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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An ascetic walks into the spotlight

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

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

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

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

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

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

The pivot from engineer to monk

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

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

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

Le recalls that Pannakara’s parents were inconsolable.

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

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

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

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

Transformative journey tracing the Buddha's steps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A conscious decision to steer clear of politics

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

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

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

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

___

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Ten people were rescued from the debris, including two who were seriously injured, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bridges and 'electrical infrastructure' hit in Iran

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

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

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

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

Tower at key port collapses in US strike

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iran retaliates by targeting Qatar, a mediator in the war

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strikes come as Iran and US vie for Strait of Hormuz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Despechá,” Rosalía (2022)

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

“Mi Gran Noche,” Raphael (1967)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dumbai,” Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso (2024)

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

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

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

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

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

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

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

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

Bones emerge from a Revolutionary War battlefield

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

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

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

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

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

DNA unlocks a centuries-old mystery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An orphan soldier's life comes into focus

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

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

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

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

A witness to history

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

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

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

An unexpected twist and an emotional reunion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All hail a new Wotan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Conway Twitty to Richard Wagner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding fame far from home

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The projected cut is currently at level par.

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

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

He might have left it too late.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It might be his only hope of a victory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nadezhdin's run for parliament triggers a quick response

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Putin critic is arrested

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some areas west of San Antonio have seen 2 feet (60 centimeters) or more of rain since the storms began on Tuesday. Rescuers aboard boats and helicopters have saved more than 200 people including stranded drivers and people trapped in homes, Gov. Gregg Abbott said.

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

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

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

In Uvalde, one of the hardest-hit cities from flooding, waters were receding and officials said a major highway, Route 90, had reopened. Floodwaters had overrun the city overnight into Thursday, cutting off most outside routes.

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

“It’s crazy happening two times in one year,” said Josiah Rodriguez, who awoke to the sound of heavy rain around 2 a.m. Thursday in Kerrville. He navigated flooded roads to help evacuate relatives.

“Last year there was no warning of it,” he said. “It just kind of happened overnight and it took everyone by surprise. This year, a lot more alerts have gone into place, a lot more safety measures.”

Residents said they were caught off guard a year ago and didn’t receive any warning when floods overtopped the Guadalupe River. Some local leaders were criticized for not acting quickly.

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

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Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The prime minister in waiting is about to take office

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

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

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

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

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

Burnham deemed a better communicator than Starmer

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

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

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

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

Burnham says he'll reverse 40 years of bad decisions

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

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

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

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

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

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

He faces strong and sometimes conflicting pressures.

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

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Associated Press Writer Brian Melley contributed to this story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A second day of Kyiv protests demand Fedorov's return

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ukraine's interim defense minister is a special operations expert

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

He had previously led the SBU’s elite Alpha special forces unit and is known for being an architect of Operation Spiderweb, one of Ukraine’s most spectacular attacks when it struck Russian air bases last year.

He joined the Alpha unit in 2011 and became its commander in 2023 before being promoted to major general the following year.

Russia and Ukraine trade more long-range attacks

Moscow’s response to its recent battlefield difficulties and Ukraine’s targeting of Russian oil facilities, which has caused severe fuel shortages, has focused in part on relentless strategic bombing of civilian areas of Ukraine.

Russian attacks on Ukraine overnight killed at least four civilians and wounded 20 other people, Zelenskyy said.

Two people were killed and 10 others injured, including children, in a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s southern port city of Odesa, regional military administration head Oleh Kiper said. One of those killed was a woman who had been walking in a park with her children, who survived, he said.

In the Zaporizhzhia region, two people were killed and five were injured in a strike, according to Zelenskyy. He said three people were injured as a result of Russian shelling in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

Officials said more people were injured in Russian strikes on five other regions of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 243 Ukrainian drones overnight into Friday.

Three civilians were killed and seven others injured in Ukrainian drone attacks over the previous 24 hours, according to Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-appointed head of the Russia-occupied part of Ukraine's Kherson region.

Ukrainian drones struck 12 Russian vessels in the Black Sea overnight, Robert “Madiar” Brovdi, head of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said Friday. The vessels included nine dry cargo ships, one tanker, one gas carrier and one tugboat, according to Brovdi.

Ukrainian forces struck 159 Russian vessels in the Black and Azov seas over the past 12 days, he said, in its campaign to stop Russian shipping.

Ukrainian forces also destroyed a Russian Tu-95 strategic bomber in Engels, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border, Zelenskyy said.

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Dan Bashakov and Dmytro Zhyhinas in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

The S&P 500 fell as much as 1.4% at the start of trading before trimming its loss to 0.6%. It's on track for its first losing week in the last three and only its third since March, just a couple days after it climbed within 0.5% of its all-time high.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 25 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, after veering between an early loss of 566 points and a modest gain. The Nasdaq composite fell 1.3%.

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

Applied Materials sank 4.6% to trim its surge for the year so far to 108%. Micron Technology dropped nearly 6% in the first 15 minutes of trading, but it quickly erased its loss and then rose 1.6% to help the market trim its losses.

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

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

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

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

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

Netflix sank 8.6% after its revenue for the latest quarter fell just short of analysts’ expectations, even though its profit was bigger than expected. Its forecasts for upcoming revenue and profit in the summer also fell below expectations.

Intuitive Surgical, a maker of robotic surgical systems, dropped 11.1% despite topping expectations for the latest quarter. Analysts pointed to worries about slowing procedure growth because of the expiration of enhanced tax credits that helped lower the cost of health insurance for many Affordable Care Act enrollees.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX fell 4.2% and touched its lowest level since its stock began trading on the Nasdaq just over a month ago. The owner of the xAI business has been swept up in the swings of AI stocks, and it had to abort a test flight of its mega Starship rocket Thursday within a second or so from blasting off.

More climbs for oil prices also pressured the stock market.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 3.3% to $86.91, up from roughly $76 a week ago.

Oil prices are near their highest levels in a month because of worries that the war with Iran will keep oil tankers out of the Strait of Hormuz and block shipments of crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. The United States expanded its airstrike campaign against Iran early Friday by hitting more bridges and collapsing a tower at a key Iranian port.

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

But Treasury yields eased Friday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.52% from 4.57% late Thursday.

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

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

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

The bus crashed Thursday night in the Kapchorwa District in eastern Uganda on the way back from the region’s Sipi Falls, the Uganda Police Force said in a statement posted on X.

Survivors, including three adults and several children, were taken to several hospitals, according to police. More than 28 children were being treated in hospitals, nine of them in critical condition, Ugandan Minister of Local Government Balaam Barugahara Ateenyi said on X.

The adult among the 21 people who died appeared to be the founder and head of the school, Barugahara said.

Video from the Uganda Red Cross showed bodies of victims in and around the wreckage as people arrived to help following the nighttime crash. Some of the survivors were transported to a hospital in a pick-up truck, according to the video provided to The Associated Press.

Education Minister John Muyingo said the government had suspended all school trips and tours across the country of around 45 million people in response to the tragedy.

The bus belonged to the King David Junior School, an elementary school in the capital, Kampala, police said. The village where police said the crash occurred is near the Uganda-Kenya border, some 300 kilometers (some 190 miles) from Kampala.

The driver reportedly lost control of the bus, which veered off the road, struck a rock and overturned, according to the police statement, which added that the information was preliminary and the cause of the crash was under investigation.

A police photo showed the bus lying on its side with the entire roof ripped off and the seats exposed, including some that were mangled. Luggage and clothing lay strewn on the road.

Road accidents are common in the East African nation and often are blamed on poorly maintained vehicles, speeding and poor road conditions, which are problems across Africa. At least 14 people died when a bus collided with a truck in a remote area of northern Uganda earlier this month.

Africa has the worst road safety record in the world, with more than 300,000 annual road deaths and around 26 deaths per 100,000 people. In Europe, which has far more road traffic, there are around 20,000 deaths yearly and nine deaths per 100,000 people, according to the World Health Organization and the United Nations.

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

Even as the buzz was wearing down, there was a reminder that a name in the record book is not nearly as satisfying as the name to be etched in the silver claret jug on Sunday.

Halfway through the second round, it was abundantly clear anything was possible.

Herbert's record-tying round could have felt like a consolation prize. The 30-year-old Australian was practically flawless until he stood over a 5-foot par putt for a 61. He pulled it left and dropped hands onto his knees when he realized his shot at history was over.

“So it was a strange one – knocking that in and knowing I tied the record but feeling like it might be one of best chances we’ve ever had to shoot a 61,” he said.

It was only 20 minutes later when Royal Birkdale saw another 62, and it came out of nowhere. Burns, who wasn't even planning to play in The Open until his wife gave birth to their second child earlier than expected, was having a good round that turned into a great one.

He finished with three straight birdies — from 40 feet off the green at the 16th, from 20 feet on the 17th and holing a bunker shot for the first birdie of the day on the 18th — for his 62.

Herbert has the early lead at 8-under 132, two shots ahead of 18-hole leader Jackson Suber (69) and Cameron Young, who birdied the last two holes for another 67. Burns was another shot behind.

Defending champion Scottie Scheffler teed off in the afternoon, when the wind was expected to be at least slightly stronger than a wee breeze that led to so much low scoring in the morning.

Rory McIlroy had a 67 that didn't feel all that great compared to what was going on around him. He saved par on the final hole and was at 1-under 139, leaving him at least seven behind.

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

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

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

His address Thursday hinged on contradictions.

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

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

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

Trump doesn't raise doubts about his election wins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Former intelligence official calls address ‘dangerous’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some networks did not air it live

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democrats accuse Trump of seeking to discredit next election

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His allegations Thursday night of interference and influence didn’t include key context. Nor did he produce evidence that votes had been manipulated or that the election outcome had been altered.

Trump also said he was releasing previously classified documents related to the 2020 and 2018 elections. Thus far, no credible intelligence — including repeated audits and reviews, many runby Republicans — has shown the vote count in 2020 was fraudulent or manipulated by foreign actors. Trump did not question his election wins in 2016 or 2024.

Here's the latest:

Why American elections are so complicated — and secure

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

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

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

▶ Read more

ICE has seen a surge in new hires

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

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

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

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

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

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

▶ Read more

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

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

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

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

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

▶ Read more

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

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

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

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

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

▶ Read more

Rubio set for Asia trip

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

▶ Read more

Former intelligence official calls Trump’s address ‘dangerous’

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

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

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

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

Trump doesn’t raise doubts about his election wins

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

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

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

Trump’s Thursday night address hinged on contradictions

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

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

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

It attacks the body immediately, spiking asthma cases with increased ambulance runs within hours, swamps emergency rooms in a day or so with people suffering from heart attacks and other cardiovascular and lung issues, as well as mental health issues, doctors and scientists told The Associated Press.

Smoke also harms pregnant women, increasing the risk of premature births and low-weight babies who could have breathing problems the rest of their lives, doctors and studies say. And then there are long-term risks connecting prolonged smoke and other air pollution exposure to some cancers and dementia.

After huge global fires in 2018 and 2019, the medical and science communities started looking at the health effects from the smoke with “more and more studies coming out finding that there’s all types of impacts that may not have been so obvious before,” said Dr. Mary Johnson, a Harvard School of Public Health environmental health scientist.

Smoke causes inflammation by triggering the body's immune system to go into overtime to fight the irritant. Scientists have found it can harm the brain, the skin and men's sperm, with almost no system of the body spared, Johnson said. People over 60 become more prone to stroke in wildfire smoke, she said.

“Wildfire smoke is the toxic product of combustion of whatever burned,” which could include houses and cars, said Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency room physician, chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance and president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association.

“So really it's a big giant toxic soup of particles and gases.”

Scientists have counted at least 1,000 toxins in wildfire smoke, according to Colorado State University environmental toxicologist Luke Montrose.

“If I gave you a list, you would recognize some of these as being very bad, oftentimes associated with the burning of diesel fuel or cigarette smoke, things like formaldehyde or volatile organic compounds,” Montrose said. “So just the smoke itself can be bad.”

Rising global temperatures from climate change means more fires

So far this year, more than 5,740 square miles (more than 14,860 square kilometers) of the United States has burned from wildfires, which is 31% more than the average of the previous 10 years on this date, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The amount of U.S. land burned each year in the 2020s — averaged out over a decade — is now more than twice what it was 30 years ago.

Europe saw a record high amount of land burned in 2025, Canada has had several record or near-record fire years in the 2020s and the Arctic recently has had unprecedented levels of burning.

“Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense because of climate change, and when a fire happens, you have smoke,” said Colleen Reid, a University of Colorado geographic health professor.

Most of the biggest particles in wildfire smoke fall close to where a blaze is burning, while the smallest particles — the ones that scientists say do the most damage — travel the farthest. In a typical wildfire, the nasty particles that harm human health are about the size of one micron, Reid said.

Inside the body, particles attack

First those particles have to get by your body's protection, mainly nose hairs and mucus, then they get into your lungs and from there the bloodstream.

Montrose said the particles can be coated in lots of chemicals and have large surface areas. That triggers the body's defense system to “send signals to other cells that say, ‘We have a problem. We need to mount an immune response to this.’ And that’s where you get your acute effect or your effect within minutes, hours or even that day.” It's mostly happening in the hearts and lungs, he said.

And many people die.

On average 24,100 people died each year in the Lower 48 states between 2006 and 2020 due to long-term exposure to tiny particles from wildfire smoke, according to a study this year in the journal Science Advances. A Stanford study projects that U.S. wildfire smoke deaths will increase with climate change and by midcentury hit an annual cost of $244 billion in terms of the economic value the government puts on each life.

On a global scale, wildfire smoke particles cause 677,745 deaths annually, with almost 39% of them children under age 5, according to a 2021 study that combined observations, studies on how the body responds to the particles and computer models to calculate the toll.

The biggest nonlethal effects have to do with the way people breathe, especially those with asthma.

“We did a study here in 2014 after we had about two-and-a-half months of smoke off and on, because we’re in the subarctic so we’re warming at triple the global rate, so in a way we’re kind of canaries in the coal mine of the health impacts of climate change,” Howard said on a clear day from Yellowknife, Canada. “We found a full doubling of emergency department visits for asthma and about 50% increase in pneumonia.”

“Even in individuals that don’t have asthma, the air can be so irritating that you could have difficulty with your respiratory system regardless,” Johnson said, “whether it’s coughing, whether it's chest tightness, whether it’s sore throat, headache.”

There are ways to minimize the risks

Studies have linked smoke to people having more trouble with decision making and other cognitive issues. People come to the emergency room depressed, Howard said. That's why it's important to find a place with clean air — including designated shelters or libraries — to get a break from the smoke and possibly exercise, she said.

Experts suggest people wear high-quality masks when outdoors, even though they don't provide perfect protection. Inside, check windows and doors for seals, invest in a good ventilation system and check air filters, they say.

“Staying away from the smoke is No. 1 if you can,” Johnson said.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Platner's exit means the clock is ticking

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

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

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

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

Some candidates might see a boost from prior campaigns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Candidates seize on recent ICE shooting

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

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

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

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

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

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

Candidates asked about Platner's best ideas

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

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

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

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

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

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

A decade ago, Burnham abandoned a 20-year climb up the Labour Party ladder in London to head north and run for mayor of Greater Manchester. A month ago, he returned to Parliament by winning a risky special election. On Monday, he will become Britain’s 59th prime minister.

The sudden downfall of Prime Minister Keir Starmer after just two years in office has swept the 56-year-old Burnham into office — unelected and largely untested. He will enter No. 10 Downing St. carrying the heavy weight of expectation, and big questions about how he will shoulder it.

“A whole range of people across the Labour movement and in the country have projected onto Andy Burnham their hopes and their fantasies about how the country should be run and what Labour should stand for and what Andy Burnham stands for,” said Joshi Herrmann, founder of Manchester news site The Mill, who has covered Burnham for years.

“He has got lots of people’s hopes up.”

He was born in Liverpool and attended Cambridge

Burnham has made his name in Manchester, but he was born in Liverpool, and grew up in a commuter village between the rival northwest English cities.

His father worked as a British Telecom engineer and his mother as a receptionist, and he was raised in a close-knit Catholic family. Burnham has said he’s “not particularly religious,” but Catholic teaching, along with the center-left Labour Party, helped forge his values and sense of social justice.

Burnham and his brothers were the first generation of their family to go to university. And not just any university — Burnham attended Cambridge, one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious institutions.

“He needed a lot of persuading to apply because he felt that as a working-class boy, going off to Cambridge wasn’t for him,” Stephen Harrington, Burnham’s former English teacher at St. Aelred’s Catholic High School, told the BBC. “He didn’t believe in himself. But he did it, and the rest is history.”

Burnham has said he felt out of place at Cambridge, where many of his classmates had gone to posh private schools in the more affluent south of England. But he got a degree in English and met his future wife, Dutch fellow student Marie-France Van Heel, now a marketing executive. The couple married in 2000 and have a son and two daughters.

After graduating, Burnham worked as a journalist at trade magazines before becoming a researcher and adviser to Labour politicians.

Elected to Parliament for the Manchester-area district of Leigh in 2001, he rose through the government ranks under Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He served in Brown’s Cabinet between 2007 and 2010 as chief secretary to the Treasury, culture secretary and health secretary.

A formative experience came in 2009, when he was heckled at a commemoration of the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster, when 97 Liverpool soccer fans were crushed to death. Bereaved families had fought for years to overturn a false narrative offered by police that unruly fans had been to blame.

Burnham became a champion for the families and helped push for a new inquest, an apology and a law that imposes a duty of candor on public officials to tell the truth about tragedies whatever the impact on their reputation.

As mayor, he became known as King of the North

After Labour lost power in 2010, Burnham ran for leadership of the party that year and in 2015, losing both times. He quit Parliament in 2017, a low ebb for Labour nationally, to run for mayor of Greater Manchester.

Being mayor played to his strengths: an ability to bring people together, a sharp eye for opportunities and a wide streak of pragmatism. His approach became known as “Manchesterism,” a brand of business-friendly socialism that aims to harness private and public money to invest in areas like transport, housing and infrastructure.

Manchester was a former manufacturing powerhouse — known as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution — that had been hollowed out as British industry crumbled. During his tenure the city boomed, with skyscrapers blooming on vacant post-industrial sites. Burnham won praise for taking a piecemeal public transport system under public control and improving it.

He shed suit and tie for jeans and dark T-shirts, spoke about his love for Oasis, The Smiths and New Order and spent spare time playing soccer or spinning 1990s tunes during DJ battles.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he harangued Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson over what he called a “London-centric” approach to the crisis that was punishing northern cities. That’s when he gained the nickname King of the North, a “Game of Thrones”-inspired nod both to his championing of his home region and his political ambition.

