This is something that affects all of America, all of the world, really.”

Millions of Americans lack safe water access

The scale of the problem is larger than most people realize, according to McClain.

“There are over two million people actually documented living without access to safe water,” she said. “But we really believe that the number is closer to eight to nine million Americans. So most likely, it is someone you know that is having problems with water.”

Nancy Hopkins, executive director of the Chris Long Foundation, said private well owners are especially vulnerable — even those who live close to public water systems.

“Folks like the Browns, they don’t live too far from the public water grid,” Hopkins said. “But when you’re on a private well and the well gets contaminated or collapses or starts to have a really low yield, it really affects families day to day. They spend a lot of mental energy, a lot of time rationing water, trying to figure out what is the best use of this scarce resource.”

Hopkins said the project will carry impact beyond the Brown property.

“This project is going to have a deep impact on the Brown family, but I think an even bigger impact on educating folks about the Clean Water Challenge,” she said.

What comes next for the Browns

With a functioning well now in the ground, the Browns are already thinking about what they can do.

MerriLynn Brown wants a garden — something she said she had to give up along with the animals.

“The garden to me is such a sweet place to be, to just watch something go from a seed to a little sprout to a plant that you can harvest and feed your family,” she said. “My grandma loved to garden. To be able to do that again is going to be such a sweet thing — and then to bring the kids into that.”

Tristan Brown said MerriLynn’s health makes the new well personal in another way.

“She has health issues with her back. To be able to soak in that bathtub with some salts and know that we have enough water — and we can still do things throughout the day — those are things I’m excited about, especially for her.”

He said the whole idea still feels surreal.

“It’s kind of crazy that that could be our future, that we don’t have to think about water anymore.”

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The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, said Anthropic had teamed up with U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct tests using the company's Mythos model. It had identified certain vulnerabilities within hours, but that does not mean the model was able to exploit them within that time, the official said.

The official said the testing was done through an Anthropic initiative called Project Glasswing, which brought together tech giants and other companies in hopes of securing the world’s critical software from “severe” fallout that the Mythos model could pose to public safety, national security and the economy.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia had briefly mentioned the testing during a June 11 hearing before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Warner had said, “This tool broke into almost all of our classified systems, not in weeks but in hours.” He attributed the information to the head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, who is Gen. Joshua Rudd.

The NSA declined to comment on the matter in an email. An Anthropic spokesman also declined to comment.

Despite the recent cooperation between Anthropic and U.S. agencies to test for vulnerabilities, tensions between the California company and the Trump administration have been growing. Anthropic has raised concerns over how the U.S. military would use its AI, while the administration has restricted the use of some of Anthropic’s models.

The administration issued a directive earlier this month requiring Anthropic to prevent foreign nationals from using its latest artificial intelligence models, known as Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Anthropic released Fable widely earlier this month. That model is a limited version of the more advanced Mythos, to which the company has tightly limited access due to cybersecurity fears.

The directive came 10 days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up to a month before their public release. Participation by AI developers would be voluntary, the order said.

Anthropic said it disabled the models for all of its customers to comply with the administration's directive. The AI giant said it did not believe the steps taken by the government were warranted by the concern it flagged about a potential security issue.

A group of cybersecurity executives has also asked the Trump administration to lift its directive, saying the move could help U.S. adversaries more than it hurts them. More than 100 cybersecurity experts and leaders from companies including Adobe and Nvidia told the government in a letter that Anthropic’s Mythos models are “quite good” at finding flaws in software and weaponizing exploits — but they are ”not uniquely good at these tasks."

Many of the letter’s signatories said they regularly use other foundation and open-source models for security audits and training. The letter said it is dangerous to take away the best cyber defense capabilities “without a good reason” when America’s adversaries are rapidly advancing.

This time, Queiroz’s team earned a point that could end up being enough for a spot in the round of 32.

England dominated possession on Tuesday but came up empty on several late scoring opportunities in a rain-filled 0-0 draw.

“Our plan was to block and frustrate them from the first minute,” Queiroz said. “We did it.”

Four years ago at the World Cup in Qatar, Queiroz was coaching Iran when his team faced England and lost 6-2.

England, which has not lost to an African country at the World Cup in nine meetings, outshot Ghana 19-1 but failed capitalize on multiple chances in the closing minutes.

“Frustrated a little bit with how they defended, how they set up,” England midfielder Jude Bellingham said. “They got exactly out of the game what they played for. Couldn’t quite break them down, even with all corners, all the possession, all the shots on goal from distance.”

Both teams won their opening matches at this year's tournament, with Ghana beating Panama 1-0 and England defeating Croatia 4-2. Now both still have work to do in Group L before securing a spot in the knockout round at the first 48-team World Cup.

England ended up losing to France in the quarterfinals at the 2022 tournament. Ghana hasn’t made it to the knockout round since reaching the quarterfinals at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

But with the expanded tournament this year, the best eight third-place teams will advance, giving both teams a good chance heading into their final group matches.

England will next play Panama on Saturday in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Ghana will take on Panama at the same time in Philadelphia.

The Three Lions had a chance to take the lead in the 86th minute when Nico O’Reilly’s header hit the crossbar. Harry Kane gathered the rebound but couldn’t get enough on it with his left foot and shot high.

Ghana’s best chance came in the 78th minute came when Abdul Fatawu outfought England midfielder Eberechi Eze for the ball and raced down the sideline. He fed the ball to Prince Adu, but he was challenged from behind by Ezri Konsa before he could get off a shot. Adu wanted a penalty but didn’t get it.

“It was a clear penalty, if not a red card,” Queiroz said. "We have no doubts about that."

England coach Thomas Tuchel said they were a bit surprised with how Ghana was aligned, defending in a 4-5-1 formation. He called Ghana's efforts one of the most physical that he's seen in the tournament.

“They defended with a lot of determination. A lot of discipline," Tuchel said.

Tuchel added he doesn’t believe England was too dependent on Kane, the striker who won the Golden Boot at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

“He was not involved as much as we would like to, but it was so narrow,” Tuchel said. “It was difficult to find space. The little moments that he had were just so unlucky."

In the first half, England had 60% of the possession but only five attempts on goal, with Kane missing inside the box just before the end of the half.

Ghana picked up the pace in the second half, getting a chance in the 50th minute when Marvin Senaya got a touch in the box, but couldn’t quite get much behind a header as it was blocked by the England defense.

Ghana goalkeeper Benjamin Asare earned a clean sheet in his first World Cup start.

“I think we did our best to get the best possible result that we were hoping for,” Ghana midfielder Kwasi Sibo said. “It’s just the plan of the coach and we did follow the coach.”

___

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

“We are in agony, and we cannot be at peace. … We love our mom. We'll never stop looking for her,” Guthrie said at the “Today” desk in New York, holding a tissue in her left hand.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, who lived alone, was reported missing from her Tucson-area home on Feb. 1. The FBI released video more than a week later from a camera outside her front door showing a masked stranger. Her blood was found on the porch, but the case remains unsolved.

Some media outlets had previously reported receiving ransom notes in the days after Guthrie’s disappearance but had not disclosed the details while the investigation was at an early stage. Guthrie's family was aware of the notes.

Tucson TV station KOLD said Monday that it had received two notes, one demanding millions in Bitcoin in exchange for Guthrie’s return and another that said she had died. Separately, CNN cited law enforcement sources in reporting on the contents of the notes.

CNN said a note indicated that those who kidnapped Guthrie did not mean to kill her but that she died shortly after her disappearance.

“I don't have any comment on this story. I'm not involved in our coverage,” Savannah Guthrie said Tuesday, referring to NBC News. “But I can't pretend I'm not here. And since I am, I want to just take the opportunity to ask people — really to beg people — to come forward. Somebody knows something.”

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department referred questions about the ransom notes to the FBI, which declined to comment.

Tom Morrissey, a retired chief U.S. marshal in Arizona who isn’t involved in the Guthrie investigation, said details of a ransom note might be publicly released in investigations if authorities think it might help to identify a suspect. But he said specifics, such as whether a victim has died, are often held back simply to protect the investigation because authorities aren’t certain where their inquiry is headed.

“It’s still an open investigation,” Morrissey said. “These things can go into directions you wouldn’t believe to be possible.”

Bob Krygier, who retired as a lieutenant with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in January, said it goes against procedure and common sense for investigators to reveal that a missing person has died until a body has been found or several years have passed since the person disappeared.

“Once you start making statements from the law enforcement side that has speculation, you lose so much credibility,” Krygier said.

Volunteers and search teams scoured the nearby desert terrain filled with cactuses, bushes and boulders in the weeks after Nancy Guthrie vanished. A group recently conducted a search near the Arizona-Mexico border but didn't report finding her.

Savannah Guthrie and her siblings occasionally appeared in social media videos earlier in the saga, urging the public to come forward with tips. She asked people to “raise your prayers with us” and acknowledged that her mother might be in heaven dancing “with our daddy.”

Yvonne “Missy” Woods entered guilty pleas to committing a cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public servant and forgery. Dozens of other counts were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

Woods was set to stand trial later this year. Instead, she'll face between 8 and 16 years in prison when she's sentenced in September.

Woods and her attorneys declined to talk to reporters after Tuesday's hearing.

Authorities accused Woods, who resigned in 2023 after a decades-long career, of altering data to conceal tampering, deleting data that showed she failed to troubleshoot issues within the testing process and not thoroughly documenting tests performed in case records.

The investigation into Woods’ misconduct began in September 2023 after an intern at the bureau discovered missing information in a case that Woods handled in 2018. According to an arrest affidavit, Woods allegedly told investigators at one point that she had changed data to complete cases more quickly.

Problems with the scientist’s work were found in cases involving homicide, sexual assault, robbery and other crimes, according to a law enforcement affidavit. Prosecutors were forced to review hundreds of cases.

At least one murder conviction was overturned as a result of Woods’ misconduct. Michael Clark was released from prison in 2025 after his lawyers argued that DNA evidence in the case was mishandled by Woods, but prosecutors are seeking to retry him.

In at least two cases, both homicides, the defendants received lesser sentences under plea deals than they could have faced if they went to trial because prosecutors were afraid Woods’ involvement could lead to acquittals.

Convictions in other cases also are being challenged in courts across Colorado.

State officials have said that the response to Woods’ actions could end up costing more than $11 million.

The state investigation bureau in a statement issued Tuesday described Woods' actions as intentional criminal fraud and said it didn't reflect the bureau's practices.

“This moment is not about moving on, for CBI it’s about moving forward,” said Armando Saldate, bureau director. “Today’s guilty plea is an important moment of accountability.”

The bureau said it has been making changes and is committed to following best practices used nationwide in forensic science.

The 358-32 vote sends the bill to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law Wednesday at the Capitol. The Senate passed the legislation 85-5 on Monday.

The legislation would reduce federal regulations, streamline environmental reviews, speed up the construction process and curb the influence of corporate landlords by limiting their ability to purchase single-family homes. It represents one of the most sweeping efforts in decades to increase the supply of housing and bring down prices, as voter frustration runs high about the cost of living.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who helped negotiate the bill, said the median age of a first-time homebuyer is now 40 and rents have soared some 47% since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our country must do better and today we will," she said.

Dozens of bills were combined to create the final package after months of negotiations, creating a rare moment of bipartisanship in a congressional session that has been plagued by bitter standoffs.

House Financial Services Chairman French Hill, an Arkansas Republican who worked with Waters and the Senate on the bill, said it is the first time in years that Congress has come together to make “measurable, accountable changes” to the nation's housing laws.

The bill will “help build more homes to meet that growing demand and keep the American dream within reach,” he said.

The bill expands financing and protects renters

The legislation on its way to Trump would expand financing, encourage the development of “innovative housing” like modular homes, require new renter protections and enhance programs that aim to end homelessness.

It would also offer funding to local governments that build more housing, including Community Development Block Grant money to places exceeding the median rate of homebuilding. It would provide new dollars for communities to turn abandoned infrastructure into housing, and it offers a framework for communities that want to reform outdated zoning regulations, which often limit larger housing developments.

ln addition, the bill would raise limits on the number of public housing units that can receive financing for renovations and codify a recovery program to help expedite funds to communities rebuilding after disaster.

The legislation does not include a Senate provision that would have required investors to sell newly constructed homes within seven years.

Housing costs are a concern for both parties

Republicans and Democrats have embraced the bill as a way to show they are addressing the nation’s affordability crisis, driven in part by rising home prices due to a shortage of affordable housing. The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes have been hovering close to a 4-million annual pace going back to 2023 — well short of the 5.2-million annual pace that’s historically been the norm. Sales slowed last year to a 30-year low and have remained sluggish so far this year, declining in January and February versus a year earlier.

The Economic Report of the President in April found a shortage of 10 million homes, while a report this month from the Joint Center For Housing Studies at Harvard University found sales of existing homes were at three-decade lows and inventories were rising due to high home buying costs. “Cost burdens for both renters and owners continue to climb, while assistance remains profoundly underfunded,” the report said.

While the median U.S. monthly rent has been declining for nearly three years, it was still 17.2% higher in May than it was before the pandemic, according to data from Realtor.com.

The legislation drew widespread support in the housing community, both from organizations representing landlords and large property owners as well as groups that advocate for tenants and low-income renters.

It also brought together Republicans and Democrats, many of whom noted the unusual level of bipartisanship ahead of the vote.

“In this polarized and angry Congress, we are actually getting something done," said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn.

——

Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

Two of the biggest stars of the World Cup are setting records with history-making goals in a sizzling start that has even the most casual soccer fans in the U.S. taking notice.

Messi has five goals in Argentina's first two matches, setting the record for career World Cup goals with 18. Mbappé has scored four times for France, moving into a tie for second with 16 goals.

“Leo always scores,” Mbappé said. “He’ll always score. If I want to look at what Leo’s doing, I’ll have to do even more.”

They are not alone in hitting the back of the net. Norway's Erling Haaland already has four in his country's first two games at the World Cup since 1998. And Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo broke out with two goals against Uzbekistan on Tuesday to raise his career World Cup total to 10.

But Messi and Mbappé are the maestros making this World Cup their personal symphony. It's one they've been writing since the 2022 final in Qatar, when Messi scored twice and Mbappé three times before Argentina finally won on penalty kicks in a title game for the ages.

There should be plenty of music still to come from both. Argentina and France have already clinched spots in the elimination rounds, and both are among the favorites to win the tournament.

Messi is defying age in a young man's game

Messi has scored most of his World Cup goals at an age when most top scorers would be well past their prime.

He has 12 World Cup goals since he turned 35, and he will turn 39 on Wednesday, three days before Argentina plays its final group-stage match — against Jordan.

Messi, the former Barcelona icon who now plays for Inter Miami of Major League Soccer, still possesses exquisite touch and passing in traffic, and energy and stamina that carry him through an entire match.

His second goal against Austria came late. Messi passed to teammate Julián Álvarez, whose shot was blocked. Messi chased the rebound and slid the shot through two defenders to seal a 2-0 victory.

“We knew that he is on a level of his own, and Lionel Messi showed us today that he’s one of the best, and he is the best,” Austria coach Ralf Rangnick said.

Mbappé chasing Messi with every goal

At 27, Mbappé is in his physical prime with the speed and power to chase Messi's record, not just in this tournament but likely for years to come.

He was just 19 when he led France to the 2018 World Cup title in Russia. With his goal against Croatia, he joined Pelé as the only teenagers to score in a World Cup final.

Mbappé scored four goals in the in the 2018 tournament and has been on a charge ever since. The Real Madrid forward's speed haunts defenders and his power shooting with with both feet can overwhelm a goalkeeper.

He was the Golden Boot winner as the top scorer with eight goals in 2022. His 16 career World Cup goals match Miroslav Klose of Germany, one ahead of Brazil great Ronaldo.

Mbappé scores at a much higher rate than Messi. His 16 goals have come in 16 matches since 2018. Messi has played in 28 matches across six tournaments dating to 2006.

“I’ve always scored goals in the World Cup, so it’s not something I’m thinking about or that I’m worried about," Mbappé said.

Haaland making his mark in World Cup debut

Norway's 6-foot-5 striker could be the biggest threat to Messi and Mbappé as the World Cup's top goal scorer if Norway can stay in the tournament long enough.

The 25-year-old Manchester City star has been one of the top strikers in Europe for several years and scored two goals in each of Norway's two victories.

Norway will meet Mbappé and France on the pitch Friday. Both teams have already advanced to the next round, and the winner of the match wins the group.

“We’re through (to the next round), which is incredible,” Haaland said. “So I couldn’t care too much about that game now. They (France) are probably going to win against us, they’re probably going to win the whole tournament.”

Norway coach Stale Solbakken says Haaland is the player who can push the team deep into the tournament.

“He is is the best striker,” Solbakken said. “He's not playing for France or Argentina. He scores for Norway.”

Mbappé disagreed. Only he didn't point at himself.

“It's clear," Mbappé said. “(Messi) is the best in the world.”

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AP Sports Writer Stephen Whyno contributed to this report.

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

A moon rose overhead, stars were visible above the runway, and beneath them came the wave: a barrel built tall enough to swallow the show.

It rose from a sandy outdoor set, spraying mist into the heat and giving the evening’s surf fantasy a practical appeal.

The front row had its own stars. Jeremy Allen White, Charles Melton, Future, Missy Elliott, Lola Young, Coco Jones, Quavo, Victor Wembanyama, Jackson Wang, BamBam and Finn Bennett were among the guests.

Out of the wave walked Williams’ surfer — sun-bleached, salt-worn and tailored for somewhere between shore and city.

For Louis Vuitton’s spring-summer 2027 men’s collection, surfing supplied the wardrobe: wetsuit textures, patched outerwear, weathered denim, beaded bombers, logoed surfboards and tailoring loosened by travel.

Since arriving at Vuitton, Williams has returned often to the dandy: elegant but easy, polished but relaxed.

This season, he sent him to the beach — or at least to the kind of beach reached after the boardroom, with luggage and cashmere in tow.

A silver camper, reimagined as a glass-walled habitat and parked among dunes, framed the Vuitton man on familiar house terrain: travel. Vuitton began with trunks, after all.

Hang 10, tailored

The clothes worked best when the surf references were handled lightly.

Technical wetsuits met tailoring fabrics, including functional diving pieces marked with Vuitton’s Monogram.

Weathered jackets looked already lived in.

Hoodies came sun-faded and salt-softened, with gilded LV drawstrings.

Denim and coats had shibori-like indigo effects. Bomber jackets were weighted with dense ropes of beadwork.

Williams’ trompe l’oeil effects also returned, with surfaces made to mimic other surfaces and casual pieces revealing more handwork up close.

Several pieces leaned into the after-surf wardrobe: robe-like coats, soft jackets and easy layers with the comfort of a towel thrown over cold shoulders.

The new flat-soled skate shoe brought the collection back to Williams’ older world: skateboarding, Billionaire Boys Club, Ice Cream and Nigo.

That gave the surf theme a sharper edge, and an obvious commercial engine.

Surf’s up, spectacle down

Williams’ Vuitton has always known how to stage an event. His debut turned the Pont Neuf into a gold Damier runway.

Other shows have brought games, houses, orchestras, choirs and front rows built for the camera.

Tuesday had plenty of production: a cinematic prelude with surfers Mikey February and Julian Wilson, a soundtrack featuring Quavo, Williams and Angélique Kidjo, and live performances by L’Orchestre du Pont Neuf and the Voices of Fire choir.

But the set did not overwhelm the clothes. The wave was huge. The collection held its own.

Vuitton said it would support Coral Gardeners, with plans to help out-plant 1,000 corals and restore 250 square meters of reef habitat in French Polynesia in 2026.

Williams took his bow as the wave still towered behind him.

This time, the clothes were not swept away.

The NFL informed the 22-year-old quarterback on Tuesday that it will not hold a supplemental draft this year, and encouraged him to focus on preparing for possible entry into the league through the regular draft next year.

The league told Sorsby of its decision in a letter that was obtained by The Associated Press.

Sorsby had applied for the supplemental draft after a legal battle with the NCAA, which had declared him ineligible for making thousands of bets on sporting events worth at least $90,000 during his college career. Those included at least 40 bets on Indiana while he was a freshman there in 2022, though none on the games in which he played for the Hoosiers that season.

The NFL hasn't held a supplemental draft since 2023 and had no plans to do so this year before Sorsby's petition. No player has been selected in the supplemental draft since 2019.

“Your Petition — filed three business days before the deadline, without any supporting information or documentation, and only after abandoning your recent litigation efforts to avoid NCAA sanctions — does not provide a basis for the League to alter those plans," NFL attorney Lawrence P. Ferazani Jr. said in his letter to Sorsby and the 32 NFL teams. "The issues presented by your Petition are too significant, and too closely tied to the League’s core integrity interests, to permit meaningful review within the timeline presented.”

Eligibility for either the regular draft or supplemental draft is required for entry into the NFL, per the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and its union. A player who is not selected in the draft could then enter the league as a free agent.

“No player shall be eligible to be employed by an NFL Club until he has been eligible for selection in an NFL Draft,” the CBA states in Article 6.

Sorsby is considered a potential Day 2 pick — second or third round — in next year's draft. Teams will have to be convinced he's overcome his gambling problems.

The NFL's letter pointed out that Sorsby's petition didn't address reports that he may have violated state law nor did it “demonstrate accountability for your conduct or indicate whether, or how, you would adhere to the League’s rules and policies governing the integrity of competition."

It concluded: “We encourage you to focus on preparing for possible entry into the NFL through the 2027 NFL Annual Draft.”

The submission deadline for the rarely used supplemental draft was Monday. Sorsby had planned to work out for NFL teams on July 10.

Sorsby, after transferring earlier this year from Cincinnati to Texas Tech, was banished from competition by the NCAA for the gambling activity.

After spending a month in a residential treatment program for a diagnosed addiction that led to thousands of bets, Sorsby sued the NCAA and gained a court-ordered reinstatement that prompted nationwide backlash toward Texas Tech. The controversy led Sorsby to enter this special draft session.

“The sole reasons identified in your Petition for seeking entry into the Supplemental Draft are that you have been ‘declared ineligible’ by the NCAA, have ‘exhausted all of (your) avenues to continue in the NCAA,’ and ‘want to now play in the NFL,’” Ferazani wrote. "The Petition provides no information regarding the basis for, or timing of, the NCAA’s decision. Public sources, however, indicate that in May 2026 the NCAA issued a determination declaring you permanently ineligible from participation in college athletics, based on a sustained pattern of improper gambling activity during your collegiate career at three different universities.”

A person with knowledge of the union's thinking told the AP that the NFL Players Association “has not made any determination on if, how or whether there are legal grounds to act on” the league's decision. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because it is a legal matter.

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

Punishing temperatures extended to the United Kingdom and Spain, where weather agencies issued red alerts — like France — about the risks of extreme heat for tens of millions of people.

The record of 29.8 C (85.6 F) for France’s national thermal indicator — an average of temperatures measured at 30 weather stations — was only the latest in a series of never-before-registered highs heaped on Europe's largest country. The conditions were likely to persist at least until the weekend.

“Further record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year,” the Meteo France weather service said.

France's previous hottest days were recorded during heat waves of August 2003 and July 2019, with an average temperature of 29.4 C (84.9 F).

Temperature records also tumbled at individual weather stations and on consecutive days in some towns as daytime highs climbed well above 40 C (104 F), Meteo France said.

In the French capital, Gin Dujardin said the heat forced him to halt his work fixing roofs, which in Paris often have galvanized zinc coverings.

“It’s very, very hard because the zinc is very hot. The welds don’t hold,” he said. “It’s Dubai temperatures. It’s impossible.”

France has recorded 40 fatalities from drowning in the past week as people seek relief in rivers and other bodies of water, despite authorities' warnings about unsupervised swimming. Most of the drownings involved young people, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said.

Meteo France said the heat wave has reached what it described as a “plateau of severity,” with unrelenting heat, day and night. A growing number of regions will tip into the red again Wednesday as the heat spreads across more than half of the country, including the northernmost tip of France, the weather service said.

Human-caused climate change is tied to increasingly extreme weather, and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years are likely to shatter more heat records.

The Louvre and the Eiffel Tower close early

In a country without widespread air conditioning, schools, public transportation and sporting events have been affected. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower closed in the afternoon instead of late at night, as it usually does. The Louvre museum said it would close two hours earlier than normal from Wednesday through Saturday.

“Although parts of its historic building are naturally resilient, the museum remains vulnerable and is not sufficiently adapted to climate change,” Louvre officials said. “Heat buildup is greatest toward the end of the day and is further intensified by high visitor numbers.”

This heat wave, coming early in the summer, has already been compared to the August 2003 heat wave that roasted France with the highest temperatures in over half a century. It caused an estimated 15,000 deaths, many of them among older people in apartments and retirement homes without air conditioning.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of those deaths were preventable, the World Health Organization’s Europe office said this month.

The above-average temperatures can cause heat exhaustion and life-threatening heat stroke.

Rail systems are strained by high temperatures

Hundreds of British schools planned to close or close early this week because of the heat, while many train services were reduced to avoid heat-related problems on the rail lines.

The Met Office, the U.K. weather agency, issued a heat warning for Wednesday and Thursday, with forecasts suggesting June’s all-time daily temperature record could be broken.

Temperatures of around 37 degrees C (98.6 F) are expected in southern England, with up to 35 C (95 F) in southeast Wales. The peak of the heat wave is now forecast for Wednesday and Thursday, when highs could reach 39 C (102.2 F) in London or southern England.

Conditions are expected to ease by Friday, the Met Office said.

On Tuesday, multiple U.K. train operators, including the express train serving London Gatwick Airport, said they were canceling or reducing services. Railway operators urged people to travel only if "absolutely necessary” on Wednesday and Thursday.

Heat waves could become more frequent and longer

Further south, Spain faced a heat wave across parts of the Iberian Peninsula.

Spain’s national weather service, Aemet, issued red alerts Tuesday for temperatures of 44 C (111 F) in southern Andalusia as well as warnings of thermometers hitting 40 C (104 F) in the normally temperate Cantabria and the Basque Country regions along the country's northern Atlantic coast.

Aemet meteorologist Rubén del Campo said Spain, which has experienced increasingly torrid summers, is only going to get hotter because of climate change as heat waves become more frequent, longer and occur outside the traditional window of July and August.

Of the dozen heat waves Aemet has recorded in June since it started tracking them in 1975, half have occurred since 2015, del Campo said.

Human-driven climate change is heating up the atmosphere, both above Spain and in the surrounding sea waters, he said.

Copernicus, the EU weather monitoring agency, found that in Europe and globally, 2024 was the hottest year on record, and the continent experienced its second-highest number of “heat stress” days.

Scientists warn that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, especially in southeastern Europe, making the region more vulnerable to health impacts and wildfires.

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Associated Press journalists John Leicester in Paris, Sylvia Hui in London and Joseph Wilson in Barcelona, Spain, contributed to this report.

But the Iranians deny it. And in the absence of more details, sanctions experts are flummoxed over exactly how billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets would make their way to the American heartland from the escrow accounts where they’ve been locked for years by U.S. sanctions.

A tentative agreement reached last week would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to start selling its oil freely again during a 60-day period when the two countries will continue negotiating key issues. The memorandum of understanding also promised to unfreeze Iranian assets.

Trump’s deal has come under fire for failing to address the reasons the president cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Lashing back at critics Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said U.S. farmers would get a payday: The U.S. Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.’’

Vance, who spoke about the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, and Trump say that any frozen funds and assets held outside of Iran will be used to buy U.S. crops.

But the Iranians deny that's part of the deal. A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,’’ not terms dictated by Washington.

“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said.

Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, rejected Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would dictate how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.

A U.S. official dismissed the contradiction, asserting that Iranian leaders were speaking to their domestic audience. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Iran was unlikely to abandon its other trade partners on food.

Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina, he said. Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”

Under previous sanctions, the U.S. has required that money foreign countries spend on imports from Iran — such as South Korean purchases of oil and Iraqi purchases of Iranian electricity — be locked in escrow accounts and typically released only if the Treasury approves and if the proceeds go toward “non-sanctionable’’ items such as food and medicine.

On Monday, the U.S. Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products through Aug. 21. It did not mention any escrow accounts.

Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X that he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying U.S. agricultural products.”

Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it’s unclear what the new U.S.-Iran agreement actually means for releasing restricted Iranian assets.

Could the U.S. require that the assets be used to buy American farm products?

“Well, we can try!’’ Nephew, who helped design Iran sanctions in the Obama and Biden administrations, said by email. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a U.S. bank to buy soybeans or whatever."

Banks do not have to comply, he said. If they refuse, the U.S. could sanction them as well.

But it's rare for the U.S. to conduct itself that way, he added, “in part because we don’t usually like to give the impression that we treat national security issues as a cash grab.”