He has said he saw his work in central government as “unfinished business,” and got his chance when Starmer was pushed to resign by Labour colleagues alarmed at the party’s unpopularity.

But Burnham still needed a seat in Parliament. A Labour lawmaker agreed to resign, triggering a special election for the Manchester-area district of Makerfield. Burnham trounced the candidate from anti-immigration party Reform UK, cementing his credentials as a winner.

In the subsequent contest to replace Starmer as Labour leader, he was the only candidate.

He’s promising to restore hope

Now he says he will deliver “a new politics based on unity and hope” and “an economy that works for everybody,” no matter where they live. A key plank is giving regional leaders more powers, and he plans to move part of the prime minister’s office to a “No. 10 North” in Manchester.

Herrmann said Burnham has clear strengths, especially an ability to tell a persuasive story and a sense of empathy that many politicians lack.

He added that the incoming prime minister has “a set of principles about trying to make the country fairer, trying to bring people out of poverty, that he really does believe in.”

Critics claim Burnham’s politics are vague on key points, such as where the money will come from to pay for his pledges. He will face many of the same political and economic challenges that stymied Starmer, including a sluggish economy, overstretched public services and a cost-of-living squeeze. He has little experience of foreign policy issues, from the Ukraine war to dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump.

And running a country of 70 million is a lot different from overseeing a region of 3 million.

But Sacha Lord, a Manchester music entrepreneur who served as Burnham’s nighttime economy adviser, said the politician has a steely side that will help him rise to the occasion.

“He’s not scared of locking horns with people,” Lord said. “Everybody thinks Andy’s this nice, cheeky-chappy guy. But trust me, when he wants something ... he tends to get it.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Thursday warned consumers not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. A record number of cyclospora cases have been reported in more than 30 states, and experts have said not every recent U.S. illness might be caused by a single source.

A Food and Drug Administration investigation identified a single supplier of the lettuce. The federal warnings to consumers did not identify the company, but a federal official who was briefed on the investigation and not authorized to discuss it told The Associated Press it was Taylor Farms of Salinas, California.

Taylor Farms, which has been tied to foodborne outbreaks in the past, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“FDA is working with the supplier of iceberg lettuce to determine if potentially contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce remains on the market,” including in other states, the CDC said. “Taco Bell has committed to stop using any lettuce from the supplier identified by FDA’s traceback investigation.”

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

CDC, FDA and public health officials in several states have been investigating a multistate outbreak of cyclospora infections.

More than 30 states have reported infections this year, and current data from them shows the number of infections surpassing the record U.S. mark of about 4,700 set in 2019. The illness is not usually life threatening and is typically treated with antibiotics.

On Tuesday, ahead of the federal government's confirmation, Taco Bell issued a statement saying it had “voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and follow the guidance of public health authorities.”

Cyclospora is a microscopic, spherical parasite that commonly causes watery diarrhea “with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Outbreaks tend to occur most often in the late spring and summer.

The heat-loving parasite infects the bowels and spreads through feces. In the past, people have been infected by consuming fruits or vegetables that were exposed to feces-contaminated irrigation water.

The illness, called cyclosporiasis, is less common than foodborne illnesses caused by other germs, including salmonella and E. coli. Many cases are never linked to a specific food or other source and, for years, few U.S. cyclospora outbreaks were reported. But the number started rising about a decade ago, with a particularly notable spike in 2018 and 2019.

Experts say it’s likely that cyclospora cases historically were underreported, in part because some common tests used to check for food poisoning have not been geared to detect cyclospora. They attribute the increasing trend in cases to climate change and better detection.

Taylor Farms also was tied to a 2013 cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to salad mix and a 2024 E. coli outbreak tied to onions served at McDonald's.

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Stobbe reported from New York.

The preparations come as meteorologists warn that El Nino is already underway and increasingly likely to strengthen through the remainder of the year. Unlike hurricanes or earthquakes, the climate phenomenon develops gradually over months, which gives governments time to prepare before its most severe impacts arrive.

But experts say authorities across the region have often struggled to turn forecasts into action, raising questions about whether countries will be better prepared than during previous El Nino events that caused widespread economic damage and disrupted water, energy and food systems.

“Now is the time for decisions, for effective preparedness and the political consistency to really be proactive this time,” said Rodney Martinez, the World Meteorological Organization’s representative for North America, Central America and the Caribbean.

“El Nino is confirmed. El Nino is ongoing. It’s not simply a possibility,” he said.

Many countries have stepped up preparations

Previous strong El Nino events have caused billions of dollars in damage across Latin America, contributing to severe drought in some regions while triggering floods and landslides in others. The phenomenon has disrupted agriculture, strained drinking water supplies, fueled wildfires and, in some countries, reduced hydroelectric power generation, leading to energy shortages.

Martinez said countries should use the months before impacts intensify to secure alternative energy sources, protect vulnerable communities and prepare for potential strain on public services.

In hydropower-dependent countries such as Ecuador, that could mean bringing thermal power generation online to offset lower reservoir levels during drier conditions and completing maintenance and procurement work well in advance. He pointed to Ecuador’s energy crisis last year, when drought depleted water levels at hydroelectric facilities and contributed to widespread power outages.

Central America, parts of the Caribbean and northern South America are already experiencing drier-than-normal conditions associated with the phenomenon, according to the WMO. Those conditions are expected to expand into parts of the Amazon basin, raising concerns about water availability, agriculture and wildfire risk.

The threats vary considerably across the region.

In Brazil, Colombia and parts of Central America, authorities are focused on drought, water shortages and wildfire risk. Brazil has hired more than 4,600 federal personnel for wildfire prevention and response, expanded firefighting brigades and deployed aircraft ahead of what officials fear could be a difficult fire season. Colombia has activated water-monitoring systems, strengthened wildfire preparedness and urged local authorities to prepare for potential shortages.

Elsewhere, governments are preparing for flooding. Ecuador, where strong El Nino events have historically brought damaging rains to the Pacific coast, has ordered local governments to develop contingency plans and allocated millions of dollars for flood mitigation, emergency response and agricultural recovery. Local authorities have begun clearing drainage channels, stabilizing hillsides and preparing emergency shelters.

Costa Rica says it has launched more than 200 measures under a national contingency plan, including efforts to protect water supplies, expand renewable energy generation and prepare for a potentially severe wildfire season. In Peru, authorities have strengthened monitoring and early-warning systems while expanding meteorological observation networks.

Panamanian authorities have developed plans to address potential impacts on operations at the Panama Canal, where lower rainfall can affect water availability needed to maintain shipping traffic through one of the world’s most important trade routes.

The WMO official warned that drought and heat could threaten food security across parts of Central America’s Dry Corridor while increasing wildfire risks in several countries. In areas expected to receive excessive rainfall, flooding can damage infrastructure, contaminate water supplies and increase the risk of disease outbreaks.

Advance warning does not always translate into action

Colombia's environment minister, Irene Vélez, told The Associated Press that El Nino is not new, but “what is new is its intensity. And because of that intensity, what is also new is how long it could last and the area it could affect.”

Despite the advance warning, Martinez said preparations remain uneven across the region.

“The reality is that this preparation doesn’t happen until they have the emergency,” he said.

Martinez said some authorities continue to delay decisions despite increasingly strong forecasts, either waiting for additional confirmation or assuming their countries will avoid the worst impacts. He warned that postponing decisions despite increasingly strong scientific evidence could leave governments scrambling to respond once droughts, floods and heat waves intensify.

Recent studies examining previous major El Nino events found their economic impacts can linger for years and ultimately cost the global economy trillions of dollars.

His message to governments still waiting to act was simple.

“Be prepared in advance, in a serious way,” Martinez said. "“The information is there. Now is the time for decisions.”

Vélez said the challenge extends beyond responding to a single climate event and requires governments to adapt to increasingly extreme conditions.

“Climate change is here to stay,” she said.

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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.

Kimi Antonelli heads into the Belgian Grand Prix with a piece of advice he picked up recently from Roger Federer.

After a run of car problems cut into the Italian's Formula 1 standings lead, Antonelli's chat with the tennis great in the Royal Box at Wimbledon offered a fresh perspective on how to stop these blips turning into a slump.

“About pressure, he just told me to really focus one race at a time, just focus on what you can control, and also to control the emotions, especially the ones that can make you do mistakes,” Antonelli said Thursday.

“Those were the main pieces of advice. Other than that, it was an incredible experience to witness.”

So far, Antonelli seems to be staying focused, even as Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton threaten Mercedes' supremacy. Antonelli doesn't seem to have lost any of his race-winning pace, unlike last year, when his confidence hit rock-bottom after errors on the European tracks he was meant to know best.

“I just need to maximize every opportunity I get, what I have in control, and then we’ll see what the rest will be,” Antonelli said. “It's part of the sport and the team are doing a tremendous job to make sure that all these issues are not happening again.”

Mercedes off the practice pace

Antonelli was only sixth and teammate George Russell eighth in first practice Friday, a rare session this year where Mercedes failed to make much impression.

Instead, it was Belgian-born Max Verstappen who led the way by 0.145 of a second from Hamilton, with Leclerc third, .208 off the pace, as Ferrari showed signs of building on Leclerc's surprise win at the British Grand Prix.

The session ended with McLaren's Oscar Piastri limping back to the pits with a technical problem.

Russell's struggles

While not everything is going Antonelli's way, at least he knows why. His more experienced Mercedes teammate Russell is finding his problems harder to fix.

A second-place finish for Russell at the British Grand Prix was more about luck than speed, as he benefited from Antonelli's car trouble, a crash for Max Verstappen and a strategy blunder for Hamilton.

Russell cut Antonelli's lead to 25 points but said he felt “less satisfied” with that home podium finish than he had breaking down from the lead in Canada.

The fast, sweeping Belgian circuit has key similarities to Silverstone. That could pose a challenge to Russell and offer an opportunity to Ferrari.

Leclerc and Ferrari were surprised he had the pace to win in Britain and they've been working since then to understand what worked so well to deliver that pace this weekend, too.

Mercedes remains the team to beat and “should be a lot further ahead" in the standings by now, Hamilton told Sky Sports.

Norris hits another setback

One driver who almost certainly won't be in contention for the win is Lando Norris. The defending champion comes into this week's race with a 10-place grid penalty after McLaren switched out a troublesome electrical part on his car.

His teammate Piastri spent Thursday stressing he trusts McLaren's assurances he'll stay with the team next year despite reported interest in signing Verstappen.

Four-time champion Verstappen left his future open Thursday but had warm words for Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies, who started his tenure a year ago with a stunning win for Verstappen in a sprint in Belgium.

After Verstappen fumed at Red Bull's “dangerous” car after back-to-back crashes caused by rear wing failures, the team is going back to an older design this week, potentially affecting Verstappen's pace.

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

The Upper Midwest and Canadian wildfire smoke has moved into our area as a result of the Jetstream sagging a bit further south. Today and tomorrow will be the worst days to be outside in the smoke before a few storms arrive this weekend that will clear out the air a bit.

Air quality is now at a moderate level but will likely move to the level this afternoon that would be considered a code orange. That means that the air quality would be unhealthy for those sensitive groups like the elderly, young children and those with respiratory issues.

Please be sure and stay weather aware today as the smoke lingers in our area.

The good news is that we have a few storms on deck for the weekend that could help to mitigate the impacts of the smoke. Widely scattered afternoon storms this weekend could bring damaging wind gusts and heavy rainfall on Saturday, so please be aware when headed out and about for outdoor plans!

We will enter an active pattern starting tomorrow and running through next Wednesday of daily showers and storms. This is very much needed to clear the air of smoke and help with the drought conditions across the region. Have a great weekend!

It's the latest attack on essential infrastructure across the Middle East that have exposed extreme vulnerabilities in one of the world’s driest regions, which relies almost exclusively on technology to produce freshwater that sustains cities, hotels, industry and some agriculture.

Kuwaiti authorities said the strikes damaged a large number of power generation units and sparked a fire. They added that a fire has been contained, and that they activated emergency contingency plans.

In Kuwait, about 90% of drinking water comes from desalination, along with roughly 86% in Oman and about 70% in Saudi Arabia. The process removes salt from seawater, most commonly by pushing it through ultrafine membranes in a process known as reverse osmosis.

Hundreds of desalination plants sit along the Persian Gulf coast, putting systems that supply water to millions within range of Iranian missile or drone strikes. Without them, major cities could not sustain their current populations.

For people living outside the Middle East, the main concern of the Iran war has been the impact on energy prices. Fighting and attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz have upended world markets and pushed oil prices to record highs.

But the infrastructure that keeps Gulf cities supplied with drinking water are equally vulnerable.

Throughout the past few months, Iran has struck close to several desalination plants in the Gulf. Kuwait previously reported damage at the Doha West desalination plant early in the war, which resulted from debris from intercepted drones or attacks on the nearby port.

Iran accused the U.S. of striking Iranian desalination plants on Qeshm Island on March 8, cutting off water supplies for 30 villages, though Washington did not acknowledged the strike.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have also targeted Saudi desalination facilities amid regional tensions in the past.

Many Gulf desalination plants are physically integrated with power stations as co‑generation facilities, meaning attacks on electrical infrastructure could also hinder water production. Desalination plants have multiple stages — intake systems, treatment facilities, energy supplies — and damage to any part of that chain can interrupt production.

Gulf governments and U.S. officials have long recognized the risks these systems pose for regional stability: if major desalination plants were knocked offline, some cities could lose most of their drinking water within days.

A 2010 CIA analysis warned attacks on desalination facilities could trigger national crises in several Gulf states, and prolonged outages could last months if critical equipment were destroyed.

More than 90% of the Gulf’s desalinated water comes from just 56 plants, the report stated, and “each of these critical plants is extremely vulnerable to sabotage or military action.”

The desalination plants are also vulnerable to climate change, including storm surges and extreme rainfall that can overwhelm infrastructure, as warming oceans increase the likelihood and intensity of cyclones in the Arabian Sea. __

Associated Press writer Melanie Lidman contributed from Tel Aviv, Israel.

The revisions include adoption of distant male relatives to father future heirs and allowing princesses to keep their royal status after marrying commoners.

Royal watchers and experts fear the new measures could doom the 1,500-year-old hereditary institution by insisting that only males can be emperor.

Emperor Naruhito ’s 24-year-old daughter is hugely popular, and many Japanese want her to be his successor, but Princess Aiko is ineligible because she is a woman. Japan’s male-only succession rule means the line must move to the emperor's younger brother, then to his 19-year-old nephew Prince Hisahito. Next in line after him is the emperor's 90-year-old uncle.

In an imperial family that places a premium on male royal babies, Hisahito is the first such boy to be born in four decades. Only five of the 16 adults in the imperial family — there are no children — are men.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and other conservatives insist the male bloodline is “the only source of the emperor’s authority and legitimacy,” which is the basis for the upcoming measures.

“I'm deeply moved,” Takaichi told reporters after the enactment.

While an emperor's mother can be a commoner, as is the case with the current one, only boys born to men with royal blood can be heirs to the throne, according to the Imperial House Law.

The revision to the antiquated law is meant to solidify the principle of that crucial bloodline by allowing the adoption of distant royal male relatives to father future heirs, pushing the Emperor's daughter to the side. It will also allow princesses to keep their royal status and serve duties if they marry a commoner.

“It’s a declaration to prevent female monarchs … and to defend the male lineage at all costs,” said Hideya Kawanishi, an expert on monarchy at Nagoya University. “They cannot say it’s male chauvinism, so they call it tradition.”

Imperial Household Agency chief Buichiro Kuroda said in a statement that his agency “will do everything it can appropriately to support smooth activity for the Imperial Family members in line with (the revisions), while fully taking into consideration their feelings.”

Takaichi supports male-only succession

There have been eight female monarchs. The last was Empress Gosakuramachi, who ruled from 1762 to 1770.

The paternal-line male succession was stipulated for the first time in the 1890 Imperial House Law, when Japan promoted patriarchal systems. That law was largely carried over to the current 1947 version.

Friday’s revisions have led to protests from Japanese who see the government efforts as meant to eliminate Princess Aiko from ruling and to justify discrimination against women and a patriarchal system.

“It’s very ironic that the first female prime minister herself is the leading proponent of the obsession with male succession,” Chizuko Ueno, a prominent feminist scholar, wrote recently referring to Takaichi.

Ueno said the new measures “treat male royals as stallions and put female royals under pressure as ‘childbearing machines’ to produce male offspring.”

After Aiko’s birth, her mother Empress Masako, a Harvard-educated former diplomat and a commoner, developed a stress-induced mental condition, apparently over criticism for not producing a male heir.

Imperial family is shrinking

Because of the male-only succession rules and the dismissal of princesses who marry commoners, the monarchy after Hisahito is “extremely unstable,” former Imperial Household Agency chief Shingo Haketa told Kyodo News recently.

Historians say the current system is unworkable, as Japan more broadly faces a fast-aging, dwindling population. It only worked in the past because concubines produced half the emperors until about 100 years ago, when the practice ended under Naruhito’s great-grandfather, Emperor Taisho.

A government proposal in 2005 to allow female monarchs was scrapped following Hisahito’s birth.

Naruhito's two male heirs are his brother, Crown Prince Akishino, 60, who is only six years younger than the emperor and has reportedly said he would be too old to serve, and Hisahito, Akishino’s 19-year-old son. Third in line is Naruhito's uncle, Prince Hitachi, who is 90.

Distant relatives

The more controversial of the two measures allows unmarried male descendants, aged 15 or older, of distant imperial relatives — but only of paternal lineage — to be adopted into the royal family.

Fifty-one members from 11 branch families renounced their royal status in 1947, mainly to ease the postwar financial burden on the monarchy, Imperial Household Agency official Yoshimi Ogata told a recent parliamentary session.

Those people are at least 36 generations removed from Naruhito because they split from a common male-line ancestor 600 years ago, Ogata said.

There is criticism of what some see as the government's extraordinary efforts to make sure that male royals are producing male emperors.

“Who wants the son of an adoptee who nobody knows to be emperor instead of Aiko?” asked Yoshinori Kobayashi, a cartoonist campaigning for Aiko’s succession.

It may also be unrealistic to ask former royals to reenter a very strict family known as “an enclave without human rights.” Royals cannot choose their jobs or homes, and must follow other serious constraints.

“I wonder if anyone would raise a hand,” 81-year-old Asahiro Kuni, whose family renounced its royal status when he was 3, told TBS television. “I imagine many people, by age 15, have some idea about their future. It’s cruel to tell them … to change the course of their life.”

Kuni, who worked as an engineer at a major Japanese company, said he would tell his family to decline if asked by the palace. “You are asked to sacrifice your life for the happiness of the people. I can’t tell my family to choose such a difficult life.”

He expressed support for female monarchs in interviews with other Japanese media.

Princesses who marry commoners can keep royal status

Aiko, known for her engaging smile, enthusiasm and witty conversation, is a public favorite.

Five single princesses, including Aiko and her popular cousin Kako, 31, may be affected by the other main revision to the Imperial House Law, which would allow them to keep their royal status and continue serving official duties if they marry commoners, although their spouse and children wouldn't be accepted as royals.

Aiko’s elder cousin Mako renounced her royal status and moved to New York after marrying her college boyfriend, a commoner who now is a lawyer. The move was largely seen as her attempt to flee from the restrained imperial life.

Ueno calls the system inhumane and urges the princesses to follow Mako's example and leave when they can.

Hisahito, possible adoptees and their future wives will face enormous pressure to produce male offspring, Kawanishi said.

Many Japanese want Aiko to be emperor

“The emperor is a symbolic figure, and I don’t see why women cannot serve in the role,” said 78-year-old Junichiro Tsujimaru, a sushi chain founder.

Yoshio Iwase, 78, said Aiko, as the daughter of the emperor, is the legitimate successor. “I think it’s fine because there used to be female emperors in the past.”

There is worry that the government's push will upset former Emperor Akihito's legacy, which included making amends for the victims of World War II, fought in his father’s name.

Akihito, who abdicated in 2019, also tried to bring what was seen as an aloof monarchy closer to the people, an example followed by his son, Naruhito, and his family.

Akihito reportedly supports Aiko's succession. He avoided directly answering a question about the 2005 government proposal but said female royals served a major role in the monarchy and that its role was to work for the happiness of the people — a remark interpreted as his support for female monarchs.

Naruhito also said in June that he hoped discussions about the measures would reach a conclusion that “will gain understanding of the people,” a comment palace watchers said was his nuanced displeasure.

Japan on Friday also enacted a controversial new law prohibiting desecration of its national flag, a key right-wing agenda pushed by Takaichi. Opponents see it as an attempt to intimidate the public and silence criticism against her government.

But all that frothy foam obscures a cold reality: Beer sales have been struggling globally, and it’s unclear if soccer's world championship tournament can reverse the trend despite having three countries and 16 cities as co-hosts this year.

In the U.S., beer consumption has fallen steadily for a decade, according to the Brewers Association, a trade group for craft brewers. Canada has seen a similar decline, according to the national statistics agency. The Brewers of Europe trade association says the story is the same in the European Union.

Consumers are buying less regular beer and more ‘wellness’ drinks

Many consumers are cutting back on alcohol for health reasons. Last year was the first time in Gallup’s polling that a majority of Americans – 53% -- said drinking “one or two drinks a day” was bad for one’s health.

While sales of non-alcoholic beer have grown, they still make up only around 1% of the U.S. market, according to the Beer Institute, a trade group for brewers.

Economic worries also have taken a toll on sales. U.S. consumption of all types of alcohol – including wine and spirits – fell 5% last year, and affordability concerns were partly to blame, beverage market research company IWSR said.

Craig Purser, the president and CEO of the National Beer Wholesalers Association, said he thinks smartphones and Netflix have taken consumers away from socializing with a cold beer in hand.

“If you have this behavior where we’re cocooning and we’re not spending time with other folks, that’s going to affect beer consumption,” Purser said.

World Cup host cities saw a bump in beer sales at stadiums, bars and restaurants

Enter the World Cup and the soccer fans who traveled from around the world to support their national teams and engage in communal celebration or sorrow.

In the first four weeks of the tournament, beer sales in bars, restaurants, stadiums and other venues rose 14% in U.S. host cities compared to the same period last year, according to the Beer Institute. The bump extended beyond host cities; sales were up 4% nationally, the institute said.

Jim Koch, the brewer, founder and CEO of the Boston Beer Co., which makes Samuel Adams and other brands, said the company had to make two emergency deliveries to its Sam Adams Boston Taproom on the first day that Scotland's fans were in town.

“At one point, we were pouring them a Sam Adams Boston Lager every 12 seconds. What a wonderful group of people,” he said.

But that wasn't all that warmed Koch's heart.

“I didn’t see a single soul on their phone," he said, “They had a beer in their hand and they were talking to each other. They were doing what beer is meant to do, which is helping people enjoy each other’s company.”

The plentiful drinking on display in stadiums stood in stark constrast to the World Cup held four years ago in Qatar, where the government banned the sale of alcoholic beer in match venues.

Brewers leaned heavily into this year's tournament. Budweiser and Michelob Ultra maker AB InBev, the World's Cup's official beer sponsor, doled out marketing support to bars and hosted 200,000 watch parties in 40 countries.

Molson Coors said it would spend 60% more than last year on marketing in June and July; it also debuted a limited edition soccer ball that can hold 12 cans of Miller Lite.

A team's loss can make supporters cry, but not in their beer

Maybell Romero, a law professor at Tulane University School of Law in New Orleans, usually prefers cocktails over beer. But she says she opts for beer during the World Cup since it has lower alcohol content than liquor or wine and watching games can be an all-day affair.

“If I drink cocktail after cocktail, I will not be functional after a few hours,” Romero said.

Romero, who has been watching this year's matches at bars in Mexico City, said she’s enjoyed trying new beers, especially those with novel ingredients like champagne yeast. She might order an occasional beer once the World Cup ends but expects to go back to mostly drinking cocktails.

Beer consumption was expected to fall in some markets even before the World Cup ended. Shares in AB InBev and Constellation Brands — which owns the U.S. rights to Mexican beer brands like Corona and Modelo — tumbled after Mexico and Brazil were eliminated from the tournament.

Romero observed the mood shift in Mexico City after those losses.

“The city is collectively depressed,” she said. "Everything is a lot quieter, and people aren’t going out as much."

Major sporting events on the horizon allow the beer industry to hold out hope

Purser remains hopeful the World Cup will remind people how much they like to gather and cheer on athletes, especially with the Summer Olympics heading to Los Angeles in 2028. Occasions are expanding, he said; college and professional football games are now played on more nights of the week, for example. And beer's consumer base is widening as more brands put out low- and no-alcohol versions, he said.

In May, the NCAA reversed its long-standing ban on alcohol advertising during March Madness, allowing makers of beer, wine, spirits and hard seltzer makers to sponsor the college basketball tournaments for the first time starting next season.

The Boston Beer Co.'s Koch said he's not fretting until then.

“People worry that the beer business has declined for a few years, and I always remind them that beer has been a part of human society, human civilization, for 10,000 years,” he said. “Beer will always be a part enhancing our enjoyment of our lives and the time we spend on this earth.”

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AP Video Journalist Rodrique Ngowi contributed from Boston.

“We were looking at different flights home (to Florida),” Cole said.

No need to change the reservation. All the bounces that went against the 38-year-old American were in his favor Friday as he ran off three straight birdies on the front nine, four in a row on the back nine and improved 12 shots from the previous day with a 6-under 64 to get back to even par for the championship.

He was not yet in position to contend. But he was not quite ready to leave.

“I was just trying to have a good day and relax and enjoy The Open Championship,” Cole said. “Hit some good shots and didn't get any weird bounces.”

Cole was the first example that Royal Birkdale was more vulnerable in the second round, with lighter wind and accessible pins. Lucas Herbert of Australia tied a British Open record with a 28 on the front nine.

Most peculiar about the 12-shot improvement was that Cole didn't feel as though he played all that much differently than his opening 76 that included three double bogeys.

The shocker was on No. 11 when his right foot slipped on his tee shot, he barely made contact and the ball tumbled about 25 yards away into thick, high grass.

“We never found the ball,” he said. “It just rolled into the gunch. So I had to re-tee. That was another double bogey.”

Then on the par-5 17th, his club caught a clump of grass and turned over, leading to a shank into the trees that forced him into taking a penalty shot and replaying the shot. Another double bogey.

“Tee to green yesterday, I felt like I played great. I know that’s weird to say, but I really did feel like I was hitting the ball where I was aiming and the swing felt good,” he said. “I’m just chalking it up to random outlier.”

This is Cole's second Open but he knew what to expect. His father is South African player Bobby Cole, who finished one shot out of the 1975 playoff at Carnoustie that Tom Watson won and twice has played at Royal Birkdale.

Eric Cole created some memories of his own over two days, good and bad. Friday was so good that Cole briefly thought about a record score when he was 6 under for the day with two par 5s ahead of him. Instead, he finished with five straight pars that figured to give him two more days at Birkdale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The famous photo was forgotten until Yamal's breakout with Spain

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

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

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

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

Barcelona fans are torn by love of both Messi and Yamal

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

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

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

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

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

FIFA announced the pick late Thursday. It's the second straight World Cup final where Argentina, now the defending champion, will have a European referee to face a European opponent.

FIFA has faced criticism during the current World Cup for Argentina seeming to get the benefit of some refereeing decisions — including when soccer great Lionel Messi escaped a red card for a rough challenge on an Algeria opponent — with the coaches of Egypt and South Africa claiming inconsistencies.

After Egypt formally alleged bias in decisions during its 3-2 loss to Argentina, FIFA director of referees Pierluigi Collina said: “Nobody can question the integrity of the FIFA World Cup match officials.”

In his three games so far at the 2026 World Cup, Vinčić has shown seven yellow cards and one red card, and awarded no penalty kicks.

In the most recent of his games, in the round of 32 more than two weeks ago, Vinčić sent off Ecuador’s Piero Hincapie after a video review for covering his mouth in a confrontation with a Mexico opponent.

Vinčić also worked two group-stage games, when Brazil and Morocco drew 1-1 and Algeria beat Jordan 2-1.

Bayern-Madrid epic

In the last European club season, Vinčić’s biggest match was Bayern Munich’s 4-3 win over Real Madrid in the quarterfinals of the Champions League.

Vinčić showed yellow cards to five Madrid players, and second yellows to Eduardo Camavinga for timewasting and Arda Guler for dissent to send them off late in the game.

Those were among just three red cards that Vinčić showed in nine Champions League games and he awarded just two penalties.

The 46-year-old Slovenian refereed Madrid’s 2-0 win over Borussia Dortmund in the 2024 Champions League final.

The Slovenia link

FIFA’s pick of Vinčić surprised some observers given ongoing tensions between its president Gianni Infantino and UEFA, led by Slovenian lawyer Aleksander Ceferin, who should attend the final at East Rutherford, New Jersey.

UEFA claimed FIFA “crossed a red line” in suspending a mandatory one-game ban for United States forward Folarin Balogun to let him face Belgium in the round of 16, and called the decision “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable.”

On day four of the World Cup, some soccer federations published a letter during a FIFA-hosted conference in Miami criticizing Ceferin personally for a reported comment made days before the tournament in Slovenia about the expanded 48-team competition format.

Vinčić follows Szymon Marciniak of Poland in being chosen to officiate the biggest match in world soccer. Marciniak awarded a penalty to each team in the thrilling 3-3 draw in the World Cup final between Argentina and France in Qatar in December 2022. Argentina then won the penalty shootout in which Marciniak showed a yellow card to goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez for unsporting conduct in trying to distract French players.

The pick of Vinčić continues a pattern for 10 straight World Cups since 1990: European referees are chosen for finals played outside Europe, and referees from other continents are picked for finals played in Europe. Those include Italian Collina, the premier referee of his generation, who worked Brazil's 2-0 win over Germany in the 2002 final in Japan.

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

The Consumer Product Safety Commission alert involves sandals made by Cat & Jack that were sold nationwide in stores and online.

They feature decorative pearls that can fall off, and possibly be swallowed.

Target says there have been 23 reports of detached pearls, but no injuries so far.

Customers can return the sandals for a refund, and full details are at this link to the Consumer Produce Safety Commission website.

The rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security will do away with the “duration of status” system, which allows foreign journalists to stay and work in the United States as long as they meet eligibility requirements. That will be replaced with a fixed period of time, though the visas may be extended.

The agency says it's necessary to better vet the visa holders. But advocates for foreign journalists oppose the change, saying the drastically shorter stay would severely restrict their ability to live and work in the States.

The even shorter visa rule for Chinese journalists, which does not include those from the “special administrative regions” of Hong Kong or Macao, is particularly harsh and could add tensions to the already fraught relations between Washington and Beijing, despite both leaders stating they intend to stabilize ties.

The decision comes at a time when President Donald Trump is targeting news organizations with multiple threats and legal actions at home and his administration is tightening immigration policies, though foreign journalists are not considered immigrants.

Journalism organizations denounce the decision

The rule will take effect 60 days after it’s published in the Federal Register. Congress can reject a rule, but it's extremely rare.

“We are outraged that the Trump administration has cruelly limited the duration of visas for foreign journalists from a period of up to five years to a fixed eight months,” the advocacy group Reporters with Borders said in a statement. “This change destroys international journalists’ ability to report from the U.S. and makes it extremely difficult for international outlets to operate here at all.”

“The relentless cycle of visa renewals restricts press freedom, as journalists will feel compelled to avoid drawing the administration’s ire, lest their applications be rejected,” it said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists released a statement calling the new visa policy “the behavior of a backsliding democracy, not the international vanguard of free speech.”

In proposing the change in August 2025, the federal agency said the rising number of foreign journalists in the U.S. “poses a challenge” to its ability “to monitor and oversee these nonimmigrants while they are in the United States.”

It added that students and foreign visitors also will see their previous rule of “duration of status” replaced with fixed periods by the same decision.

By admitting them into the country for a fixed period, the Department of Homeland Security said it could better vet the visa holders to ensure their activities are permissible. The visas can be extended.

This isn't the first time shortening visas has been proposed

The first Trump administration sought to change the visa rules in 2020, but the proposal was withdrawn in 2021 when President Joe Biden took office.

But the White House then tightened visas for Chinese journalists to only 90 days, in response to the treatment of U.S. journalists in China, including the expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters, as tensions flared up during the COVID-19 pandemic between the two countries. The Biden administration later relaxed the rule, allowing stays to increase to up to a year.

When the Trump administration proposed to revive the 90-day rule last year, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it opposed “the U.S.’s discriminatory move targeting a specific country.”

China warns of reciprocal measures

China's Foreign Ministry called the decision “discriminatory” and said it would affect the work of Chinese media in the U.S.

“China urges the U.S. to immediately revoke its discriminatory policies targeting Chinese journalists and effectively safeguard their lawful rights and interests in the U.S.,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian at a daily briefing in Beijing. He added that “China reserves the right to take reciprocal countermeasures.”

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AP journalists Fu Ting in Washington and E. Eduardo Castillo in Beijing contributed to the report.

Speaking at a conference in Shanghai, Xi said AI should not be dominated by any single nation. American-led restrictions have blocked China from accessing some of the world's most advanced technologies, spurring China's efforts to build its own know-how and intensifying the rivalry between the world’s two biggest economies.

“The development of artificial intelligence should not be a solo performance by any single country but rather a symphony of global cooperation,” Xi said at the opening of China's annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. Others attending included the leaders of Kazakhstan, Cambodia and Thailand and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

Xi opposes the ‘overstretching’ of national security in AI

“We should together oppose the practice of overstretching the concept of national security in the field of artificial intelligence, and of placing one’s own security above that of other countries,” he said, repeating a longstanding Chinese complaint.

China will expand AI cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the League of Arab States, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS countries, Xi said. He promised to provide access for 30 countries to a Chinese-developed AI meteorological tool that provides early warning systems.

Over the next five years, Xi said China will provide 5,000 AI training opportunities to developing countries.

Closer partnerships can help prevent “historical injustice in AI,” he said.

China’s new AI cooperation body seen as response to the U.S.

Ahead of the conference, 29 countries including Pakistan, Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement with China to establish a World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization. State media described it as an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Shanghai promoting global AI governance.

The new AI cooperation organization can be viewed as China’s answer to the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative, said George Chen, partner and chair of digital practice at Washington-headquartered consultancy The Asia Group.

The Pax Silica framework, launched late last year, focuses on strengthening collaboration with U.S. allies and partners on AI-related supply chains. Signatories include Japan, the U.K., Australia, the Philippines, Israel and India.

Following a visit by U.S. President Donald Trump’s to Beijing to meet with Xi in mid-May, China and the United States also agreed to conduct a dialogue on AI development and governance.

Chen, who was at the conference in Shanghai, also said Xi’s speech can be seen as a signal that China can be a reliable partner to the developing world, or “Global South” countries. “China will not let America be the monopoly of AI technology.”

China's advanced tech showcased as it steps up self-reliance

More than 1,100 companies and 1,400 guests are participating in the annual AI conference this year, Chinese state media said.

During the conference that runs until Monday, tech giant Huawei is showcasing its powerful AI computing system, the Atlas 950 SuperPoD.

Some technology analysts now believe China has become an innovator in AI and is no longer just catching up with the U.S. China’s five-year plan until 2030 has prioritized progress in frontiers of science and technology including AI.

China’s open-source AI models, like DeepSeek, are seen, especially across the developing world, as appealing and often more affordable than U.S. AI models, which are largely closed-source.

Coinciding with the conference, the Chinese AI startup Moonshot released its latest AI model, Kimi K3. It said Kimi K3's 2.8 trillion parameters — one of the measurements of an AI model's capability — will make it the world's largest open-source model. DeepSeek's V4 Pro version has 1.6 trillion parameters.

Last month, another Chinese AI company Zhipu, or Z.ai, rolled out its new flagship GLM-5.2 open-source model in a challenge to U.S. rivals including Anthropic’s models.

But U.S. politicians and several major U.S. AI companies including Anthropic have accused Chinese AI models of illicit “distillation” of their models to extract their technologies, a claim that Beijing says is “groundless.” U.S. policymakers have also raised concerns over Chinese AI posing an economic threat to the United States.

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Chan reported from Hong Kong. Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu contributed from Beijing.

The Knesset, which was scheduled to break for its summer recess on Friday, will not reconvene before the elections scheduled on Oct. 27.

The expected dissolution comes as Netanyahu is struggling to hold onto power ahead of the next elections as Israel grinds toward the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack that sparked nearly three years of war. Israeli polls are showing a groundswell of support for opposition parties, led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and a popular centrist former military chief.

Over the past week, the Knesset passed several controversial laws in marathon sessions as Netanyahu attempted to ram through several of his pet projects.

Earlier this week, the Knesset passed two bills that effectively halt the enlistment of ultra-Orthodox men in the military in an attempt to ensure ultra-Orthodox parties join Netanyahu’s coalition in the next government.

The Knesset also recently passed several bills connected with Netanyahu’s attempts to overhaul the judiciary, including increasing government control over broadcast media and weakening the role of the attorney general. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has opposed the overhaul, and been a frequent target of Netanyahu and the Israeli right.