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Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.

State officials said they are combating the administration's attacks on their offshore wind industry by sending a notice of their intention to sue to the Department of the Interior on Tuesday. Tuesday’s action is focused on the administration buying back the lease for Golden State Wind, a floating offshore wind project off California’s central coast.

California has made a major commitment to offshore wind because of its potential to generate vast amounts of clean electricity from strong, consistent winds off its coast. Its strategy calls for the state to develop 25 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2045, enough to power roughly 25 million homes and provide about 13% of the state’s electricity supply.

These energy and climate goals are now in jeopardy, and that's why California will fight vigorously, said California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild. He called the administration's strategy of buying back offshore wind leases “a strategic mistake of colossal proportions" that is especially stunning at a time when fossil fuel prices have been spiking due to the Iran war.

“Countries that thrive around the world are those that lean into innovation, into the energy sources of the future,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. “And so to turn away from this, and turn back the clock, and really engage in what I consider to be a war on innovation, is really ill-considered. And I think it’s a decision that’s not just bad for California, it’s bad for the nation.”

Trump administration favors fossil fuels over wind

President Donald Trump has said he’s boosting fossil fuels to unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy, and he frequently talks about his hatred of wind power. The Interior Department started buying back offshore wind leases after federal courts thwarted Trump’s efforts to stop offshore wind development through executive action.

In exchange for reimbursements of lease fees, companies are investing in fossil fuel projects and geothermal energy. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last week that “under President Trump, companies are shifting investment back toward dependable, secure energy infrastructure that can power our economy and lower utility costs.”

A total of five federal leases off California's coastline have been awarded to energy developers. Two are being canceled through deals with the Interior Department: Golden State Wind and another floating project off California’s central coast by Chicago-based Invenergy. The state says it also issued an administrative investigative subpoena on Tuesday to Invenergy, which accepted a $765 million deal last week to terminate its offshore wind leases.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement that the state won’t stand idly by as the Trump administration “illegally strikes deals to kill offshore wind projects and replace them with more windfalls for his fossil fuel friends.”

Eight offshore wind projects have been stopped so far

The total amount spent on these agreements is nearly $2.6 billion. Under the first deal announced in March, French company TotalEnergies is getting nearly $1 billion — essentially a refund of its two offshore wind leases — if it invests the money in fossil fuels instead. Those leases were off the coasts of North Carolina and New York. New York is leading a lawsuit challenging the TotalEnergies agreement and Democrats in Congress are investigating it.

Golden State Wind and Bluepoint Wind agreed in April to end their leases. Bluepoint Wind was an offshore wind farm in the early stages of development off the coasts of New Jersey and New York.

Golden State Wind is a joint venture by Ocean Winds and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Under its agreement, Golden State Wind can recover about $120 million in lease fees after the same amount is invested in oil and gas assets, infrastructure or projects along the Gulf Coast, Interior said. Michael Brown, CEO of Ocean Winds North America, said in April that the deal provided “clarity” for the company and its investors.

Hochschild and Bonta say that Interior illegally reallocated federal taxpayer dollars to pay Golden State Wind to abandon its offshore wind energy lease and invest an equal amount in out-of-state fossil fuel projects, which will do nothing to support California’s energy economy.

They also say California has invested more than $100 million over the past decade to ready its ports, transmission systems and industries to support offshore wind generation, and those investments may be lost if the Trump administration successfully halts offshore wind development.

California plans to sue in 60 days if the situation isn't rectified.

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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 vaccine was found to be about 55% effective against COVID-19-associated hospitalizations, and reduced COVID-19-related trips to emergency departments and urgent care clinics by 50%, according to the study published Tuesday by JAMA Network Open.

The findings are not particularly surprising: Researchers have repeatedly found that COVID-19 vaccines work. But the paper drew public attention after Trump administration political appointees decided not to run it in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publication.

They argued that the study's design was too vulnerable to false assumptions that could produce flawed results. But many public health researchers maintain it's a reliable design that's been used for decades and offers the best way to understand how well a vaccine is working currently.

“It is critical that we continue to characterize and publish estimates of vaccine effectiveness in populations with changing immunity against evolving viral strains,” wrote Natalie Dean, an Emory University biostatistics expert, in a commentary that accompanied the study's publication Tuesday.

The research originally was scheduled to be published this spring in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC's flagship publication. It had been cleared by the agency's Office of Science but was flagged by acting agency Director Jay Bhattacharya, said Althea Grant-Lenzy, the CDC's chief science officer, in a recent interview.

His decision did not mean the paper would never be published, she said, but rather that the authors had to take time to address his concerns. The authors had the freedom to take the study instead to outside journals, she added.

The study approach, called “test-negative design,” looks at people who were admitted to hospitals or visited emergency rooms with respiratory illnesses. The researchers checked whether patients were vaccinated and then calculated the odds of a positive COVID-19 test among vaccinated patients vs. those who were unvaccinated.

Papers using that methodology have been published — after review by experts in the field — in a number of esteemed journals, including Pediatrics and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Bhattacharya has argued the methodology relies too heavily on assumptions and could produce results that were skewed by factors such as prior infections and how different groups of patients behave.

Proponents of the study design say the methodology is built to address differences related to who seeks care, and prior infection shouldn’t be much of an issue because so many Americans have already been infected by the coronavirus. They say no study design is perfect but that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials haven’t proposed a realistic alternative for getting real-time estimates of how well vaccines are working.

Earlier this month, the CDC held a forum to discuss the pros and cons of such studies. A panel of speakers at the front of a CDC auditorium included Dean and two others who mostly focused on the methodology's strengths.

But the panel also included one critic: Martin Kulldorff, a Swedish-born biostatistician who — along with Bhattacharya — was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 letter maintaining that pandemic shutdowns were causing irreparable harm.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year appointed Kulldorff as head of a federal vaccine advisory committee before the biostatistician stepped down to become chief science officer at the HHS planning and evaluation office.

Kulldorff argued that studies with that design can — but shouldn't — include people with different diseases. He also questioned why longer-term studies weren't used to evaluate COVID-19 vaccines.

“We were in a pandemic! That's why!” one person called from the audience.

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

The disagreement over nuclear inspections came as Iran’s president met with Pakistani mediators and technical teams from the U.S. and Iran continued talks in Switzerland.

A United Nations agency said Tuesday that a plan was underway to move stranded ships and their thousands of crew members through the strait — a vital passage for global energy supplies that Iran had blocked after the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28.

Earlier in the day, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, told reporters in Tehran that U.N. inspectors were not scheduled to examine nuclear sites bombed by the U.S. last year, rejecting comments made a day before by U.S. Vice President JD Vance.

President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that if Iran had not agreed to inspections, he would cut off talks with Tehran immediately. But he added there was no rush for those inspections to begin.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has not responded to requests for comment over its possible role. It has been in and out of Iran since Israel’s 12-day war in 2025, but has not been granted access to bombed enrichment sites targeted by the U.S.

Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, though it has highly enriched uranium that could be used to build atomic bombs, should it choose to do so, the IAEA has said.

The U.S. and Iran agreed to a deal last week that calls for Tehran to dilute its stockpile of enriched uranium, and waives U.S.-backed sanctions on the country while giving each side 60 days to hammer out broader agreements.

Plan to evacuate stranded seafarers through Strait of Hormuz

The plan to evacuate 11,000 crew members stranded on ships is being done in cooperation with Iran, Oman, all other coastal states in the region, the United States and the maritime industry, according to the secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization, Arsenio Dominguez.

“We have secured the necessary safety guarantees and have thoroughly verified the conditions for safe navigation to support these operations,” he said in a statement.

The organization said moving the ships will be done gradually to avoid any risk of collision.

A shipping insurance executive cheered the development. “That can only be good news for all concerned,” said Marcus Baker, global head of marine, cargo and logistics for Marsh in London.

But the uneasy ceasefire already has been tested by Iran saying it closed the strait again over fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah in Lebanon. Violence again broke out in Lebanon Tuesday.

The U.S. has said that negotiators have discussed “mechanisms” to ensure that the strait remains open. Ship traffic is increasing but questions remain about who controls the passageway.

Data and analytics company Kpler confirmed 39 ships crossed through the strait Monday, after about 92 crossings between Friday and Sunday. Prior to the war, roughly 100 ships a day made the journey.

Two U.S. aircraft carriers were continuing to operate in the Middle East, the U.S. military’s Central Command said.

Iran's president makes his first visit to Islamabad since the war started

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday discussed a range of issues, including regional peace and economic cooperation, according to a statement from the presidency in Islamabad.

It was the Iranian president's first visit since the U.S. and Israel launched war on Iran. He said during a news conference after their meeting that there was no mention of Iran’s missile program in the memorandum of understanding signed between the U.S. and Iran.

“If it was not for Iran’s missile capabilities, our country would have been plundered and destroyed,” Pezeshkian said, vowing to “never compromise or negotiate our missile capabilities.”

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif afterward said he will attend the Tehran funeral of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the war's opening airstrikes.

Iran says negotiations focused on sanctions relief, nuclear issues and more

At the start of a 60-day window to reach a permanent deal to end the war, Iran and the U.S. agreed to create a “de-confliction cell” to address the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Iran said the talks in Switzerland led to the creation of negotiation groups focused on sanctions relief, nuclear issues, reconstruction, and monitoring, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. The report quoted Kazem Gharibabadi, a deputy foreign minister leading the talks there, as saying the countries also formed a way to discuss ships moving through Hormuz.

In southern Lebanon Tuesday, Israeli soldiers opened fire and killed two people. That followed two days of calm after a ceasefire brokered Saturday. Any renewal of heavy fighting could threaten the broader diplomatic talks, since Iran has demanded that a full truce in Lebanon be part of any comprehensive deal.

Israel occupies part of Lebanon and insists it must be able to attack militants launching attacks into northern Israel.

The Israeli military said troops fired at four Hezbollah members who were riding a bulldozer and a motorcycle and had entered a security zone and failed to stop despite warning shots. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that the two men were killed next to a bulldozer clearing a road.

No Israeli airstrikes or shelling have been reported since Sunday and Hezbollah has not claimed any attacks in what has been the longest halt in the fighting since the latest Israel-Hezbollah war erupted in March.

Netanyahu raises new questions over fragile Lebanon ceasefire

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that his military still has “full freedom of action" in Lebanon to thwart any threats.

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah is a signatory to the U.S.-Iran deal. Netanyahu has vowed to keep his forces in southern Lebanon until threats to Israel are eliminated. Hezbollah has refused to halt attacks unless Israel commits to withdrawing.

When asked about Netanyahu’s comments, Trump said “we’re going to take a look at it,” adding that the situation would “get solved.”

The main highway leading south from Beirut was jammed Tuesday with people displaced from southern Lebanon returning to their homes. Among them was Hawraa Nour El-Din, from the village of Khirbet Selm.

“We don’t want the negotiations done by the government,” she said. “We want Iran to negotiate on our behalf, and we are returning victorious, whether everyone likes it or not.”

In Washington, the State Department said a new round of Israel-Lebanon talks began on Tuesday with both political and security issues on the agenda.

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Rising reported from Bangkok and Gambrell from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, Josh Boak, Matthew Lee in Washington, Mae Anderson in New York, and Seung Min Kim in Reading, Pennsylvania contributed to this report.

The awards were announced as part of the VHSL’s 2026 Class 3 All-State Girls Soccer Team.

Carnevali claimed Class 3 Player of the Year honors for the second consecutive season after leading the Knights’ attack throughout their championship run. The attacking midfielder finished the season with 26 goals and 18 assists while appearing in all 24 matches and serving as a team captain.

After totaling 15 goals and 24 assists a year ago, Carnevali expanded her impact in the attacking third by becoming a more dangerous scoring threat while continuing to create opportunities for teammates. Through three varsity seasons, she has amassed 53 goals and 54 assists.

Carnevali played a key role in Cave Spring’s postseason success and delivered in the biggest moments. She converted one of the Knights’ penalty kicks in the Class 3 state championship match against Western Albemarle, helping Cave Spring secure a 4-3 shootout victory after the teams battled to a scoreless draw through 100 minutes. The title was the first state championship in program history.

A three-time first-team all-district and first-team all-region selection, Carnevali has now earned first-team all-state honors in back-to-back seasons. She also has been named Region 3D Player of the Year twice.

French was recognized after guiding Cave Spring to a 23-0-1 record, an unbeaten season and the first state championship in school history during his first year leading the program.

The Knights capped their title run by defeating Western Albemarle in a rematch of the previous season’s state final. Cave Spring prevailed in penalty kicks after neither team could find a breakthrough during regulation or overtime.

French brought two decades of coaching experience to the Knights. He began his coaching career in England before moving to the United States, where he has worked extensively in club and collegiate soccer. He currently serves as sporting director for Virginia United in Roanoke.

Throughout his coaching career, French has emphasized a player-centered philosophy focused on development, trust and investment in each athlete, a formula that helped produce one of the most successful seasons in Cave Spring girls soccer history.

Cave Spring placed three additional players on the first-team all-state squad. Junior forward Lucy Pietravalle, junior midfielder Myla McDonald and junior defender Abby Tozier each earned first-team honors after helping lead the Knights to an unbeaten 23-0-1 season and the program’s first state championship. Hidden Valley junior defender Brynnigan Raymond also was selected to the first team, while Titans freshman forward Lilah Harding and sophomore midfielder Addison Johnson earned second-team all-state recognition.

The deal was announced on Tuesday by Pitts' agency, Athletes First, in a social media post. The agency said it is the largest three-year deal for a tight end in NFL history.

The agreement with Pitts comes three weeks after the team signed wide receiver Drake London to a four-year, $141 million deal.

Pitts, 25, was the No. 8 overall pick by the Falcons in the 2021 NFL draft. He set a career high with 88 catches for 928 yards and five touchdowns last season. He ranked second among tight ends in receptions and receiving yards.

Pitts’ contract, which includes $36 million in guaranteed salary, was first reported by ESPN. The Falcons have not announced the deal, but still celebrated by posting a video of Pitts on social media.

Pitts' big season included a three-touchdown game in Atlanta's 29-28 win at Tampa Bay on Dec. 11. That win came with Kirk Cousins at quarterback. The Falcons will enter training camp with Tua Tagovailoa expected to compete with Michael Penix Jr. for the starting job at quarterback.

Falcons coach Kevin Stefanski says Penix, recovering from knee surgery, is on schedule in his recovery. Penix had not been cleared for team drills in the recent minicamp but was impressive in seven-on-seven drills.

The Falcons signed Tagovailoa, the former Miami Dolphins starter, to a one-year deal in March after releasing Cousins with a post-June 1 designation.

The Falcons used a franchise tag of $15.045 million on Pitts, but now the tight end will play under the new deal in the 2026 season. The $18 million average of Pitts' contract places him third on the list of the NFL's highest paid tight ends, behind San Francisco's George Kittle ($19.1 million) and Arizona's Trey McBride ($19 million).

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

“While this decision is not easy, it is time for me to step aside and allow the next generation of leaders and coaches the opportunity to continue growing and building the program,” Wilson said.

A 1997 William Fleming graduate, Wilson maintained the Lady Colonels’ presence as a perennial contender the past 8 seasons. The program made multiple state tournament appearances including a Class 5 state runner-up finish in the 2024-2025 season.

Throughout his tenure, he became one of the most respected coaches in the Roanoke Valley, known for his commitment to player development, academic achievement and community involvement.

His contributions to William Fleming athletics extend beyond the sidelines. In 2023, Wilson was inducted into the William Fleming Athletic Hall of Fame as a student-athlete, recognizing his accomplishments during his playing days and his lasting impact on the school’s athletic tradition.

Wilson will not be a stranger to the William Fleming community as he steps into role of student support specialist and the assistant athletics director.

The Division I Cabinet unanimously approved the change from the longstanding tenet of college sports that gave athletes five years to complete four seasons of competition with their eligibility clock starting at the time of enrollment, regardless of age.

The move will all but eliminate waivers or redshirt years for extended eligibility except for religious missions, maternity leave or active-duty military service. No longer will extensions be considered for athletes who are injured.

“While previous NCAA rules have served college sports well for a long time, we heard also loud and clear from NCAA members and student-athletes that eligibility rules should be easier to understand,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said.

The NCAA believes the age-based model will make rules easier to administer and help make roster management more predictable for coaches.

“I think this new rule is one of the most sensible things the NCAA has ever done, and it will absolutely eliminate the type of eligibility litigation that’s predominated lately,” said attorney Tom Mars, who represented Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss in his successful quest for an additional year of eligibility in a case that went to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Mars added, “Let me put it in bottom-line language: There’s no way somebody could file an eligibility case based on a medical waiver now with the new rule. Can’t be done. You can file it, I guess, but it will be immediately dismissed.”

The rules, which will become official when the Cabinet adjourns its meetings on Wednesday, are set to take effect this fall. Division I includes more than 350 schools, some 200,000 athletes and, with football and basketball leading the way, is by far the most lucrative of the three in the NCAA.

The five-in-five language also is included in Senate legislation intended to address numerous concerns across college sports and comes after a wave of lawsuits from athletes seeking to extend their college careers and ability to earn money through revenue sharing and name, image and likeness deals. Still to be seen is whether the new rules will withstand legal scrutiny alongside the existing challenges.

Heisman Trophy runner-up and Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia remains the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging an NCAA rule counting seasons spent at junior colleges against players’ Division I eligibility time. That case is slated for trial in February.

“I wouldn’t say that the rule change itself will slow lawsuits down,” said Sam Ehrlich, a Boise State assistant professor of legal studies in business and management who tracks litigation against the NCAA.

Ehrlich said athletes very well could continue to petition courts for extended eligibility based on antitrust arguments, but appellate courts recently have delivered wins for the NCAA by overturning preliminary injunctions in several cases.

The new eligibility model will affect all athletes who enroll in 2027-28. Currently enrolled athletes with eligibility after the 2025-26 academic year, and those who are incoming freshmen this fall, can apply the age-based model or continue under previous eligibility rules. It would be advantageous this year for some incoming freshman hockey players to use the traditional model if they are coming from the junior ranks and are 20, as is common in the sport.

For schools with current athletes who may be eligible for hardship waivers or extensions of eligibility under current rules, the D-I Cabinet indicated the deadline to submit requests to the NCAA is July 31. After that date, waivers would no longer be available.

Ryan Downton, the attorney for Pavia in his case against the NCAA that won him a sixth year of eligibility last season, said he was happy to see athletes allowed five seasons of competition. But he said it was likely that high school class of 2022 athletes who are now cut off from further competition will go to court.

“These athletes are still within their five-year eligibility window and spent their entire college careers competing against fifth- and sixth-year players due to the COVID waiver,” Downton wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "We hope the courts will correct the unfairness of the NCAA’s ruling and allow class of 2022 players to play their fifth season in 2026-27.”

Ramogi Huma, executive director of the National College Players Association, wrote in a text to the AP that he had not seen the final language that was adopted but that the rule's “general structure that has been discussed is within reason.”

“But it's important for athletes to have an opportunity to seek hardship waivers,” he wrote.

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

It inspired her to bring those health care facilities to the Roanoke Valley, which helped bring Friendship Richfield Living to Salem.

Today, Friendship honored Harris with a plaque unveiling, making sure her legacy is never forgotten.

Kim Bratic - the Executive Director of Advancement at Friendship Richfield Living - says that even though the dedication is to Harris, it also honors all women across healthcare.

“We have been there at every angle of health care, and a lot of times that’s overlooked, and recognizing that everything that Jane Morgan Harris stood for was really about taking care of people regardless of their ability to pay for care,” Bratic said. “Back in the day, people actually traded apple butter and eggs for that care. That’s a legacy that friendship still embraces today.”

Today was also the day that the garden was dedicated in her name. The Jane Morgan Harris Garden has dozens - if not hundreds - of day lilies.

Shirley Jarusek - Director of Landscape Operations at Friendship Richfield Living - says she spent nearly five years getting the garden to the perfect condition.

She says the term day lily comes from a Latin term Hemerocallis, or beauty for a day. They only stay in full bloom for a day, but because they bloom in different stages, visitors can see different flowers every week.

Part of Jarusek’s inspiration behind the garden was ensuring that Harris’s name wasn’t lost to time.

“There was a chapel here with her name on it, but during renovations, of course, it was removed, so I felt her name had would get lost and I was not going to have any part of that,” Jarusek said.

Among those charged is a nurse practitioner accused in Texas of billing Medicare for medically unnecessary wound-care procedures and using the proceeds for fancy jewelry and luxury cars; a mental health company owner who prosecutors say targeted the homeless by billing for crisis stabilization services they did not receive; and a hospice owner alleged to have paid kickbacks to a funeral home employee for information about deceased Medicare beneficiaries.

A heart doctor, meanwhile, is charged in Florida in an $89 million healthcare fraud scheme, accused of billing insurers for medically unnecessary cardiovascular screening tests for college student-athletes and then rubber-stamping the results as normal without personally reviewing them.

The doctor, Jason Finkelstein, 53, faces charges of healthcare fraud and conspiracy in what prosecutors describe as a yearslong scheme that preyed on the fears of athletes that they could die on playing fields or courts of sudden cardiac arrest. Athletes with no preexisting conditions who were concerned about being cleared to compete were administered tests they did not need and, in one case, a patient whose results were falsely certified as normal later died after his significant heart problems were undetected, the indictment says.

Healthcare fraud has been a long-running Justice Department priority and news conferences announcing roundups and crackdowns have been common occurrences across the years. The Trump administration has made a point of emphasizing enforcement over the last year, including through the appointment of a new assistant attorney general, Colin McDonald, to help oversee healthcare fraud prosecutions at a Justice Department that operates multiple specialized task forces.

“Today’s cases allege more than the theft of taxpayer dollars. Many allege the theft of human dignity,” McDonald said at a news conference announcing this year's crackdown, which covers cases charged or unsealed since June 8. “Our sick, needy and elderly placing their faith in the gift of medicine were neglected, ignored and used for personal profit,”

The department says Finkelstein’s case, with allegations not only of unrendered services but also poor medical performance that put patients at risk, represents the type of sophisticated scheme prosecutors are striving to disrupt.

A lawyer for Finkelstein, a Texas-based doctor who pleaded not guilty during a court appearance in Florida on Monday, did not return messages seeking comment.

The alleged fraud ran between 2019 and the end of last year and, prosecutors say, involved Finkelstein and a pair of unidentified co-conspirators at a Florida-based cardiovascular testing and treatment practice where he served as medical director

Officials say the scheme had multiple components, with Finkelstein and his company using what the indictment says were deceptive marketing tactics to encourage and offer free heart screens for students who did not need them and then certifying the results as normal without any review.

The indictment quotes Finkelstein as telling an unnamed co-conspirator with whom he worked that “(t)hese kids could be high risk ...(o)ne of them drops dead on a field, they’re coming after both of us.”

Finkelstein's co-conspirators blasted out emails to athletic trainers at colleges and universities stating that the tests being offered could identify any life-threatening condition that could prevent the students from playing, and also offered kickbacks and other inducements to school officials to refer potential patients for testing, according to the indictment.

Insurance companies do not cover blanket cardiovascular testing but instead require a prior finding of a medical necessity. To avert that roadblock, prosecutors say, Finkelstein submitted to insurers phony diagnoses of conditions, such as elevated blood pressure and hypertension, that the athletes did not actually have.

His company relied on sonographers who lacked the requisite credentials to travel to college campuses to perform the tests, and because Finkelstein was licensed in the 48 contiguous states, he and his company were able to submit claims for patients across the country, the indictment says.

At the same time, prosecutors say, Finkelstein would certify cardiac test results as being normal without actually reviewing them.

In one instance in 2024, according to the indictment, he signed off on approximately 63 test result images of one patient just 11 seconds after accessing them. The test results actually revealed a significantly enlarged heart and the teenage patient later died on the basketball court, officials said.

“There is no way they could miss that, except they didn’t care,” said Mehmet Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon by training and head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “This is not a diagnostic company. It’s a predatory scheme dressed up in medical clothing and we’re going to treat it as such.”

“Damn, New York, we really did it,” Brunson, the finals MVP, said at a celebration at City Hall. “Somehow, someway, I knew we were going to find a way to get this done.”

Moments later, Mayor Zohran Mamdani presented keys to the city to the Knicks' players, coaches, owners and staff. Wearing a team jersey under his suit jacket, Mamdani said he and other fans “waited because we knew deep down in our sick, suffering hearts” the Knicks would someday win.

Blue and orange confetti swirled through the air during the parade. Massive cheers of “Let’s go, Knicks!” and “Knicks in five!” kept erupting.

And OG Anunoby, who scored the go-ahead basket in Game 4 of the finals on a tip-in with 1.2 seconds left, left his parade float to interact with fans, holding the NBA Cup in-season championship trophy in one hand and a bottle of Patron tequila in the other.

Director Spike Lee, perhaps the team’s most iconic fan, was on a float with Brunson, savoring the moment. “I’ve never been to a parade — ever — and I’m glad it’s this one,” Lee said.

The MVP’s mom, Sandra Brunson, wore a shirt with photos of Jalen and husband Rick, who played for the Knicks and is an assistant on coach Mike Brown's staff. She echoed her son’s words, saying, “It was all worth it.”

Karl-Anthony Towns hoisted the Eastern Conference championship trophy and a cigar on top of a parade bus while Mamdani danced. Later, Towns approached a group of kids with the NBA trophy to let them get their hands on it, bringing joyful screams.

Knicks fans turn out in force

Several blocks from the parade route, fans stood shoulder to shoulder — sometimes on each other’s shoulders — or climbed traffic lights and sanitation trucks. Far away on the Brooklyn Bridge, people gathered just to hear the loudspeakers.

“I had to be here today,” said Shareefa Wallace, 34, who got up at 3 a.m. to make her way from suburban Long Island. She grew up in the city going to Knicks games, and she sported the souvenir jersey of a legend from that era, Patrick Ewing.

Owner James Dolan thanked fans for waiting more than a half-century. Brown encouraged fans to keep their energy going “because this championship is about you guys.”

‘The New York vibe’

Nearby bars and delis filled with fans, some wishing they’d arrived at dawn. But many seemed at peace with only experiencing the parade from a distance.

“We just want to be with the New York energy and the New York vibe,” said Jean Strong, who came to the parade from Harlem with his nephew and sister.

Terrell Emerson, a chef who grew up in Queens, said he drove from Maryland with his daughter Madison — named in honor of the Knicks' home arena, Madison Square Garden.

Beaming, Madison held a handwritten sign announcing she’d skipped her fifth-grade graduation to be there.

Stars and Knicks legends

Knicks great Walt “Clyde” Frazier — a member of the ’70s champion teams — led the parade in a stylish convertible, wearing his NBA title rings. Frazier had late teammates and coaches on his mind.

“They would be amazed at what has happened to the Knicks and how they’ve really captivated the city this year,” Frazier said. “This has exceeded any expectations I ever thought that we’d have.”

Timothée Chalamet, Ben Stiller, Jon Stewart, Mariska Hargitay, Tracy Morgan and other celebrities joined the party, while Knicks play-by-play announcer Mike Breen emceed the City Hall ceremony.

Alicia Keys performed her 2009 hit “Empire State of Mind” and a portion of the Billy Joel classic, “New York State of Mind.”

A parade decades in the making

The mere fact that the parade is happening is historic in itself. Although the Knicks won the championship twice in the 1970s, the city didn’t host a parade for them either time. Then-Mayor John Lindsay had cut down on ticker-tape extravaganzas for financial and other reasons. Instead, he held a 1970 reception at the mayoral mansion and a jam-packed ceremony in 1973 outside City Hall.

This time, the city went all out. A police officer could be seen holding a sign reading, “This is really happening.”

And a massive security operation

Officials said 10,000 police officers were deployed to secure the event, which follows ebullient but sometimes chaotic street celebrations and some violence during the Knicks' title run, including a five-game final against San Antonio.

Police said 10 people in the area around the parade were arrested and three others were issued summonses, on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to felony assault. The Fire Department said it took 30 people to hospitals and treated 31 others at the scene for ailments that included heat-related emergencies, asthma and minor injuries.

Before the parade, a small group of people were crushed against a barrier near Fulton Street, a key subway hub, pinned between a swelling crowd and a group of police officers shoving the barrier.

Some 650 sanitation workers were assigned to clean up what could be tens of thousands of pounds (kilograms) of debris, if recent history is any guide.

Why does New York throw ticker-tape parades?

Ticker-tape parades derive their name from the narrow strips of paper used by telegraph-era “stock ticker” machines. New York brokerage firm workers tossed the paper from office windows during parades in the late 19th century, adding a swirling spectacle.

Over the years, especially up to the mid-1960s, the city rolled out ticker-tape parades for visiting foreign leaders, historic anniversaries and feats in aviation, war, sports, music, space travel and more.