“We are completing a four-year term, we passed nine budgets and hundreds of bills, I thank you for the trust you placed in me, through which together we succeeded in maintaining a four-year term,” Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said as he announced the dissolution.

Completing a full, four-year term is a rare occurrence throughout Israeli history.

The last time Israel’s government fulfilled a full term without breaking for early elections was in 1988. Israel has no term limits, and Netanyahu has served more terms than any other prime minister in Israel’s history, but it is rare even for him to finish a full, four-year term.

Between 2019 and 2022, Israelis went to the polls five times. Israel holds elections on average every 2.4 years, making it second-lowest ranked country in the OECD for periods between elections, a marker of political instability, according to the Israel Democracy Institute.

That was May 24, 2000, the day Israel ended its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon.

By then, many Israelis had grown to view the invasion — initially aimed at ousting Palestinian militants — as a strategic failure, akin to the U.S. military quagmire in Vietnam.

Now, 26 years later, Israel is again occupying much of southern Lebanon, and while polling shows that a majority of Israelis currently support an extended military presence in Lebanon, some, including Barak, who remember the pitfalls of the last occupation, are afraid that Israel is falling into the same trap.

“Our very presence will become the only goal,” Barak said in a recent interview, recounting what he said he thought of the occupation in 1985, when he was a general in the Israeli military, and Israel was shifting from active fighting to long-term deployment in Lebanon.

“We will protect our fortresses, we will protect our convoys of supply, the logistics, the patrols, everything," he said he warned. “But we were not serving Israeli security, we were not serving the state. There was no logic to this in 1985, and there was no logic in 2000, when we pulled out.”

An open-ended occupation

Israel again invaded Lebanon in March and now controls more than 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) of territory. It began the operation after Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group, launched a wave of drone and missile attacks in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Last month, Israel signed a framework agreement with the Lebanese government to use at least two areas in southern Lebanon as “pilot zones” for removing Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure and handing over security to Lebanon’s army. Israel would then redeploy or withdraw its forces from those areas. Hezbollah was not part of the agreement and has vowed to oppose it.

In the meantime, Israeli officials have vowed to keep troops inside a broader “security zone” in Lebanon as long as Hezbollah retains its weapons. After the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza, Israel has maintained smaller “security zones” in Gaza and Syria, which it says are needed to prevent future attacks by militants.

“We didn’t ask anyone’s permission to enter Lebanon, and we don’t need anyone’s permission to stay in Lebanon,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said recently, calling it Israel's “right and our duty” to protect residents in northern border towns.

A former prime minister warns of similar pitfalls

Barak, who served as Israel’s military chief before coming prime minister, still considers the pullout one of his proudest achievements.

As a general, he recalls visiting soldiers stationed in Lebanon in the early 1980s. He said they told him, “We are fighting to remove the threat from Hezbollah so that our children will be safe and won’t have to serve here.”

But when Barak ordered the withdrawal nearly two decades later, he said some of the children of those same soldiers were serving in Lebanon.

Israel’s self-declared security zone inside Lebanon did not deliver for Israelis during the previous occupation, and it is unlikely the new zone will either, Barak said. Even in the 1990s, rudimentary Katyusha rockets launched by Hezbollah could easily bypass it and hit northern Israel.

“In order to destroy, totally destroy Hezbollah, you’d have to conquer the whole of Lebanon,” Barak said, something most Israelis consider to be impractical.

But even Israel's presence in the south, and the widespread destruction of villages there, runs the risk of rallying Lebanese support for Hezbollah, he said. Israel says the group embeds fighters and weapons in these border towns, but Israeli operations since March had displaced around 1 million Lebanese.

About 40% of them have since returned home, according to the Lebanese government. More than 4,300 people have been killed since hostilities began on March 2. Nearly 40 Israeli soldiers have also died, as well as a defense contractor and two civilians in northern Israel.

Same place, different war

Hezbollah was founded in 1982, as a response to the Israeli occupation, and fought a deadly guerrilla war that included high-profile suicide bombings and assassinations, roadside bombs and ambushes.

Israel carried out bombing campaigns and airstrikes against the militant groups. It also helped establish a local proxy force, a mostly-Christian militia known as the South Lebanon Army that carried out patrols and provided a buffer between Israeli troops and Hezbollah. Thousands of SLA fighters and their families fled to Israel following the withdrawal.

But the type of warfare between the two sides has also changed.

Israel is now operating without a local proxy, instead relying on monitoring and strikes either by air or from vantage points on ridges and hilltops. And Hezbollah, which once relied on insurgent tactics, now uses high-precision missiles and drones, including fiber-optic drones that are hard to defend against and have caused Israeli casualties.

Unique diplomatic opportunity could shift balance

One key difference from 2000 is the possibility of a diplomatic solution with Lebanon, said Orna Mizrahi, former deputy director of Israel’s National Security Council.

Israel has an opportunity in Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Mizrahi said. Since he was elected last year, he has publicly condemned Hezbollah and expressed readiness to negotiate a permanent ceasefire with Israel.

“The military operation needs to complement a diplomatic process,” said Mizrahi, now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank.

Although Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to disarm, it has been severely weakened by wars with Israel, she said, adding that its main sponsor, Iran, is also busy weathering U.S. strikes and battling for control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Mizrahi said this has created an opportunity for a new balance of power inside Lebanon, by strengthening the Lebanese government and military. Israel will never destroy Hezbollah completely, she said. But while the group is scrambling to reorganize, Israel can work with international powers to empower Lebanon to confront it, she added.

4 mothers against the war

By the time Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, the occupation had become deeply unpopular, in large part because of the more than 1,200 Israeli soldiers killed in operations.

In 1997, four mothers of soldiers serving in Lebanon founded a grassroots movement advocating for withdrawal.

Brurya Sharon, now 84, one of the founding members, recalls sending both of her sons off to fight in Lebanon. At the time, she said she felt like Israel’s government and military were maintaining the occupation out of inertia, without stopping to consider if it was effective.

The “Four Mothers” movement has been widely cited as a major factor in Israel’s withdrawal in 2000. They tried to steer clear of politics, instead focusing on the soldiers’ lives, a bipartisan issue, Sharon said.

But now, the country is so divided, especially after the Oct. 7 attack, that Sharon says she sees no option for a broad-based public movement to pressure Israel to withdraw.

Israelis, still traumatized from the Hamas attack, are also concerned about leaving the country's borders vulnerable. Currently, more than seven in 10 Israelis support a permanent security presence in southern Lebanon, according to a recent poll by the think tank Israel Democracy Institute.

“I don’t see a sunbeam of hope, I don’t even see a speck of light,” Sharon said.

Aktar's work is demanding, with each worker expected to produce thousands of garments a day. Precision is essential, and even small mistakes can slow production or result in rejected items. Aktar said her new glasses have helped her thread needles faster — and they've also relieved her headaches and eye strain.

“Before I got the glasses, it took me a long time to thread the needle. Now I can thread it in just a short time. I make far fewer alterations than before,” she said.

In Bangladesh, home to the world’s second-largest garment industry after China, some factory owners are working on supplying more glasses to workers to boost productivity. The country's garment sector contributes about 11% of gross domestic product and employs around 4 million workers.

VisionSpring, a global nonprofit social enterprise supplying affordable glasses to people in poorer countries, estimates that roughly one in three Bangladeshi garment workers need glasses but do not have them.

The group has supplied glasses that cost less than ten dollars per pair to some workers through a partnership with the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, which represents factory owners.

Ella Gudwin, chief executive of VisionSpring, said the benefits were immediate, as workers were better able to meet quality and production targets. Better vision also reduces mistakes such as skipped stitches, uneven hems and misplaced buttons, cutting the need for rework, she said.

Fahima Akhter, a director of Bangladeshi garment company Masco Group, said managers initially did not realize how many workers had vision problems because they rarely complained. She said Masco Group has screened about 5,000 workers, with around 30% receiving glasses.

Akhter said her company plans to extend the program to its remaining workforce of more than 20,000 employees.

“We don’t consider it a cost. It is an investment. If the workers are working with better vision, their productivity and workplace safety will improve, and eventually this will translate into better productivity and profit for the company," she said.

A randomized controlled research trial in India that was co-authored by Gudwin suggested that sewing machine operators who received reading glasses increased productivity by 6% while making fewer errors. The study, published in April in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, found that every $1 spent on vision screening and glasses generated $3.37 in productivity gains over 12 weeks.

It estimated that expanding similar programs across the global textile and garment industry could generate the equivalent of $27 billion in additional annual output.

Gudwin said vision correction has long been overlooked because eyeglasses were often seen as a luxury rather than an essential workplace tool. She said many factory workers develop age-related short-sightedness in their late 30s and early 40s, but delay treatment because they assume glasses are expensive.

Gudwin said bringing eye screenings directly into factories removes those barriers.

Masco Group’s Akhter said Bangladesh’s garment sector should make vision screening a standard workplace benefit.

“Having a clear vision is not a luxury, it is a necessity now,” she said.

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

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

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

“This senseless tragedy must be investigated and the officer responsible should be taken off our streets and face justice for his actions,” Thompson said in a statement to the AP.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who led a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year as Democrats tried to impose restraints on immigration enforcement operations, said the consequences of failing to put guardrails on ICE are now being measured in lives.

“The Trump administration rushed 12,000 agents onto our streets without ensuring they were fit to carry a badge and a gun — and Republicans gave this rogue agency vast power and no accountability,” Schumer said in a statement. “They empowered ICE. Now they must work with us to prevent more killings.”

The report on Brouillette’s troubling past comes as the Department of Homeland Security has been on a hiring spree, fueled by vast sums from Republicans in Congress to help carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. It raises fresh questions about the department's efforts to quickly hire, vet, train and dispatch recruits who are being sent to patrol communities across America.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, referred back to her prior statement that “an impartial investigation into the shooting in Biddeford needs to proceed, as the details surrounding this tragedy are important.”

Collins had said earlier that it is “extremely unfortunate” that the agent did not have a body-worn camera.

The senator ensured $20 million for expanded use of body-worn cameras and $2 million for deescalation training as part of the Homeland Security funding bill that Republicans approved to end the department shutdown.

“The Democratic government shutdown delayed enactment and implementation of these important safety measures,” she said.

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

“This bombshell is absolutely appalling — exactly the intolerable danger that we feared as a result of arrest quotas and inadequate training,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., in a statement to the AP.

“This agent clearly should never have had a gun — let alone one provided to him by the United States government. And now a man is dead. I’m going to continue demanding answers and accountability,” he said.

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said Trump and his administration “have encouraged ICE and CBP to enter and terrorize our communities, even if those agents are untrained, improperly vetted, or lack experience,” referring to Customs and Border Protection.

“The killing of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was horrifying,” he said in a statement to the AP, “and there must be a credible, independent, and transparent investigation so that those responsible are held accountable.”

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

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

The dilemma took place against a backdrop of deep tension between the media and a president working to exert control over it by whatever means he can. Even in his speech itself, Trump excoriated networks that chose not to carry it live, saying that “NBC and ABC fake news” avoided it because they “don't like the topic.” He also threatened them with consequences, using the presidential pulpit to suggest they should be sanctioned for their editorial decisions.

"They and others in the media are part of a plot," Trump said, offering no evidence for his assertion. There is also no evidence of fraud in the 2020 elections.

“They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going," he said. "Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multibillion-dollar-in-value airwaves for absolutely no money. They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting.”

The tension between Trump and the news media during his second term has taken many forms, from sanctions against members of the White House press corps to regulatory actions through the Federal Communications Commission to outright lawsuits.

There were a variety of approaches to coverage

The media outlets' decision-making — seemingly last-minute, for many, with networks divulging their plans minutes beforehand — produced a variety of coverage scenarios for the 24 minutes of Trump’s address.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins anchored her nightly program. “We aren’t taking it live,” she said of the speech, given the president’s “well-documented history” of falsehoods. Panelists were on hand for analysis and fact-checking. “Sadly, we have no choice to be skeptical when this president talks elections,” said the network’s veteran correspondent John King.

Fox News and Fox Broadcasting aired the president’s speech live. But ABC and NBC did not, sticking with regular programming — “Press Your Luck,” in ABC's case, and an animal show featuring alligators in NBC's. But they were ready to cut in as they deemed newsworthy, as well as offering special reports afterwards.

Both ABC and NBC, however, provided live coverage on their streaming channels — NBC News NOW and ABC News Live — as well as ABC News Radio. In the still-young era of streaming, that is increasingly a decision that allows network news to play it both ways.

As for CBS, the network did preempt regular programming — a summer rerun of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” — to air a special report anchored by Tony Dokoupil. The report joined the live speech a few minutes in, at 9:06, and left it before the end, at 9:23.

MS NOW started airing the speech, then cut away for analysis and commentary after 17 minutes on host Jen Psaki’s show. Psaki used the split screen for a bit, with her speaking on the right and a muted Trump appearing on the left.

By the end, of the top networks, the speech was continuing live only on Fox News.

Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, said coverage of the 24- minute address made for “a weird evening, where the reporters quote and describe the speech but show little of what they’re quoting." Thompson said full coverage was the way to go even — and perhaps especially — if the speech was believed to contain falsehoods.

“When the president of the United States makes an announcement that there is going to be a major speech with major information, however cynical we are … I think that is, by definition, important civic news significant to the citizenry,” he said. “It’s the president making the speech, and if the president does what everybody’s worried about him doing, that is a real reason to be covering it, to bear witness on exactly what gets said."

Networks had been urged beforehand to carry it live

Earlier Thursday, at the White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt had urged TV networks to carry the speech live. And Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity said on his show that major networks not going live was “pretty unheard of for a primetime address for a president.”

Broadcast networks, though, have previously declined primetime coverage to President Barack Obama for a 2014 speech on immigration, and President Joe Biden for his speech on democracy, “Battle for the Soul of the Nation,” in 2022.

The backdrop of Thursday’s speech was an ever-increasing tension between the media and the administration. Broadcast networks have been under close scrutiny by the Trump-appointed chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr, who has launched early reviews of licenses of some ABC-owned stations and threatened to revoke the long-held exemption from equal time rules for the popular talk show “The View.”

Trump’s animosity toward news outlets whose agenda runs counter to his own isn’t new. But in his second presidential term, he has launched an escalation, often harnessing the levers of the federal government or attempting to do so. The efforts have taken place both in actual courtrooms and in the court of public opinion.

The police operation on Wednesday was the third round of arrests targeting independent bookstores within four months. Critics have raised concerns over the city's freedom of expression under what they called an unclear red line. Two of the booksellers were seen released on bail on Friday morning.

On Thursday, Secretary for Security Chris Tang told reporters at the legislative building that the law is clear.

“If you are a bookseller, you have the responsibility to make sure the books you sell won't endanger national security,” he said. “It's equal to, for example, when you are selling food, you need to ensure the food won't cause a stomach ache and is not either poison or illegal.”

Asked if authorities would make a list of banned books, Tang said that would not be conducive to effective law enforcement targeting titles that “intend to harm the country.”

“We will not let criminals off the hook like this,” he said.

On Wednesday, police raided Have A Nice Stay, a bookshop founded by a group of former journalists, and the longstanding Greenfield Book Store. Police said the five people who were arrested were suspected of displaying seditious materials and selling seditious publications.

A police statement alleged that the content stirred up hatred against the city’s government, judiciary and law enforcement agencies.

Have A Nice Stay had already announced it would close Aug. 30. In a social media post, it said financial difficulties and an elusive red line were among the factors.

It said it cannot read through every single book and lacks the ability to judge what books are “problematic.”

In March, police also arrested the owner and staff of the independent Book Punch store, reportedly on suspicion of selling seditious publications. They included the biography of former pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in his national security case.

In June, Hong Kong police arrested two booksellers on suspicion of selling seditious publications and receiving funds from foreign political organizations.

In Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that China claims as its own, President Lai Ching-te noted Hong Kong's freedom of expression and publication are under pressure in a Facebook post.

“Every independent bookstore is vital in guarding free thought,” he said.

Liang Wen-chieh, deputy minister of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council, told reporters that some Taiwanese publishers have self-censored their list of books when participating in a Hong Kong book fair.

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

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

Decentralized elections date back to the nation's founding

America's highly decentralized system of voting exists because the nation’s Founding Fathers gave authority over elections to the states, rather than the federal government. While Congress has the power to regulate elections — and has used that authority to pass such laws as the Voting Rights Act — the Constitution makes clear that states have primary authority to set the “times, places and manner” for elections.

There also is no national election agency that administers the presidential contest, something that's different from many other countries. And when it comes to doing the day-to-day work of running an election, the responsibility falls to officials at the local level — usually a clerk or election supervisor — with help from staff and volunteers.

While differences in election laws can get confusing, election security experts say this structure is a strength. That's because to pull off stealing a presidential election — as Trump falsely claims was done to him in 2020 — it would require large numbers of election workers in the most competitive counties across the country who are willing to risk prosecution, prison time and fines while working with officials from both parties willing to look the other way. And everyone somehow would have to keep quiet — a highly unlikely scenario.

There are also shared practices and security measures in place across the country that together work to ensure that only eligible voters can cast a ballot and only one ballot is counted for each.

Voter fraud can happen, but it's rare and there are safeguards to catch it

Most Americans by now have probably heard stories about someone casting multiple ballots, or voting in the name of dead relatives, or stealing mail ballots from mailboxes.

When these incidents happen, they are often caught and prosecuted.

Voting more than once, tampering with ballots, lying about your residence to vote somewhere else or casting someone else’s ballot are crimes that can be punished with hefty fines and prison time. Non-U.S. citizens who break election laws can be deported.

For anyone still motivated to cheat, election systems in the United States are designed with multiple layers of protection and transparency intended to stand in the way.

For example, for in-person voting, most states either require or request voters provide some sort of identification at the polls. Others require voters to verify who they are in another way, such as stating their name and address, signing a poll book or signing an affidavit.

For absentee voting, all states require a voter's signature, and many states have further precautions, such as having bipartisan teams compare the signature with other signatures on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign.

That means even if a ballot is erroneously sent to someone’s past address and the current resident mails it in, there are checks to alert election workers to the foul play.

AP review found there was too little voter fraud to tip the 2020 election

Trump has spent six years insisting he won the 2020 election, a campaign he lost to former President Joe Biden.

An Associated Press review in 2021 dug into every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states that Trump disputed. It found fewer than 475 cases — a number that would have made no difference in that race.

Allegations from Trump of massive voting fraud have been refuted by a variety of judges, state election officials and an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department. In 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, told the AP that no proof of widespread voter fraud had been uncovered. “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” he said at the time.

It is noticeably hazy when you step outside and our air quality is now at a moderate level because of the upper Midwest and Canadian wildfire smoke in the region. If you do have respiratory issues, please be sure to take frequent breaks if you have to be outside today and tomorrow.

Although we are dry today, the good news is we have a cold front that will sweep through the area tomorrow and bring the chance of isolated afternoon showers and storms. This will do a bit to help clear out the air. Another system will pass through this weekend, bringing the better chance for widely scattered showers and storms.

We will return to seasonable temperatures on Monday and break the mini heat wave that has ruled the roost this past week. Have a great day and try to stay cool!

At Trump’s last primetime presidential address in April, he said the U.S. would accomplish its Iran war objectives “very shortly.” But days of back-and-forth attacks by the U.S. and Iran across the Middle East and in the Strait of Hormuz have shredded the interim deal to pause the fighting. U.S. strikes intensified early Thursday against a widening set of targets, including a ship it accused of breaking its blockade on Iranian ports. Iran retaliated by firing on U.S. allies in the region.

Here's the latest:

Solomon says he’s seen no intelligence that votes were flipped

Conservative commentator John Solomon, who joined the White House staff last month, was seated in the East Room for Trump’s speech.

He later told MS NOW outside the building that “the intelligence community has zero evidence that someone has flipped — that a foreign power flipped — a vote in 2020, 22 or 24.”

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

He also defended Trump’s decision to discuss intelligence that Venezuela interfered with voting results on their own election machines, not ones in the U.S. Solomon argued that Venezuela’s “machine protocols are the same as America.”

Trump uses primetime address to the nation to once again raise doubts about past elections

The president used Thursday’s address revive a subject he’s long used to make unproven claims and deny his loss in the 2020 election.

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

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

No credible intelligence has emerged showing that the vote count in 2020 was manipulated by foreign actors.

Repeated audits and reviews — manyrun by Republicans, including Trump’s own then-attorney general — have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.

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

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Top Trump officials were in the room for the speech

Nearly the entire Cabinet, including Vice President JD Vance, was in attendance for the president’s primetime speech, underscoring the centrality of elections — and continued preoccupation with his 2020 loss — for Trump and his administration.

A photo of the audience shared by Communications Director Steven Cheung showed Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick among those in the first row.

The speech came a day after a contentious confirmation hearing in which Jay Clayton, Trump’s pick to head the nation’s intelligence agencies, clashed repeatedly with Democrats as he refused to acknowledge that former President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

That stance has become a litmus test of loyalty for the president.

DHS secretary to speak Friday on voting system security

Trump said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin will hold a briefing to talk about his department’s cybersecurity findings related to electronic voting systems.

The president said the systems are in “bad shape in so many states” and his administration is informing political leaders of potential issues in their states.

Election experts have long acknowledged that the technology used to facilitate elections carries risks that officials work to identify and address. Nationwide, the vast majority of ballots cast included a paper record, helping to prevent cyberattacks or errors from affecting the accuracy of the vote count.

Trump obsesses over election security after cutting election security agency

The president’s concern about foreign interference in the 2020 election is a striking contrast with how his administration has treated the federal agency charged with protecting election infrastructure from overseas tampering.

The Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency was founded in Trump’s first term in the wake of Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 presidential vote. When its director, Chris Krebs, said the 2020 vote was secure, Trump fired him.

After returning to office, Trump cut the agency’s staff and programs. His budget this year cuts $707 million from CISA as it says it will restore the agency “to its original mission of securing cyberspace and protecting critical infrastructure.”

CISA’s attempts to combat election misinformation in 2020 and beyond angered Trump and some of his allies.

Trump calls for prosecutions

The president urged Justice Department investigations and prosecutions, though it was unclear from his speech what sort of criminal conduct — if any — could be identified, proved and charged.

At one point he suggested prosecutions for government officials who had left documents he said were related to election investigations in “burn bags” to be incinerated. The FBI under Director Kash Patel investigated that, but no charges have been filed.

Despite the vague claims, Trump’s push could matter because the FBI and the Justice Department in this administration have proved willing to act at his behest.

House Democrat says Trump is trying to weaken democracy

Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Administration committee, which provides oversight of federal voting issues and elections, said what’s troubling about the president’s address is the way he is trying to sow confusion and spread misinformation ahead of the midterm elections.

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

“We have secure elections,” Morelle said, inviting Trump to spend some time understanding the state systems.

“This is a fundamental effort to weaken the foundation of our democracy.”

Former Trump intelligence official pans speech

Sue Gordon, who was principal deputy director of national intelligence for Trump, noted that the intelligence community was alarmed about foreign interference in his first term but the president was dismissive, apparently angered by the probe into his campaign’s possible ties with Russia.

“This was a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic,” Gordon said on CNN. “He had an entire term to deal with it, and I don’t know how you can believe how the same community that told him about it, that was excoriated about it” would ignore a danger in 2020, she added.

Gordon also said none of the president’s speech surprised her and noted that new intelligence documents may simply recount theories without showing anything actually happened: “Even if there’s new data that’s released, that doesn’t prove anything.”

Voting by noncitizens is uncommon

“According to the DHS review, state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in federal elections.”

Multiple studies and investigations in individual states have shown that noncitizens casting ballots in federal elections is exceedingly rare.

For example a Georgia audit of its voter rolls conducted in 2022 found fewer than 2,000 instances of noncitizens attempting to register to vote over the last 25 years, none of which succeeded. Millions of new Georgia voters registered during that time period.

A 1996 U.S. law makes it illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress. Violators can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year. They can also be deported.

Trump looks toward the midterms

During his speech the president referenced November's midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

“We have very important elections coming up,” he said. “We want those elections to be honest.”

Trump has been eager to overhaul the country’s voting systems and has said changes are necessary to ensure that Republicans can still be successful.

Election officials and voting system experts maintain that the decentralized nature of U.S. elections and the many safeguards in place to catch meddling ensure that the vote can be trusted.

The SAVE America Act is stalled in the Senate

Trump has made legislation to require proof of citizenship for voters a priority for his presidency.

However, it doesn’t have enough votes to pass.

Trump has unsuccessfully pressured Senate Republicans to scrap the filibuster to eliminate the need for Democratic support, but there aren’t enough votes to do that either.

Trump has concluded his elections address

After 24 minutes, the president closed out his speech by urging the passage of the SAVE Act.

The bill, known as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for anyone registering to vote — something voting rights group have warned could disenfranchise millions of Americans.

Noncitizen voting is illegal under federal law and already rare.

Trump says California vote count 'worse than any Third World country'

Trump zeroed in on California’s routinely prolonged vote count but he vastly misstated the scope of the issue. He complained the state only finished the count for the June 2 primary on July 10. It takes most states a month or more to formally certify the vote, which is what California did on July 10.

The winners of the state’s big races were known sooner — but not exactly soon. It took a week before the Los Angeles mayoral primary was called, for example. That’s partly because California tallies mail-in ballots that arrive up to a week after Election Day as long as they were postmarked by the end of voting.

There are issues with California’s drawn-out vote count, but there’s no indication of any sort of fraud. Indeed, when Republicans have done well in the state’s elections, such as in 2022 congressional races, Trump hasn’t cast aspersions on the results.

Fox goes live, CNN, ABC and NBC do not, CBS airs special report

As Trump arrived at the lectern and began speaking, networks launched into a variety of coverage, after days of intense deliberation.

Fox News and Fox were airing the speech live. ABC and NBC were not, staying with regular programming but ready to cut in as deemed newsworthy.

CBS did preempt regular programming — a summer rerun of “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage” — and was airing a special report anchored by Tony Dokoupil.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins was anchoring her nightly program. “We aren’t taking it live,” she said of the speech, given the president’s well-documented history of falsehoods.

MS NOW started airing the speech, but cut it off for analysis after 17 minutes on host Jen Psaki’s show.

By 9:25 p.m. the speech was only continuing live on Fox News.

Trump claims his own appointees were wrong in 2020

Trump’s vague allegations included a rant against one of his favorite targets: “members of the deep state.”

He claimed that intelligence agencies covered up China’s attempt to disrupt U.S. elections. But Trump appointed the very people who led those intelligence agencies in 2020. Indeed, Trump was given the assessment from those agencies on Jan. 7, 2021, that no foreign country tried to change vote totals or fake ballots in the election. There’s no record of him objecting to the findings at the time.

Now, of course, Trump has restocked the leadership of intelligence agencies with people who echo his often-debunked allegations about elections.

Trump says the benefits of his war with Iran will soon be realized

In his speech on election security, the president said the U.S. is “winning big in Iran and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly.”

The comments come as the U.S. expanded its airstrike campaign against Iran early Friday by hitting bridges as part of a broader attack on the nation’s infrastructure to pressure Tehran to ease its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

The White House has created a new website posting documents that Trump claims reveal major ‘areas of concern’

The White House has created a new website with documents that Trump says reveal major ‘areas of concerns’ in election security.

The site went live Thursday as Trump was delivering a primetime address on foreign interference and foreign influence in U.S. elections.

Trump devotes the opening minutes of his speech to repeating campaign-style boasts

The president ran through a long list of what he said were his administration’s accomplishments – including cutting drug prices.

He avoided speaking about elections or the conflict with Iran, including new strikes.

Trump beings his speech saying America is safer, stronger and wealthier

Trump has started his primetime address saying “We are doing great.”

He’s promised he will focus on elections and may revisit some of the unproven claims he has previously made about Republican losses.

The White House has offered few concrete details on what Trump will say, insisting he could still alter his remarks up until the last minute.

But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt promised it “will shock you.”

ABC, NBC and CNN decided not to air the remarks live. CBS said it was “airing a special report” during the address.

CBS plans special report while CNN will not air speech live

More networks revealed their plans for coverage of Trump’s speech, with CBS saying it was planning to air “a special report” at 9 p.m., anchored by Tony Dokoupil. A person familiar with the plan, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it included various scenarios, including taking the speech live, or cutting away for analysis. There would be experts on set to provide analysis and fact-checking, the person said. As for CNN, the cable network said it would not air the speech live, but would cover it “as a news event,” monitoring it for developments and providing analysis and commentary from CNN experts on elections, intelligence and the FBI. A live feed of the speech, alongside analysis and expert commentary, was being made available on CNN.com and on CNN’s All Access streaming platform.

— Jocelyn Noveck

Top Democrat on House Homeland Security panel questions vetting, training of ICE officers

The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, is calling into question the vetting and training of ICE officers after details have emerged about the officer involved in a fatal shooting in Maine this week.

Thompson’s remarks come after The Associated Press reported that the ICE officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood, according to the officer’s relatives.

David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years.

“This senseless tragedy must be investigated and the officer responsible should be taken off our streets and face justice for his actions,” Thompson said in a statement to AP.

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AP Exclusive: ICE officer in Maine shooting has history of violent behavior, family and records say

The ICE officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets, several of his close relatives told The Associated Press.

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

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

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Democrats warn Trump’s intelligence officials against misleading Americans on election security

Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut and Democratic lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee sent a letter to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel and others ahead of the president’s primetime address.

“The President is within his authority to declassify intelligence,” the lawmakers wrote, “but if he does so in a way that is intended to mislead Americans about the most basic foundation of our democracy and that may compromise sources and methods, it is incumbent on you to stand up for the agencies you lead.”

Before any intelligence is publicly disclosed, they said, “it should be coordinated with all relevant Intelligence Community elements.”

The lawmakers said, “We remind you that you are statutorily obligated to keep the Committee fully and currently informed, a requirement that should include notification of new intelligence related to election influence or interference as well as any significant declassification.”

Hegseth backs low-altitude military flyovers as a series of maneuvers draws scrutiny

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is sticking to encouraging low-altitude military flyovers after a fighter jet buzzed a Florida beach during a show this week.

Video spreading widely on social media shows a jet from the Navy’s demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels, flying so low over a crowded beach in Pensacola that chairs and tents went flying, sand kicked up and children held their hands over their ears.

The U.S. Navy said in a statement shortly afterward that it was “conducting a thorough safety review.” Then on Thursday morning, a host of Trump administration officials heaped praise on the maneuver.

“The flyovers will continue until morale improves,” Hegseth wrote on his personal X account, without elaborating.

The Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, wrote “Carry on Patriots” on social media alongside a photo showing a Blue Angels jet with a wingtip just feet above the heads of beachgoers.

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Flyovers might not violate rules but that doesn’t make them safe

Former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo said military planes flying low over people probably don’t violate military rules because the Pentagon doesn’t have the same restrictions that the FAA imposes on civilian flights.

“They are air demonstration teams, and what they do is exceedingly dangerous — amazing and wonderful — but dangerous,” said Schiavo, who is also a pilot and used to work in air shows years ago. “And so it is really not something to be performed over people.”

Florida beachgoer Alexandra Belcher, 34, called the Blue Angels flyover this week a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“I didn’t realize how close it was, until everyone around me was like, ‘That was so cool,’” she said. “It was not normal, but it was such a blessing to be able to witness that with everybody that I was with.”

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Trump administration to drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in US

The Trump administration will drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in the U.S. to 240 days, down from years, and cut those for Chinese journalists to only 90 days, raising concerns over press freedom in the United States and retaliation against American journalists overseas.

The final rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security will do away with the “duration of status” system, which allows foreign journalists to stay and work in the United States as long as they meet eligibility requirements. That will be replaced with a fixed period of time, though the visas may be extended.

The agency says it’s necessary to better vet the visa holders. But advocates for foreign journalists oppose the change, saying the drastically shorter stay would severely restrict their ability to live and work in the States.

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Trump media firm plans to sell high speed access to Truth Social posts

Trump’s media company is planning to charge for special high-speed access to Truth Social posts, including possibly his own affecting national security and financial markets.

The move announced Thursday would allow Wall Street trading firms and other institutions to get news from Truth Social contributors in milliseconds so they could profit off subsequent moves in stocks, bonds and interest rates. The most popular Truth Social poster is the president himself and, as the biggest shareholder of the public traded parent company, he would directly benefit.

“He’s selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president,” said Kathleen Clark of Washington University School of Law and an expert in government conflicts of interest rules. “It’s yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself.”

The Trump family company declined to comment about whether the new feature is profiting off the presidency.

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GOP senator says Blanche must meet Epstein accusers to earn his vote for attorney general

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was expected to meet Thursday with accusers of Jeffrey Epstein after a key Republican senator said it was necessary to earn his support for Blanche’s nomination to lead the Justice Department.

Sen. Thom Tillis had indicated during Blanche’s confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he was leaning toward backing Blanche, who has been leading the department in an acting capacity since April.

But after an Epstein accuser testified a day later, Tillis said he expects a meeting to occur before he’s “willing to vote out of this committee.”

Without Tillis’ support, Blanche’s nomination won’t make it through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Trump stops offshore wind development while citing national security

President Donald Trump’s administration has worked to stop offshore wind development on the grounds it’s a national security risk since late last year, halting work on major projects and buying back leases.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says a classified report from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proves offshore wind is a national security threat.

This comes against the backdrop of the Republican president’s hatred of wind turbines and desire to boost fossil fuels for “energy dominance” in the global market. Wind turbines interfere with radar, but that isn’t a new problem.

The Pentagon reviews wind farm construction plans and can deem areas off limits. And there are upgrades to radar to mitigate turbine impacts.

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

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

The precise circumstances surrounding the officer's hiring were not immediately clear. But the revelations about the man, David Brouillette, shine a new spotlight on ICE's hiring spree and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Here is a look at the agency's hiring and training practices:

A surge in new hires at ICE

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

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

At the time, Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, would not answer questions about specific hiring decisions. It did say some applicants received “tentative selection letters” and offers to begin working on a temporary status before they had been subjected to full background checks.

It defended its hiring practices, saying it does rigorous vetting.

ICE’s former acting director, Todd Lyons, said during a congressional hearing in February that he was proud of the hiring campaign, which drew more than 220,000 applications.

“This expansion of a well-trained and well-vetted workforce will help further ICE’s ability to execute the president’s and secretary’s bold agenda,” he said.

The vetting process includes reviewing applicants' criminal histories and credit scores and conducting background investigations that include interviewing prior employers and other associates, which can take weeks. ICE also promised signing bonuses of up to $50,000, advertised that college degrees were not required and lowered the age of new recruits to 18.

An internal memo, first reported by Reuters in February, told ICE supervisors that if they receive “derogatory information about a newly hired employee’s conduct” they should refer the allegations to an internal affairs unit for investigation. Such information could include the employees’ termination or forced resignations, the memo said.

The DHS inspector general last August announced plans to audit ICE’s hiring and training processes, but no findings have been released.

Applicants have to get a security clearance

Recent job advertisements for deportation officers spell out the current qualifications, including that the person must be a U.S. citizen to apply and will have to pass a background investigation and a drug test.

New deportation officers also have to take a physical fitness test and be able to obtain and maintain a security clearance. Once hired, new deportation officers may have to serve a one-year probationary period.

According to the job advertisement, deportation officers are required to carry a firearm, which means anyone convicted of domestic violence is ruled out.

Applicants undergo a medical exam and should be prepared to possibly be polygraphed. The application cautions that any false statements on the application can translate into the job offer being pulled or, if the person has already started work, they can lose their job or go to prison.

The background investigation can include a credit check, reviews of any financial problems like failure to pay child support or taxes and a look at the person’s criminal and drug history.

Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official under the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations, said hiring a new deportation officer is similar to any other federal hiring.

Generally, applications are reviewed by a hiring manager who decides which candidates to advance. Once someone gets a tentative offer, the agency conducts a background check.

When people are applying for jobs that involve getting a security clearance, Trickler-McNulty said, they have to disclose on their application any drug use, interactions with police, groups they’re affiliated with, mental health concerns, prior addresses and job history.

Depending on the clearance level, they’ll also ask for references that a background investigator will contact. If there’s red flag such as a DUI or a history of debt, that can trigger a deeper investigation.

“You want to make sure the person is appropriate for a public trust position,” she said.

Concerns over changes to ICE training schedule

Generally, new candidates for deportation officer positions have to go through a 50-day immigration law enforcement training program, according to the job advertisement.

Ryan Schwank, a former lawyer at ICE who was responsible for training new deportation officers, told The Associated Press that the agency reduced the overall amount of training new recruits received and reduced the testing needed to pass before graduating. Homeland Security has denied that it has removed any training requirements or lessened requirements for officers.

Trickler-McNulty said she has concerns over reports the agency shortened training as it was aiming to hire thousands of new officers. ICE officials revamped the training as part of efforts to swiftly hire and train an additional 10,000 deportation officers with an infusion of billions of dollars last summer from Congress.

At the time, the agency had about 6,500 deportation officers. That led to allegations that the department was cutting corners in an effort to get more officers in the field, which Homeland Security and ICE repeatedly denied.