The Knicks' parade was the 210th, coming after a bash for the WNBA's New York Liberty in 2024.

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz and Julie Walker in New York and AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney in Southampton, New York, contributed.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the sanctions target five Cuban entities, including three linked to Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., a business conglomerate run by Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. Best known as GAESA, it is believed to command nearly 40% of Cuba's gross domestic product. As of early 2024, it held $14.5 billion in liquid reserves.

“The situation in Cuba is devolving as the island’s corrupt, brutal and anti-American Communist regime continues to prioritize its own total control over the freedom, opportunity and basic well-being of the Cuban people,” Rubio wrote on X.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, accused “regime elites” of using GAESA to “steal the island’s few resources, diverting them for repression, anti-American subversion and spying instead of schools, power plants, and basic necessities for the Cuban people.”

Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba's foreign affairs minister, rejected the sanctions, calling Rubio “dishonest and mendacious.”

“Cuba has proven stronger, more capable, and more effective than he anticipated in the face of the ruthless aggression and collective punishment inflicted upon its people and their living conditions," he wrote on X. “What this individual is promoting from the world’s greatest power is a crime.”

Cuba’s U.N. Ambassador Ernesto Soberón Guzmán accused Rubio of directing “a chorus of lies” featuring Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a Republican.

“No government, no rational person — and certainly not the people of Cuba who suffer from the economic impact of the U.S. economic war — can believe that the intensification of the blockade, the energy siege, and the rest of the most recent sanctions are aimed at supporting the Cuban people,” he said in a statement.

Anyone who provides services to the targeted Cuban entities risks being sanctioned and cut off from the U.S. financial system.

“By designating specific entities, they’re making it clear to foreign investors: ‘If your business in Cuba touches any of these folks, you risk being banned,’” said Michael Bustamante, a professor and chair in Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.

“For most of these companies, it’s a bridge too far,” he said of the impact of the new sanctions.

The 5 entities sanctioned are key to Cuba's economy

Almacenes Universales S.A., or AUSA, is among the entities sanctioned. As the government’s main logistics and warehousing company, it holds up Cuba's export and import system and is the main logistics operator at the port of Mariel, west of Havana. It’s also the main storage company used by the state, Cuba’s private sector and foreign investor partners.

Last week, Cuba announced a series of economic reforms, including allowing the private sector to bypass the state when importing goods. But Bustamante said he doesn’t believe that measure is operational yet.

If people or companies avoid doing business with the storage entities, he said, that could disrupt the flow of goods and lead to humanitarian consequences.

Also sanctioned was Rafin S.A., which Bustamante described as a “very opaque” company that he believes operates as the corporate financial arm within GAESA. He said it’s not a bank but holds capital from the government and GAESA and may be a player in financial deals.

“That would also seemingly throw more cold water on the foreign investors that are already there,” Bustamante said.

The third GAESA-related entity that was sanctioned is Banco Financiero Internacional S.A., a commercial bank that Bustamante said serves as a key institution for foreign investors. “If you don’t have a bank where you can go as a foreign investor, it makes your operations logistically quite difficult, to put it mildly.”

Max Meizlish, a former U.S. Treasury sanctions enforcement officer, said the bank was targeted because it's “a key nexus” for GAESA-related funds: "This is significant.”

Also sanctioned were Geominera S.A., a state-owned mining company, and Empresa Siderúrgica Jose Martí, which the U.S. described as Cuba’s largest raw steel producer.

The final sanction was slapped against Annalie Lilliam Rueda Cardero, daughter-in-law of former President Raúl Castro.

Sanctions imposed days after sweeping economic reforms

The sanctions are the latest in a recent string that have targeted GAESA itself and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.

“It’s very, very hard to suss out what’s going on here,” Bustamante said. “Is this setting the table for the great sale of Cuba state assets to the highest bidder or the lowest bidder?...Is this part of the recipe of a hostile takeover?”

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump keeps pressuring for a change in Cuba’s political and economic model, accusing the island of representing a threat to the U.S. because of its ties to U.S. adversaries. The Cuban government has repeatedly denied it’s a threat.

Meanwhile, Cuba unveiled economic reforms last week that Bustamante described as “potentially the most significant liberalization of the Cuban economy in 60 years," though he said questions and doubts remain.

On Tuesday, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said the reforms “are modest, long overdue and ultimately superficial smoke signals from the Cuban regime. This is part of the dictatorship’s handbook: announce a cycle of supposed reforms to insinuate a desire for change, then quickly roll back any changes the moment the regime’s total control is at all threatened.”

“The U.S. administration is going to continue applying pressure on the regime until the regime is a different beast entirely,” said Meizlish, a research fellow with the U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Cuba is already struggling with severe blackouts, food and water shortages and a crumbling healthcare system stemming in part from a U.S. energy blockade. In late January, Trump threatened tariffs against any country that sells or provides oil to the island, which depended heavily on oil shipments from Venezuela that were halted after the U.S. attacked the South American country.

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Associated Press reporters Matthew Lee in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

The federal government, which was sued by Michigan and a Detroit suburb, informed a judge Monday that a warehouse purchased in Romulus will be sold. Plans also are unraveling in Social Circle, Georgia, and the El Paso suburb of Socorro, local officials said.

The three cities are among 11 where the federal government spent a combined $1.074 billion on warehouses.

The New York Times first reported last week that federal immigration officials now plan to get rid of seven of the 11 warehouses — either giving them to other federal agencies or selling them outright.

DHS didn't confirm the reports but said in a statement that it is "moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners.”

Pushback to warehouse purchases was immediate

“Wildly foolhardy" is how Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official under the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations described the plans to convert the buildings into immigrant detention.

One issue was that Noem’s purchases were largely carried out of public view and angered communities that were caught by surprise. Some only learned about ICE’s ambitions after the agency bought or leased space for detainees.

After Noem was fired, her replacement, Markwayne Mullin, quickly paused the purchase of new warehouses.

Objections came from Republicans and Democrats alike

Some were opposed on moral grounds to ICE’s presence in their neighborhoods, while others questioned whether the facilities would be a drain on local resources, such as sewer and water systems.

Seven federal lawsuits were filed, and regulatory roadblocks created hassles elsewhere.

Meanwhile, questions about how much DHS paid for some warehouses triggered an internal audit. The agency shelled out double what the New Jersey warehouse was valued at in tax records and nearly five times more than the assessed value of the Social Circle warehouse.

Trickler-McNulty, the former ICE official, said ICE does have a few facilities that it owns that it inherited from its predecessor agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but generally ICE has contracted out its detention needs.

“Facilities over 2,000 people just break down. It’s very hard to run a very big facility, to keep it staffed, to keep all of it moving,” she said.

Former head of plumbing business takes over for Noem

Mullin, who took over and expanded his family’s plumbing business before representing Oklahoma in the U.S House and Senate, acknowledged there had been issues at his confirmation hearing.

He noted that most municipalities don’t have the capacity in their infrastructure for waste and water.

Indeed the water issues were such a challenge that a federal lawsuit filed over the Salt Lake City warehouse, the costliest purchased at $145.4 million, said ICE officials told the mayor that they might need to truck water and sewage from the facility as an “interim solution.”

Plans begin to unravel

The New York Times story, which cited internal documents that the newspaper obtained, said the Salt Lake City warehouse is among those that federal immigration officials plans to hand off or sell. Also on the list is the Romulus warehouse, as well as one in New Jersey and two each in Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said it would have been an “abomination" if the 249,000-square-foot Romulus warehouse was transformed into immigrant detention, as was planned when it was purchased for $34.7 million,

“The ICE warehouse proposal was every bit as ill-conceived as it was cruel and unnecessary, and I am relieved that this chapter is coming to a close,” Nessel, a Democrat, said.

Social Circle, Georgia, announced last week in a statement that it has received notification from U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican, that the Department of Homeland Security is no longer pursuing an ICE detention facility there.

Meanwhile, acting ICE Director David Venturella told officials in the El Paso area during a visit there earlier this month that the agency has changed its plans for three warehouses it purchased in nearby Socorro for $122 million, said Rep. Veronica Escobar, who was present for the visit.

Escobar, a Democrat who represents El Paso, said during a news conference that ICE no longer plans to detain up to 8,500 immigrants in the facilities as originally envisioned, and instead will convert the property into an ICE campus, she said. The site will include an unspecified smaller number of detainees but also ICE offices and training space, she said.

Frustrations persist as communities seek details

However, many of the communities remained frustrated, as they struggled to get information about possible sales.

In Pennsylvania, state and local officials said Tuesday that they hadn’t received any new information from DHS about two warehouses bought earlier this year by the department. Both are being held up by the state’s denial of permits over concerns that drinking water and sewer service are inadequate to handle thousands of inhabitants.

U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, whose district includes both warehouses, said he met Friday with DHS personnel, but that the agency hadn’t made a decision whether to use them as detention centers or sell them.

In Georgia, the city manager in Oakwood, said Tuesday he is talking to his state congressional delegation, trying to confirm rumors that a warehouse there will be sold. “I have not heard anything yet,” B.R. White said.

Work appears to continue on other warehouses

In Maryland, where a judge extended a stoppage on transforming a sprawling warehouse into a processing facility for immigrants, ICE is currently collecting public comments about the environmental impacts of the facility. And an announcement earlier this month disclosed more details on plans for the facility, including six secure recreation yards.

Patrick Dattilio, the founder of Hagerstown Rapid Response, which formed in opposition to housing ICE detainees in the warehouse, said there has been little communication outside of the lawsuit. But he remains committed to keeping it from opening.

“It’s a big warehouse," Dattilio said. “It’s not meant for people.”

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Associated Press writers Marc Levy and Ed White contributed to this report.

The Supreme Court overturned Richard Glossip's conviction in 2025, and a state judge released the man on bond last month.

His attorneys had asked the same judge to consider whether there is enough evidence to retry him, but after a hearing Tuesday, the judge ruled that a new trial would start Sept. 28.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond had pledged to retry Glossip for first-degree murder, but is not pursuing the death penalty again.

“We are pleased with the ruling,” a spokesperson, Leslie Berger, said in an email.

Glossip's attorney, Don Knight, declined to comment.

Glossip had been sentenced to death for the January 1997 killing in Oklahoma City of motel owner Barry Van Treese, his former boss. Van Treese was beaten with a baseball bat in what prosecutors have alleged was a murder-for-hire scheme.

Prosecutors accused Glossip of setting up Van Treese's murder, and a co-defendant, Justin Sneed, agreed to testify against Glossip to avoid the death penalty himself. Sneed was the only witness linking Glossip directly to the crime.

But the Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors allowed Sneed to give testimony about his mental health history that they knew was false, and said it violated Glossip's constitutional right to a fair trial. Drummond agreed that Glossip should get a new trial.

Glossip has maintained his innocence and has drawn support from Kim Kardashian and other prominent figures. Van Treese’s family had asked the Supreme Court to leave Glossip’s conviction and sentence intact.

During Glossip's time on death row, Oklahoma courts set nine different execution dates for him. He came so close to being put to death that he ate three separate last meals.

Each time, he was spared because of questions about Oklahoma's planned procedures for lethal injection. In 2015, he was even held in a cell next to Oklahoma’s execution chamber, waiting to be strapped to a gurney and die by lethal injection, when the state's governor put executions on hold to review its execution protocols.

The Roanoke County fire department still has not reported a cause for the fire that killed at least 59 cats. Regardless of the cause, the danger was still the same for anything living in the home.

“Typically, we call it an IDLH environment, meaning that it’s immediately dangerous to life and health. Just because of the products of combustion, the toxic gases produced as a byproduct of the fire itself is not a survivable environment for any living being, to where with a few gulps of that air, you would probably end up having those symptoms of smoke inhalation and eventual death, unfortunately, within minutes,” said Laura Schneider, public information officer for Roanoke County Fire and Rescue.

That was the situation when a reported 59 cats died in a house in Vinton over the weekend. Fire crews responded and had the fire out in about 10 minutes, but for the animals, it was already too late.

“So, you add the high stress, you add the flames, the smoke, the toxic gases, things that will easily kill them. It’s really hard for that many animals to escape a home in a house fire,” Schneider said.

The reported number of cat deaths may have been higher than what was reported.

“So, they say 59, that was in the original press release, but there was at least 59. So the official count was 59, but they do believe there may have been more that was not counted during the investigation, which is still ongoing,” she said.

Schneider says fires like this one double in size every 30 seconds. Crews kept the flames from flashing over and creating a fireball that could have engulfed the building – but for the cats, it wasn’t enough. A fact not lost on the firefighting crew.

“It’s not easy for any firefighter, any person on our staff, to witness the deaths of so many animals, especially when they were all living in one house. It’s just really hard, especially just seeing them in pain, it’s not really an easy thing for us to see,” Schneider said.

ORIGINAL STORY

A house fire in Vinton killed dozens of cats and sent one resident to the hospital early Sunday morning, according to the Roanoke County Fire & Rescue Department.

Crews were called to the 200 block of Gunn Avenue just before 5 a.m. after reports of a residential structure fire. Firefighters knocked down the heavy blaze in about 10 minutes, but not before the fire killed 59 cats. One cat and one dog survived. Two residents were displaced — one of whom was taken to the hospital.

Neighbor Allen Dawes said he was woken up by the commotion outside his home.

“We saw that there was smoke coming out, lights were going off, we woke up to all the fire truck and ambulance going off in our yard and all around here. Walked outside to see what the commotion was, saw smoke coming out of the house, saw one of the neighbors standing there with an ambulance.”

Investigators estimate the fire caused approximately $100,000 in damage to the structure. The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.

Animal welfare experts cite fire risks, capacity for care

The large number of animals inside the home prompted local animal welfare advocates to speak out about the responsibilities of pet ownership.

Lisa O’Neill, director of Angels of Assisi, said homes with many animals carry specific fire risks that owners may overlook.

“All those cats in one home, they’re bound to knock something over. I would imagine that there’s a lot of laundry involved so you’ve got to really be conscientious of lint filters, a lot of pet hair in the house can go into those intake ducts and be a fire hazard.”

Julie Rickmond, communications director for the Roanoke Valley SPCA, said responsible pet ownership comes down to more than just space.

“When it comes down to animals and pet ownership, it really comes down to capacity for care and that’s the amount of animals that we can kind of put on a space. But we need to make sure that we’re also taking care of their mental well-being, their physical well-being, that all needs are met.”

Experts recommend pet owners consider local regulations, available space, financial resources and their ability to provide long-term care before bringing additional animals into their homes.

A petition filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia accuses Saeed Abedini, an Iranian-born U.S. citizen living in Turkey at the time, of wrongfully taking his daughter from her mother and bringing her to Lynchburg without permission.

The case was filed by Aragh, who alleges her daughter was taken from Turkey in January 2025 after she allowed the child to travel with Abedini to visit family in Istanbul.

Aragh’s attorneys, Devon Slovensky and Emily Rowe Sitzler, say the child has been separated from her mother for nearly 18 months.

“This has been heartbreaking for any mother to be separated from her child for a year and a half,” Slovensky said. “The child is now five and she hasn’t been able to hug her child in almost 18 months.”

According to Aragh’s attorneys, Abedini did not return the child to Turkey after the trip, leading Aragh to pursue legal action through the federal court system.

“The child has not voluntarily returned after a request to voluntarily return the child,” Slovensky said. “The next step is to take the case to federal court, and that is why we are in court.”

Abdini is an Iranian-born pastor who was jailed in Iran back in 2012 after being convicted by an Iranian court for “undermining national security” after trying to establish home-based Cristian churches in Iran during the early 2000s.

Abedini was freed from prison and returned to the U.S. in 2016.

The case is being handled under the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, an international treaty designed to address cases where children are taken across international borders during custody disputes.

“The Hague Convention works in the same way that states recognize each other’s custody orders,” Slovensky said.

Both the United States and Turkey are parties to the treaty, which allows parents to ask courts in participating countries to help facilitate the return of children in certain custody disputes.

Aragh remains in Turkey, where her attorneys say she has refugee status. They say she has had limited phone and video contact with her daughter but has not been able to see her in person.

“My client has had limited Zoom and phone call contact, but she’s not been able to hold her daughter,” Slovensky said. “She’s not been able to talk to her daughter in a way that she feels is private and secure.”

Aragh’s attorneys say the federal petition is one of the few options available that could allow her to reunite with her daughter in a timely manner.

They say Hague Convention cases are typically handled quickly, with decisions often being made within weeks after a petition is filed.

“Once the petition has been filed, then usually most of the time a decision is made by the U.S. District Court within six weeks,” Rowe Sitzler said.

Ten News reached out to Abedini for comment but did not receive a response.

“I’m back,” he said directly into the television camera. “I’m back.”

Ronaldo became the first player to score in six different World Cup tournaments by getting two goals in Portugal’s 5-0 win over Uzbekistan, quieting critics after his forgettable performance in the team's 1-1 draw with Congo in the opener.

Even though criticism isn't anything new to the 41-year-old superstar, he admitted that the intense negativity directed toward him this week was difficult.

“But it’s always like that,” he said in Portuguese. “It doesn’t matter, because it’s been 23 years on the job and when things go well, ’Cristiano is good,' when things go bad, ‘Cristiano is a retired player, is old.' It will always be like that. But we responded well today, me and my teammates, which is what we wanted.”

Ronaldo made history in the sixth minute when João Cancelo crossed the ball to him and he shot with his right foot to make it 1-0. He ran toward the bench and celebrated with his teammates.

He added another in the 39th minute when he got a pass from Bruno Fernandes and scored with his right foot just inside the near post to make it 3-0.

“As a defender you need to be ready and you need to be close to him in the box,” said Uzbekistan coach Fabio Cannavaro, a standout defender in his playing days who led Italy to the 2006 World Cup title. “If you give him one centimeter in the box you are dead.”

Ronaldo was named man of the match for his performance, the latest of many in his incredible career.

Portugal coach Roberto Martínez raved about the professionalism and poise Ronaldo showed this week amid calls from outsiders to bench him.

“He's a human being," Martínez said. “He's allowed to have emotions. He's allowed to have feelings. What is impressive with him is the answer. Whatever he feels, the answer is to get back on the training ground and practice and work and demand from himself. That professionalism is what's (led) to the longevity.”

The goals on Tuesday make him the second-oldest player to score at a World Cup behind Cameroon forward Roger Milla, who was 42 when he scored at the 1994 tournament in the United States.

Ronaldo and Argentina captain Lionel Messi became the only men in history to play in six World Cup tournaments this year. Ronaldo’s scoring streak started in his debut in 2006 and he also netted goals in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022.

While he shares the record for most tournaments with Messi, he stands alone in scoring a goal in each edition after Messi failed to score at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Ronaldo’s two strikes against Uzbekistan gave him 10 career goals in the tournament. Messi has 18 after a hat trick in Argentina's opener against Algeria and two more goals Monday against Austria that made him the all-time leading scorer in tournament history.

Ronaldo's latest performance extended his record by giving him 145 international goals, and his 10 career goals in the World Cup moved him past Eusébio's nine to make him Portugal's all-time scoring leader at the tournament.

Tuesday's game was the 230th of Ronaldo’s international career, which is the most in history.

This is likely to be the final World Cup for Ronaldo, who won the European Championship with Portugal in 2016 and the Champions League five times with Manchester United and Real Madrid.

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

A giant tribute to Messi

A 26-meter-tall (85-foot) figure of Messi made of 70 tons of steel and iron towers over the outskirts of Cutral Co, a remote southern town in Patagonia. The player is kneeling, with the World Cup trophy he won in 2022 between his legs and one arm raised, as if greeting motorists traveling along Route 22.

Even the strong Patagonian wind cannot topple this tribute, inaugurated on June 16 during Argentina’s World Cup debut, when the team once again dazzled under Messi, who sealed the victory over Algeria after scoring three goals.

Local authorities and the sculptor who designed it say it is the largest monument ever dedicated to the team captain, who turns 39 on Wednesday.

“He is Argentina’s natural ambassador. For me, it was very important, not only as an artist but as an Argentine,” Aldo Beroisa, 61, told The Associated Press.

The sculptor has designed giant dinosaurs and monuments to his country’s independence heroes in Cutral Co, an oil-producing town that has never attracted nearly as much attention as other Patagonian communities surrounded by picturesque lakes and mountains.

Now, the town is filling up with admirers who want to see the statue of the soccer player who has scored 18 goals since making his World Cup debut in 2006. He achieved the record as the tournament’s top scorer this week, after netting both goals in Argentina’s 2-0 victory over Austria.

The statue, which took 18 months to complete, depicts Messi falling to his knees on the grass at Lusail Stadium in Qatar during the 2022 World Cup final after Gonzalo Montiel sealed Argentina’s 4-2 shootout victory over France and crowned the country world champion.

The statue also depicts the captain clutching Argentina’s jersey with one hand and pointing to the sky with his index finger, as he often does when he scores a goal, in tribute to his late grandmother.

A mural made by fans

There are many murals of Messi around the world. However, the one painted in the Buenos Aires suburb of Berazategui stands out: The player’s smiling face is surrounded by the names of hundreds of his admirers.

The mural, which is about six meters wide and 5.5 meters high (20 by 18 feet), caught Messi's attention.

“Crazy ... thank you very much to all of you, to the people who supported it, who came by, and who keep coming by,” Messi said in a video sent to the creators.

Creator Leonel García, 32, is gracious when he talks about the making of the mural.

“This is a mural that I didn’t make by myself. Beyond the fact that I painted it, it was made by more than 1,300 people,” said García, recalling those who traveled to Berazategui from different towns to write down their names in the mural.

The mural was painted in 18 days. García collaborated with Federico Merodo, the owner of the parking lot where the wall that served as the canvas was built.

The hyperrealistic portrait posed a huge challenge, given that it depicts one of the most recognizable faces on the planet. The image is inspired by a gesture Messi made during a friendly match after Argentina’s triumph in Qatar, when he appeared relaxed and seemed to be enjoying the game.

“Messi brings joy to the country. The times we’re living through in Argentina may not be very good for some people, but Messi unites everyone ... and the mural does that too, because people from everywhere come together here, from every social class and every political sector,” García said.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Bettman said the Board of Governors executive committee endorsed a term sheet agreed to with the Friedkins over the next six months. The total investment required between an expansion fee and the cost to build a new arena in one of those cities would amount to $3.5 billion, according to Bettman, who said discussions over the past two years largely revolved around Houston before Austin joined the conversation.

“That’s part of the process is to determine what would be best, both for the league and for Dan Friedkin and family,” Bettman said. "Both cities will require a new arena. It may be more feasible in one place than the other. And as we dig a little deeper and do the due diligence, we’ll figure out which makes the most sense.”

Friedkin is chairman and CEO of the Friedkin Group with a net worth of $6.4 billion, according to Forbes. The Houston-based consortium has investments in the automotive industry, entertainment, hospitality and sports, including stakes in European soccer clubs Everton and AS Roma.

No board vote was taken. That would only come if the sides involved move forward with an agreement.

While there is no guarantee the NHL adds a 33rd team, the move is a first step toward becoming the largest professional sports league in North America, surpassing the NFL. Bettman has said officials were listening to expressions of interest from prospective owners in places like Houston and Atlanta but until now not yet engaged in a formal path toward expansion.

“There was an update on Atlanta, there was an update on Arizona and there was an update on South Texas," Bettman said. "But neither Arizona nor Atlanta are quite as far along in the process as the Friedkin opportunities.”

Montreal Canadiens owner Geoff Molson, who is on the executive committee, called it an important decision and said, “It’s just an exploration at this stage.”

In a statement released through Pursuit Sports, the Friedkin family said it had reached an agreement with the NHL for exclusive rights to a franchise in South Texas with a focus on Houston and Austin. It said it would be methodical in assessing the best option.

“Each city brings unique attributes that would make a new team a huge success — both have the infrastructure, passionate fan bases and economic strength needed to support a championship-caliber franchise for years to come," the family said. “We have wanted for some time to bring an NHL team to Texas, and we are excited that the process has now begun."

The league last expanded to 32 teams with the Seattle Kraken beginning play in 2021 after the Vegas Golden Knights started in the 2017-18 season. Before that, there had been 30 teams since 2000, when Columbus and Minnesota entered.

The recent success stories, combined with booming franchise values across sports, spurred talk of expansion in hockey circles, especially because expansion fees could exceed $1 billion. Seattle paid $650 million and Las Vegas $500 million.

From Florida to Texas to California and places in between, the NHL has enjoyed strong popularity across the Sun Belt and non-traditional hockey markets over the past four decades. Teams were added in South Florida and Tampa in Florida, San Jose and Anaheim in California, Nashville, Tennessee, and Las Vegas, while relocations put teams in Dallas, Raleigh, North Carolina, Denver and elsewhere.

Teams in those places have won the Stanley Cup the past seven years in a row and 13 times dating to Colorado's championship run in 1995-96.

Board approves Penguins sale

Bettman said the board had approved the sale of the Pittsburgh Penguins from Fenway Sports Group to the Hoffmann family. The deal, reached a year ago, is worth $1.7 billion to $1.75 billion.

“It’s nice that the Hoffmanns got a good deal, and it’s nice that Fenway in five years doubled its investment,” Bettman said. "I still think it’s low, but that’s OK.”

In a statement released by the team, incoming NHL governor Geoff Hoffmann called it a defining moment for his family.

“The Penguins represent everything Hoffmann Family of Companies stands for: community, excellence and long-term thinking,” Hoffman said. "We look forward to building on the team’s success by providing support and resources to both (general manager) Kyle Dubas and the hockey operations team, as well as the established leadership group on the business side. We’re proud to represent this storied franchise and are eager to become an active, invested part of the Pittsburgh community.”

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

The training, led by Carilion and the American Heart Association, is part of a broader effort to raise awareness about heart disease and prepare contestants to be leaders both on and off the stage.

According to the American Heart Association, more than 350,000 people experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year in the U.S. Immediate CPR can double or even triple a person’s chance of survival.

Miss Virginia’s Teen Aryana Guest said the training is especially important for women and young girls.

“It’s a vital thing that we all need to learn, especially as women, because it is the leading cause of death amongst women throughout the nation. And so with us, especially young girls, being able to learn how to perform hands-only CPR, we’re able to save more lives no matter the circumstance or situation.”

Competition week continues through Saturday, when new Miss Virginia and Miss Virginia’s Teen titleholders will be crowned.

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a lower court decision that temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s expanded use of expedited removal. The ruling was a big victory for the Republican administration, which views the expansion of so-called expedited removal as a key tool for carrying out its mass deportation policy.

Expedited removal — quick deportation without a chance to appear before a judge — has previously been applied to migrants arriving by sea or caught at or near the border shortly after crossing.

In January, Trump expanded its use to undocumented migrants all over the United States. Immigration agents began whisking migrants away from courthouses where they had gone for immigration proceedings and then removing them from the country within days.

“The Trump administration’s push for fast-track deportations will subject people to an unfair and error-prone system,” Anand Balakrishnan, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

Balakrishnan represented plaintiffs in arguments before the appellate panel and said its ruling “undermines the fundamental principle that people receive due process when the government seeks to deport them.”

DC Circuit Judge Justin R. Walker, one of the judges on the panel, said the plaintiffs had not shown the expanded use of expedited removal violated due process rights. Immigrants received notice of removal proceedings and were given a chance to respond, he wrote in his opinion.

Walker and the second judge in the majority, Neomi Rao, were appointed by Trump. The third judge on the panel was appointed by President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

Walker said there was no requirement that the administration inform immigrants that they can avoid expedited removal if they can show they have been in the United States for more than two years.

"The constitutional requirement is notice of the action the government is taking and the grounds for it, plus an opportunity to respond," he wrote, adding that the plaintiffs' “contrary reasoning would require immigration officers to provide what amounts to legal advice.”

Walker and Rao vacated an order by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb that put the expanded use of expedited removal on hold. Cobb, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, ruled in August that the administration had not developed procedures to ensure migrants were not wrongly deported under the expedited process.

The plaintiffs had put forward “substantial evidence" that the expedited removal process, on the contrary, carried a high risk of error when applied more broadly, Cobb said. The ruling cited examples of people who had lived in the U.S. for far longer than two years but were still ordered to be removed in expedited proceedings.

In his opinion, Walker acknowledged evidence of such errors, but said they resulted from “individual officers’ failure to follow the law — not defects in the written directives under review or the procedures they incorporate.”

The Trump administration has argued that its expansion of expedited removal includes protections to prevent arbitrary removal. In a court filing in October, Justice Department attorneys said Cobb's ruling was an “egregious error” that was depriving the administration of an “essential tool to combat the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration over the past few years” and efficiently deport potentially millions of people.

Babcock is now in charge of trying to get Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl a Stanley Cup championship after two of the best hockey players in the league have fallen short over the past decade.

“He’s bringing experience and accountability," Oilers CEO of hockey operations Jeff Jackson said at the league’s Board of Governors meeting. “That’s what we wanted on the organizational management side, and that’s what our players wanted — our leadership group — so it all aligned.”

There have been complaints from former players about Babcock's approach, including allegations of bullying. McDavid, Draisaitl and teammate Zach Hyman were consulted by management prior to bringing in Babcock, according to Jackson, who represented McDavid before joining the Oilers in 2023.

“I think it was very important that Connor and Leon and Zach were involved and made their opinion known," Jackson said. “They’ve been in Edmonton a long time, have gone through some heartbreak together. They’ve earned the right to have a voice, and we sought that and we decided. Players don’t make the ultimate decision, but I think it’s more important to be collaborative with them about communication.”

The 63-year-old Babcock has not coached a game in the league since being fired by Toronto 23 games into the 2019-20 season.

Babcock has championship experience from coaching Detroit to the Cup in 2008. He made two other trips to the final, with Anaheim in ‘03 and when the Red Wings went again in ’09 and lost to Pittsburgh. He also guided Canada to back-to-back Olympic goal medals in 2010 and '14.

Babcock also brings baggage.

He stepped away from the Blue Jackets before training camp in September 2023 after taking the job on July 1. At the time, Babcock’s requests for personal photos from players in an attempt to get to know them drew criticism as an invasion of privacy.

When word emerged that Edmonton was interested in hiring Babcock, the NHL Players' Association asked the league to review what happened three years ago. The NHL said it found nothing to prevent him from being employed by a team, and Commissioner Gary Bettman echoed that sentiment after the hire became official.

“Based on our investigation, we concluded there was no basis upon which he should be prohibited from coaching," Bettman said. "His ability to coach depended on an NHL team wanting to have him coach — and that’s what Edmonton did.”

Bettman said league officials looked into what was alleged to have happened with the Blue Jackets and drew conclusions as to whether they should disqualify someone from employment.

“We do — and Mr. Babcock knows it because I spoke to him — expect a certain level of decorum and conduct among all NHL personnel, especially head coaches,” Bettman said.

A report surfaced after the Maple Leafs fired Babcock that he had asked star Mitch Marner to share his ranking of teammates from hardest- to least-hardest working and then shared that with the rest of the group. Former Red Wings player Johan Franzen told a Swedish outlet that Babcock was the worst person he had ever met and said at one point he was terrified to go to the rink.

Retired defenseman Mike Commodore, who played for Babcock briefly in 2011 in Detroit, spoke out this spring.

“I don’t want to hear another word about how important mental health is for us when you literally just paved the way, cleared the way for Mike Babcock to get another opportunity in the NHL and put him in another position of power where he can abuse people,” Commodore said on the “Clearing the Crease” podcast.

Daniel Winnik, who played for Babcock in 2015-16 with the Leafs, last week called him “the only guy that's ever made me hate hockey.”

“I just hated coming to the rink,” Winnik said on TSN 1050 radio in Toronto. "He's just a bully."

Asked how the Oilers remained on track to hire Babcock given the criticism, Jackson said they “didn't look at social media.”

“We just sort of did our thing,” Jackson said. "Lots of people have lots of opinions, and that’s part of our business and the fans have their opinion. We knew what we needed to do to get the coach we wanted, so we just kept sort of moving forward with our diligence and got to a point where we were comfortable.”

Kris Knoblauch, who coached Edmonton to consecutive trips to the Cup final in 2024 and ’25, was fired May 14. That decision was announced after news leaked that the Oilers had been denied permission by division rival Vegas to interview 2023 Cup-winning coach Bruce Cassidy, whom the Golden Knights fired on March 30 with eight games left in the regular season. Cassidy remains under contract for one more year.

The Oilers instead turned to Babcock, whose 700 regular season and 90 playoff victories rank 12th and 10th, respectively, in NHL history.

D.J. Smith, who was most recently the interim replacement in Los Angeles after Jim Hiller was fired and ran the bench in Ottawa from 2019-23, was named an associate coach. Smith was an assistant under Babcock in Toronto.

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

The trip to Macungie, in the Allentown suburbs, came as Trump works to put the conflict — and the higher gasoline prices it caused — in the rearview mirror as the November midterm elections draw closer.

Trump had a private tour of the facility, but his speech often felt more like a reelection rally from two years ago than an effort to promote his second-term accomplishments.

The president listed longstanding political grievances, and made only passing mentions of promoting Republicans ahead of Election Day — while spending more time bragging about the UFC fight he staged on the White House lawn in honor of his own 80th birthday than he did the economy.

At one point, Trump even called UFC fighters Bo Nickal and Anthony Cassar to the stage and mused about whether he could beat either one of them in a wrestling match if he were to “work out for the next couple of months.”

It was Trump's fifth second-term visit to Pennsylvania, a state whose support in 2016 and 2024 helped him to win the White House. The truck factory is in a district where incumbent Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie faces Democratic challenger Bob Brooks in November.

“For more than 100 years, this legendary company has been making trucks right here in eastern Pennsylvania," Trump said, “building the heavy duty machinery that keeps our economy rolling, our factories moving, and our industries roaring all across the nation.”

His visit coincided with rising prices that could color the verdict voters render on Trump's stewardship in the fall. About one-third of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s approach to the economy, according to a June Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. That’s in line with last month for Trump on the issue.

The Iran war, which began Feb. 28, has also been a politically difficult issue for the president. Most Americans continued to disapprove of his handling of Iran, according to the June AP-NORC poll, which was being fielded as Trump announced a tentative deal with Iran and concluded just before the interim agreement was signed last week. It found that 65% of U.S. adults disapprove of how the president is handling issues with Iran, unchanged from May.

Still, while most Democrats and independents view Trump’s actions negatively, only about 3 in 10 Republicans are unhappy.

This is the kind of district that matters in November elections

Trump addressed a cheering crowd from a stage erected on the factory floor, flanked by two red, white and blue trucks and rows of workers in fluorescent safety vests under a large “American Workers First” banner.

It's the kind of district that may prove pivotal to Republicans holding narrow control of the House, where a loss could hobble the president's final two years in office.

Mackenzie, a freshman lawmaker, is looking to hold on to a district Democrats have targeted to flip. Brooks, president of the state firefighters' union, has support from Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who's also seeking reelection this year.

Trump urged the crowd to support Mackenzie, saying of his trip, “I’m not doing this for my health.” But he devoted more energy to issues like the U.S.-Mexico border, opposing transgender rights and decrying “Marxist” judges, while also referencing his administration's efforts to lower prescription drug prices.

“We gotta win the midterms,” Trump said, in one of the few references he made to the midterms. Later, however, he suggested it wasn’t actually a “political season,” perhaps because he himself won’t be on the ballot in November.

On Iran, Trump suggested that the country would be smart and keep negotiating during the ceasefire. “Otherwise we’ll have to finish the job, which will take about, maybe less than a week," he said.

An odd moment came when the president offered, “The ideology of the Muslims is slightly different than the ideology of the Catholics. We have the Catholics and the Muslims slightly different." He didn't elaborate.

Biden came to the same plant previously

Trump's predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, visited the same Mack Trucks facility in 2021 to highlight regulations aimed at promoting manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at nearly 19.6 million jobs. It trended downward after the 2001 recession and the 2007-09 Great Recession. The figure now stands at 12.6 million as of May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2025, the truck facility got hit by market uncertainty, including sweeping tariffs that Trump's administration imposed, and about 170 people were laid off, according to Mack spokesperson Kimberly Pupillo. She added that by the end of last year, almost 150 people were recalled to work and anyone laid off last year was given the chance to return.

There are about 2,800 workers at Mack, Pupillo said.

At a pizzeria down the road from the truck facility, workers and diners said they'd heard about the president’s visit and recalled Biden’s trip to the plant.

George Carver, a retired elementary school principal, said he wasn’t a fan of Trump’s: “I’m looking for a president who’ll clean up this mess,” he said, meaning improve the economy and better handle the war in Iran and immigration.

“I’m looking for someone who’s gonna tell the truth — that could be a Democrat or Republican,” Carver said.

Trump's visit underscores Pennsylvania's status as a crucial swing state.

Trump made a trip to Mount Pocono in December to road test messages that he's addressing affordability; in July 2025, he was in Pittsburgh to tout tens of billions of dollars of recent energy and technology investments in the state; in June 2025, he was in West Mifflin to tell steelworkers he was doubling the tariff on steel imports to protect the industry; and in March 2025 he attended the NCAA wrestling championship in Philadelphia.

Denise Green, a retired software trainer, was among a handful of people protesting the visit outside a McDonald’s across the street from the plant.

Green said she was a former Republican who became a Democrat in 2007 because her original party backed policies where “all the money" was going to the rich.

Green said her key issue was Social Security funding, which she said she’ll need but is worried could run out.

“It’s outrageous,” she said.

Also known as Caramelo, candy in English, Chávez is arguably as well-known in Mexico as the members of the national team.

He says the game last Thursday in Guadalajara was his 543rd match watching “El Tri,” which he has followed around the world since Mexico last hosted the World Cup in 1986.

Now at his 11the World Cup, Chávez is flanked by his 21-year-old son, also called Héctor Chávez, and known as Caramelo Jr. Both wear oversized sombreros with their nicknames written in all caps, making them hard to miss at stadiums.

“Mexico has one of the best fan bases in the world, one that travels the most to matches, and one of the most colorful ones in the world, with tradition, identity and pride,” the 64-year-old Chávez told The Associated Press. “I’m very fortunate to be here, with my son by my side in his fifth World Cup, to keep supporting the national team with everything we’ve got.”

Chávez has become a familiar sight in every stadium where the team plays in Mexico and around the world, including friendlies. He said the first national team match he attended was on Feb. 19, 1986, when Mexico faced the Soviet Union in the country’s capital. His first World Cup match was that same year, on June 3 against Belgium.

Despite being at another World Cup at home, Chávez said he struggled to make it to the games this time.

“This has been the most expensive World Cup in history, some of my friends who usually accompany me couldn’t come,” he said. “I had to break the piggy bank, and we are here with the support of our family, because without this support it wouldn’t be possible. The truth is that we’ve worked hard to be here, but finally we made it and we will keep following the national team to the end.”

Caramelo is popular but also has his critics

Despite his popularity, Chávez is not universally loved in Mexico. Critics say he’s getting too much attention and question whether he’s promoting himself or the national team. He’s annoyed some fans by throwing his hat onto the field, including at the game between Colombia and Uzbekistan in Mexico City last week.

“Well, they say that if they are criticizing you, it's because you are doing something good. We try not to pay too much attention to it. We preferer to hold on to the great support that the fans have shown us in person,” the younger Héctor Chávez said.

Many teams have superfans who attract headlines at World Cups. Spain had Manuel Cáceres, known as “Manolo el del bombo” or “Manolo the bass drummer,” who followed the Spanish national team since the 1982 World Cup. He died last year. Brazil’s Clóvis Acosta Fernandes, known as the “Gaúcho Da Copa,” died in 2015.

Congo has Michel Nkuka Mboladinga, who gained fame during the Africa Cup of Nations for posing as a statue of Congo’s assassinated independence hero Patrice Lumumba. He missed the team’s first game at this year’s World Cup but was expected to make it to Tuesday’s match against Colombia.

Chávez worried that die-hard fans are being priced out of the World Cup, affecting the atmosphere in stadiums.

“I miss the hardcore fans who follow their teams, who chant and cheer during the whole 90 minutes. Did you notice that they couldn’t even get the wave to work again?" he said after Mexico's match against South Korea on June 18. “And why is that? It’s because we don’t have these fans. And why don’t we have these fans? It’s because they can’t afford these expensive tickets.”

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AP World Cup: https://apnews.com/FIFA-World-Cup

The S&P fell 1.4%. The benchmark index is coming off 11 weekly gains out of the last 12, led largely by technology stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is less influenced by tech stocks, gave up an early gain and closed just 0.1% lower. The Nasdaq composite fell 2.2%.

Markets throughout Asia fell. South Korea's Kospi index, a big winner in the AI boom, sank 10%. Stocks in Europe also fell.

The selling largely targeted companies that have seen their values surge amid the frenzy over artificial intelligence technology. Their pricey stock values give them more influence over the broader market’s direction. On Tuesday, more stocks gained ground within the S&P 500 than fell, but tech companies overpowered gains elsewhere.

Micron Technology slumped 13.2% and Nvidia fell 4.1%. Samsung Electronics slumped 12.3% in South Korea.

SpaceX wavered in early trading then closed 1% higher. The space exploration and artificial intelligence company had a soaring market debut less than two weeks ago. The company plans to raise money through a bond offering, partly to fund AI development.

The growing likelihood of interest rate hikes later this year has helped deflate the massive run-up in AI-related stocks in recent days as traders worry that the higher rates could hamper economic growth.

Those Big Tech gains have been significant, sending major indexes on record-setting runs throughout 2026. Within the S&P 500, the tech sector alone is up 25.5% just over the last three months and 16.6% for the year. In Asia, South Korea's Kospi has nearly doubled so far in 2026, even after Tuesday's plunge.

Analysts have been warning that high-flying technology stocks could be due for a downturn.

“Viewed through this lens, a period of consolidation is reasonable, in our view, after such a sharp move higher,” wrote Brock Weimer, investment strategy analyst at Edward Jones, in a research note.

Many technology companies have been spending heavily on AI technology. The potential for higher interest rates can stifle future spending and hurt prices for investments. The Federal Reserve has signaled that it could raise interest rates at least once before the end of the year. Wall Street sees an 85% chance that the central bank will raise its benchmark interest rate this year, according to date from CME Group. That's compared to 60% a week earlier.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.50% from 4.51% late Monday. The yield on the 2-year Treasury fell to 4.20% from 4.24% late Monday. Bond yields remain high, though, amid worries about inflation.

Inflation has been heating up throughout the year. The impact from tariffs helped halt and reverse what had been an easing of inflation growth. The U.S. war with Iran quickly pushed energy prices higher, including gas prices. Higher energy costs have also made shipping more expensive for a wide range of goods, and that has been weighing on businesses and households. A report due Thursday with an inflation measure that is preferred by the Fed is expected to show that inflation rose to 4.1%, in May.

Oil prices have eased amid negotiations between the U.S. and Iran to end their war. The price for a barrel of U.S. crude for August delivery fell 0.9% to settle at $73.21. The September delivery price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 0.9% to settle at $76.80. Prices are still above levels of roughly $70 per barrel before the war began.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 107.33 points to 7,365.46, while the Nasdaq dropped 579.56 points to 25,587.04. The Dow lost 45.87 points to close at 51,666.84.

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AP Senior Producer Mayuko Ono in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Proponents of artificial intelligence see it as the next great revolution for the global economy. The revolution won't come cheap. Just four companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms and Microsoft — plan to spend up to $720 billion this year, primarily on AI data centers.

This week, investors are looking at the huge sums being spent and questioning whether AI can produce the profits and productivity necessary to make all the investment worth it. Critics have been talking about the possibility of a bubble in AI investment. On Monday, Amazon and Alphabet fell about 5%.

On Tuesday, several companies that make the chips needed for the data center buildup — Nvidia, Micron Technology, Broadcom and Lam Research — led the market lower.

At first, Microsoft, Alphabet and other so-called hyperscalers turned to cash on hand to fund the AI expansion. But they're increasingly relying on the markets to raise cash.

AI buildout needs cash

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, said earlier this month that it’s raising $80 billion in cash to help pay for its investments by selling shares of its stock. Overall, Alphabet is planning to spend as much as $190 billion this year — more than all the stock of The Walt Disney Co. is worth, and Alphabet is forecasting its spending on investments next year will “significantly increase.”

In March, Amazon sold $54 billion of bonds in the U.S. and Europe as it plans to spend around $200 billion this year on AI investments.

Elon Musk's rocket maker SpaceX was on a three-day skid heading into Tuesday. It regained some lost ground, but ended trading slightly below the closing price on its first day of trading on June 12. Musk acknowledges that SpaceX will have to spend heavily to fulfill its plans of sending AI data centers into space, and the company has announced that part of an upcoming bond offering will fund its AI buildout.

High-priced chip companies

Chip companies have benefitted as the demand for memory chips and processing power for AI data centers and other projects has led to a supply shortage and a surge in prices. Investors have bid up the share prices of these companies now in anticipation of big profits down the road. By one measure, which compares a company's stock price to its earnings per share, these companies might look expensive.

Marvell Technologies lost money for five straight years before turning a profit of $2.7 billion in the fiscal year ended in January, thanks to gains in its data center business. The stock has more than tripled so far this year and its price-to-earnings ratio has gone from about 30 at the start of 2026 to near 100.

Some data storage companies have seen even more eye-popping gains. Sandisk shares have soared more than 700% year to date and its P/E ratio stands at 68. Whether Sandisk shares are overvalued will depend on whether it meets Wall Street’s lofty expectations for the next 12 months -- earnings per share of $188.05 per share compared with $29.16 per share for the 12 months ended March 31. When the current stock price is compared to the forecast, the price-to-earnings ratio falls to around 11.

The current price-to-earnings ratio for the S&P 500 is around 25.

On Tuesday, investors unloaded at least some of their holdings in these stocks. Sandisk sank 13.6%, while Marvell lost 9.4%.

The sell-off also took a bite out of exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, that invest heavily in tech stocks. The Invesco QQQ Trust Series ETF was down 3.3%, while iShares Semiconductor ETF slumped 7.9%.

Pocketing some gains

While some investors may have doubts that companies going full throttle on AI infrastructure spending will ultimately be able to generate profits to justify their investment, it's likely some of the selling this week may be investors pausing to pocket some of their gains after the stock market’s recent string of all-time highs.

“With no clear catalyst driving the move lower, we believe today’s pullback likely reflects profit-taking following a strong rally from the March lows,” said Brock Weimer, an investments strategy analyst at Edward Jones.

Big Tech gains have powered major stock indexes on record-setting runs this year. Within the S&P 500, the tech sector alone is up nearly 27% just over the last three months and roughly 17% for the year. In Asia, South Korea’s Kospi has nearly doubled so far in 2026.

Heavy selling on Tuesday triggered a halt in trading in the Kospi, which set the stage for the wave of tech stock selling when trading opened in U.S. markets, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a research note Tuesday.

Overall AI enterprise demand in Asia is “showing no cracks in the armor, which continue to make us very bullish on owning the tech AI winners over the coming year,” he added.

Still, tech companies’ race to invest in the expansion of AI infrastructure could ultimately be sowing the seeds of future oversupply, according to Philip Straehl, chief investment officer at Morningstar Wealth.

“Periods of elevated capital investment have historically not translated into strong outcomes for investors, leaving us cautious on the outlook,” Straehl wrote in a report last week.

He expects that the rapid expansion of AI computing power will weigh on pricing, hurting companies’ returns and eventually result in a pullback in investing. Semiconductor companies are “particularly exposed to this dynamic,” Straehl wrote.

Monday's ruling scuttles restrictions now in place or planned for the federally funded and state-run Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 23 states. President Donald Trump's administration has not said whether it will appeal to a higher court.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who sits in Washington and was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama, said in her opinion that the ruling was because the federal government did not follow its own definition of “food.” She said it wasn't a comment on whether the restrictions are a good idea.

“The federal defendants and the states may have a genuine desire to improve the health of SNAP households by encouraging healthy choices at the store, and they can take lawful steps to meet those goals,” she wrote. “But what they cannot do is violate the law and their own regulations along the way.”

The restrictions are part of the Make America Healthy Again campaign

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have encouraged states to limit what the food aid can be used to buy as part of the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.

They reason that soda and candy fuel obesity, diabetes and chronic disease epidemics — and taking them off the menu would encourage healthier food choices.

The Agriculture Department has given 23 states so far permission to implement restrictions. Some have been implemented already, while others are queued to take effect in the coming months and years.

At least one state that was set to limit soda and candy purchases changed course earlier this year. Colorado's human services board voted against implementing the ban after a March hearing in which SNAP beneficiaries and advocates said people would face stigmas if they mistakenly tried to use the benefits on prohibited items. They also said the rules were confusing because they would have allowed buying drinks with at least 50% fruit or vegetable juice, but not those with less.

While the goals are similar, the exact rules vary by state. Some wanted to ban both sugary drinks and candy, while others only sought to ban sugary beverages.

A legal challenge to the candy and soda ban — which includes items such as sports drinks in some states — was filed by SNAP beneficiaries in Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Judge says government ignored a definition of food

Jackson said the main legal misstep in restricting what SNAP benefits could buy came because it ran contrary to Congress's definition of “food.”

Under the law, SNAP benefits — formerly known as food stamps — can be used for “any food or food product for home consumption except alcoholic beverages, tobacco, hot foods or hot food products ready for immediate consumption.”

The government can waive requirements, but limiting use of the benefits to improve nutrition isn't listed as a reason to do so. Yet when states asked the Agriculture Department to let them restrict purchases, their requests included using alternate definitions of “food.”

This may not be the final word

Rollins suggested on social media Tuesday that the administration would “keep fighting to Make America Health Again,” though she did not say directly whether there would be an appeal. Rollins said “an activist judge just blocked our commonsense restriction on using SNAP benefits for soda and junk.”

The case is among scores of challenges to Trump administration policies that hinge on whether the administration has the authority to change policies without congressional approval.

While it's a big program helping nearly 39 million Americans — about 1 in 9 — buy groceries, SNAP is normally relatively low-profile. That's been different since Trump returned to office last year.

Under his big tax and policy law signed last year, more recipients are subject to work requirements and states are being required to pay a larger share of administrative costs — and could be on the hook for benefit costs if their error rates are too high.

During a government shutdown last year, courts blocked the administration from cutting off benefits. Meanwhile, Rollins has said that there's rampant fraud in the program.

The Washington Post confirmed that one of its journalists received a subpoena from the Trump administration as part of a broader and aggressive crackdown on media leaks that in January also included the extraordinary step of an FBI search of the home of another journalist at the newspaper and the seizure of her electronic devices. Reporters at The Wall Street Journal also received grand jury subpoenas, according to people familiar with the matter, a rare and unusual move that critics said amounted to a threat against press freedom.

It wasn't immediately clear why the government withdrew the subpoenas or what precise news coverage the subpoenas concerned, but the decision to rescind them, first reported Tuesday by The Washington Post, was confirmed by people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a non-public law enforcement action.

Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray wrote in a staff email obtained by The Associated Press that a subpoena to Ellen Nakashima, a prominent national security journalist who has reported on the Iran war and deadly U.S. military boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea, had been withdrawn.

“The unwarranted subpoena of our reporter Ellen Nakashima – a clear violation of constitutionally guaranteed press freedom – was another sign of the government seeking to compel journalists to become instruments of its investigations. We will continue to stand fully behind the journalism of The Washington Post and fight all efforts by any administration that violate our First Amendment rights," a newspaper spokesperson said in a statement.

A spokesperson for The Wall Street Journal didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Tuesday.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declined to comment on the subpoenas or the decision to withdraw them while speaking to reporters after an unrelated news conference, calling it a grand jury matter.

“To the extent that we have to investigate breaches of national security, in whatever form they come, that’s something that we will continue to do,” Blanche said.

He noted that in media leak investigations, “reporters are not our targets. We very much value and appreciate the role that reporters play in this city and country.”

But, he added, “I have a similar important role to make sure that people that are entrusted with our nation’s secrets do what they’re supposed to do with that information, which -- spoiler alert -- means not sharing with reporters. There’s tension there. I don’t deny there’s tension there. But we're not going to stop investigating people who work in this administration who think it’s OK to leak classified information.”

Mark Schoeff Jr., a reporter at CQ Roll Call and president of the National Press Club, called the decision to seek grand jury testimony from journalists “one of the most aggressive actions against a free and independent press in recent memory.”

“Reporters were one step away from being forced to participate in a criminal investigation because they were doing their jobs. That should alarm every American who values a free press,” Schoeff said in a statement.

The Justice Department over the years has developed, and revised, internal policies governing how it will respond to news media leaks.

Though the department across presidential administration has periodically seized the phone records of individual journalists in hopes of identifying sources for national security stories, it is extremely rare for the government to attempt to compel a reporter to reveal their sources before a grand jury.

In April 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations — a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups. The moves again gave prosecutors the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists.

A memo she issued said members of the press are “presumptively entitled to advance notice of such investigative activities,” and subpoenas are to be “narrowly drawn.” Warrants must also include “protocols designed to limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities,” the memo stated.

In January, FBI agents searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, who has been covering President Donald Trump’s transformation of the federal government, as part of a leak investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of taking home classified information.

It was the 10th time the Senate has tried to stop the war, and the outcome, on a vote of 50-48, was a stunning turnaround from past efforts.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has told senators it needs roughly $80 billion, mostly to cover the cost of the U.S. war against Iran, adding to an already sizable military spending boost sought by President Donald Trump. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill ahead of a formal request. Meanwhile Iran’s president is in Pakistan to facilitate negotiations on ending the war, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Abu Dhabi seeking to reassure Gulf allies.

Trump visited a Mack Truck facility in a battleground district in swing state Pennsylvania Tuesday, shifting attention to the U.S. economy in his first major public event beyond the capital since he signed an interim agreement to end the Iran war.

National Guard members and U.S. Park Police have been patrolling around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as the Trump administration faces a self-imposed deadline to fix a botched renovation before the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.

The Latest:

Senate for first time approves a war powers resolution in a rebuke to Trump over Iran conflict

The Senate for the first time approved a war powers resolution Tuesday seeking to block U.S. military action against Iran, as lawmakers warily watch President Donald Trump’s efforts to resolve a conflict that the administration launched on its own and now needs Congress to fund.

It was the 10th time the Senate has tried to stop the war, and the outcome, on a vote of 50-48, was a stunning turnaround from past efforts. While the resolution is largely symbolic, and does not fully carry the force of law, it reflects the growing concerns from a number of Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate over both the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran to end it. The House approved the resolution earlier this month.

“Time after time, the vast majority of Senate Republicans sided with Trump and his war instead of the American people,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

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Trump touts the economy at Mack Truck facility in battleground Pennsylvania

The president kept attention on the economy in his opening remarks while visiting the facility in the Allentown suburbs on Tuesday.

Speaking in front of an audience of workers wearing reflective safety vests, the president said the U.S. is “the hottest country by a lot,” nodding to the success of Mack Trucks.

He’s visiting the state ahead of key midterm elections in the battleground state. Pointing to Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, Trump said “We gotta get you back in.”

Trump kept his early comments to the U.S., briefly mentioning the war in Iran.

Trump claims factory construction boom, but the spending numbers show a slowdown

The president claimed his tariffs are causing a boom in new factories opening in the U.S.

While the artificial intelligence is boosting U.S. manufacturing, there has not been the renaissance claimed by Trump.

Construction spending on manufacturing has fallen nearly 23% from an August 2024 peak, according to Census Bureau data.

While the average annual spending is still higher than the historical average, it has slowed during Trump’s second term instead of accelerating at the president has insisted.

The U.S. economy has shed 68,000 manufacturing jobs since the start of Trump’s second term, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Trump says that Iran agreed to UN watchdog inspections of its nuclear sites but ‘there’s no rush’

The president told reporters as he arrived in Pennsylvania on Tuesday that if Iran had not agreed to the inspections, he’d cut off talks with Tehran, saying, “I’d cancel the meetings right now.”

When asked when the inspections might occur, Trump said: “There’s no rush. They’ll be on the ground at the appropriate time.”

Trump says Interior Department will release images of alleged and unverified vandalism of reflecting pool

Pressed by reporters after Air Force One landed in Pennsylvania, Trump said the Interior Department is “going to share” photos and videos of what he claims has been vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The president said Monday that the images existed and the federal government would provide them, though the reporters tracking Trump said that their outlets had yet to receive images from the Interior Department that validated his claims.

Trump said that six people have been arrested for damaging the pool, which filled with green algae after his recent repair as the blue coating began to peel off the floor.

The government has yet to provide evidence that vandalism was behind the pool’s condition instead of repair process that failed to provide the results promised by Trump.

Trump says critics of Iran deal have to be educated

The president was asked Tuesday about Republicans in Congress — including Sen. Ted Cruz — who have been critical of Trump’s interim deal to end the war with Iran.

“I think anybody that’s been critical has to be educated — even if they’re friends of mine,” Trump told reporters.

Critics of the deal, including some Republicans on Capitol Hill, have said the agreement gives Iran significant benefits, while getting little immediately in exchange.

Trump plans to speak as part of ‘The Great American State Fair’

Trump will speak not far from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where the gavel Nancy Pelosi used as the first female House speaker sits next to a red “Make America Great Again” cap. It’s part of an exhibit dubbed “In Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness,” commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary, with artifacts reminding Americans that today’s stark divides are not new.