In June, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the agency would be increasing the amount of training for new officers starting this month. In a statement Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said all new academy training classes beginning July 1 will last for 71 days and officers who graduated under the previous curriculum would get more training under a separate field officer program.

The department also said it was adding new training in crowd control measures, high-risk vehicle stops, live-fire exercises and medical training, in response to what they called coordinated attacks against their officers and ICE facilities.

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Associated Press reporter Jonathan J. Cooper contributed to this report from Phoenix.

The interim ceasefire agreed to last month has collapsed, and the region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks by the U.S. and Iran as they battle for control of the strait. Iranian officials say U.S. strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded over 300 others, with new casualties reported in Friday's strikes.

When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.

Speaking in a primetime address to the American public, Trump insisted the war was going well.

"We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly," Trump said.

US airstrikes hit bridges in Iran

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

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

Iranian state media said the U.S. strikes Thursday hit around Tehran and Semnan province, home to Iran’s ballistic missile production and space program.

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

Qatar is a key mediator with Pakistan in trying to reach an end to the Iran war. But talks have broken down over Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran earlier targeted Bahrain and Kuwait over U.S. airstrikes hitting bridges in the Islamic Republic overnight.

Strikes come Iran and US vie for Strait of Hormuz

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

Week-to-week cargo shipments through the strait dropped by almost a quarter at the beginning of the month, according to Maritime data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence. And that was before the recent surge in tit-for-tat attacks.

Given the risks, some oil shippers are transiting the strait with their location devices turned off, but many are just staying put, Lloyd’s said Thursday. A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping through the strait.

U.S. forces have redirected three commercial vessels trying to run the blockade, disabled one that did not comply and boarded another “to ensure full compliance,” the U.S. military's Central Command said in a post on X.

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Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut, Mae Anderson in New York and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Heavy, pungent wildfire smoke darkened skies in the U.S. from the Great Lakes to parts of the East Coast, reducing visibility and prompting warnings that breathing the air outside could be dangerous.

Officials in many cities urged residents to stay inside or wear masks outside as air quality reached unhealthy to hazardous levels, meaning it’s unhealthy for anyone, regardless of health conditions. The National Weather Service said a lingering high pressure system has trapped the smoke close to the ground.

The Philadelphia region is experiencing smoky and hazy skies. The game's start was moved to 6:10 p.m. EDT from 7:10 p.m. It is the only game on the big league schedule coming out of this week's All-Star break.

“It’s definitely different,” Phillies first baseman Bryce Harper said on ESPN during the broadcasting of the game. “Not the greatest idea, I guess, to come out here and play in this type of weather, but we’re doing it.”

After his team’s 4-1 victory, Mets interim manager Andy Green was asked how the conditions affected the game.

“I don’t think they really did,” Green said. “I think it felt like they could have at any moment, especially as visibility got tougher. But, guys managed to see baseballs that I couldn’t when they went up in the air as popups. So, good thing we’ve got good athletes on the field that can see things.”

Phillies manager Don Mattingly said tracking fly balls later in the game seemed to become an issue.

“It didn’t seem to be a huge problem,” Mattingly said. "The vision, later on, was a little bit like foggy conditions more than the air quality. As far as the guys were concerned (visibility) seemed to be the problem.”

This is the second time wildfire smoke has affected a game in Philadelphia. In June 2023, a game between Detroit and Philadelphia was postponed due to poor air quality related to smoke from Canadian wildfires.

Poor air quality due to wildfire smoke also forced the Major League Soccer game between the Vancouver Whitecaps and Fire at Chicago's Soldier Field, along with a scheduled postgame concert, to be postponed. The game, which was expected to draw 40,000, will be made up on Oct. 6.

Also, the Canadian Premier League postponed Thursday's scheduled game between Forge FC and Pacific FC that was to be played in Hamilton, Ontario, due to “worsening air quality issues.” The league said on its website that conditions “deteriorated in the final hours leading up to kickoff.”

Trinity Rodman, a member of the U.S. women's national team, said the smokey sky was difficult to deal with during Wednesday night's NWSL game between the Washington Spirit and Gotham FC at New York's Citi Field.

Rodman said she wasn't a fan of the hydration breaks every 15 minutes in the game as the temperature reached into the 90s.

“Air quality was rough,” Rodman was quoted as saying by The Athletic. “Not to make excuses at all, but I think on both sides we were all like, ‘another break, another break, another break.’”

A crowd of more than 42,000 attended the rematch of teams in last season's NWSL title game. The crowd was a record for a women’s sporting event in New York City.

“If we have to have a hydration break every 15 minutes, then we shouldn’t be playing the game, and that’s my opinion,” Rodman said. “But at the end of the day, there’s 40,000 people. It’s a whole event, so it’s really tough. It’s just a really hard situation for everyone to work around.”

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

One video posted on social media showed a man yelling and crying on the ground in Terminal 3 at Harry Reid International Airport on Monday when a man and a masked woman, both in plainclothes, tried to control, handcuff and detain him. When the pair realized they were being filmed, they walked away, leaving the man with a handcuff attached to one arm.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police found no outstanding warrants for the man, removed his handcuffs and notified ICE.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, ICE officers on Monday did not proceed with the arrest at the Las Vegas airport of Phu Nguyen, a 57-year-old citizen of Australia who overstayed his visa. ICE arrested him at his flight departing the Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said.

“ICE is continuing to act with impunity — instilling fear in our communities and scaring tourists, which hurts our tourism economy,” Democratic U.S. Senator for Nevada Jacky Rosen said in a statement. “Enough is enough. ICE must follow the same commonsense guardrails as other law enforcement agencies."

The Nevada Latino Legislative Caucus and the Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Caucus are calling for a full investigation into the aborted arrest by ICE at Harry Reid International Airport, urging Gov. Joe Lombardo to explain the transparency and accountability for federal law enforcement agencies operating in Nevada.

Dozens of family members of the victims packed the courtroom as Chief Judge Paolo Lepri read the verdicts against 57 defendants, including former executives and officials. Many relatives broke down in tears as the sentences were read.

A representative for the families of the victims, Egle Possetti, expressed satisfaction with the verdicts, saying they showed “there were serious failures in management, and 43 people paid with their lives.”

The former chief executive of highway operator Autostrade per l'Italia, Giovanni Castellucci, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down after four hours of deliberation in the trial that spanned four years.

Castellucci’s lawyers said they would appeal, noting in a statement that as CEO, their client had relied on Italy’s leading engineers and suggesting that he had been scapegoated.

“The suffering caused by the Genoa tragedy is immense and deserves respect. But the gravity of the event requires justice to remain based on individual responsibility, not the search for a scapegoat,” they said in a statement.

Also convicted were Autostrade’s former head of maintenance, Michele Donferri Mitelli, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The former CEO of the SPEA engineering company, Antonino Galatà, received five years and six months.

The court says the bridge collapse was foreseeable

The most serious charges included negligence resulting in the collapse, aggravated manslaughter and vehicular homicide stemming from failures to properly monitor and maintain the bridge, which was part of a main route linking northern Italy with the French Riviera.

The court will issue its full reasoning within six months. But in a summary accompanying the verdict, it said the convictions were based on findings that identified a system of defects affecting one of the bridge’s stay cables and concluded that the collapse was “foreseeable and preventable.”

The court said that some defendants from the highway concession and its engineering subsidiary failed to carry out the requiring monitoring of the bridge, relying in part on a 1967 Ministry of Public Works circular, while some transport ministry had officials had failed to exercise proper oversight of Autostrade's safety monitoring.

In all, 32 people were convicted and handed sentences ranging from 1 year and 11 months to 12 years. The rest were either found not guilty, or lesser charges had expired under the statute of limitations.

Lawyer Raffaele Caruso expressed satisfaction that court had held people resonsible at the three main players: the highway concession, its engineering subsidiary and the transport ministry.

“What emerges is that this bridge did not collapse by chance — this bridge collapsed due to specific, precise, individualized, personalized, and specifically identified responsibilities," Caruso told a press conference. “There has been much talk about the construction defect ... But this does not rule out the existence of liability.”

Warning signs of defect were ignored

Shortly before noon on Aug. 14, 2018, a 200-meter (650-foot) section of Genoa’s Morandi highway bridge gave way during a rainstorm, sending dozens of vehicles plunging to the ground.

Images of the collapsed bridge were seen around the world and shocked Italians on one of Italy’s busiest travel days, as millions headed out for the traditional Aug. 15 Ferragosto holiday that marks the peak summer vacation season.

Prosecutors argued that years of maintenance neglect led to the collapse, and demanded combined sentences totaling nearly 400 years for all of the defendants. The defendants denied wrongdoing and say the fault was caused by a construction defect.

Considered an engineering marvel when it opened in 1967, the Morandi featured three A-shaped concrete pylons and concrete-encased stay cables.

Caruso said that the trial showed that warning signs about defects in the pylon that collapsed had existed for decades. He cited maintenance on the other two starting in 1993 that was never extended to the third.

“From 1993 onward, the problem was known. We had three identical pylons. Two had already shown the same defect, and no one seriously asked whether the third one had it as well,” Caruso said.

Autostrade had reached a deal to avoid trial

The current Autostrade chief executive, Arrigo Giana, issued a public apology Thursday in an open letter published in major Italian dailies.

“The actions and decisions of some people left indelible scars,’’ said Giana, who joined Autostrade as CEO last year. “Offering today the apology that was not made then is, for us, a moral imperative that goes beyond establishing legal responsibility and the course of justice toward the truth.”

Autostrade and its subsidiary reached a deal on corporate liability earlier in the proceedings, paying roughly 30 million euros ($34 million) in financial penalties. The agreement spared the companies from a trial as corporate defendants and potentially much harsher sanctions, including exclusion from public contracts.

The settlements were reached after the companies adopted new compliance procedures aimed at preventing similar accidents, and after victims were compensated.

A new bridge designed by Genoa-born Italian architect Renzo Piano opened in 2020, spanning a memorial to the victims of the Morandi Bridge collapse.

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Barry reported from Milan.

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This story corrects the number of convictions to 32.

Rescuers aboard boats and helicopters have saved more than 200 people, including stranded drivers and people trapped in homes, Abbott said.

The governor said the hardest-hit areas are expecting more rain into Friday and are not out of danger yet, with some rivers expected to reach historic levels.

After days of pounding rain, the National Weather Service said a large wave on Thursday barreled down the same river wrecked by flash floods last summer when two dozen children and counselors died at Camp Mystic.

Much like last year, the floods came in the middle of the night. But this time some residents in the Texas Hill Country said they received more warnings.

Forecasters urgently warned, “Move to higher ground now!” as rivers rose hour by hour. Some spots of the Guadalupe River rose by more than 30 feet (9 meters).

The governor said more than 2,000 first responders had been deployed and some evacuations began before the worst of the flooding.

“What happened last year was a warning to people on or near rivers," Abbott said. “No one can be complacent.”

As much as 28 inches (74 centimeters) of rain fell over the past three days in Uvalde County, which was spared from the worst flooding a year ago, the weather service said Thursday. Other areas saw roughly a foot of rain.

Victims in Texas floods were swept away

The governor said one of the victims was driving on a flooded road and was swept away near Uvalde while the other died in Kerr County.

Jennie Steward said the body of her husband, 65-year-old John Mark Steward, of Kerrville, was found Thursday.

She was visiting her parents when a neighbor called overnight, saying her husband was missing after water had risen to the door of their mobile home, which stood off the ground.

The entire home was swept off the platform and floated down Goat Creek on the Guadalupe, she said.

“It’s really hard that I wasn’t there with him,” she said. The two last spoke by phone Wednesday to celebrate their third anniversary.

Hill Country residents say they were better prepared

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

“It’s crazy happening two times in one year,” said Josiah Rodriguez, who awoke to the sound of heavy rain around 2 a.m. Thursday in Kerrville. He navigated flooded roads to help evacuate relatives.

“Last year there was no warning of it,” he said. “It just kind of happened overnight and it took everyone by surprise. This year, a lot more alerts have gone into place, a lot more safety measures.”

Residents said they were caught off guard a year ago and didn’t receive any warning when floods overtopped the Guadalupe. Some local leaders were criticized for not acting quickly.

The storms and flooding this time threatened multiple counties close to the Mexico border and in the Hill Country near San Antonio. Roughly 6 million residents across Texas were under a flood watch this week, and many were expected to remain in effect into Friday.

Several agencies sent rescue helicopters to the flood zone, including Travis County in the state capital of Austin.

Residents rush animals and campers to higher ground

At a wild animal rescue, Katie Buck evacuated several dozen animals to higher ground in the dark Thursday as the normally dry Lazy Creek overflowed. She got all of the animals to safety, but flooding destroyed several enclosures at the Buck Wild Animal Rescue and Wildlife Rehab near Ingram in Kerr County.

“We were just starting to get back on our feet again,” Buck said. “To have to go through this again is just devastating.”

Residents at an RV park in Comfort moved their trailers as sirens sounded, manager Duke Earwood said.

Water rose over the hoods of vehicles parked near the river at the Comfort RV Resort. Markers showed the flooding already matched last July's big flood.

“Too familiar for sure, and too soon,” Earwood said.

Uvalde residents isolated by floodwaters

Floodwaters also overran the city of Uvalde overnight, cutting off most outside routes. The Leona River, normally dry most of the year, filled streets with water.

“People really can’t get anywhere,” said Carmen Rodriguez, who nervously watched water engulf her neighborhood as a helicopter roared overhead. “We have a place to go, but all the streets are closed.”

Rodriguez said authorities seemed to be prepared, ordering mandatory evacuations and notifying people directly.

After staying up most of the night, Casy Sanford and her husband felt like things were OK at their home in Uvalde as the downpour and heavy winds let up. Texas Game Wardens were outside their door just a few hours later, evacuating the couple, Sanford’s son and three daughters, her mother-in-law and two dogs by boat Thursday morning.

Sanford said she felt “mere shock” as they left most everything and closed the door behind them, water seeping into the ground floor of the only home her little girls have known.

“My little one was scared. She kept grabbing my hand real tight,” Sanford said of her 8-year-old. “I’m not sure what we’ll see when we get back.”

Sanford later said a neighbor had visited her family’s home and found water had climbed as high as their kitchen counters.

Texas Game Wardens rescued close to 150 people by the afternoon, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesperson. Video released by the agency showed crews hoisting children from a house surrounded with water into a helicopter.

Uvalde resident Jose Maldonado said water reached the first step to the entrance of his RV on Wednesday and rose above the door on Thursday. Floodwaters took down nearby walls, moved cars, flipped a trailer and left behind debris, he said.

He and his wife planned to stay with his parents until they could return to clean up.

Flooding hasn't reached last year's deadly high

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

In Kerr County, where summer camps dot the river's shores, the sheriff’s office said all campers were safe. Several camps said the children were staying inside, with one camp reporting normal flooding.

While the water didn’t rise as high as a year ago in Ingram, Mayor Claud Jordan believes this round of flooding was more widespread in his city.

“There are a bunch of businesses that haven’t reopened from last year,” Jordan said. “This doesn’t help.”

The Hill Country is especially prone to flash floods because the area’s signature limestone is covered by just a thin layer of soil. During heavy rains, water can quickly shoot downhill before filling the narrow river basins.

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Stengle reported from Dallas and Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writers Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; Michael Phillis in Washington; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Anna Wilder in Austin, Texas; Laura Turbay in Little Rock, Arkansas; and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

Elon Musk, the company's founder and CEO, said two engines will be replaced “to be confident of a good flight” before sending Starship from Texas on a space-skimming journey halfway around the world. It will be the 13th flight for Starship, which at 407 feet (124 meters) tall with 33 main engines is the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket.

SpaceX's launch webcast showed the start of engine ignition three seconds before the planned liftoff, viewed from a drone high above the pad. Although the company did not elaborate, onscreen data showed four engines not firing, with the remaining 29 engines immediately shutting down and keeping the rocket anchored to the pad. It was the first time a full-scale Starship experienced a last-second abort like this.

The launch team immediately began draining the fuel from the rocket.

"Most probable launch timing is early next week," Musk said via X.

Everything was going SpaceX's way, even the weather, until the partial engine ignition. In the end, the rocket’s automatic launch system worked as planned by halting everything. Too few operating engines could have doomed the launch. Some earlier Starship flights ended in explosive fireballs.

Elon Musk's company had newest, most advanced Starlinks aboard

Twenty of SpaceX's newest and most advanced Starlinks were on board Starship for release during the planned hourlong flight from Starbase, the company's hub near the Texas-Mexico border. The internet satellites were going to try communicating with Starlinks already in orbit while taking photos of Starship's heat shield.

Neither the first-stage booster nor spacecraft were meant to be recovered, with both ending up in the sea.

The rocket's automatic launch system worked as planned by halting everything. Too few operating engines could have resulted in a failed launch. Some earlier Starship flights, for example, ended in explosive fireballs.

World's biggest rocket is key to putting astronauts back on the moon

NASA is counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in the next few years. The space agency has hired SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to build and fly the lunar landers that will return humanity to the surface of the moon after an absence of more than half a century.

Both companies need to have their landers — Starship and Blue Moon — ready to fly by next year so that the newly named Artemis III crew can practice docking their capsule with them in orbit around Earth. The mission after that — Artemis IV planned for no earlier than 2028 — would use one of those landers to take two astronauts to the moon's south polar region.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A new career in ICE

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

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

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

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

The abuse continued after she left him, she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A military deployment and law enforcement aspirations

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

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

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

He was eventually able to enlist.

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

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

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

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

Life after the Army

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His daughter also said he told her it was justified.

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

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

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

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

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

The ceremony for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who was fatally shot last Tuesday by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer while driving his construction crew to a job site in Houston, comes amid mounting scrutiny of President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown. Encounters with ICE have resulted in at least 10 deaths since the start of Trump's second term last year — two of which happened in the days after a federal agent killed Salgado Araujo.

“My family would like to express our heartfelt gratitude for the unbelievable and incredible support we have received,” Salgado Araujo's son, Ronaldo Salgado, said in a Facebook post Thursday.

Salgado Araujo, 52, who had no criminal record, had lived in the U.S. for 35 years.

In the fallout of the shooting, three men whom Salgado Araujo was driving when he was killed have adamantly disputed the government's official account.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said Salgado Araujo had rammed an ICE vehicle, and that a federal agent fired a weapon in self-defense. Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a staunch supporter of Trump’s immigration crackdown, said Wednesday that the state’s top law enforcement unit would investigate the fatal shooting.

More than a week after the shooting, new court records show the FBI is investigating whether drugs were found in the van, according to a search warrant application signed by a federal judge on Tuesday.