“People find the hope and the resiliency to move forward,” museum director Anthea M. Hartig said. “History is filled with those moments where we think we’re completely falling apart as we did in the Civil War and then we’re trying to figure out how to build it back together again.”

The split screen will return on July Fourth as America 250 holds a concert in Los Angeles hosted by Queen Latifah while the president returns to the National Mall for what he has described as a “Trump rally.”

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Trump says 6 people have been arrested for damaging Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool

Trump’s social media post said another seven were cited for damaging the pool, which Trump recently had ordered painted American Flag Blue. The president claimed without supporting evidence that there had been a “350 foot gash” in the paint.

“It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night, to create such a condition,” the president alleged.

The Associated Press verified that one man was arrested after touching the already-peeling paint as federal workers try to deal with an algae bloom in the water.

Trump said that “some of the water” will be drained from the pool “either immediately before or after the Fourth of July, to do the permanent repair.”

It was unclear from his post what the scale, scope or cost of the permanent repair would be.

Marco Rubio has arrived in Abu Dhabi

The U.S. secretary of state is in the United Arab Emirates on the first leg of a three-nation tour of Gulf countries aimed at easing their concerns about the result of an agreement intended to end the war with Iran.

In the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain — all nations that Iran hit with missiles and drones in retaliation for U.S.-Israeli airstrikes — Rubio has meetings starting Wednesday with leaders who, in some cases, have taken a harder line on Iran recently than has the Trump administration.

The Emiratis, in particular, have been at the forefront of calls for tough action notably to ensure the reopening of the Straight of Hormuz. There have been conflicting accounts of what the Memorandum of Understanding signed last week will mean for the strait, which the rest of the world wants open free of charge for all shipping.

Judge rules government can’t stop SNAP dollars from buying candy and sugary drinks

The federal judge said Congress imposed no such limits on the nation’s largest food aid program.

The ruling scuttles restrictions on candy, soda and other sugary drinks in the federally funded and state-run Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 23 states. The Trump administration hasn’t announced an appeal.

“The federal defendants and the states may have a genuine desire to improve the health of SNAP households by encouraging healthy choices at the store, and they can take lawful steps to meet those goals,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote. “But what they cannot do is violate the law and their own regulations along the way.”

Seeking to encourage healthier food choices, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign has sought to take soda and candy off the menu because they fuel obesity, diabetes and chronic disease.

Supreme Court sides with Trump administration against green card holders accused of crimes

Tuesday’s 6-3 decision centers around an immigration officer’s 2012 decision to put green-card holder Muk Choi Lau on immigration parole when he returned from a short trip abroad because he had been accused of a counterfeiting crime.

Lau argued that overstepped the officer’s authority, and the decision wrongly allowed the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly begin deportation proceedings after he pleaded guilty to trademark counterfeiting.

The Trump administration argued that suspicion of a crime is enough to put a lawful permanent resident on immigration parole.

The court is separately considering cases over Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship, potentially revive a restrictive asylum policy and end temporary legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disasters in their homelands.

Justices give US corporations big wins

The Cisco and ExxonMobil rulings, issued the same day, open U.S. courts in one case involving a foreign government while shutting the door in another. But they involved very different statutes.

The Cisco decision was the latest to rule against plaintiffs seeking to use U.S. courts as a venue to seek justice over the acts of foreign governments, especially those that took place abroad. Falun Gong members sought unsuccessfully to overcome that skepticism by arguing that a substantial portion of Cisco’s activities involving China took place in the United States.

The Cuba case hinged on whether the 1996 Helms-Burton law removes the shield from lawsuits in U.S. courts that typically cover foreign countries and state-owned businesses. The justices reversed a lower-court ruling that found that the Cuban state-owned companies are immune from lawsuits in U.S. courts.

Supreme Court OKs ExxonMobil suit over property seized by Castro’s government

The Supreme Court has ruled that ExxonMobil can sue Cuban state-owned companies in American courts over property on the island nation that was seized after Fidel Castro took power.

The 6-3 decision was the second in as many months in favor of U.S. owners of Cuban property confiscated by the Communist government more than 65 years ago.

The outcome in the two cases could be an additional lever for the Trump administration to exert pressure on Cuba, which is already being squeezed by a U.S. oil embargo.

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Supreme Court kills suit claiming Cisco’s technology helped China persecute Falun Gong members

The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted tech giant Cisco’s bid to shut down a lawsuit that claimed the company’s technology was used to persecute members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement in China.

The justices ruled that American courts are the wrong forum, rejecting plaintiffs’ attempts to litigate under the 18th-century Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), first enacted in 1991.

An Associated Press investigation last year showed that American tech companies, to a large degree, designed and built China’s surveillance state, encouraged by both Republican and Democratic administrations, even as activists warned such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious groups and target minorities. Last month, AP won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its stories.

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Wall Street points to another day of losses, led by an ongoing sell-off in tech

Futures for the S&P 500 fell 1.2% before the opening bell Tuesday, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average retreated 0.4%. Futures for the technology-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 2.6% following a 1.3% loss Monday. The Nasdaq has suffered heavy selling for days as investors grow anxious over massive spending by artificial intelligence companies and looming interest rate hikes in the U.S., which will make it more expensive for companies to fund growth through borrowing.

Chip companies were among the biggest losers in overnight trading, with Micron and Intel both down more than 7%. Qualcomm fell 6.3%. Companies that specialize in memory and data storage were also taking a beating. Sandisk fell nearly 9% and Seagate was down 7.2% early.

And Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which owns xAI, slipped another 1% before the bell after a 16.4% tumble to start the week.

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Iran’s president visits Pakistan for crucial talks on ending war

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also joined the delegation in Masoud Pezeshkian’s first visit to Islamabad since the conflict started with the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran on Feb. 28.

Iran’s talks Tuesday with officials mediating negotiations between Tehran and Washington on a permanent end to the war come as discrepancies emerge on what has been agreed to so far, and as more violence broke out in Lebanon.

Technical teams have been working on details of the deal following high-level negotiations in Switzerland Monday led by Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.

Iran Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters that no visits were scheduled for the U.N. watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency — to examine Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the United States last year. Vance previously said the negotiations in Switzerland won an agreement for the inspectors to visit the sites.

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Discrepancy on Iran’s use of unfrozen funds

Following the high-level talks in Switzerland, Vice-President JD Vance had said if Iranian financial assets were unfrozen, they “would actually go to buy American soy, American corn and American wheat for the benefit of the Iranian people.”

However, Iran has no current demand for U.S. crops, and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on Tuesday that Tehran’s decisions on what to import would be based on “prices and quality.”

“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said in Tehran.

Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, also questioned Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would have to approve how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.

Trump says Iran will buy US corn, soy and wheat. It won't likely happen soon

Trump has heralded the peace talks with Iran as a win for U.S. farmers, saying that the unfreezing of sanctioned Iranian money will be tied to that country buying American-grown corn, soybeans and wheat.

“These are things that are desperately needed by Iran,” Trump posted on social media. “This is a humanitarian crisis, and I feel it is necessary to help.”

But Iran is unlikely to start buying a vast amount of U.S. farm products.

“I don’t expect that trade would be very large in the short run,” said Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Glauber noted that Iran was “unlikely” to abandon its other trade partners on food for America. He said Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina and that Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”

Authorities arrest 2 more suspects in planned attack on Trump’s UFC show

Two more people in Missouri and Washington state have been arrested in connection with what authorities say was a planned attack targeting Trump’s UFC cage-fighting show at the White House earlier this month.

Law enforcement officials disrupted the plan a few days before the June 14 White House event, according to court documents.

William Lee Spartacus Falkner of Belfair, Washington, was arrested Friday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder, according to court documents filed Monday in the Western District of Washington. Jordan W. Rincker, 28, was arrested Sunday and charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the Western District of Missouri. A defense attorney appointed to represent Falkner did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment, and court records do not reveal if Rincker has obtained an attorney. Neither man has had the opportunity to enter a plea.

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Judge blocks use of federal database to check citizenship, saying it could wrongly purge voters

A federal judge on Monday ruled that a recently revamped version of a federal tool central to the Trump administration’s efforts to nationalize elections can no longer be used.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan sided with advocacy groups that argued the recent upgrades to the program, called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from voter rolls.

She said Congress had expressly prohibited the government from centralizing Americans’ personal identifying information and that the federal agencies that created the SAVE program “knew that the database violates those statutory protections.”

The decision is a major legal setback for Trump in his efforts to use federal agencies to encourage a nationwide crackdown on having noncitizens illegally on state voter rolls. The modified SAVE system had been a key pillar of the second election executive order the Republican president signed earlier this year. The ruling leaves its future uncertain.

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Patrols and nanobubbles at the Reflecting Pool as Trump seeks a renovation do-over

National Guard members and U.S. Park Police patrolled the deck around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday as President Donald Trump’s administration faces a self-imposed deadline to fix a botched renovation before the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration.

The patrols came two days after Trump said authorities had made “multiple arrests” of people he insisted were responsible for damage to the peeling coating after an algae bloom occurred. The liner was installed as part of his $14 million-plus project.

The president has confirmed the problems most likely require draining the pool again for liner repairs and he promised a quick fix. Without offering substantiation, he also said vandals dumped fertilizer in the pool and slashed the coating with a box cutter.

But the timeline was not clear Monday, with the White House saying damaged areas are still being assessed. Contractors and federal workers in recent days have been using chemicals and ozone nanobubbles to combat the algae.

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Pentagon seeks $80 billion from Congress for Iran war

The Pentagon has told senators it needs roughly $80 billion, mostly to cover the cost of the U.S. war against Iran, adding to what is already a sizable military spending boost being sought by President Donald Trump.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has yet to make a formal request to Congress. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, including Monday evening. A top deputy defense secretary told senators about the Iran funding request last week, according to two people familiar with the situation but not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the developments.

The push for billions of dollars in Iran war funding comes at a fraught political moment. Lawmakers are skeptical of the deal Trump struck with Iran to bring an end to the war, and wary of next steps. The White House has requested a remarkable $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon — a nearly 50% increase over the current fiscal year’s funding levels.

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The story — originally a 1965 novel that was made into a cult, dystopian 1979 film — follows a street gang called the Warriors as they make their way from the Bronx to their home turf of Coney Island in Brooklyn while being hunted by rivals gangs and cops. It will be the first full musical from Miranda since “Hamilton.”

The musical of “Warriors” is expected to begin previews next March and open next April at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. “Warriors” will be directed by Jenny Koons with a book by Miranda and Davis. No casting was announced.

“Musicalizing such a vibrant world for the concept album has been a thrill, and now we’re coming out to play on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne. We can’t wait,” Miranda and Davis said in a statement Tuesday.

Miranda and Davis released their album in 2024, keeping the bones of the story but making strategic changes in genders, like making the Warriors all women. The album had an astonishing list of artists playing various parts: Ms. Lauryn Hill, Nas, Busta Rhymes, Billy Porter, Ghostface Killah, RZA, Marc Anthony, Colman Domingo, Cam’ron, Shenseea and Joshua Henry, among them.

The album included the sounds of salsa, ska, agro-rock, boy band, pop, old-school rap and even K-pop. Spanish and Korean mixes with the English. It has the song “We Got You,” a seductive R&B tune delivered by a male gang wearing cardigans, and “Quiet Girls,” a feminist anthem.

The campaign will add five new classrooms, a patio, and a ramp for all-access to the Astronaut Leland Melvin STEM Center.

Officials say that the center plans to break ground and begin construction in August, and the expansion will be complete in May 2027. Classes will continue to be held in the current building while the expansion construction is in progress.

The Astronaut Leland Melvin STEM Center offers college classes and certification training for adults, including cybersecurity, building trades, certified nursing assistant and more.

Jubilee’s life coach guides adult students through academic enrichment, career planning and job training programs that enable them to enter the skilled labor workforce, increase their income and help stabilize their families.

The Astronaut Leland Melvin STEM Center is not just for adults - it is also for children. The new Mark Spain Media Center will be located in the expansion! The Mark Spain Media Center teaches Jubilee youth the skills necessary for careers in digital media, including photography, videography, podcasting, graphic design, film/audio/photo editing, and journalism.

Learn more here.

Senators said Tuesday that they hope the closed-door meeting will focus on unity, not disagreement. Yet it comes at a time when Trump appears to have lost interest in much of their agenda ahead of the midterm elections, pushing his proof-of-citizenship voting bill instead even though it doesn’t have the votes to pass.

In the last month, Trump has abruptly blocked Senate Republicans from confirming one of his own nominees, asked them to fund parts of his White House ballroom project despite opposition and forced them to defend his Iran war even as they question the strategy and endgame.

Trump has also helped whittle down his own support in the Senate after endorsing primary challengers to two GOP incumbents who were previously reliable votes for his agenda — Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy. Both men lost their primaries and have since become more critical of the president.

“If we’re going to win the midterm elections, we need to get on the same page,” Cornyn said Tuesday ahead of the meeting. “We’re not on the same page now, and that I think is dangerous.”

It was uncertain, though, if Trump’s visit would smooth differences with the Republican majority — or if GOP senators who have been increasingly vocal about their frustration will voice their concerns directly.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said a lot of his complaints with the administration have already been communicated. He said he hopes the meeting will be “conciliatory.”

“That would be a big win for us tomorrow,” Tillis said.

Trump pushes Thune on SAVE America Act

Adding to the tension is Trump’s increasingly distant relationship with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. While Thune remains popular in his conference and cordial with the president, he has spent much of his time lately telling Trump what he doesn’t want to hear.

Thune said Tuesday that while Trump and some in their conference want to see the voting bill pass, “it’s just not realistic.”

Trump has been pushing the Senate for months to eliminate the filibuster and pass the legislation, known as the SAVE America Act, which would create strict new requirements for voters to prove citizenship and show voter ID at the polls. He has also demanded that they add a ban on mail-in ballots to the bill as well as unrelated provisions to block sex reassignment surgeries on some minors and prevent people born as men from playing in women’s sports.

“John is a leader and hopefully he can get the votes,” Trump said Tuesday on a trip to Pennsylvania.

Thune devoted weeks of floor time to the voting bill earlier this year and has said he supports it. But he has repeatedly said there aren’t enough votes to scrap the filibuster that triggers a 60-vote threshold to pass most bills in the 53-47 Senate. And Democrats are uniformly opposed to the bill.

“Those are just hard realities,” Thune said. “And I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.“

Thune said he hopes the meeting is about “sitting down as a family” and “celebrating time left before the election."

Some GOP senators back Trump on SAVE Act

Thune said he found out Trump was coming to the luncheon from Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who had extended the invitation without telling him — an unusual move that could signal some frustration within the ranks. Scott, a close Trump ally, leads the Senate Republican lunch every Wednesday.

Scott, who ran against Thune for leader two years ago, said Trump responded "on the spot" to his invitation and said he would come.

“He’s going to be very positive," Scott said. "There's a lot that we can brag about that we’ve accomplished, and he wants to figure out how we can win November and continue to fulfill his agenda.”

On Monday, Scott sent a letter to his Republican colleagues arguing that the Senate should be taking votes every week on some version of the SAVE America Act and other GOP priorities that Democrats oppose.

“We need to show voters that we are listening to them and will fight for their priorities whether any Democrats vote with us or not,” Scott wrote.

Also needling Thune on the bill is Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican who has amassed a large following on X with daily posts about how they should kill the filibuster and pass the bill. Several Republican senators, including Cornyn, confronted Lee at a closed-door lunch last week about his advocacy.

Lee has also echoed Trump’s claims that Republicans can’t win elections unless the bill passes, despite the party's sweeping victories in 2024.

“The push to pass the SAVE America Act is not a ‘fantasy,’” Lee posted over the weekend. “It’s a plan to avoid a nightmare — one that’s coming soon unless we act.”

Thune said Tuesday that it’s Lee’s prerogative to post, but “at the end of the day, I have a different reality. And sometimes the alternative universe that is X doesn’t reflect the facts on the ground.”

Frustration over Iran, intelligence job could also be topics

Trump could be faced with questions about his announcement on social media last week that he was delaying Jay Clayton’s nomination to become national intelligence director. Republican leaders had hoped to quickly confirm Clayton and circumvent Trump’s unpopular interim pick Bill Pulte, who has no known experience in the field.

In the same social media post, Trump said he wouldn't sign a renewal of a key surveillance law unless Senate Republicans attach the SAVE America Act. That hardline approach has some support in the House, where a group of 25 Republicans has vowed to oppose all legislation until the voting bill moves forward.

Republicans could also use the luncheon to push Trump on the war in Iran and the agreement with Iran to end it. Most lawmakers still have not been briefed about the deal.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said there are a lot of questions about the Iran agreement, but added that Trump may not be able to talk publicly about the ongoing negotiations.

“We’re there to listen” and to try and ensure that the rest of Trump’s term is successful, Rounds said. But that means “we’ve got to come out with a united team.”

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Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited “tremendous interest” among developers of data centers that would buy the power, as well as utilities and energy companies. The nuclear plants could begin construction by 2030 and become operational in the mid-2030s, Wright and other officials said Tuesday.

“This is the start,” Wright said on a call with reporters. “We’re going to move with the players that are ready to stand up and move quickly. Once that supply chain is up and running, do we think there will be dozens of these built going forward? I’d be very surprised if there were not.”

Most U.S. nuclear power plants were built between 1970 and 1990. Only two new large reactors have been built from scratch in the United States in recent decades. Those two reactors, at Georgia Power Co.’s Plant Vogtle, were completed years late and billions of dollars over budget. The 10 new reactors will use the same design, Westinghouse’s AP1000.

Wright said the Plant Vogtle project struggled because of bad planning, supply chain problems and the COVID-19 pandemic. But, he said, the reactor design is “robust and sound.”

“By building in volume and at multiple locations, we think we will create and stand up a large supply chain and build a lot of construction expertise,” Wright said. “We expect the timing and cost of these plants to well outperform what was done on Vogtle.”

Seven utilities and energy companies signed letters of intent that identified sites, the Energy Department said. The agency plans to pick five, which would host two reactors at each site. The federal financing would be used to purchase nuclear components with long lead times, and are not construction loans.

The department declined to name the utilities involved or the states they are in, calling it premature until the selections are made. It did not give a timeline for making those selections.

President Donald Trump set a goal of quadrupling domestic production of nuclear power within the next 25 years, and he has signed executive orders to speed development. The administration is working to advance new nuclear technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors.

Dan Sumner, president and chief executive officer of Westinghouse, said industrialized nuclear power needs to be built at fleet scale, in order for the United States to lead in artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and the industries that will define the next century.

Critics of building more nuclear reactors say they’re too expensive and riskier than other low-carbon energy sources. Several states restrict or ban new nuclear power plant construction.

Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank, said the Energy Department has the authority to issue these loan guarantees, but he doesn't think the executive branch should be so heavily involved in the electricity sector.

If the past is any indication, the next administration will use similar authorities to favor a different set of energy resources, he added. "Remove the state barriers and the federal favoritism and let companies build the power plants that pass the market test,” Fisher wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.

Data centers used 4% to 5% of the nation's total electricity in 2024, a share that could nearly triple by 2028, according to government estimates. Some analysts predict nationwide electricity use to rise as much as 20% in the next decade, with data centers a big reason.

The Energy Department said the loans could speed up the development of these 10 reactors by up to three years and lower construction costs. Its goal is for all 10 to be under construction by 2030, to start providing power in the mid-2030s.

The utilities and Westinghouse will be expected to contribute up to $5 billion in equity in total across the five, two-reactors projects. Wright said his department provides up to $17.5 billion in loans, or $3.5 billion per project, in debt to pair with the equity. He said it's “very, very low risk to the American taxpayers.”

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McDermott reported from Providence, R.I.

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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.

Now the Bucks face the onerous challenge of retooling without the player who carried the team on his broad shoulders for over a decade.

The Bucks agreed on the eve of Tuesday’s draft to send Antetokounmpo along with forward Bobby Portis to the Miami Heat in exchange for Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware and Kasparas Jakucionis, according to a person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the move had yet to receive the required league approval.

Milwaukee also gets the No. 13 selection in Tuesday’s draft along with a first-round pick swap in 2030, first-round picks in 2031 and 2033 and a second-rounder in 2033, the person said.

The move leaves the Bucks without one of the most beloved figures in Wisconsin sports history. Milwaukee fans watched in awe as Antetokounmpo spent the last 13 seasons maturing from a skinny teenager into one of the top players on the planet.

Bucks coach Taylor Jenkins understood this was a possibility when he accepted the job in April following the departure of Doc Rivers.

“Naturally, we did talk about Giannis, the entire roster, developmental pathways for everyone you know, moving forward,” Jenkins said during his introductory news conference last month. “Because from the coaching lens, I've got to start formulating that, what we’re going to do, not just this offseason, but when we hit the ground running, you know, at the start of training camp. So naturally, (we) talked about that. Had great dialogue, full transparency.”

Replacing a beloved superstar

Antetokounmpo had spent his entire career with the Bucks, who selected the 18-year-old from Greece with the 15th pick in the 2013 draft. The nine-time all-NBA forward leads the Bucks in virtually every career statistical category, including points, rebounds, assists, blocks, games and minutes.

He won MVP awards in 2019 and 2020. Antetokounmpo came back from a knee hyperextension in the 2021 playoffs to earn NBA Finals MVP honors while scoring 50 points in the title-clinching Game 6 victory over the Phoenix Suns.

Antetokounmpo, 31, had signed multiple contract extensions to stay in Milwaukee and play in one of the NBA’s smallest markets. He was so appreciated for his loyalty that a mural of him — 53½ feet high and 56½ feet wide — appears on the side of a three-story building in downtown Milwaukee.

Plenty of fans stopped by that mural Tuesday to pay homage to Milwaukee’s departing superstar. Some left mementoes, including a Sports Illustrated commemorating the Bucks’ 2021 title that included this message: “Thanks for everything, big fella! 34 forever — Milwaukee.”

“I’m at a loss for words,” said Danny Nelson of Delafield, Wisconsin. “I still don’t think it’s real. He was everything to the city. It doesn’t feel real that he’s gone.”

Those fans generally harbored no hard feelings toward Antetokounmpo regarding the trade. They instead wanted to offer thanks.

“I want what’s best for him,” Isabelle Branger of Milwaukee said. “He’s done a lot for us here.”

Facing possibility of a long rebuild

The Bucks made plenty of high-risk, high-reward moves in an attempt to keep Antetokounmpo happy and remain in contention. But the Bucks never got beyond the second round of the playoffs after winning that 2021 title due in part to injuries to Antetokounmpo and other key players. They're coming off a 32-50 season that snapped a string of nine straight playoff appearances.

Those big swings they took to stay competitive with Antetokounmpo will make it tougher to rebuild without him.

Even after making this blockbuster deal to recoup draft capital, Milwaukee doesn’t have any first-round picks in 2027 or 2029.

The Bucks gave up multiple first-round picks in the 2020 trade that brought Jrue Holiday to Milwaukee and the 2023 deal in which they acquired Damian Lillard. Holiday played a key role in the Bucks’ 2021 title before leaving Milwaukee in the Lillard trade. Lillard was waived after tearing his Achilles in a 2025 first-round playoff loss to Indiana, a move that enabled the Bucks to sign former Pacers center Myles Turner.

That makes it imperative that the Bucks find assets with their two lottery picks Tuesday, as they pick 10th and 13th. That No. 10 pick represents their earliest selection since 2016, when they also went 10th and took Thon Maker.

The Bucks have one potential building block in guard Ryan Rollins, who turns 24 next month. Perhaps a new staff gets more from Turner, whose production dipped his first year in Milwaukee.

This trade gives Milwaukee an infusion of youth as it begins a new chapter.

Herro is a Milwaukee-area native and 2025 All-Star who has scored at least 20 points per game each of the last four seasons, though injuries limited the 26-year-old to 33 games in 2025-26.

Jaquez, 25, scored 15.4 points per game in a bench role this season. Ware is a 22-year-old, 7-footer. Jakucionis, 20, was the 20th pick in last year’s draft.

But this still represents a major transition for a team that had considered itself a legitimate contender as long as it had a healthy Antetokounmpo, who finished fourth or higher in the MVP balloting every year from 2019-25 before injuries limited him to a career-low 36 games this season.

This franchise has been through lean years before. The Bucks reached the Eastern Conference finals in 2001 but didn’t win another playoff series until returning to the East finals in 2019.

Longtime Bucks fans know the challenges that come after a superstar’s departure.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led the Bucks to a 1971 title when he was known as Lew Alcindor and got them another conference championship in 1974 before requesting a trade. The Bucks sent Abdul-Jabbar to the Los Angeles Lakers in the summer of 1975, and they wouldn’t get back to the NBA Finals until that 2021 championship season.

Now the guy most responsible for that 2021 celebration also is leaving town.

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AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this report.

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

The high court ruled against a sweeping argument from a Michigan family whose house was sold for less than half its open-market value to cover an unpaid tax bill of just over $2,000. They argued the foreclosure violated their rights because the house would have fetched a higher price of nearly $200,000 if sold through typical real-estate channels.

The Supreme Court unanimously found that people aren't entitled to recoup a “hypothetical fair market value” of homes sold at auction to cover unpaid taxes. Auctions are designed to be a relatively quick way to collect unpaid taxes, and requiring local governments to get the higher fair-market value might make them unworkable, Justice Samuel Alito wrote.

“The traditional rule, under which the taxpayer receives only the difference between the auction sale price and unpaid taxes, is ‘just,’” he wrote.

The sale, though, must be conducted fairly, he wrote. The court sent the Pung family's case back to lower courts to reassess the process used by Isabella County. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Neil Gorsuch, wrote separately to raise doubts about the constitutionality of the foreclosure process.

“The case isn’t over," said Larry Salzman, vice president for litigation at the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the family. “The Pungs won the right to continue their fight in the lower courts.”

The county maintained that auction sale prices are always lower than open real estate transactions, in part because they typically require full cash payment rather than a mortgage.

Officials make “herculean efforts to help homeowners avoid foreclosure," said attorney Matthew Nelson, who represented the county. “But at the end of the day, foreclosure is a tool that needs to remain in their toolboxes.”

He said the county's actions would withstand further scrutiny. “We are confident the process Isabella County followed in this case exceeded what the law required."

The case comes about three years after another major foreclosure case where the justices ruled against local governments. The court found counties can’t keep tax sale proceeds beyond what the owner owes in unpaid taxes.

That case centered on a 94-year-old Minnesota woman whose county government kept about $40,000 in proceeds from the sale of her condominium after she failed to pay about $2,300 in taxes.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it's opening a special investigation into the Tesla Model 3 crash on Friday near Houston, a significant probe because the car was using technology that Elon Musk considers key to the company's future.

The Tesla CEO is rolling out robotaxis using automated software in several U.S. cities this year and plans to invite Tesla owners to put their cars into the fleet using the same system across the country.

The driver told the Harris County Sheriff's Office that he was using the technology, according to a police report on the crash, but it's not clear what role, if any, it played in the incident.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment but the head of the company's artificial intelligence efforts suggested on social media later Monday that the self-driving feature was not to blame.

“In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area,” wrote Ashok Elluswamy on X, the platform that is now part of Musk's rocket company, SpaceX. “They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.”

The police report noted that the driver was not drunk and is cooperating. It identified the woman killed as Martha Avila.

Video obtained by KHOU-TV shows the car traveling at top speed over the front lawn of a brick home in Katy, then ramming into a front room. The next shot shows the car encased in the home amid piles of crumbling plaster, split beams and bits of furniture.

The auto safety regulator, known as NHTSA, has launched several investigations into Tesla, including one late last year into 58 incidents in which Teslas reportedly violated traffic safety laws while using self-driving technology, leading to more than a dozen crashes and fires and nearly two dozen injuries.

A few months earlier, the NHTSA opened an investigation into why Tesla apparently had not been reporting crashes promptly as required.

As for special crash investigations, the NHTSA has opened 46 involving Teslas using self-driving or driver-assistance technology over the past decade, according to the agency's records. In more than a dozen of those crashes, at least one person — a driver, passenger or pedestrian — was killed.

Tesla stock fell sharply early last year as car sales plunged amid a boycott of Musk after he waded into politics, leading President Donald Trump's budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency initiative and embracing European extremist candidates.

Musk has since shifted the Tesla story to one less about car sales and more about AI and robotaxis, and done so successfully. The stock is up 16% in the past year.

The 6-3 decision centers on an immigration officers’ 2012 decision to put lawful permanent resident Muk Choi Lau on immigration parole when he returned from a short trip to China because he had been accused of a counterfeiting crime.