FBI Special Agent David McNeilly stated in an affidavit that he observed four plastic bags of a white substance appearing to be meth inside the van. DHS has not stated that suspected drugs were the reason why ICE officers engaged in the traffic stop. The FBI referred all questions to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.

U.S. Attorney Aaron Reitz emphasized in a recorded video statement on Thursday that all information was preliminary and not conclusive.

“We are doing everything we can to seek the truth and do the right thing,” Reitz said. “In the meantime, I encourage the public to give the FBI and DHS the opportunity to investigate.”

An attorney for Salgado Araujo's brother, who was in the van when the agent killed Salgado Araujo and who was subsequently detained by ICE, said that the powder is a homemade electrolyte mix that the construction crew used to stay hydrated while working outside in the grueling Texas heat.

Ruby L. Powers, the attorney for Salgado Araujo’s brother, in a statement called for officials to test the substance to establish that it isn't an illicit substance.

“But no test result, whatever it ultimately shows, will change the fact that deadly force was used against Lorenzo,” Powers said. “You cannot shoot first and ask questions later.”

—

Riddle reported from Los Angeles.

Blanche spent about an hour at Justice Department headquarters in Washington with the group of Epstein accusers, who have criticized the Trump administration's handling of the disgraced financier's investigation and a trove of files related to his sex trafficking case.

After the meeting, Blanche told reporters that he encouraged the accusers to come to the FBI with any information that could help investigators build cases against additional figures tied to Epstein.

But Blanche acknowledged he couldn't assure them additional prosecutions could be brought. The Justice Department has repeatedly said it will investigate further if new information surfaces, but the government doesn’t currently have evidence to support prosecutions against others in Epstein's orbit.

“It wasn’t all cordial,” Blanche said of Thursday’s meeting. “Because there’s something that they want that I don’t think I can give them, which is some form of justice. And I want to be able to give justice in the form of prosecutions, and maybe we can do a prosecution at some point,” Blanche said.

But Blanche added, “I don’t know.”

The political firestorm over Epstein has been a persistent headache for the Trump administration, which released millions of investigative documents over the last year in response to right-wing clamoring for answers about the disgraced financier's crimes and connections to high-profile people.

One accuser is disappointed in Blanche meeting

One accuser, Dani Bensky, expressed frustration after the meeting, saying Blanche appeared to treat it as “a mere ‘check-the-box’ exercise intended to secure votes for his confirmation.”

"He danced around his wording, repeatedly interrupted us and could not commit to anything that would demonstrate good faith or begin to restore trust," she said in an emailed statement. She said Blanche offered “no credible plan to investigate and pursue accountability" beyond Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.

Earlier Thursday, Bensky told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that women harmed by Epstein repeatedly asked to meet with Blanche “through multiple channels and he never responded.”

“We deserve to be heard directly, not dismissed and ignored,” Bensky said.

Blanche has pushed back on suggestions that the Justice Department has been dismissive of the Epstein's accusers, saying officials have spoken with more than 30 representatives of the women over the course of their sweeping review of the files.

“The Department of Justice will always meet with victims or their representatives, and if those victims or their representatives have evidence that anybody committed a crime — whether it has to do with Jeffrey Epstein or anybody else — we will of course move forward and investigate and prosecute,” Blanche told reporters.

Blanche needs key Republican support to get confirmed

The meeting came hours after Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said it needed to happen before Blanche could earn his vote.

Without Tillis’ support, Blanche’s nomination won’t make it through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which questioned Blanche for hours Wednesday about the Epstein files as well as the creation of a fund to compensate President Donald Trump’s allies, a tax immunity deal for the president and a slew of other issues.

Another Republican, Sen. John Cornyn, has also expressed concern over the fund and has said he remains undecided about his vote.

Tillis indicated during Blanche’s confirmation hearing Wednesday that he was leaning toward backing Blanche, who has been leading the department in an acting capacity since April. But after lawmakers heard Bensky's testimony, Tillis said he expected a meeting between victims and Blanche to occur before he’s “willing to vote out of this committee.”

Tillis later Thursday commended Blanche for holding the meeting, writing in a social media post, “I appreciate his willingness to directly engage and listen to them.”

After missteps by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi that enraged Trump's base, Blanche as deputy attorney general oversaw a massive review and the release of millions of files related to the investigation into Epstein. The case has captivated internet sleuths and conspiracy theorists for years, in part because of Epstein's connections to other powerful individuals.

Blanche has also defended the department's staggered release of the Epstein files, a process beset by problems, including redaction errors that left exposed nude photos showing the faces of potential victims.

Blanche said during his confirmation hearing Wednesday that he takes responsibility for mistakes that were made, but noted that department lawyers were given a "herculean task” to quickly review millions of files for release. Blanche said department lawyers took pains to protect the women involved, and quickly fixed any errors that were found.

“I am sorry that in about 1% of the documents mistakes were made,” Blanche said Wednesday. “But what I will say on top of that is we put tons of resources to rectifying those mistakes immediately, including pulling down documents within minutes of being informed that there were mistakes.”

The dangerous flooding for a second consecutive year set off hundreds of high-water rescues, washed out roads and killed at least two people, authorities said. Relentless downpours served as another frightening reminder of the flood-prone Texas Hill Country, following what experts say was fueled this time by the right mix of air and lots of available moisture.

“Last year, it was one big wave that came through. And it wiped everything out, and then it receded, and then we could deal with the damage. This time, we’re on day three of heavy rain and everything keeps continuing to rise, and it’s expected to rain today and tonight,” said Suzanne Sutphin Gschwind of Kerrville, where some of the worst flooding took place.

Hot weather over the middle of the continental United States ensured storms that formed would move slowly, and rounds of rain over roughly the last three days at times reached several inches an hour. The flooding is “about as bad as it gets” — conditions that are typically rare, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“Obviously, something like this doesn’t occur every year, but it has occurred over two years in a row and it has occurred over a region that is prone to flash flooding by its topography,” Oravec said.

Nearly 1 trillion gallons of water fell on the three hardest-hit counties in Texas over three days — Uvalde County alone got more rain in that period than California has seen over the last month, according to Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

Flooding over the Fourth of July weekend last year killed more than 100 people, including roughly two dozen children and camp counselors at Camp Mystic, a now-shuttered Christian camp for girls. These storms dumped rain on a wider area, overlapping with some of the places where floodwaters overturned cars, ripped down trees and sent rescuers hustling to save lives last July.

A local official in Travis County, which includes Austin, said people were trapped on barn roofs and in trees. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said drones and helicopters were airborne for rescues.

"We are looking at every square inch of the entire area for anybody who may be stranded anywhere. And there will be help coming very rapidly to whoever may be displaced, wherever they are,” Abbott said.

The flood in Texas Hill Country

The rain hit Texas Hill Country, a part of central and south Texas with steep terrain. Shallow soil covers limestone hills that have been soaked for days. Instead of the land absorbing the water, it shoots into rivers with steep banks.

That causes water to rise fast, a dangerous scenario that catches people by surprise.

When rivers rise so fast “it’s almost like a river tsunami,” said Tyler Roys, a senior meteorologist with the forecasting company AccuWeather. These conditions are so deadly because water is heavy and moves quickly. Just one cubic foot of water — imagine a box a bit larger than the size of a basketball — weighs about 62 pounds (28 kilograms).

Compared to last year's flood, the rain fell hard, but in some places it wasn't quite as intense and rivers in many places didn't rise quite as quickly, Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said. Plus, the previous days of rain previewed the flood threat.

“This one is producing greater overall precipitation totals, but it is mostly doing it with lower rain rates. They are still fairly high, but they aren't as high as they were last year," he said.

While swollen from rainfall, so far Guadalupe River levels have largely remained below record levels, some of which were reached during last year’s deadly floods. The river did surpass last year's mark at the small community of Comfort, rising to 37 feet (11.3 meters) early Thursday, a mark 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) higher than it reached last year. At its height then, water weighing as much as the Empire State Building flowed downstream roughly every minute.

The river's record at this spot is 42.3 feet (12.9 meters) set in 1869.

Climate change and forecasting

It is difficult, especially as storms are happening, to know whether climate change has made the event more likely or worse.

Oravec said that the conditions that created this storm — hot air that steers and slows storms — have long occurred, but that climate change could make these conditions more common. A warmer atmosphere also has the potential to hold more moisture and heavier rains.

Last year's flooding did raise awareness of the dangers floods create, especially when they occur at night, Oravec said.

“I think overall it has been a good forecast. The effects are catastrophic, but the signal was there for potential heavy rainfall,” he said.

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Associated Press writers Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

The town issued the following statement:

“Due to ongoing drought conditions throughout the region, the Campbell County Utilities and Service Authority (CCUSA) has implemented Stage 1 voluntary water conservation measures under its established Drought Response and Contingency Plan.

CCUSA provides the source water serving the Town of Appomattox’s water system. As a customer and regional partner, the Town is asking its residential and commercial water customers to cooperate with CCUSA’s guidance by voluntarily reducing indoor and outdoor water use.

Since October 2025, Campbell County and much of the Roanoke River Basin have received approximately 40 to 60 percent less rainfall than normal. Declining streamflow in the Big Otter River has prompted these voluntary conservation measures. Taking action now can help preserve the regional water supply and reduce the likelihood that more restrictive measures will become necessary.

How You Can Help

• Limit outdoor watering to before 10 a.m. or after 7 p.m., when evaporation rates are lowest.
• Sweep driveways, sidewalks and porches instead of using a hose.
• Turn off ornamental fountains and other nonessential water features.
• Identify and repair leaking faucets, toilets and outdoor spigots.
• Turn off the faucet while brushing your teeth, washing your hands or shaving.
• Reduce shower time and use less water when taking a bath.
• Run washing machines and dishwashers only when they are full.
• Keep a pitcher of drinking water in the refrigerator instead of running the faucet until the water becomes cold.
• Avoid overwatering lawns and landscaping.
• Consider using a commercial car wash that recycles water rather than washing vehicles at home.

The Town appreciates the cooperation of its water customers as we work with CCUSA and our regional partners to protect the area’s water supply. Small changes in daily water use can make a meaningful difference during periods of drought.

Additional water conservation information is available through CCUSA at www.ccusa-water.com"

A parasite-caused intestinal illness is spreading at unusually high levels across the United States this summer, and health officials say the numbers are likely to keep climbing.

NBC News has reported Thursday that, “the Food and Drug Administration is investigating iceberg lettuce supplied to Taco Bell by Taylor Farms as a possible source in an escalating outbreak of cyclosporiasis in four Midwestern states.” The CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and state and federal continue to partner investigating this multistate outbreak.

As of July 13, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has received reports of 1,645 confirmed domestic cases of cyclosporiasis since May 1, 2026, across 34 states. Of those, 141 people have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported.

The CDC notes that state-level case counts are likely higher than what is currently reflected in federal data, as additional cases continue to be confirmed and reported.

More than 5,100 additional cases have to be further analyzed by the CDC before they can be confirmed as domestically acquired cyclosporiasis.

Virginia has reported at least 11 confirmed cases as of July 9, according to the Virginia Department of Health (VDH). The VDH says there is no current evidence that Virginia is experiencing its own outbreak but is closely monitoring the situation.

Michigan is currently the hardest-hit state in the country. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) has confirmed 4,312 cases as of July 16, and that number has continued to rise. 102 of those reported cases indicated they had been hospitalized.

MDHHS has recommended that any people and entities handling raw produce, including lettuce/leafy greens, cilantro, basil, green onions, raspberries, and snow peas, be asked to thoroughly clean all ingredients with running water.

Cyclospora infections occur every year, especially between May and August, but this year’s numbers are running well above normal, according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Health Security.

What is cyclosporiasis?

Cyclosporiasis is an intestinal illness caused by a parasite called Cyclospora. It does not spread directly from person to person. Instead, the parasite must spend days to weeks in the environment before it can make someone sick, according to VDH. Infection happens when a person eats or drinks something contaminated with the parasite.

Symptoms typically appear within one week of exposure and can include watery or explosive diarrhea, loss of appetite, weight loss, bloating, increased gas, stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, low-grade fever and fatigue.

If left untreated, illness can last from a few days to a month or longer, and symptoms may return after appearing to improve.

Some people infected with Cyclospora have no symptoms at all and some people who have been infected once can become infected again.

Past U.S. outbreaks have been linked to imported fresh produce, including bagged salad, fresh herbs, raspberries, snow peas and scallions.

How to protect yourself

Washing all fruits and vegetables under running water before eating, cutting or cooking them is an important preventive step. Washing hands carefully with soap and water before and after food preparation, after using the bathroom and after changing diapers also helps prevent contamination.

Travelers, especially to tropical areas, should avoid eating raw or undercooked foods or drinking untreated water. Anyone who develops symptoms should contact a health care provider for testing and treatment.

It halted work on major projects, and it's buying back leases, citing national security concerns. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says a classified report from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proves offshore wind is a national security threat.

This comes against the backdrop of the Republican president's hatred of wind turbines and desire to boost fossil fuels for “energy dominance” in the global market. National lab estimates show that turbines installed along the U.S. coasts could provide more than enough power to cover the nation's annual electricity consumption.

Wind turbines interfere with radar, but that isn't a new problem. The Pentagon reviews wind farm construction plans and can deem areas off limits. There are upgrades to radar to mitigate turbine impacts.

Here’s what to know about the national security implications of offshore wind development:

Turbines’ spinning blades can create false targets on radar screens

Burgum says he’s worried about autonomous drones going through a wind tower field undetected because of radar interference. And, he said, the vibration of wind towers could affect undersea sonar.

Radar systems can be adjusted to raise the threshold for what's considered a detection but may miss actual targets consequently, according to the Department of Energy.

Kirk Lippold, a national security expert and former commander of the USS Cole, said radar operators are trained to differentiate a live track — anything from a boat or a submarine periscope to an inbound drone or missile — from clutter. If drones aren't detected before they reach a wind farm, “we have bigger national security issues,” he said.

Trump administration says there are new risks

According to the Department of Justice, defense officials gave the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management classified information in November 2025 detailing new national security risks from offshore wind projects.

BOEM halted construction on five big East Coast projects days before Christmas. Burgum said they had to address the rapid evolution of relevant adversary technologies and vulnerabilities created by these projects near East Coast cities. This came after courts blocked Trump's efforts to halt development through executive action.

Like the United States, Sweden is raising security concerns with offshore wind energy. Officials said Thursday they're approving two offshore wind farms while rejecting 11 others.

Green Power Sweden CEO Nils Grunditz said he questions why Sweden is scaling back its offshore wind plans when technological solutions for radar interference are used elsewhere in the region. Denmark has been a pioneer in wind energy since building the first offshore wind farm in 1991.

The UK government said in March it bought new air defense radars to mitigate against anomalies created by offshore wind farms, touting it as new technology that secures coexistence of air defense and offshore wind. The independent climate change think tank E3G said North Sea turbines can be a defense asset, for example by including surveillance and monitoring equipment.

Judges were not convinced by the Trump administration

Developers impacted by the construction freeze and states sued. The DOJ argued national security concerns are paramount and federal courts do not second-guess military officials’ assessment of these risks.

Federal judges reviewed the classified information and allowed all five wind farms to resume construction.

At the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Senior Judge Royce Lamberth expressed concern that the stated national security reasoning may have been “pretextual,” to mask the true motives for stopping offshore wind.

In putting a major wind farm for Rhode Island and Connecticut back on track in January, Lamberth said the government did not apply the newly discovered concerns specifically to that project, Revolution Wind, Burgum publicly criticized offshore wind around the time of the stop work order for reasons unrelated to national security, and BOEM waited to act until December on information it received in November.

The Pentagon is also holding up the development of onshore wind farms, and the administration has used emergency orders to keep fossil fuel plants online. On Thursday, attorneys general from 18 states and Washington moved to intervene in a lawsuit to try to advance the onshore wind farms.

Meghan Greenfield, a partner at Jenner & Block LLP in Washington, said the administration is making a national security argument in so many different contexts, “it has caused increased skepticism by the courts.”

A retired Navy officer is suspicious of the administration's motives

In buying back offshore wind leases, the Interior Department cited national security concerns with the projects, including those off California. The Interior Department said Thursday there were serious national security risks that demanded immediate attention, and it won't let “reckless projects create higher utility costs, a weakened energy system and unnecessary harm to the environment.” Several states are suing.

Retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn knows the waters off California's shore well. He commanded the fleet responsible for naval operations across the eastern and northern Pacific Ocean. He said there's no “showstopping national security issue” that would invalidate years of analysis of the lease areas.

McGinn said he thinks the administration is maximizing the risks and costs of offshore wind while minimizing the benefits to justify pursuing more fossil fuels and “it doesn't pass commonsense tests.” Offshore wind produces electricity cleanly. Oil, coal and natural gas emit carbon pollution when burned.

McGinn, who served as an assistant secretary of the Navy, said that radar interference is a problem recognized early on and adequately addressed and that thousands of turbines are operating across Europe and Asia.

“National security and offshore wind are compatible, if it is done right, in the right locations,” he said.

Economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth disagrees. A distinguished fellow at the Energy Policy Research Foundation, Furchtgott-Roth said the defense issues have been known for decades, the military's views should be taken very seriously, the nation shouldn't be dependent on Chinese-made turbines, and gas, coal and nuclear provide affordable, reliable power. The administration is acting prudently, she said.

Members of Congress were briefed

Democratic U.S. Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island said he participated in a classified briefing months ago and didn't find the reasoning compelling. Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is trying to include a measure in the defense bill that sets military policy to force a 180-day deadline for a military office known as the siting clearinghouse to evaluate wind projects and explain its conclusion.

“They have to be able to produce a thoughtful and thorough analysis which justifies their decision,” Reed said Wednesday. "That’s the way to go.”

Even with that step, Reed said, this administration finds many ways to stop things it doesn't like and he expects the campaign against wind energy to continue.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

“We’re asking all Virginians to do their part in preserving our water supply now,” Spanberger said.

Counties, cities affected

Bedford, Campbell, Charlotte, Franklin, Halifax, Henry, Mecklenburg, Patrick, Pittsylvania and Roanoke counties, as well as the cities of Danville, Martinsville, Roanoke and Salem are all impacted.

Smith Mountain Lake — typically a summer destination — has become a visible symbol of the drought’s severity. Water levels that once felt routine are now low enough to prompt state intervention.

Spanberger cited stark rainfall data to explain the scope of the problem.

“In this region in particular, they have received 57 percent of the total rainfall that is expected in an average year,” she said.

What comes next

Officials say next steps could move quickly and may include water-use restrictions, emergency funding requests and targeted support for farmers and businesses — described as being hit “first and hardest.”

A third statement from the governor’s appearance touched on broader resource protection.

“We can also ensure that we are protecting our natural resources separate and apart from drought conditions by ensuring any technology, manufacturing, any data center, are utilized.”