Lau argued that the officer overstepped their authority, and the decision wrongly allowed the Department of Homeland Security under then-President Barack Obama an easier path to removal after he pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit clothes in New Jersey.

The high court disagreed. “Border officers did not have the burden to establish by clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the opinion.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, writing that the decision to put Lau on immigration parole effectively sentenced him to “immigration limbo” before he’d been convicted of any crime.

“I worry that the Court has now handed the Government a massive blank check,” she wrote in the dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues.

The liberal group Alliance for Justice echoed that concern, saying the ruling could provide an expanded path for revoking green cards.

But Advancing American Freedom, a group founded by former Republican Vice President Mike Pence, called it an important case to allow the removal of people who “abuse the privilege of being granted lawful permanent resident status.”

The decision comes as the high court considers a series of immigration-related issues against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, though this case started before Trump took office.

His administration argued that suspicion of a crime is enough to put a lawful permanent resident, also known as a green-card holder, on immigration parole. Federal attorneys urged the court to take an expansive view of executive authority over immigration.

The court is also considering cases over Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship, potentially revive a restrictive asylum policy and end temporary legal protections for migrants fleeing war and natural disasters in their homelands.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher last week dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit against Maryland that sought access to the state’s voter records.

Gallagher, appointed by Republican President Donald Trump during his first term, wrote that she “joins every court to have addressed this issue" in concluding that the unredacted voter registration file "is not a record or paper that a state must produce to the United States.”

With the dismissal Thursday in Maryland, the number of states where the Justice Department has lost similar cases comes to nine. The department has sued to force release of detailed state voter data — which includes dates of birth, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers — in 30 states and the District of Columbia.

In addition to Maryland, judges have rejected those attempts in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. In Georgia, a judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit because it had been filed in the wrong city, prompting the government to refile elsewhere.

In the Maryland case, the Justice Department tried to cite an opinion written by its own legal counsel's office that it had the right to the state voter records under federal civil rights law, but Gallagher was not persuaded.

“The Court will not interpret the (Civil Rights Act) contrary to its text simply because an office of the party advancing that interpretation has adopted it,” she wrote.

In explaining their push for the records, federal officials have said that they need the voter data to ensure that states are complying with federal election laws related to maintaining voter registration lists, even though states already have detailed processes to do that. In the case out of Rhode Island, a Justice Department attorney acknowledged that the department was seeking unredacted voter roll information so it could be shared with the Department of Homeland Security to check citizenship status.

On Monday, a federal judge found that the Homeland Security program to check citizenship, referred to as SAVE, violated federal privacy laws and was wrongly identifying eligible voters as noncitizens. She ruled that the system could no longer be used.

Democratic and some Republican officials have objected to the Justice Department requests for detailed voter data and said such a demand violates state and federal privacy laws.

But at least 13 states have either provided or promised to provide their voter registration lists to the department, according to the Brennan Center for Justice and Associated Press reporting: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

Gianni Infantino, the soccer body's president, defended the decision to introduce breaks — which come midway through each half — at this World Cup and said Tuesday they may be providing more entertainment for fans.

He said FIFA would analyze what it will do in future tournaments “based on this experience.” But after criticism that the breaks were a stealth way to insert advertising or American-style timeouts, Infantino suggested the stoppages have been positive.

“Maybe the coach can reassess certain situations, correct certain mistakes. The players get a little rest and come back in full speed. Well, is that bad necessarily? Maybe it’s good,” Infantino told SNTV. "And we see as well the intensity of the games. We’ve never seen 90 minutes in a tournament like this played in such an intensity.

“Until the last second of the match, players attack and so on," he continued. "And maybe, maybe not, but maybe it’s also a bit thanks to this little break that the players have and after they can go back on the field and show what they can do.”

The World Cup has certainly delivered in terms of entertainment, with goals scored at a record pace and big performances from soccer greats like Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland. There have also been shocks provided by debutants Cape Verde and Curacao, despite fears the expansion of the tournament from 32 teams to 48 would dilute the quality.

But the biggest criticism has been the introduction of hydration breaks for all matches regardless of venue or location.

Loud jeers have greeted the stoppages, around 22 minutes into each half, especially at games played in stadiums with roofs and air conditioning, such as Atlanta.

Infantino said it was necessary for sporting equity.

“If we were to use hydration breaks only in those matches where it was too hot and not in the other matches, we would give an advantage or a disadvantage to some of the coaches or some of the teams,” he said. “Why would the coach have the opportunity to influence the game in one match just because it’s hot and in another match where it’s a bit less hot, he wouldn’t have this opportunity?”

Infantino also insisted FIFA was making no extra money as a result of networks cutting to commercials because contracts had been signed before the decision to introduce hydration breaks.

“Broadcasters maybe, they make, they generate more. I don’t know, that’s great for them," he said. "But for us, we make zero additional revenues.”

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James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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

The case began after deputies received a tip on Feb. 23 regarding Raven Hamm. Following an investigation, authorities determined that Hamm had juveniles at her home on Jan. 31, where alcohol and vapes were made available to at least three minors.

The sheriff’s office said Hamm admitted to the accusations during interviews. She was charged with three counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and three counts of distributing, purchasing or providing alcohol to a person under the age of 21.

Hamm was convicted in the Alleghany Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court and is serving a four-month sentence at the Alleghany Regional Jail.

Alleghany Highlands Public Schools released a statement following the incident:

Alleghany Highland Public Schools (AHPS) is aware of a press release issued by the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office today that a paraprofessional formerly employed by AHPS has been convicted and sentenced on charges relating to the delinquency of a minor. 

According to that press release, the Alleghany County Sheriff’s Office received information on February 23, 2026 that led to the initiation of its criminal investigation. AHPS first learned of the allegations and the criminal investigation on April 28, 2026, when the former employee reported to her building principal her need to meet for an interview with law enforcement. The former employee was promptly placed on administrative leave and, thereafter, she did not return to work. 

Following review of the circumstances and in accordance with division policies, applicable law, and due process requirements, the School Board terminated the employee’s contract in May 2026. Prior to April 28, 2026, AHPS was not aware of the allegations or the criminal charges against the former employee.

Darrell Gleason, Communication specialist at Alleghany Highlands Public Schools

The votes in the state House and Senate came after lawmakers limited a provision that requires a hand recount of ballots in certain races. Leaders in the Republican-controlled Legislature said their plan to delay action on the vote-counting equipment had the support of the governor, Republican Brian Kemp.

Kemp had called lawmakers into a special session in part to address a July 1 deadline that was set to ban the QR codes used for the official vote count. Legislators passed a law two years ago that set that deadline, but then failed to find a replacement for tabulating votes.

Some voting rights activists had urged lawmakers to delay any changes to the QR code system, warning that there wasn't enough time before the midterm elections to ensure they didn't cause confusion at polling sites. Georgia is a political swing state where voters will decide nationally prominent races for U.S. Senate and governor in the fall.

State lawmakers last week appeared to have reached a deal on a bill to postpone the deadline for banning the QR code tabulation, but Senate Republicans over the weekend inserted an amendment that required a full hand recount of the top two races on the ballot. That change drew strong opposition from Democrats.

The revised bill that passed Tuesday would limit hand recounts to eight races for statewide office, including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state. But the hand counts would take place only for the top two contests on a ballot and only if the margin of victory is within a half percentage point. U.S. Senate and House races would not be subject to the hand counts.

To qualify, the race would have to appear as the first or second contest on a ballot.

Democrats objected to any hand recount provision. Research has shown that hand-counting is more prone to error, costlier and likely to delay results. Yet it has gained traction with Republican lawmakers in some states as President Donald Trump repeats false claims about a stolen 2020 election.

Georgia already has established election procedures that include audits and provisions for recounts in certain circumstances, Democratic state Rep. Debra Bazemore said.

“The question before us is not whether we support election integrity. Of course we do,” she said. “The question is whether the bill actually improves election integrity or whether it creates a new opportunity to cast doubt on legitimate election results. I believe it does the latter.”

Rep. Victor Anderson, a Republican who helped lead a House study committee on elections that held public hearings around the state last year, said the bill is the “culmination of a lot of work.”

He cautioned that if no bill is passed to address the QR code deadline, all votes may have to be hand counted in the coming midterm election.

“This bill is not the ultimate solution,” he said. “This bill solves an immediate conflict we have and lays out a path to achieve the most election integrity, the most accuracy, the most transparency that we can have going forward when we implement the next uniform voting system in Georgia.”

The state's current system uses a QR code printed on ballots to tally the votes. It has drawn the ire of Trump, who claimed without evidence that voting machines in Georgia deleted or switched votes in the 2020 election. Trump narrowly lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden that year.

Georgia voting machines have been the subject of conspiracy theories, which manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems fought vigorously in court. But election integrity advocates also have raised concerns about the machines, arguing that they are vulnerable to hacking and that voters cannot be sure their selections are accurately reflected because people can’t read QR codes.

Dominion was bought by another company last year and is now known as Liberty Vote.

Nearly 1,100 peacekeepers from countries around the world have lost their lives in the line of duty and thousands of others have been injured since 1948, according to U.N. peacekeeping department figures. Yet the resolution says the rate of prosecution for killings and other criminal acts against peacekeepers “has remained very low.”

The resolution, sponsored by Pakistan and Denmark and cosponsored by more than 150 countries, seeks to fill gaps in ensuring accountability. It authorizes Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to ensure that after future attacks, facts are collected and to support investigations and prosecutions of all violent acts.

Denmark’s U.N. Ambassador Christina Lassen said the resolution sends a clear message to the more than 50,000 personnel serving in peacekeeping missions from Lebanon and Cyprus to South Sudan and Central African Republic: “Attacks against them will not be met with silence or impunity.”

“To the perpetrators of any crimes, wherever and whoever they are,” she said, “it sends a firm message that the international community is watching, that crimes will not go unpunished, that accountability and justice will be pursued and will be upheld.”

Pakistan’s U.N. Ambassador Asim Ahmad said attacks against peacekeepers in several countries have increased in number and sophistication, often with little accountability.

Condolences are necessary when peacekeepers are killed and injured, but what's needed is justice, he said. “Most importantly, this resolution is a strong expression of the council’s political will to stand by the peacekeepers. ”

The Security Council also adopted a resolution in 2021 aimed at strengthening accountability for crimes committed against perpetrators.

The U.N. peacekeeping department pointed to “significant progress” since then, with an increase in national investigations and the number of alleged perpetrators identified, detained, or both. It pointed to 103 individuals convicted since 2020 for a range of offenses related to the killing of 35 peacekeepers and two U.N. experts in the Central African Republic, Congo, Lebanon and Mali.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric welcomed the council’s adoption of the resolution and noted the actions since 2020 but stressed: “Much more needs to be done.”

The resolution adopted Tuesday asks the secretary-general to provide options to the council within 120 days on ways to strengthen accountability for crimes against peacekeepers.

“This will help the council assess what is working, where gaps remain, and what further action may be required,” Pakistan's Ahmad said.

Denmark's Lassen said the council looks forward to considering the proposals and working together “to translate them into meaningful progress.”

Rubio arrived in Abu Dhabi late Tuesday following a two-day flurry of diplomatic activity between the U.S. and Iran in Switzerland led by Vice President JD Vance that resulted in what Vance says is a significant agreement to end all hostilities in the region, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and provide sanctions relief with negotiations on its nuclear program to be concluded in 60 days.

In the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain — all nations that Iran hit with missiles and drones in retaliation for U.S.-Israeli airstrikes — Rubio will be holding meetings starting Wednesday with leaders who, in some cases, have taken a harder line on Iran recently than has the Trump administration.

In brief comments to reporters on his arrival, Rubio said he would explain the benefits of the agreement to the skeptical Gulf states if it is implemented. He said that a proposed $300 billion investment fund for Iran would not become a reality unless "its leadership makes a decision that they want to be a country instead of a revolutionary movement that exports terror.”

Another complaint is that the agreement does not cover Iran's missile program, its support for proxies and pushes off the nuclear question until later.

Rubio argued, however, that the memorandum of understanding signed last week calls for the “complete end of hostilities and conflicts in the region,” which he said will require Iran to halt its funding of proxies like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

“You can’t have the end of hostilities and conflicts in a region as long as Iranian proxies are launching missiles and drones from Iraq, and are participating in terrorism, like Hamas did, and like Hezbollah did,” Rubio said. “So, I do think it’s covered by the MOU, and it is an issue that will be gotten to at the appropriate time in these negotiations.”

The Emiratis, in particular, have been at the forefront of calls for tough action notably to ensure the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. There have been conflicting accounts of what the Memorandum of Understanding signed last week will mean for the strait, which the rest of the world wants open free of charge for all shipping.

The U.S. has been firm on that point, but the Iranians are moving ahead with a scheme that could charge service fees for passage that many believe would amount to a toll. Rubio said under no circumstances would the U.S. accept that.

“It’s an international waterway," he said. “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law. That’s the way it is.”

“I don’t think we have anybody to convince around here in that regard. I think all the countries in this region would agree with us,” he said.

The drone attacks added to the woes on the Black Sea peninsula, where Russian authorities have had to suspend gasoline sales to civilians as Ukraine has intensified its recent campaign to disrupt supply lines and the electrical grid at the height of the summer tourist season.

The peninsula was seized by force and illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014. Ukraine's increasing use of long-range strikes has highlighted its ability to inflict painful damage on Russia and put added pressure on the Kremlin while Moscow’s advances recently have ground to a near halt, Western analysts and officials say.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said last week that his forces are “isolating Crimea with drones.”

“It looks like in the nearest time, Crimea will become an island. This could lead to some very unexpected consequences for Russians,” Fedorov said on a blogger's YouTube channel.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had been warned that Ukraine aimed to disrupt energy supplies and Russia’s tourism industry. He didn’t say who gave the warning.

Ukrainian drones “coming in a huge stream” seek to “destabilize” Russian society, Putin said.

Russia's ​Deputy Prime Minister ​Alexander Novak told Putin on Tuesday that officials were considering suspending diesel fuel exports to protect the country's motorists, adding to ongoing bans on the export of jet fuel and gasoline, according to the Tass news agency. Novak also said scheduled maintenance at refineries had been postponed.

Ukraine also has hit targets near to the Kremlin in Moscow and in St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city this month.

Parts of Crimea are without power

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said drones struck an oil storage depot at the Kerch thermal power plant in eastern Crimea, an electrical substation in the west, and a liquefied natural gas distribution station in Simferopol, the peninsula’s second-biggest city.

In addition, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said their units, working with what it said was the resistance movement in Crimea, destroyed a rail bridge over the North Crimean Canal near the village of Rozdolne.

The military described the span as a key logistics route used to supply Russian forces in southern Ukraine and said drones began hitting the structure late Sunday to Monday, collapsing part of it. A second strike early Tuesday targeted railway repair equipment deployed at the bridge and its remaining sections, it said on Telegram.

It was not possible to independently verify the Ukrainian claims, and Russian officials made no immediate comment.

Parts of Crimea were without power Tuesday, the area’s energy supplier said. But it attributed the outages to “technical malfunctions” in local electrical grids and said it expected power to be restored within 24 hours.

The diamond-shaped peninsula is important because of its naval bases and beaches, as well as its strategic location in the Black Sea. Russia has spent centuries fighting for it.

Russian-appointed officials in Crimea have appeared reluctant to discuss attacks on the peninsula, but new security measures suggest deepening tension.

Its Ministry of Sport on Tuesday canceled all sporting events, competitions, and training sessions for children through Sept. 1. It described the measures as “aimed solely at ensuring the safety of our children, athletes, and anyone who is involved with sport.”

On Monday, Gov. Sergei Aksyonov said that for security reasons, all summer camps in the region had stopped accepting children and new bookings until Sept. 1.

Successes against Russia boost Ukrainian morale

On the front line in eastern Ukraine, where Russia’s war of attrition has made slow and costly advances since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has deployed cutting-edge drone technology to keep the enemy pinned down.

Meanwhile, its medium-range drones have also disrupted Russia’s supply lines to the front, and its long-range strikes have increasingly damaged Russian oil facilities that provide vital revenue for the Kremlin’s war effort.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Monday its forces have hit more than 800,000 enemy targets with drones since the beginning of the year and that 95% of drones used by the armed forces are domestically produced.

The successes have boosted Ukrainian confidence, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says sustained foreign support is locked in to help stop Russia.

Officials have shown renewed vigor in talking about the war.

Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Andrii Melnyk said Monday that Kyiv remained ready for direct talks with Russia to achieve a “just and lasting peace” based on the U.N. Charter, but warned that Ukraine’s willingness to compromise was not open-ended.

Melnyk said at a U.N. Security Council meeting that a ceasefire along the current front line already represented a major concession and urged Russia to withdraw from occupied Ukrainian territory.

He also said recent Ukrainian strikes had altered the dynamics of the war, adding: “This is just the beginning.”

Russia's top diplomat says Moscow will defend Belarus

Meanwhile, the Kremlin is ready to “ensure the security” of its neighbor and ally Belarus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday, days after Zelenskyy demanded that Belarus remove relay equipment on its territory that Kyiv said aided Russian drone attacks.

The relay stations are used for signal transmissions to Russian drones attacking Ukraine, according to Zelenskyy.

Lavrov told the Russian news agency Interfax that Kyiv was trying to drag Belarus into the conflict. Moscow, in fact, had used Belarus territory to launch its invasion of Ukraine.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Thousands of spectators had turned out in central Amman to watch the match between Algeria and Jordan on giant screens. The crowd, at Hashemite Plaza, grew and nine people injured in the crush were hospitalized, the Jordan News Agency reported, citing the Public Security Directorate.

One of the injured fans later died, the report said.

This year was the first that Jordan qualified for the World Cup. The team was knocked out Tuesday after losing to Algeria 2-1.

Donors gave U.S. charities $617 billion in 2025, an inflation-adjusted 3% increase over last year, according to “Giving USA 2026: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2025.”

Bequests last year jumped by nearly 17%, the third year of the last four to clock double-digit increases in this form of giving. The trend could signal the beginning of the long predicted Great Wealth Transfer — in which baby boomers begin passing their enormous wealth to their children and charities. Overall, giving increased among all categories: corporations, living individuals, bequests, and foundations.

Strong markets and big donors boost giving

A strong stock market and economic growth contributed to the uptick, despite upheaval caused by federal cuts, says Wendy McGrady, chair of Giving USA.

All donor types stepped up to give amid the turmoil, McGrady notes, because charities made their needs known. “Those that were effective in sharing their story saw their donors respond,” McGrady says.

The robust giving was propelled by positive economic factors, says Jon Bergdoll, interim director of data and research partnerships at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, which conducts the research for the report. “Whether you’re looking at the S&P 500 or the financial markets, they saw really, really robust growth,” Bergdoll says. “That has a pretty direct contribution to wealth and asset sizes of companies, foundations, the wealthy and helped drive a lot of that increase.”

All types of donors increased their giving in 2025, and giving to most causes also rose. Education nonprofits saw an 8.9% uptick, organizations in the “public-society benefit” category had an 8.7% increase, and environment and animal nonprofits were up 8.2%. Smaller increases were seen for charities with missions involving arts, culture and humanities (4.7%); health (3.3%); human services (2.6%); and international (1. 4%). However, giving to religious groups was marginally lower, down 0.2% when adjusted for inflation.

Several nonprofits the Chronicle spoke to noted that they raised more money last year and that success was reliant on big gifts, which in turn are buoyed by a strong stock market. “The market has become a larger and larger predictor of giving,” Bergdoll at IU says. “And I would anticipate that to continue. That growing reliance means that the unpredictability of the markets is going to start bleeding into an unpredictability in giving as well.”

While Giving USA does not measure the number of donors who give, over the years, the share of dollars from individuals has decreased. In 1985, 80% of dollars came from individuals; now it is just 64%.

Big donors loom large in one category, megagifts, which are defined as contributions that exceed 0.1% of total giving that year. In 2025 megagifts were those amounting to $600 million or more. There were $19.2 billion worth of megagifts, roughly 4% of all dollars given by individuals. MacKenzie Scott’s $6.65 billion in contributions represented a third of all mega-giving in 2025. Michael Bloomberg who donated $4.3 billion, Bill Gates, who gave away at $3.7 billion, and Paul Allen’s bequest of $3.1 billion all qualified as megadonors.

Indications of Great Wealth Transfer start

For years, pundits have predicted a great transfer of wealth that would move $18 trillion from baby boomers and older donors to younger generations and possibly to charities. Three of the past four years have shown big growth in bequests, which may indicate that the great wealth transfer has begun.

Bergdoll recognizes that people get excited over the prospect of this wealth moving to charities but says more data is needed to definitively declare that the transfer has started. Giving by bequests in the past 10 years “outpaced overall giving,” Bergdoll says, but the number of IRS estate reports from the past few years is still small.

“It’s really tough — just from one or two years of data (to know if the great wealth transfer has begun),” he says. “We need a little bit more data to feel comfortable saying, ‘Oh, it has started. It’s off to the races.’”

However, several nonprofits, including the Christian missionary group InterVarsity and the international charity CARE, are putting more resources into planned giving.

“We know a big wealth transfer is happening so we have also been growing our planned giving program,” says Sarah Taylor Peace, CARE’s chief revenue officer. Taylor Peace says CARE has received multimillion-dollar bequests from donors who had given small gifts over decades.

Patrick Schmitt, co-CEO of estate planning company FreeWill, notes that there are more than 70 million baby boomers, and it’s imperative to get on their radar. Many are already giving qualified charitable distributions from retirement accounts.

Federal shifts drive giving

The federal government’s cuts to USAID and international aid programs deeply affected organizations like CARE, but donors responded generously when the organization asked for help.

“We raised a lot of private (funds). We actually had our highest ever fiscal year,” Taylor Peace says, “mostly coming from individual givers responding to the fact that lots of the traditional funding wasn’t there and wanting to make sure we could continue to run our crisis humanitarian work.”

When there’s a lot of bad news and negative noise in the world, donors want to “do something hopeful,” Taylor Peace says. Offering donors a positive way to contribute to making things better for others resonated with donors, she says.

Donors also responded generously to fundraising appeals that focused on federal policy shifts. Mollie Marsh-Heine, chief development officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says donors at all giving levels responded well to appeals to help the environmental organization fight back against the current administration’s hostility toward environmental regulations.

Donations to foundations drop

There was a sharp drop in giving to foundations, which fell nearly 18.3% in inflation-adjusted dollars. While this seems steep, Bergdoll notes that foundations had a near-record-high 2024, in which giving grew 32.6%. “In raw dollar terms, they still had a very strong” 2025, Bergdoll says.

While news from “Giving USA” was mostly positive, there were some lackluster figures. Corporate giving was up only half a percent. According to Bergdoll, it’s “challenging” to get a good view of giving by businesses of all sizes.

The Houston Humane Society said corporate giving remained strong in 2025. But Stark, with UnityPoint Health, noted that some corporate sponsors whose businesses were facing challenges did “back off” last year. Similarly, Susan G. Komen had some companies “reduce the amount they were giving” due to economic headwinds, says vice president Andi Hughes.

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Rasheeda Childress is a senior editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the full article. This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

The justices condemned what happened to the former inmate, Damon Landor. But they ruled that a federal law designed to protect the religious rights of inmates does not permit lawsuits for money damages against individuals even when rights are violated.

The high court, in a 6-3 decision, agreed with lower courts that without exception had ruled that the law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, can’t be used to hold those who violate inmates’ rights financially responsible.

The justices refused to apply the rationale from their decision in 2020 that allowed Muslim men to sue over their inclusion on the FBI’s no-fly list under a sister statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The Justice Department, which argued against the plaintiffs in the no-fly list case in President Donald Trump’s first Republican administration, had sided with Landor.

Nothing in the law dealing with prisoners' religious rights authorizes lawsuits against individual officers, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that state prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law. “It is not often that a real-life incident so clearly illustrates Congress’s reasons for adopting legislation, or the Constitution’s wisdom in enabling it,” Jackson wrote in an opinion that was joined by her two liberal colleagues.

No one defended what happened to Landor during his five-month prison term in 2020. When he entered the prison system, he carried a copy of an appeals court ruling in another inmate’s case holding that cutting religious prisoners’ dreadlocks violated the federal law.

At his first two stops, officials respected his beliefs. But things changed when he got to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Baton Rouge, for the final three weeks of his term.

A prison guard took the copy of the ruling Landor carried and tossed it in the trash, according to court records. Then the warden ordered guards to cut his dreadlocks. While two guards restrained him, a third shaved his head to the scalp, the records show.

Landor sued after his release, but lower courts dismissed the case. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lamented Landor’s treatment but said the law doesn’t allow him to hold prison officials liable for damages.

Louisiana wrote that “the state has amended its prison grooming policy to ensure that nothing like petitioner’s alleged experience can occur.”

The Rastafari faith is rooted in 1930s Jamaica, growing as a response by Black people to white colonial oppression. Its beliefs are a melding of Old Testament teachings and a desire to return to Africa. Its message was spread across the world in the 1970s by Jamaican music icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, two of the faith’s most famous exponents.

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

The new system is to start in 2028, and the Future Competition Committee that Woods leads still has work left on key details. Chief among them is which of the roughly 15 tournaments will be part of the “Championship Series,” and the 20 events on the lesser “Challenger Series.”

Other details involve bringing a form of match play to the postseason and creating a rotation of prestigious courses instead of going to East Lake in Atlanta every year.

“This work was never about any one player or person,” Woods said in his first public appearance since his arrest on a DUI charges on March 27. “It was about bringing together different perspectives, having honest, hard conversations, and thinking boldly about what is best for the game that we all love.”

The PGA Tour boards on Monday afternoon approved the recommendations. Woods jumped back into his role as chairman the last several weeks upon his return from seeking treatment out of the country since his arrest.

“It's great to see him back,” PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp said. “Tiger has been involved throughout the process. He's contributed meaningfully. It's awesome to see him back and in great form.”

Rolapp preached “scarcity, simplicity and parity” when he took over last summer, and those pillars have become more clear. The season will be shorter — approximately February through August with some scheduled weeks off — without taking away playing opportunities.

The $20 million signature events for 72 players now will be part of the Championship Series and expanded to 120 players on average. Players are not required to play them all and those tournaments will not have sponsor invitations or an alternate list. There will be a 36-hole cut.

“When fans tune into the PGA Tour Championship Series, they know they will see the best players in the world competing head-to-head,” Rolapp said. He said it was important to credibility not to have sponsor exemptions because sponsors in other sports don't determine who plays.

The Challenger Series will be a path for players to earn their way to the top level. Those fields will be about 144 players, and Rolapp said purses would be at least $4 million. This year, all but three regular non-signature events had prize funds of at least $9 million.

Except for about seven times during the season, the Championship and Challenger Series tournaments will be held the same week. Rolapp said on the occasion of a week off for the elite circuit, the Challenger Series event would be elevated.

Rory McIlroy last week referred to the secondary tier as a “glorified Korn Ferry event,” referring to the tour's developmental circuit.

“I just think there's going to be certain events that might lose their status if a sponsor doesn't pony up $30 million,” McIlroy said.

Rolapp said he spoke to McIlroy on Tuesday — the Masters champion is skipping the Travelers Championship, the third signature event he has missed this year — and said the new model will serve the same player and offer a similar number of tournaments. Korn Ferry purses are $1 million.

“We've just organized the same tour into a much more interesting and competitive system," Rolapp said. “If you look at the Challenger Series events, they’ll be at venues you recognize. They’ll be for healthy purses. They’ll include a subset of the same 200 and change players that we have today. That is much different than what the Korn Ferry Tour is today.”

Each tour will have a separate points standings and there is no plan for players to move up to the Championship Series during the season unless they were to win twice.

The Championship Series eligibility would be determined by the top 90 players from the previous year, the top 20 players from the Challenger Series and other exemption categories for tournament winners, injuries or career milestones.

Missing from the announcement was any mention of the FedEx Corp., the financial muscle behind the PGA Tour's postseason since it began in 2007. The most recent FedEx deal ends in 2027.

“Our hope is to create more value for FedEx and everybody else. We’re in an existing contract, and we’re going to honor that,” Rolapp said.

As for the fall, the PGA Tour is moving toward a separate series of four to six tournaments in which top performers can earn their way back to the Championship Series. The tour said it still has plans for the Korn Ferry Tour, PGA Tour Americas and the PGA Tour University ranking system that creates places for top college players.

Finishing in August would give the elite players time to consider playing overseas, such as premier European tour events or the Australian Open. The PGA Tour recently became partners with Golf Australia without co-sanctioning the century-old event.

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

Afghans make up one of the largest groups of migrants seeking asylum in the EU, but a growing number of governments in the 27-nation bloc want to speed up and increase deportations for those whose claims are rejected or who commit crimes in their host countries.

Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesperson for the Taliban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called the visit “historic," noting it was the first time a delegation from the Islamic Emirate held talks with the EU and EU nations in Brussels.

Balkhi, who led the delegation of five, said talks focused on “trust-building measures," the Taliban's diplomatic presence in the EU and a "dignified return process."

The meeting was held in an undisclosed location in the Belgian capital, where both the EU and NATO are headquartered.

The Commission said it co-chaired the meeting with Sweden and that representatives from 15 of the EU's 27 nations participated in discussions focused on easing deportations of criminals and security threats.

Rights groups say meeting could endanger Afghans in and out of Europe

Afghan authorities have imposed draconian restrictions on rights, particularly for women and girls, since the Taliban seized power in the country in 2021 in the wake of the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.

Rights groups said Tuesday's meeting undercuts the EU’s human rights obligations and could endanger people in Europe and Afghanistan.

“Any engagement with the Taliban needs to prioritize protecting human rights and accountability — not deporting people to danger there,” said Fereshta Abbasi, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. “EU countries are undermining their credibility by condemning Taliban abuses and pursuing accountability on one hand, while cooperating with the Taliban to forcibly return Afghans on the other.”

With not a single EU nation recognizing the Taliban, the meeting in Brussels symbolizes a small crack in the group’s diplomatic isolation since seizing power five years ago. Most nations around the world — including the entire EU — cut off diplomatic relations at the time. The Taliban has been quietly expanding its access to diplomatic missions in Europe ever since.

Afghan activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai said Monday that she was “deeply shaken” that the EU was talking with the Taliban.

“Europe must not legitimise a regime responsible for one of the worst human rights crises in the world. Any engagement with the Taliban must begin and end with the rights of Afghan women and girls,” she wrote on X.

Members of the Taliban delegation were issued visas after security screening with limited territorial validity, giving them 24 hours in Belgium and no access to other countries in the Schengen border-free travel zone.

Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot said Belgium complied with EU requests to grant the Taliban delegates visas.

“Making a meeting possible in the framework of our host-state policy does not amount to recognition, does not amount to legitimacy, and does not constitute an invitation by the Belgian government,” Prévot said in a statement.

Since neither Belgium nor the EU officially recognizes the Taliban government, the meeting did not take place at official sites belonging to either.

The drive to increase deportations from EU grows stronger

A spokesperson for the European Commission said the meeting was a response to pressure from a clear majority of the 27 EU member states — 20 of whom signed a letter in October calling for stronger migration policies, including a ramp-up of deportations.

Spokesperson Markus Lammert said the Commission had been asked to coordinate “technical talks” on returns.

“This does not mean recognition," he said.

While it was the first meeting of the Taliban in the EU, the first meeting between the two sides was held in Afghanistan in January when the Commission sent a mission to Kabul. It also maintains staff there.

The October letter was drafted in part by Belgian Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt, who said then that “we can no longer afford a standstill. It is high time for a firm and joint approach, so that Europe can regain control over migration and security.”

Bossuyt said that across the EU, only 2% of the 22,870 Afghans told to return had done so.

Afghanistan faces an increasingly dire situation

Afghanistan has been dealing with the return of about 3 million Afghans from Pakistan and Iran in the past year alone, all of whom have pretty much been forcibly repatriated from those two countries. That has exacerbated a humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, which is already reeling from food and economic crises, including biting sanctions.

Afghan Taliban authorities have imposed draconian restrictions on women and girls, including bans on education beyond primary school and on working in all but very few professions, as well as strict regulations on what women are allowed to wear in public.

“The desperate scenes of people — including EU staff — fleeing Afghanistan are a recent memory. It is unconscionable that the EU would now try and deport people to Afghanistan, which has only become more dangerous in the meantime,” said Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office.

Facing political pressure to toughen migration policies across the 27-nation bloc, the EU has recently passed deep reforms to its collective rules aiming to ramp up deportations — including allowing the setting up of so-called “return hubs,” increased domestic surveillance capabilities, tighter border controls, and engagement with the Taliban government.

With Afghanistan facing food shortages and economic collapse, the Taliban government is in need of humanitarian aid and hopes to lessen its international economic and political isolation.

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Afghan reported from Kabul. Associated Press writers Victoria Eastwood in Cairo, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, and Sylvain Plazy in Brussels contributed to this report.

The bill, which passed 85-5 and now heads to the House, has been the focus of intense negotiations in recent weeks as lawmakers in both parties try to address housing costs in an election year. The final version of the legislation bans corporate investors from buying single-family homes but doesn’t include a Senate provision that would have required investors to sell newly constructed homes within seven years.

The measure was the result of years of work to “lower costs, expand housing supply, cut red tape, protect taxpayers, and help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership,” said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., who worked with Democrats to get the bill passed.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the banking panel, said it is the most significant housing bill to pass Congress since 1990, when the average home in America was sold for $150,000. Now it costs more than $500,000, she said.

The bill “acknowledges that the federal government has a role to play in lowering housing prices,” Warren told The Associated Press. “For the first time ever, private equity will be blocked from buying up single-family homes and trying to turn housing into one more Wall Street investment.”

Senate passage of the bill shapes up as a rare bipartisan legislative achievement when much of Republicans’ agenda has stalled. The House is expected to give final approval later this week and send the bill to President Donald Trump, who has signaled his support.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who helped negotiate the legislation, said it was a “huge step toward finally addressing the affordable housing and homelessness crises in this country.”

Housing costs are a concern for both parties

Republicans and Democrats have embraced the bill as a way to show they are addressing the nation’s affordability crisis, driven in part by rising home prices due to a shortage of affordable housing. The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes have been hovering close to a 4-million annual pace going back to 2023 — well short of the 5.2-million annual pace that’s historically been the norm. Sales slowed last year to a 30-year low and have remained sluggish so far this year, declining in January and February versus a year earlier.

The Economic Report of the President in April found a shortage of 10 million homes, while a report this month from the Joint Center For Housing Studies at Harvard University found sales of existing homes were at three-decade lows and inventories were rising due to high home buying costs. “Cost burdens for both renters and owners continue to climb, while assistance remains profoundly underfunded,” the report said.

While the median U.S. monthly rent has been declining for nearly three years, it was still 17.2% higher in May than it was before the pandemic, according to data from Realtor.com.

Changes for grants, Section 8 and manufactured housing

To increase the supply of housing, the bill would streamline environmental reviews and speed up the construction process.

It would offer funding to local governments that build more housing, including Community Development Block Grant money to places exceeding the median rate of homebuilding. It would also provide new dollars for communities to turn abandoned infrastructure into housing, and offers a framework for communities that want to reform outdated zoning regulations, which often limit larger housing developments.

The legislation would allow banks to invest more in affordable housing and raise limits on the number of public housing units that can receive private financing through Section 8 funding to rehabilitate properties. And it would remove outdated requirements and expand federal financing to make manufactured homes more affordable.

“Manufactured housing produces some of the most cost-effective housing in America, but access to financing has been tightly restricted,” Warren said. “This creates the opportunity for more manufactured housing and, at the same time, creates a structure for people living in manufactured housing communities to organize and protect their investment in their homes.”

Lawmakers compromised on a disaster program

One of the sticking points between the two chambers was over a federal disaster recovery program.

An earlier Senate bill had permanently authorized block grant recovery funds, a change intended to ensure that funding requests aren’t needed after every disaster. House lawmakers opposed that provision because of concerns over how the program was run, so they agreed on a three-year authorization instead.

The final bill has received widespread support in the housing community, both from organizations representing landlords and large property owners as well as groups that advocate for tenants and low-income renters.

“There is no magic wand that will fix this crisis overnight, and no single piece of legislation is perfect,” said David Dworkin, chief executive of the National Housing Conference, the nation’s oldest housing coalition.

“Compromise demands that. But this bill is a significant down payment on a long-term effort to make housing more affordable for all Americans.”

Burnham is the strong front-runner to succeed Starmer, who announced Monday that he would step down within weeks after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.

Burnham, a former Cabinet minister who served since 2017 as mayor of Greater Manchester, won a special election last week for a seat in Parliament with the express aim of challenging Starmer for leadership of the Labour Party and the country.

Burnham’s chances got a big boost on Monday when former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who was considered his main rival, announced his support.

Starmer and Burnham met Tuesday for the first time since last week's special election. Neither side released details of what was discussed. Burnham was also meeting Labour lawmakers as he seeks to build momentum for his bid.

The U.K. parliamentary system allows governing parties to change leaders — and thus prime ministers — without the need for a national election. The next general election doesn't have to be held until 2029.

Nominations for the Labour leadership will open on July 9 and close a week later. If Burnham is the only contender, he could be prime minister by July 17. If there is a contest, the winner should be in place by the time Parliament returns from its summer break on Sept. 1.

Starmer told the weekly meeting of his Cabinet on Tuesday that he will try to make the transition to his successor as easy as possible. He told ministers that he wants an “orderly transition” and for whoever replaces him to succeed, his office said.

He is also keeping up a busy schedule, trying not to look like a lame duck during his final days in office. But while Starmer wants to carry on with business as usual, he’s not allowed to make new major policy announcements or spending commitments during what remains of his time in office.

The European Union says a key U.K.-EU summit scheduled for July 22 will be postponed because of the uncertainty in Britain.

The British government is still expected to publish a long-awaited defense investment plan — which sparked the resignation of Defense Secretary John Healey on June 11 — before a NATO summit in Turkey on July 7 and 8 that Starmer is likely to attend.

Burnham's economic plans aren't yet known

Burnham was a popular mayor of Greater Manchester, overseeing a period of rapid regeneration for the city in northern England where the Industrial Revolution was forged. He has pledged to repeat his signature brand of “Manchesterism” on a national scale.

Many Labour members hope Burnham’s people skills and charisma can connect with the public more than the stolid, managerial Starmer could ever do.

But Burnham's policies in many areas are unknown and untested. Some Labour lawmakers want to see a party election contest where he would face public debate and scrutiny.

Burnham is expected to make a speech next week outlining some of his economic plans.

Former Armed Forces Minister Al Carns, who quit this month to protest what he saw as inadequate defense spending, said that “we need to have a clear and concise discussion about what this country wants to be.”

He has suggested that he might run for the leadership, but told broadcaster ITV that “I’m not ready to make a decision on this in any way, shape or form.”

Others have suggested Darren Jones, a senior Cabinet minister and Starmer ally, should run, though he has yet to comment.

Potential candidates need the support of at least 81 Labour lawmakers, a fifth of the parliamentary party, to run.

Many argue that a leadership contest will only focus attention on the party’s internal divisions and extend a period of political uncertainty.

Starmer won a landslide but stumbled in office

Starmer resigned on Monday after a weekend considering his future, acknowledging that the Labour Party no longer thinks “I am best placed to lead us into the next general election.”

He was the sixth prime minister in a decade to stand outside No. 10 Downing St. and announce a departure. It comes as Britain marks the 10th anniversary of its vote to leave the European Union, a decision that still roils the country’s economy and politics.

After weeks of insisting that he would fight to keep his job, Starmer conceded to growing pressure to hand over to a new leader who can try and revive the government’s flagging fortunes. He led Labour to a landslide election victory in July 2024, but his popularity and that of the party have plummeted since then.

Starmer has struggled to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living. He has been hamstrung by repeated missteps, including his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson, a scandal-tarnished friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as U.K. ambassador to the United States.

Labour is losing liberal voters to the growing Green Party and facing a rising Reform UK, the Nigel Farage -led anti-immigration party that consistently leads in nationwide opinion polls.

When doors flung open, Sharpton entered to a standing ovation that continued until he was perched behind a lectern, on a stage decorated with a floor-to-ceiling video screen.

The audience was not anticipating a call for justice. Instead, the rabble-rousing youth minister turned go-to national advocate was there to declare his organization was officially an owner, no longer a renter, in the historically Black Harlem neighborhood it has called home for more than two decades.

“I want to make something permanent,” Sharpton said recently to the gathered crowd of NAN board members, local clergy and other allies. “When people see that you’ve bought a building, they say, ‘Wait a minute, they’re not going nowhere.’”

NAN’s new permanent home is the former Faison Firehouse Theater on Hancock Place, near the intersection of 124th Street and Manhattan Avenue. George Faison, a Tony Award-winning choreographer known for his work in the original 1970s Broadway staging of “The Wiz,” had bought the firehouse in 1999 and converted it into a community theater.

When Faison had a choice between selling the former firehouse in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood to a large developer or selling it to NAN, he chose the latter, according to Sharpton.

“I’m 71 years old — if I was just trying to do it as an Al Sharpton personal fan club, I could just keep renting,” Sharpton told The Associated Press during an interview in his new private office, with large windows overlooking central Harlem.

“I’m buying it to show I want this to be an institution. I want it to last beyond me.”

Although the renovation is structurally complete and its rooms are functional, Sharpton said he expects his weekly Saturday rallies to resume in the new headquarters this summer.

From renting to owning

Founded in 1991, NAN began meeting at P.S. 175, a Manhattan elementary school, during the tenure of the late David Dinkins, New York City’s first Black mayor. Next, NAN rented a space at 125th Street and Madison Avenue. In 2006, Sharpton moved NAN into a rented space at 145th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, where it operated until January.

NAN's headquarters had been named the “House of Justice” by his late mentor, the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.

Often organizing from his Harlem headquarters, Sharpton became known staging direct-action protests on behalf of Black men killed, brutalized or persecuted by police in New York City: Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, the exonerated men formerly known as the Central Park Five, and Eric Garner, among others.

“Harlem means home,” Sharpton told the AP.

The new NAN headquarters now carries the name “House of Justice Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Workshop,” following the multimillion dollar purchase and renovation of its five floors. Sharpton said he will invite artists to hold salons, poetry readings and jazz nights, as a callback to the Black cultural and intellectual movement of the Harlem Renaissance.

Looking out at his supporters during the invite-only reception for the new space, Sharpton reflected not just on the NAN’s past, but on the current cultural and political environment.

“We are in trouble,” he said in reference to redistricting fights set off by a recent Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act and the rolling back of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

“We don’t have, in my opinion, the luxury of not nailing down and working together,” Sharpton said.

Building on decades of local and national activism

Over the years, the NAN headquarters has become a “can’t skip” campaign stop for Democratic candidates seeking everything from the presidency and Congress to state and local offices. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the House of Justice is typically standing room only for the dignitaries who show up.

After the death of his childhood hero James Brown in 2006, the horse drawn carriage carrying the Godfather of Soul’s golden casket stopped outside NAN’s 145th Street headquarters.

The organization’s weekly Saturday rallies have also been a venue for families grieving loss through police violence, or for celebrities to speak out and unfairness in the entertainment industry.

Ashley Sharpton, the youngest of the reverend’s two daughters, grew up around the House of Justice. She and her older sister, Dominique Sharpton-Bright, were there on the day the late pop icon Michael Jackson visited and spoke at the invitation of their dad.

“The magic was palpable,” Ashley recalled.

Now, as founder and director of NAN’s youth initiatives, Ashley feels deeper stake in the organization’s future.

“It’s time for us to step in and take ownership, literally, of what is needed to maintain the legacy, and to continue the fight,” she told the AP.

___

Morrison is AP’s race and ethnicity news editor.

The justices ruled that American courts are the wrong forum for the suits, rejecting arguments made by the plaintiffs that the suits should go forward under the 18th-century Alien Tort Statute (ATS) and the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), first enacted in 1991.

The decision was the latest to rule against plaintiffs seeking to use U.S. courts as a venue to seek justice over the acts of foreign governments, especially those that took place abroad.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her majority opinion that the justices “close the door” that the court slightly opened in 2004 when it suggested that some human-rights claims might be viable under the ATS. “In truth, this class is a null set,” Barrett wrote, while acknowledging such cases “frequently involve heinous and inhumane acts.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the court “closes the courthouse doors not just to respondents, but to virtually every future litigant seeking redress for a violation of international law under the ATS.”

Falun Gong members had sought to overcome the court's skepticism by arguing that a substantial portion of Cisco’s activities involving China took place in the United States.

An Associated Press investigation last year showed that American tech companies, to a large degree, designed and built China’s surveillance state, encouraged by both Republican and Democratic administrations, even as activists warned such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious groups and target minorities. Last month, AP won the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for its stories.

In 2008, documents leaked to the press showed Cisco saw the “Golden Shield,” China’s internet censorship effort, as a sales opportunity. The company quoted a Chinese official calling the Falun Gong an “evil cult.” A Cisco presentation reviewed by the AP from the same year said its products could identify over 90% of Falun Gong material on the web.

Other presentations reviewed by the AP show that Cisco represented Falun Gong material as a “threat” and built out a national information system to track Falun Gong believers. In 2011, Falun Gong members sued Cisco, alleging the company tailored technology for Beijing that it knew would be used to track, detain and torture believers.

At arguments in April, Sotomayor said Cisco “knew that those people will be tortured.” A lawyer for the company said, “Cisco vigorously disputes those allegations.”

The 6-3 decision was the second in as many months in favor of U.S. owners of Cuban property that was confiscated by the Communist government more than 65 years ago.

The outcome in the two cases could be an additional lever for the Trump administration to exert pressure on Cuba, which is already being squeezed by a U.S. oil embargo.

At issue was whether the 1996 law known as Helms-Burton removes the shield from lawsuits in U.S. courts that typically cover foreign countries and state-owned businesses. The justices reversed a lower-court ruling that found that the Cuban state-owned companies are immune from lawsuits in U.S. courts.

Exxon Mobil is seeking compensation for the confiscation of assets owned by subsidiaries of Standard Oil, Exxon Mobil’s predecessor, including more than 100 service stations and an oil refinery.

Last month, the court ruled in another case involving confiscated property in Cuba, reviving claims by the U.S. company that operated docks in Havana against four cruise lines that brought tourists to Cuba during the brief thaw in relations during the Obama administration. That case turned on the same section of Helms-Burton allowing lawsuits over seized property.

Congress passed the law in response to the 1996 downing of civilian planes flown by Miami-based exiles.

Title III of the law allows Americans to sue almost any company that engages in commercial activity or benefits from property confiscated by Cuba’s government.

Before the first Trump administration, every president had suspended the provision because of objections from U.S. allies doing business in Cuba and the effect on future negotiated settlements between the U.S. and Cuba.

But Trump lifted the suspension in 2019, and Exxon Mobil filed its lawsuit the same day.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the conservative majority that it “would make little sense” if the law allowed the president to decide whether suits can proceed against Cuban interests while also protecting them.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent for the three liberals that the 1996 law simply contains no provision eliminating the sovereign immunity shield.

The U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, an arm of the Justice Department, said in 1969 that the value of Exxon Mobil's property in Cuba is $71.6 million, plus 6% annual interest beginning in 1960. That would be worth more than $1 billion today, Kavanaugh wrote.

In addition, the commission found that nearly 6,000 individuals and businesses held claims worth $1.9 billion, before adding in interest or damages.

Trump administration officials had said that the United States was planning to send Americans who are exposed to Ebola while abroad to a new facility in Kenya instead of flying them home.

In May, the high court had ordered the construction of the center to be halted pending a determination of the case filed by the Law Society of Kenya and the constitutional watchdog, the Katiba Institute, which argued that Kenya’s fragile health system was unable to handle a potential Ebola outbreak.

Construction continued despite the order, and locals held a series of protests in which three people died.

Health Minister Aden Duale was found in contempt on Monday and was ordered to attend a sentencing hearing on Tuesday. At the hearing, Duale apologized and he said that it was never his intention to “disregard, undermine or act in defiance of the orders of the court.”

The court accepted his apology and didn't take any further action against the minister.

Duale defended the quarantine center, saying concerns that it posed a threat to local residents were unfounded.

“The fear that the Laikipia facility could serve as a vehicle for Ebola importation into surrounding communities is scientifically unfounded,” he said.

The U.S. government intends to commit $13.5 million toward Kenya’s Ebola preparedness efforts.

As the Giorgio Armani Foundation continues its search for a buyer for a 15% stake in Armani’s fashion group as stipulated in the late designer’s will, every runway show carries the extra weight of demonstrating that his creative vision is not only enduring but evolving.

“We tried to continue the message that he wanted to convey,’’ Silvana Armani, Armani’s niece and the head of womenswear design, told reporters after the co-ed show closing Milan Fashion Week on Monday evening.

Real clothes, for real people

The Giorgio Armani menswear collection for next summer, mixed with womenswear cruise looks, exuded Armani’s trademark nonchalance, which was evident not only in the relaxed silhouette but also in the models’ casual gestures.

One fiddled with a ring as she approached photographers, another slung a jacket over his shoulder.

Still, Silvana Armani and menswear designer Leo Dell’Orco added some distinctive touches.

Jackets were a few inches longer than standard Armani, while trousers were just a tad slimmer to balance the silhouette. Longtime Armani watchers noted that the 160-odd looks conveyed a sense of real people heading out on the town, not models on a runway.

“When the models came for their fittings, they were always a bit taken aback,’’ Dell’Orco said. “It felt as though they could easily just walk out onto the street.”

Mediterranean mood

Safari jackets and elongated blazers were layered effortlessly over plunging shawl-collar vests or paired with shirts and long neckties, depending on the occasion. A rich palette of sun-bleached greens, cobalt blues and sandy neutrals evoked the Mediterranean. Linen, cotton and textured knits reinforced the collections relaxed summer mood.

The womenswear cruise looks — the first designed by Silvana Armani — were seamlessly interspersed, characterized by jackets, coats and dresses that draped lightly over the figure.

“I think he would have applauded,” Dell’Orco said.

Front-row guests included actors Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark Strong and Lucy Boynton, along with pop singer Conan Gray. Afterward, guests including film director Paolo Sorrentino and former Gucci CEO and Armani board member Marco Bizzarri strolled from the courtyard venue into the adjacent garden for a casual cocktail dînatoire.

The next chapter

Armani’s will instructed his heirs to sell a 15% stake in the company, which includes the Emporio Armani label as well as Armani/Casa and Armani Hotels, within 18 months of his death last September.

For now, Silvana Armani and Dell’Orco – his longtime collaborators – are carrying on his creative legacy.

Dell’Orco is also chairman of the foundation, the key governance vehicle for Armani’s empire, and holds 40% of the fashion group’s voting rights.

After the show, Dell’Orco shut down rumors that Dario Vitale, who exited Versace after just one season, would be joining Emporio Armani. The reports “are not true,’’ Dell’Orco told the news agency ANSA.

One media account noted that he “defeated par, pressure and a hostile gallery Sunday" and that he “stalked poker-faced through the heat and caustic comments of the gallery.” The local columnist wrote “except for a few strays from his hometown,” nobody rooted for him.

That was Jack Nicklaus in 1962 at Oakmont.

Nicklaus certainly can relate to the toughness Wyndham Clark showed Sunday at Shinnecock Hills to become a U.S. Open champion for the second time. If hearing the crowd cheer his bad shots wasn't enough of a challenge, Clark's six-shot lead was nearly gone in five holes. But he showed his moxie by not letting Sam Burns or anyone else catch him.

“He had some stones down the stretch,” said Scottie Scheffler, high praise from golf's best player.

But could Nicklaus relate to the “hostile gallery” and “caustic comments” Clark endured? Hostile and caustic had a different meaning in 1962.

Society has changed mightily over the past 64 years, and it's getting worse by the year. The Long Island fans — no one would refer to them as “patrons” — had no filter and no restraint. But this isn't a Long Island problem. It's largely an American problem everywhere but Augusta National.

Clark is not the first person to be a major champion hardly anyone wanted.

Nicklaus was never going to be celebrated in 1962, not in an 18-hole playoff against Arnold Palmer in the King's backyard at Oakmont, especially with Palmer having won the Masters that year.

It felt as though all of New York was ready to crown Phil Mickelson at Shinnecock Hills in 2004 until he three-putted from 5 feet for double bogey on the 17th hole. The air came out of the place in a New York minute. Retief Goosen was appreciated — but not adored — as the U.S. Open champion.

This was different. This was ugly. It was relentless.

“Hit it in the fescue!” was nothing like Nicklaus ever heard. Nor did Oakmont in 1962 have a fan like the idiot who shouted, “Don't choke, Wyndham!” when it was Clark's turn to tee off on the fourth hole. The fan was quickly approached and evicted.

The rousing and sudden cheer on the par-3 seventh sounded as though Clark had just hit it close. Instead, it was because his ball went into the bunker.

It might have been different had Clark played in the final group with Tom Kim instead of Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world who had a chance to give fans something to remember forever by winning the U.S. Open on his 30th birthday to complete the career Grand Slam.

But the crowd shifted quickly from being pro-Scottie to anti-Wyndham.

Clark no doubt is difficult to embrace, particularly after his behavior last year when he flung a driver that made a marshal flinch at the PGA Championship, and a month later smashed a locker at Oakmont when he missed the cut at the U.S. Open.

“New York didn’t really like me. I love you guys,” Clark said during the trophy presentation. “But I get it. Some of it’s self-deserved. I did some unfortunate things last year that I really regret, and I’ve been sorry multiple times and I’m still sorry. So hopefully, I can win you guys over eventually."

His signature moment came on the par-5 16th when he atoned for a bad tee shot into gnarly grass by making a 30-foot birdie putt. The applause was muted, and don't get the idea it sounded that way because too many fans had phones in their hands. They didn't like him.

Clark played right through it, with some level of experience. He played with popular Rickie Fowler in the final round of his U.S. Open victory at Los Angeles Country Club in 2023, when he held off popular Rory McIlroy by one shot. But no one cheered against him that day.

The Long Island gallery was at another level, and ultimately Clark took his place among other Shinnecock Hills champions notes for their toughness — Brooks Koepka, Goosen, Corey Pavin and Raymond Floyd.

Scheffler has seen this act before. He played McIlroy in singles at Bethpage Black in the Ryder Cup last September, when the taunts became personal and left a stain on the matches.

He also got a relatively muted response in McIlroy's home country when Scheffler won the British Open at Royal Portrush last summer. There was no heckling, certainly not any bad behavior. But it was quiet for a world-class performance by the No. 1 player.

“The crowd was tough today. I mean, New Yorkers, they are tough people,” Scheffler said Sunday. "You like seeing the fans cheer for you. I think sometimes it can get a little too much when balls are going off greens and you start hearing cheers. That felt a bit much to me.

“Being in the arena is not for everybody, and I think it shows a lot about Wyndham, how he handled not only this golf course but I think the crowd today as well and is a well-deserving champion.”

Clark took the high road in the closing ceremony, his news conference and other interviews in the hours after his victory. He posted on social media Monday night, "This game can be incredibly humbling. It doesn’t owe you anything, and sometimes the only thing you can do is keep showing up and trust that the work will eventually pay off.”

Keep showing up and maybe the fans might cheer for him.

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On The Fringe analyzes the biggest topics in golf during the season. AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

The U.K. is about to get its seventh prime minister since June 23, 2016, a decade ago Tuesday, when the country voted 52%-48% to leave the EU after more than four decades of membership. Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who called the referendum but campaigned for the U.K. to stay in the bloc, quit the next day.

His successors have all grappled, largely unsuccessfully, with the consequences of that rupture. The latest is Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced Monday that he was stepping down after two years of a sluggish economy, malfunctioning government and a divided and jaded electorate — all legacies, at least in part, of Brexit.

Though the decision has faded from headlines, “the subterranean trace of Brexit” still runs through Britain’s increasingly unruly politics, said Chris Grey, an academic who has studied the fallout from Britain’s EU departure.

The Brexit campaign channeled discontent

Campaigners for Brexit promised that leaving the then-28 member political and economic bloc would let the U.K. “take back control” of its laws, economy and borders.

While the “remain” campaign focused largely on the economic downsides of exiting, the “leave” side was emotive.

“We can see the sunlit meadows beyond. I believe we would be mad not to take this once-in-a-lifetime chance to walk through that door,” Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit campaigner who later became prime minister, said a few weeks before the referendum.

Margaret MacMillan, emeritus professor of history at the University of Toronto, said Brexit was fueled by a bundle of motives including nostalgia “for an imagined past.”

“It was against what people saw as unrestricted immigration. It was against what they saw as EU regulations. And then there was this mix of nostalgia — ‘We fought alone in the Second World War.’ Which was of course not true.

“It was never clearly explained what Brexit might entail.”

Trying to make Brexit work made everyone unhappy

Hard reality soon collided with Brexiteers’ bold promises of immigration controls, trade deals, more money for public services and an end to complex regulations emanating from Brussels.

Acrimonious divorce talks dragged on for years. The U.K. formally left the bloc on Jan. 31, 2020, followed by an 11-month transition period until the final split.

Prime Minister Theresa May, Cameron’s successor, quit in 2019 after failing to find exit terms acceptable to a divided Parliament.

Johnson succeeded May and promised to “get Brexit done,” and managed to secure a bare-bones trade deal after negotiations that left U.K.-EU relations in the deep freeze.

He was ousted by the Conservative Party in mid-2022 after mounting financial and ethical scandals. His replacement, Liz Truss, lasted just 49 days in office. Her successor, Rishi Sunak, thawed the frosty EU relationship without making major changes.

Starmer promised a “reset, ” but refused to consider rejoining the bloc’s frictionless single market, which was free of tariffs and other trade barriers.

As he hands over power, Brexit remains unfinished business.

Political parties have fractured

Historian Anthony Seldon said Cameron called the referendum hoping it would end arguments about relations with Europe that had riven the Conservative Party. It didn’t.

“The people who obsessed about it still obsess about it. Britain’s problems have continued,” Seldon told Times Radio.

During the divorce negotiations, Conservatives who wanted a softer Brexit and closer ties with the EU were pushed out of the party by the triumphant Brexiteer faction.

Labour, though much more pro-EU, also has an internal division between those who want to get closer to the bloc or even rejoin, and senior leaders like Starmer who want to avoid reopening old wounds.

A decade on, millions of voters have deserted the two big parties for alternatives including the left-leaning Green Party and the hard-right Reform UK led by Nigel Farage.

Farage has arguably been the biggest political winner from Brexit. He campaigned for the divorce then complained it had been betrayed. His anti-immigration message has shifted from focusing on Polish plumbers to asylum seekers in dinghies. His party consistently leads opinion polls.

Cynicism and political violence have grown

The economy has struggled in the past decade, with businesses facing new barriers to trade with Britain's closest neighbors, though Brexit is not the only cause of low growth. The COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and the Iran war also played a part.

Through it all, “we just haven’t had politicians who’ve been upfront with the public about the fact that when they get into power, they won’t be able to have no increases in taxes, no increases in debt, and better public services all in the same breath,” said Hannah White, director of the Institute for Government think tank.

“And so people are disappointed.”

Brexit failed to ease debate about immigration, which has only become more heightened, regardless of the numbers. Net migration rose after Brexit to more than 900,000 in 2023 before falling to 171,000 last year.

Cynicism has grown and trust in politicians has plunged. In recent years, agitators have fueled anti-immigration street violence following crimes committed by, or falsely reported to have been committed by, immigrants.

In the past, Britain had a firm barrier “between the conventional dominant politics of talk and argument, and what was seen as beyond the pale: violence on the streets,” Grey said. “I think that boundary is being eroded. And I think that did to some large extent begin with Brexit.”

Regrets? The UK has had a few

Polls suggest a degree of “Bregret” about Britain's choice a decade ago, with a recent Ipsos survey finding 52% of people in the U.K. would like to rejoin the EU while 33% oppose it.

Hundreds of people, many waving blue and yellow EU flags, marched through London on Saturday on a “rejoin” march. It was a much smaller turnout than the mass protests on both sides at the height of the Brexit drama. Many people just want to move on.

But Brexit remains a minefield that politicians fear to enter. Even if Britain wanted to rejoin, it would be a long road back to a wary EU.

Grey said that until politicians are willing to face the legacy of Brexit, Britain faces an “undertow of low-grade crisis.”

He likened the U.K. to a person with a nagging illness that saps their energy.

“A chronic thing, in this case perhaps not incurable,” he said. “But it’s just that they don’t fancy going to the doctor because they know it’s not going to be very nice.”

Her unapologetically expansive, left-wing agenda includes subsidized or even free childcare, increased down payment assistance for homebuyers and community resources to reduce crime, plus a promise to aggressively confront President Donald Trump's attempts to reshape the nation's capital.

“People are tired of hearing what government can’t do. They want to hear what government can do,” Lewis George said in an interview before the city's primary, where she defeated her Democratic opponents and positioned herself to win the general election in November in a city dominated by Democrats.

Lewis George's victory signals a break with a quarter-century of centrist governance in Washington, and it puts her in the vanguard of democratic socialists who have ascended in urban politics over the last year. Zohran Mamdani toppled Andrew Cuomo, the scion of a political dynasty, on his way to becoming New York City mayor. Katie Wilson won an upset victory to lead Seattle last fall. And this month, Nithya Raman clinched a spot in the November runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

All of them are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. The political organization has seen its membership ranks swell from a few thousand to more than 100,000 nationwide over the last decade after an influx of younger Americans joined following the presidential bids of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, also a self-described democratic socialist.

There's little sign of national coordination among the candidates, and it’s unclear whether voters are gravitating toward their promises of improved government services, their vows to fight the Trump administration or their critiques of capitalism.

But from coast to coast, confrontational progressives are advancing in mayoral races. City leaders can draw outsized attention for their successes and failures, and democratic socialists will be under pressure from residents to deliver on their vows for a new kind of governance. Whether that translates to national politics is a next test for their movement.

“They are all channeling a displeasure with a status quo and a serious desire for economic populism that the establishment Democratic Party hasn't been preaching,” said Eric Stern, a Democratic strategist with Fight Agency, a political consulting firm that strategized Mamdani's mayoral campaign.

Stern added that Democratic voters appeared more willing to support the most progressive candidate in mayoral races rather than in contests for the U.S. House. Candidates like Mamdani and Raman, Stern said, are “daring voters to dream and fall in love not just with the individual candidates but also the political process as a whole.”

A rising left navigates America's urban challenges

The trend of progressives surging in urban areas may have limits for its broader impact on Democratic politics. Democratic mayors in cities including Atlanta, Houston, Miami and San Francisco won on relatively moderate platforms in recent years.

Progressive have also faced noteworthy challenges. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was supported by the city council’s democratic socialists during his 2023 mayoral run and later appointed democratic socialists to key positions. But he has since faced criticism from both moderate and liberal local leaders on issues such as immigration, the local budget and public safety. Recalls and public pressure ousted progressives elected to district attorney offices in multiple jurisdictions over the last five years, when criminal justice reform efforts ran into dissatisfaction over public disorder following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump's hardline immigration and law enforcement tactics have also become a challenge for liberal cities. The president's agenda poses an especially serious threat to Washington, D.C., because of its status as a federal territory.

“Maybe we take back Washington and run it on a federal basis,” Trump told reporters this month when asked about the potential election of a democratic socialist as the district's mayor. “We won’t put up with it.”

But progressives hope the current wave of anti-Trump furor in deep blue cities across the country will help buoy the chances of those on the hard left.

“It’s not folks looking for the leftmost option so much as looking for a candidate who’s gonna be on their side,” said Ravi Mangla, speaking for the left-wing Working Families Party. The party often endorses the same candidates as the DSA and is readying to target more mayoral offices in the country's biggest metropolises this fall and in 2028.

“It’s less about whether you are on the right or on the left so much as whether you are willing to punch up at the powerful,” he added.

Mamdani and Lewis George are both self-described “sewer socialists” who emphasize the need for responsive government services rather than critiques of market economics. The phrase recalls the socialist Gilded Age mayors whom critics derided as too preoccupied with managing public works projects.

The term's revival is partly a strategic move to align leftist ideas with concerns over affordability and the economy, voters' top concern in the midterm elections, and shift the public perception of democratic socialists from firebrands who support radical policies to independent-minded public servants.

“This is absolutely a change election and I’m excited to bring the change that people want, which is really putting people first in the city and having the moral clarity and courage to stand up to Trump,” Lewis George said.

For voters the ‘socialist’ label did not seem to matter

While conservatives have used the “socialist” label to attack Democrats as extreme or incompetent, some D.C. voters appeared ambivalent before Tuesday's primary.

Several lifelong residents said they believed Lewis George was a “fighter” but didn't think she'd have much of an impact on the local economy, given the city's status as a federal district.

“I go back and forth on my own labels and whether I am supportive of that movement or not, but I am supportive of making D.C. more affordable,” Owen Fitzgerald, a University of Maryland graduate student, said of his support for democratic socialism.

Fitzgerald voted for Lewis George because she would stand up to Trump and said he'd first learned of her campaign from friends in his neighborhood. But he didn't know she was a democratic socialist until he saw news reports describing her with the label.

“It sends a cultural message to this administration that the people who are surrounding them in the capital are opposed to their platform, opposed to their political agenda, and I think that it will send a message, both nationally and internationally,” Fitzgerald said.

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This story has been updated to correct that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was not endorsed by the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. He was supported by the city council’s democratic socialists during his 2023 mayoral run.

Tehran and Washington clashed over the Strait of Hormuz again this past weekend. Citing Israel's latest attacks on Lebanon, Iran declared that it reclosed the strait. The U.S. was quick to contest that. Maritime tracking data showed that dozens of ships passed through on Saturday and Sunday, though far fewer than the daily average before the war.

President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. might impose its own tolls on strait crossings if a final deal with Iran was not reached during the countries’ 60-day negotiating period. Passage was free before the war, but Iran last month established a new governmental authority to collect money from ships and has said it still expects vessels to register with the Persian Gulf Strait Authority.

No one country owns the Strait of Hormuz, which borders both Iran and Oman. Last week's memorandum of understanding allowed Iran to manage the strait for now while holding discussions with Oman and six other Gulf states “to define the future administration and maritime services” of the waterway. Iran agreed not to charge transiting vessels tolls for 60 days.

Legal experts and maritime associations have repeatedly stressed that a toll regime would upend decades of international trade precedent involving the world's waters. If the U.S. and Iran cement a final deal, analysts say it could take months for the flow of oil, natural gas, fertilizer and other commodities to return to prewar levels.

Here's a closer look at the status of the Strait of Hormuz:

Ships are moving but not at the prewar pace

Data and analytics company Kpler said its tracking confirmed 131 ships traveled through the strait between Friday and Monday, including 39 crossings on Monday. In contrast, about 100 to 130 vessels a day made the journey before the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in late February, and Tehran responded with its own attacks and effective closure of the waterway.

As part of the provisional Iran-U.S. framework, Iran said it would conduct demining work within 30 days and remove “technical and military obstacles” to shipping. Iran's lead negotiator and parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, told Iranian state media Monday that his country would manage the strait in accordance with international maritime law.

The main central route of the Strait of Hormuz is still mined and remains closed. Ships have been using the smaller northern route, which goes through Iranian waters, and the southern route, which goes through Omani waters. But “caution is still clear” in the many vessels either sticking to Iran's prescribed route or trying to conceal their positions and identities by keeping their transponders off, Kpler said.

Both Iran and US have threatened tolls

Early in the war, Iran threatened to attack ships that tried to use the Strait of Hormuz without its approval and began vetting vessels in a pay-to-pass scheme that shipping analysts dubbed the “tollbooth.” Iran also demanded in early April the right to collect tolls as a precondition for relinquishing its chokehold on the strait.

Although the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Persian Gulf Strait Authority late last month to oppose what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described as Tehran's attempt to extort global maritime trade, the president on Saturday suggested the U.S. could impose its own tolls for “services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East.”

The administration has not provided details on how the U.S. would apply any charges on ships if talks with Iran do not yield a completed agreement. Shipping analysts have expressed surprise at how much control over the strait the inital agreement gave Iran.

“Almost all the power goes into Iran to determine the arrangements going forward in the future. This is what we really need clarity on,” said Philip Belcher, marine director of Intertanko, a trade group for independent tanker owners, said Thursday.

Experts say tolls would violate maritime law

Collecting tolls in the strait could violate an enduring principle of international maritime trade: freedom of peaceful navigation. The concept was codified by the United Nations’ Convention on the Law of the Sea, which took effect in 1994.

The treaty provides ships the right of unimpeded “transit passage” through more than 100 straits worldwide, including the Strait of Hormuz. It only applies to natural waterways, so authorities can charge fees for ships to traverse man-made waterways such as the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal.

Oman is among the more than 170 countries that have ratified the U.N. convention, but the U.S. and Iran are not. Maritime associations have argued that all nations remain subject to the treaty's provisions.

James Kraska, a U.S. Naval War College professor of international maritime law, notes that the U.S. and Iran are both members of the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency that oversees safety and security measures in international shipping. Both countries also are parties to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, a treaty that governs standards for building and operating ships.

In straits like Hormuz, fees can only be applied at established ports of entry or for services specifically requested by a ship, such as specialized navigation aid through hazardous areas, according to Kraska, who is also a visiting professor at Harvard Law School..

“If Iran wants to apply those to everybody, then it has to adjust the traffic separation scheme rules, and that can only be done through the member states of the International Maritime Organization,” he said.

“You can't impose fees for a ship exercising its right of transit passage,” Kraska added. “So the bottom line is, no — fees in this context are just not lawful.”

Countries sometimes have joined forces to share the costs of maintaining of a strait, he noted. For example, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore worked with the International Maritime Organization and later other countries to develop such an agreement for the Strait of Malacca, but it involved negotiated contributions from the states using the passage, not fees on individual ships.

Disruptions could continue for months ahead

Conditions in the Strait of Hormuz have escalated or deteriorated quickly over the course of the war. While the outlook for shipping has improved since the U.S. and Iran pledged to extend their ceasefire, “there is a degree of nervousness around the situation,” said Marcus Baker, the global head of marine, cargo and logistics at insurance brokerage and risk management company Marsh.

“As far as the insurance position is concerned, there’s a good deal of support for ship owners that are trying to move out” during this period, but the interim deal between Iran and the U.S. does not include language for keeping the strait toll-free beyond the negotiating window, Baker said.

“We’ll see what the next six weeks brings us,” he said.

Pavinee Supasirivisan is also charged with murder for the May killing of the diplomat, whose identity has not been released, but is first standing trial on a charge of violating Myanmar's immigration code, which applies to any foreign national who commits a crime there.

Three prosecution witnesses, including immigration officers, testified during the hearing at Kamayut Township Court, the second in her trial, according to the attorney who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid possible repercussions from Myanmar’s military-run government.

The attorney said she had two legal representatives in court but did not have further details and it was not clear whether she had entered a plea. The charge carries a sentence ranging from six months to five years.

An official from Kamayut township’s immigration and population department confirmed to The Associated Press that witnesses testified at her trial but would not provide further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press.

It was not immediately clear how long the trial might last, nor when she would be tried on the charge of murder, which carries a possible sentence ranging from 10 years in prison to the death penalty.

The military seized power from democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, giving rise to widespread protests that have expanded into a bloody civil war in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

Authorities rarely speak with the media and the police investigating the case, the prison where the suspect is believed to be being held and the court where she made her appearance have all refused to comment. Journalists are not allowed into court proceedings.

Thailand’s Foreign Ministry confirmed it has provided consular assistance to the suspect but has refused to provide other details.

The diplomat was found dead with stab wounds to the head and neck on May 11 at the Sakura Residence & Hotel, a facility popular with diplomats, business people and other international visitors, located about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the U.S. Embassy, according to the attorney.

The U.S. State Department confirmed the death but refused to provide further information, including the name of the diplomat.

An oral history project led by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition is wrapping up in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Friday. To date, the nonprofit’s historians have collected video testimony from more than 360 Indigenous survivors in 19 states — stories set to be preserved in the Library of Congress for years to come.

Iona Mad Plume, who is Blackfeet and grew up on her tribe’s reservation in Montana, said she “can’t emphasize enough” how healing her experience was. She testified in front of a video camera last month in Billings about her time in the Pierre Indian School in South Dakota, where she was sent at age 14.

Mad Plume, now 74, said since her interview she’s been more grounded and has been able to let go of some of the haunting memories: a dusty blue Greyhound bus driving her away from her parents’ red pickup truck. School staff beating her with a wooden dowel as she cowered on a bunk bed in her dorm room. Eating corn meal or cereal littered with weevil bugs.

“I got a lot out of that, pretty much a lot of closure,” she said. “It was after almost a lifetime of carrying around questions and different things in my mind — so I don’t have to carry that around anymore.”

Another boarding school survivor who contributed to the project in Michigan in 2024 recounted a similar experience. Gene Bozicic, of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, attended the Catholic-run Holy Childhood School of Jesus in Harbor Springs, Michigan, beginning at age 11.

“As we further went along, I started to feel more confident in what I could do and what I have accomplished, almost like more pride to be Native,” Bozicic, now 81, said about her video interview. “I hate to see it coming to an end, because they have given me my backbone back.”

Survivors endured systemic abuse

The oral history project, which began in March 2024, is a collaboration between the Minnesota-based National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition and the U.S. Department of the Interior. The intent is to document and share with the public the systemic abuse endured by boarding school survivors under the government’s attempts at forced assimilation — policies that began in the 1800s and lasted for over a century.

Two years earlier, former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — a Laguna Pueblo member and a descendant of boarding school survivors — led the historic Road to Healing listening tour with Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community.

Haaland’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative also included in-depth reports on the schools’ multigenerational impacts. Nearly 1,000 Native children were buried at 65 different school sites, the federal government reported. Atrocities occurring within school walls ranged from physical and sexual abuse to failed attempts at cultural genocide, the report found.

In the more than two years since the boarding school coalition’s oral history work began, the process of collecting these in-person testimonies in 19 states evolved, said Lacey Kinnart, the coalition’s oral history program co-director.

Initially, the “quiet room” where survivors decompress with a fellow elder after their interview was optional. But staff soon changed that policy so entering the room was automatic, and added a second “quiet room.” They also began matching survivors with a licensed clinical therapist who specializes in boarding school trauma and a licensed social worker.

“Our elders don’t want to be a burden,” said Kinnart, a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. “But they really do need that extra support.”

Kinnart said staff also noticed survivors feeling nervous around the Indigenous photographer. That shyness showed in the photos. So they built in an extra half-hour into the schedule so each survivor could get to know the person who took their portraits.

Stories affect generations

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the Department of the Interior are still assessing how to present the video interviews to the world. Survivors, however, will retain full ownership of their interviews and they alone decide whether their stories are made public.

The videos will be housed in a permanent oral history collection at the Library of Congress, and the project’s end date is June 2027.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition will continue other oral history projects independently. Staff said their next project will likely be more costly — potentially as much as $13 million — compared to the $6.2 million they received from Interior and the Mellon Foundation for the initial oral history project. And while the upcoming venture would take longer, it would be even more inclusive.

“We’re just scratching the surface with these stories,” said the coalition’s Oral History Program Co-director Charlee Brissette, a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie of Chippewa Indians. “We want to get a more robust picture of the boarding school experience because it does have that intergenerational effect.”

Indigenous people excluded from this first iteration of the oral history project may get another opportunity in the coming years. It’s an effort welcomed by survivors and descendants alike.

“I’d be interested in doing that, because the whole story needs to be taught,” said Desiray Emerton, 56, a Seminole woman and a descendant of two generations of boarding school survivors.

Her relatives attended Goodland Academy and Chilocco Indian School in Oklahoma. She said she’s seen the generational impacts: Because of her boarding school experiences, Emerton’s mother struggled to be affectionate toward her as a child. And her grandmother died long before the oral history project’s existence.

“I know time’s running out for those who did go through that personally,” Emerton said, “but I always tell my kids I’m walking on the prayers of our ancestors, and I’m running out of time.”

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

Sleep experts call this sleep latency, and they say there’s a typical range for how long it takes most people to drift off.

“Generally, it should take someone about 10 to 20 minutes to fall asleep. Faster isn’t necessarily better, because if you’re falling asleep within a minute, it may suggest sleep deprivation or an underlying sleep issue,” said Michelle Drerup, PsyD, a behavioral sleep medicine specialist at Cleveland Clinic.

While 10 to 20 minutes is a general guideline, Dr. Drerup said it varies from person to person.

It only becomes a problem if it keeps you from getting enough sleep or causes stress.

If you have trouble falling asleep, keeping a consistent sleep schedule, exercising regularly and avoiding caffeine at night can help.

Dr. Drerup also stressed not to get into bed until you’re actually sleepy or drowsy.

It’s important to know that an underlying sleep disorder can affect how long it takes you to fall asleep as well.

“One of the most common causes of sleep latency issues is chronic insomnia, which makes it harder to fall asleep,” Dr. Drerup said. “Restless legs syndrome can also affect sleep latency. In addition, people with untreated sleep apnea may fall asleep very quickly because they aren’t getting restorative sleep.”

Dr. Drerup recommends seeing a sleep specialist if sleep issues affect how you feel during the day.

They can help identify the cause and develop a treatment plan.

Haaland scored twice to raise his World Cup goals total to four, and the Vikings clinched advancement to the knockout rounds with a 3-2 win over Senegal on Monday night that was more of a slog than a sail.

“It’s my specialty to score goals,” Haaland said. “I’m just really good at scoring goals.”

After the final whistle, Norway's players and staff gathered tightly in a 10-row formation just inside the penalty area at MetLife Stadium's north end, facing their red-shirted supporters, Haaland sitting in front as teammate Martin Ødegaard banged on a bongo drum. They alternated with the fans performing the Viking Row — chanting “Ro!” while mimicking oarsmen.

“We’ve all seen it online and it’s been going completely viral, so Martin told me before the game, `What do you think? Should we join in?'" Haaland recalled.

“`If we win, let’s do it. So why not? Let’s go for it,'" Haaland said he responded. "So it was a perfect moment I think to do that."

Back in Norway, parliamentarians did the Viking Row last week in a show of support.

“It was fun,” Norway coach Ståle Solbakken said through an interpreter. “We will not be rowing after the World Cup but this can be a gimmick during the tournament.”

Marcus Pederson put the Vikings ahead in the 43rd minute after replacing an injured teammate, and Haaland kept up his incredible goals streak in the 48th and 58th minutes to build a 3-1 lead.

“He's very efficient,” Senegal coach Pape Thiaw said through an interpreter.

Haaland ran onto Ødegaard's pass and put a left-footed shot past the outstretched left hand of goalkeeper Édouard Mendy, capping an end-to-end counterattack for a 2-0 lead.

For his second goal, Haaland tunneled through the defense and 8 yards out lifted his weaker right foot to volley in Patrick Berg’s pass. Haaland raised a hand to an ear to inspire the Norway supporters.

Haaland has 24 goals in his last 12 international games — scoring at least once in every match — and 59 goals in 52 international appearances. The 25-year-old striker joined England's Harry Kane in 2018 as the only players in the last 50 years with two-goal games in both of their first two World Cup appearances.

Haaland is second in the Golden Boot race, one behind Argentina's Lionel Messi and tied with France's Kylian Mbappé. Haaland nearly got another in first-half stoppage time, hitting a post after Mendy lost control of the ball.

“He did miss an open goal. He could have scored even four,” Solbakken said. “He is the best striker — he is not playing for France or Argentina. He scores for Norway.”

Ismaïla Sarr got both goals for the Lions of Teranga, in the 53rd minute and in the third minute of second-half stoppage time.

“If we had just played slightly worse, then we would be in trouble,” Solbakken said.

Making its first World Cup appearance since 1998, Norway (2-0) is assured of advancing from Group I along with France. Because they allowed Senegal's stoppage-time goal, the Vikings need to beat Les Bleus on Friday for first place and what would appear to be an easier path in the knockout bracket.

Senegal is 0-2 in a World Cup for the first time and needs a win over Iraq (0-2) to have any chance of advancing as a third-place team.

“We've got everything left to play for,” Thaw said.

Pederson entered in the 13th minute for his World Cup debut after Julian Ryerson couldn't play through what Solbakken said was a nagging injury, and Pederson put the Vikings ahead with the help of mistakes by Senegal captain Kalidou Koulibaly and Mendy.

Ødegaard made a centering pass that Koulibaly cleared straight to Pedersen at the top of the arc. Pederson took two touches and sent a savable shot inside the near post that glanced off Mendy’s left hand and into the goal.

Mendy left in the 63rd minute because of an injury.

While there had been storm warnings, a downpour stopped more than 3 1/2 hours before kickoff. The skies opened again after the final whistle, causing announcements for fans to leave the stadium bowl for sheltered space.

“Let’s be happy,” Haaland said, “every single Norwegian on the planet today.”

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

Some media outlets, however, reported that some of those detained were politicians or activists, leading to allegations of arbitrary detentions.

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to join other leaders of the 32‑member alliance in Ankara for the July 7–8 summit.

Turkey is planning strict security measures for the summit, including banning demonstrations and restricting access to roads leading to airports, as well as sealing off areas around the summit venue and hotels hosting delegations.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government has prioritized security and authorities regularly carry out security raids. Last month, security forces detained 324 people suspected of links to the Islamic State group in a nationwide sweep.

Early on Tuesday, Turkish prosecutors issued detention orders for 241 suspects, and 209 of them were subsequently taken into custody in police and gendarmerie raids around Ankara, according to a statement from the chief prosecutor’s office. The raids were still underway later Tuesday to take in the rest of the suspects.

Among those detained were 56 alleged Islamic State militants and 35 members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front, a far‑left group known for armed attacks and assassinations in Turkey, the statement said.

Birgun, an independent left-leaning newspaper, and other media reported that a politician, an LGBTQ activist and at least three lawyers allegedly close to left-wing groups were also among the detained. That lead to concerns that the government could be using security as a pretext to silence critics and prevent possible anti-NATO demonstrations during the summit.

“This arbitrary wave of detentions and arrests targeting leftist and socialist institutions once again reveals the state the country has reached,” the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party, DEM, said. “Turning Ankara into a giant prison with bans imposed for the NATO Summit is unacceptable.”

The Islamic State group has also carried out numerous deadly attacks in Turkey, including the 2017 New Year’s shooting at an Istanbul nightclub that killed 39 people.

The concern centers on the Black+Decker PowerCrush BL1230 blender. Consumer Reports says it became aware of the issue after reviewing a report submitted to the Consumer Product Safety Commission involving a young child with elevated blood lead levels. According to the report, local health officials believed a blender used daily to prepare baby food may have been the source of the exposure.

That discovery prompted Consumer Reports to investigate further. CR’s safety experts say no material that comes into contact with food should contain lead, a toxic heavy metal that can be especially harmful to young children. Even low levels of lead exposure can affect a child’s development and have lasting health consequences.

Consumer Reports is calling attention to the potential risk and urging consumers to check the products they use for food preparation, particularly if they are preparing food for infants and young children.

If you own the Black+Decker PowerCrush BL1230, Consumer Reports recommends paying close attention to any safety announcements or guidance from regulators and the manufacturer. Consumers who are concerned about possible lead exposure should consult their healthcare provider, especially if the appliance has been used regularly to prepare food for children.

CR is advising anyone who owns a Black+Decker PowerCrush BL1230 to stop using it immediately and contact Spectrum Brands directly at 1-800-465-6070, or email empowercustomerservice@spectrumbrands.com.

If you own this blender, you can contact Black and Decker at support.blackanddecker.com.

As of Tuesday, June 23, the average price of regular gas per gallon in Virginia is $3.75, according to AAA. Premium averages $4.65 per gallon, while diesel averages $4.91 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: $3.61
  • Mid: $4.18
  • Premium: $4.59
  • Diesel: $4.88
• Roanoke:
• • Regular: $3.68
  • Mid: $4.18
  • Premium: $4.59
  • Diesel: $4.97
• Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Radford (New River Valley area)
• • Regular: $3.695
  • Mid: $4.195
  • Premium: $4.596
  • Diesel: $4.82

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.

This year's supersized tournament, up from 32 teams to 48, has changed the format of the competition and how teams are separated by tiebreakers in the group phase.

For instance, there's an extra knockout round of 32 teams, where as previously the group phase was immediately followed by a round of 16.

There are also lifelines for teams to advance if they miss out on the top two places in their respective groups.

Here's what to know about qualification for the round of 32.

How to advance from the group phase

The expanded tournament means there are more groups and more games than ever before at a World Cup. By the time the group phase is completed 72 matches will have been played to eliminate 16 teams.

The top two in each of the 12 groups advance automatically and then there are places for the eight best third-placed teams.

It is the first time since 1994, when only 24 teams competed, that there has been a lifeline for third-placed teams.

Head-to-head results before goal difference

For the first time at a World Cup, FIFA will prioritize head-to-head results if two or more teams are tied on points.

The steps to determine the final placings if a tiebreaker is needed will be deployed in the following order:

— Head-to-head results between the teams concerned.

— Goal difference in the games between the teams concerned.

— Highest number of goals scored in those games.

— Overall goal difference in all group games.

— Overall highest number of goals scored in the group.

— The fewest number of red or yellow cards (including team officials) received during the group phase.

— FIFA ranking.

Making the final cut

Coaches, players and fans will be assessing what's required to make the cut as one of the eight best third-placed teams. This is where goal difference is likely to be crucial.

For instance, Scotland’s chances of advancing from the group stage for the first time in its history may depend on it avoiding a heavy loss against Brazil. It won its first match against Haiti and was then beaten by Morocco.

The third-placed teams with the highest number of points advance, but if teams are level on points, goal difference is the primary tiebreaker, followed by goals scored, disciplinary record (red and yellow cards) and finally FIFA ranking.

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James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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