More details — including whether any restrictions become mandatory and what assistance programs may be available — are expected to be announced in the coming days.

Another defeat in the semifinals. Another defeat from a winning position.

The English media was predictably critical of coach Thomas Tuchel after Wednesday's 2-1 loss to Argentina.

“Same old story” read one headline. Another declared that “Tuchel just shrank."

Tuchel, a serial trophy-winning coach with Borussia Dortmund, Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea and Bayern Munich, was hired to put a second star on England's jersey and end the decades-long wait for a first trophy since the World Cup in 1966.

The wait goes on.

Former England captain Gary Lineker raised the question about Tuchel's future, saying he was "brought in specifically to take us over the line.”

“Is he the right man to take us forward?" Lineker said on his Netflix show ‘The Rest is Football.’ "He just got it so wrong in the big moment."

Tuchel's predecessor, Gareth Southgate, was credited with making England fans fall back in love with the men's national team after years of underachievement. He reached back-to-back European Championship finals but ultimately fell short, with his supposed cautious approach said to have cost England in clutch matches.

Southgate's substitutions were criticized as well as his tactics when England relinquished leads against Croatia in the World Cup semifinals in 2018 and Italy in the final of the Euros three years later.

There was criticism of the English soccer federation's decision to turn to a German, but Tuchel, a Champions League winner, was supposed to be difference maker in those key moments.

Leading 1-0 going into the 85th minute and in a defensive shell, England saw its hopes shattered on Argentina goals from Enzo Fernandez and substitute Lautaro Martinez.

“It’s a real panic. You can’t go a goal up and then surrender the ball and surrender any opportunity of trying to get the second goal," former England captain Wayne Rooney told the BBC. ”I just think the decisions Thomas Tuchel made, and I think we have to be honest on this, have cost us tonight."

Lineker said Tuchel's tactics and substitutions after going 1-0 up “made zero sense to me.”

Tuchel, who signed a two-year contract extension ahead of the World Cup, stood by his decisions.

“As soon as you lose, you get criticized. It’s just what it is,” Tuchel said. "No one knows what would have happened if I had made different decisions so it makes no sense to engage in that and lose my head.

“I’m responsible for them. I took them, so I take the criticism. That’s just the way it is.”

FA chief executive Mark Bullingham said shortly after the loss that it is “heartbreaking to be so close.”

“The players and Thomas gave it everything today and the squad, coaches and staff could not have worked harder during the tournament,” he said in a statement. “I would like to thank them all — and also give my heartfelt thanks to our wonderful fans here in the USA and at home. We felt your support every step of the way and we are all so disappointed not to go further.”

England will face France in the third-place game on Saturday in Miami.

Defeat to defending champion Argentina continued a pattern for the England men at the World Cup.

It has not beaten one of the traditional major nations at soccer's biggest tournament since the 1-0 win over Argentina in the group stage in 2002. Before that, England beat France in the group stage in 1982.

Knockout eliminations have come at the hands of Argentina and Germany on three occasions each, Brazil, Portugal and France. There was also the 2018 semifinals defeat to Croatia, a team that has never won a major trophy.

Tuchel, however, does not buy into the narrative that repeated failure is a specifically English problem.

“I love to see these things in a football matter and through football glasses. So first of all I always think it’s solvable on the football field,” he said. “I don’t believe so much in an English thing or in a curse or whatever or history repeating itself.”

Britain and Ireland are co-hosting Euro 2028.

"I have a contract until the home Euros, and I’m looking forward to that, even if right now it is difficult to look that far ahead,” Tuchel said.

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James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

The move announced Thursday would allow Wall Street trading firms and other institutions to get news from top Truth Social contributors in milliseconds so they could profit off subsequent moves in stocks, bonds and interest rates.

Called Truth PSI, the new service comes amid a flurry of other deals by Trump and his family company that critics say are exploiting the presidency for profit. It follows similar offers of paid access on rival platforms, though with one key difference: The most popular Truth Social poster is the president himself and, as the biggest shareholder of the public traded parent company, would directly benefit.

“He’s selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president,” said Kathleen Clark of Washington University School of Law and an expert in government conflicts of interest rules. “It’s yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself.”

The Trump family company declined to comment about whether the new feature is profiting off the presidency. Truth Social's public parent, Trump Media & Technology, did not respond to emailed questions, including whether the president's posts will be excluded from the offering.

A press release states it would allow traders to see “the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts” ahead of others. The president has the most followers — 12.9 million — followed by his oldest son, Don Jr. and, close behind, his son Eric.

The release did not say how much customers would be charged.

In the past few months, Trump has announced major decisions and musings on his platform including posts about the Iran war, tariffs and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown in U.S. cities. The Iran posts in particular are impactful because investors are worried that higher oil prices will continue to stoke inflation and possibly force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

Stock in Trump Media & Technology has plunged more than 70% since the president took office last year, erasing $6 billion in shareholder wealth. Those losses, along with billions more of investor losses tied to new Trump family crypto businesses, have drawn scrutiny after Trump's annual disclosure of his financial holdings shows he took in more than $1 billion in revenue last year in the same companies and offerings.

Conflict of interest laws would bar U.S. government officials from owning a company that profits off their office by selling access to their decisions through public posts, says Washington University's Clark. But the president and vice-president, she notes, are excluded from the provision.

Despite that, all presidents since the law was passed decades ago have acted as if it applied — selling individual stocks, dumping business holdings or putting their financial assets in a blind trust so they wouldn’t know what was being bought and sold on their behalf while they wielded power — but Trump has refused.

Trump Media has been trying to lift its stock price recently by branching into various businesses, including crypto, financial services and even nuclear fusion. It recently replaced its longtime CEO, former Congressman Devin Nunes, with a seasoned media executive, Kevin McGurn.

In the release, McGurn described the Truth PSI move as part of a “strategy to monetize proprietary assets." He added that he expected it to become a "meaningful, ongoing source of revenue.”

Trump Media said that it plans to start the service next month and that it has already signed up customers.

The stock rose 0.6% to $9.63 on Thursday. Before Trump took office last year, it closed at $40.

But just months into Mullin's time in office, the department is squarely in the center of controversy again after three people were killed in encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the span of less than a week.

The events are the first major test for Mullin, who promised a steady hand for a department roiled by his predecessor's conduct and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. New revelations about one of the officers involved could add further scrutiny.

As he navigates the uptick in violence, Mullin is being forced into a balancing act that has him juggling pressures from a White House eager to carry out mass deportations and his former colleagues in Congress seeking answers — all while attempting to ease tensions in American cities over the deaths.

“When he took his position, Secretary Mullin said that his goal was to get the department off the front page of the news,” Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner said on the House floor Tuesday. Then, waving a newspaper, he said: “Well, you’re back on the goddamn front page now."

Mullin's approach is a marked change from his predecessor, Kristi Noem

Mullin, a former senator from Oklahoma, was a surprise pick to run the sprawling department after Noem was fired in the wake of two deadly shootings of American protesters at the hands of federal immigration officers in Minneapolis earlier this year.

As the secretary in charge of carrying out the administration's mass deportations vision, Noem pushed an aggressive style of immigration enforcement where she was front and center, including most famously, a visit to a Salvadoran detention center. She was quick to speak publicly on controversial events, weighing in on both Minneapolis shootings with statements accusing the killed protesters of being agitators.

President Donald Trump, who made mass deportations a central promise of his second administration, ultimately soured on Noem over a $200 million ad campaign and her handling of the Minneapolis operation.

Mullin promised a different approach, while still pledging to deliver on the president's priorities. His first trip as secretary was not to promote immigration enforcement but to observe hurricane recovery efforts in North Carolina. Noem frequently went out on immigration raids with her officers — Mullin has not.

Since he became secretary and in the aftermath of the Minneapolis violence, the administration has also moved away from high-profile and unpopular immigration operations in American cities to a quieter approach to enforcement that has largely shifted media attention away from the crackdown. Under Mullin, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is also retreating from a plan to use warehouses to detain migrants.

But immigration arrests continue under Mullin and often with little fanfare: ICE arrested 10,000 people over a five-day period in late June, averaging out to about to 2,000 arrests per day. And legal pathways to immigration have also faced new restrictions.

Trump, during Mullin's tenure, has hailed the secretary as “so incredible,” and “amazing,” lauding him for giving up his Senate seat to run DHS.

For months, it appeared as though Mullin's change in approach was taking hold. While advocates and civil rights activists accused the department of mistreating immigrants under his leadership, Mullin's less confrontational approach seemed to keep the department out of the spotlight.

ICE-related deaths bring renewed spotlight to Mullin and DHS

But the events of the past week have posed a new challenge for Mullin as he walks a tightrope between his softer approach and the president's demands.

“Trying to deal with competing policy objectives is a challenge for any Cabinet secretary, but Mullin has this worse than most,” said Tom Warrick, a former counterterrorism official at Homeland Security who’s now at the Atlantic Council.

“In the case of Homeland Security, the White House wants both to meet their immigration quotas at the same time that they keep public trust, and how you do that — even with the funding that Mullin has — is a really difficult challenge."

ICE officers in Houston and Maine shot and killed individuals in their cars during immigration operations. In Florida, a man fleeing ICE officers was killed in a car crash.

Mullin has not spoken publicly about the deaths while the department’s public affairs office has released only brief statements following each.

Behind the scenes, Mullin, who frequently talks about how he shares his cellphone number with members of Congress and encourages them to call him directly, has talked with lawmakers and shared information, including talking with both senators from Maine.

And after the second shooting death in Maine, as criticism surged from both protesters and Mullin's former colleagues in Congress, ICE was ordered to suspend most vehicle stops.

Trump heaps pressure on Mullin over vehicle stop order

That decision infuriated Trump's supporters.

Conservative influencer Nick Sorter called it a “TOTAL CAPITULATION to the left," in a post on X. Conservative activist Mike Davis accused Mullin of heeding the advice of Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who said she'd suggested the vehicle stop pause to the secretary.

A day later, Trump appeared to contradict the guidance to ICE, saying in a social media post “we must be strong, tough and smart and we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”

Mullin then reposted Trump's words, adding that people in the country would be “arrested and deported wherever they are." He later said on X that he and the president are “on the same page.”

During a briefing Thursday, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said vehicle stops are continuing after field offices around the country were given “verbal guidance."

"The president and the secretary of Homeland Security are on the same page that vehicle stops are a necessary tool that ICE agents need," she said.

But it showed the friction between Mullin's attempts to maintain calm and the president's demands that illegal immigrants, which the administration has in many instances portrayed as criminals, be arrested in large numbers.

Democrats have slammed the new secretary, saying that they see little change at the department.

“Secretary Mullin, if he wants to, and if he has the backing of the White House, he has the ability to get ICE under control and make them follow the law,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas. “So either he has no interest in doing that, or the White House is not backing him up, or the agents are simply out of control.”

Republican lawmakers have come to Mullin's defense.

“I think the Secretary has lived up to what he’s wanted to do to try to change the atmosphere over there,” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, who as chair of the congressional Homeland Security Committee has requested a bipartisan briefing on ICE's use of force policies from DHS.

“I don’t think anybody is celebrating that ICE is back in the headlines," Garbarino said.

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Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

The verdict — believed to be the largest ever against a gun dealer — was awarded by a jury Wednesday following a trial focused on whether the vendor, Husky Armory LLC, skirted federal regulations barring the sale of the gun-assembly kits to those under 21.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org. Helplines outside the U.S. can be found at www.iasp.info/suicidalthoughts.

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In a wrongful-death lawsuit, the family of Henry Willis said he was just 18 when he purchased the Glock G19 pistol “build kit” from Husky Armory's website in 2023. He assembled the handgun in his garage — telling his father it was a transistor radio — and used it to end his life six days later.

Everytown Law, which represented the family, said the $104.2 million payout was the largest ever reached against a gun seller, surpassing the $73 million settlement awarded to the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting by the rifle maker Remington.

It comes a little over a year after the Supreme Court upheld regulations enacted by the Biden administration that mandated serial numbers on the homemade weapons and required buyers to complete background checks and age verification.

Attorneys for Willis said Husky Armory had flouted each of those requirements.

Its website advertised the product as having “everything you need to build your own Glock style pistol from the comfort of your home,” noting the weapon could be assembled by “nearly anyone with a brain,” according to the lawsuit.

Inquiries to Husky Armory LLC and its owner, Cody Yurk, were not immediately returned. The company, which is based in Omaha, Nebraska, was not present for the trial, according to the family and their attorneys.

At a news conference Thursday, Willis’ mother, Laura Herp, described her son as a “kind, gentle child” who had struggled with mental health issues in the months leading up to his death.

“A child in crisis should never be able to access a deadly weapon,” Herp said. “Companies like Husky Armory thrive off selling to folks who shouldn’t have access to firearms, and they didn’t care who Henry was. They didn’t even bother showing up to the trial.”

A state court in Louisville had previously issued a default judgment against the vendor for failing to respond to the lawsuit. Following a two-day trial this week, a jury awarded $4.2 million in economic damages and $100 million in punitive damages to the family.

“This historic verdict sends a powerful message to ghost-gun sellers who set up businesses to profit by circumventing critical safeguards like background checks and age verification,” said Dana Mulhauser, an attorney for Everytown Law. “Henry should be home with his family today, and Laura deserved more time and opportunity to help her son heal.”

The National Transportation Safety Board said that after taking a closer look at the plane's flight path, investigators determined the incident occurred in Greek airspace, and not over the Republic of North Macedonia as they initially believed.

International aviation rules allow Greece’s Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority to hand the investigation over to the NTSB. The U.S. federal agency said it accepted and is now leading the probe, with Greece participating.

The incident happened on July 10 on a morning flight from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki to Memmingen, near Munich. The flight was operated by Malta Air, a subsidiary of Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget carrier.

The 61-year-old passenger, who was not identified by name, suffered neck and shoulder injuries and friction burns, according to a Greek hospital official. It was not immediately clear Thursday if the injured passenger remained hospitalized.

The NTSB previously said it was notified that the flight turned back because of “a right engine issue and cabin decompression.”

Ryanair has not publicly addressed the engine issue disclosed by the NTSB. In response to an emailed request for comment about the engine issue on July 10, the airline reiterated its previous statement about the flight returning to Thessaloniki after a window became dislodged.

Passengers told Greek media that they heard a loud bang, oxygen masks dropped and the plane began to lose altitude.

A series of short videos recorded from inside the plane and shared by Radio Thessaloniki showed passengers wearing oxygen masks after the cabin lost pressure. Another appeared to show the blown-out window, with a man seated nearby wearing an oxygen mask. A third video, apparently filmed after the aircraft landed, showed first responders working in the aisle.

Shye Gilad, a former airline captain who teaches at Georgetown University’s business school in the U.S., said the window blowing out would have caused rapid decompression — a sudden loss of cabin pressure that can create a brief but powerful suction effect near the opening before the pressure stabilizes.

“The seat belt can help in those first few seconds. It’s a difference maker and people should keep their seat belts fastened at all times,” Gilad said, adding that events such as this one are “very rare” because “it takes a lot to breach a cabin.”

Flight records show the aircraft — a Boeing 737-800 delivered new to Ryanair in 2008 — had been climbing past 15,000 feet (4,570 meters) about six minutes after departure before immediately descending to about 6,000 feet (1,830 meters). Flight-tracking site Flightradar24 said the aircraft remained at the lower altitude for roughly 30 minutes to burn fuel before returning to Thessaloniki about an hour after takeoff.

Ryanair said in its statement that one passenger requested and received medical care after landing, and that a replacement aircraft later flew passengers to Germany.

Due to less available habitat, deer have begun boldly walking around urban areas and eating plants that people have grown.

Stores like One Earth Landscapes and Mulch have customers who come in to ask them about deer issues and how to deal with them.

“Yeah, we’ll get calls to come out and I’ll go look and it’s like they’ve eaten the top layer of everything,” owner Tony Wirt said.

Wirt has had his own encounters with deer.

“They come into the yard, they drink the water out of the bowls, and then there’s food for them. So then they just hang out in the yard and lay down,” Wirt said. “By morning they’re gone, you know, because they’re usually up dust to dawn. Those are the hours that they’re most active, it seems like.”

In some areas, deer have become a part of many neighborhoods.

10 News turned to Justin Folk - the Deer Project Leader with the Department of Wildlife Resources - to find out why the population has grown so high.

“There’s often times, there’s less predation, definitely from natural predators,” Folk said. “Hunting is often times a little bit more difficult.”

They’re not just a backyard nuisance either. Deer are showing up on roads, and that creates real danger.

“The number one source of deer mortality in those areas are deer vehicle collisions,” Folks said. “So it’s an increased risk for sure, but motorists just need to be aware and slow down and just be aware for it and be on the lookout for deer on roadsides.”

As far as keeping deer out of your yard, there are solutions like repellents and plants they may not eat.

You can also try protecting the plants.

“I think no matter what, putting up some sort of fencing around plants that you don’t want deer to eat is going to be the most effective kind of short-term solution,” Folks said.

An NBA spokesman said that “the NBA is continuing to look into it.” ESPN first reported that the NBA was investigating the signing for possible circumvention of the salary cap.

Although the Bucks didn’t disclose terms when they announced the signing, ESPN has reported Trent received a four-year, $64 million deal. He’s getting that lucrative deal after a season in which his statistics dipped.

Trent is coming off a 2025-26 season in which he scored 8.1 points per game and played 21.2 minutes per game for Milwaukee. Those represented his lowest averages in both categories since his rookie season of 2018-19.

The 6-foot-4 guard had joined the Bucks in 2024 by signing for the veteran minimum after a season in which he had scored 13.7 points per game and had shot 39.3% from 3-point range for the Toronto Raptors.

He returned to the Bucks last year after scoring 11.1 points per game and shooting 41.6% from 3-point range with Milwaukee in 2024-25. He had capped that 2024-25 season by scoring over 30 points in two of the Bucks' five playoff games during their first-round loss to the Indiana Pacers.

The contract Trent signed last year included a $3.9 million player option for 2026-27 that he declined before agreeing to this new deal.

The concerns over salary cap circumvention involve whether there was a prior agreement that Trent would be rewarded now if he signed below-market deals each of the last two years.

While the situations aren't similar, this probe comes as the NBA also investigates whether the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented salary cap rules involving a $28 million endorsement contract between seven-time all-NBA forward Kawhi Leonard and the now-bankrupt California-based sustainability services company called Aspiration Fund Adviser LLC. That investigation has put the Clippers' trade of Leonard to the Toronto Raptors on hold.

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

Officials in many cities urged residents to stay inside or wear masks outside as air quality reached unhealthy to hazardous levels, meaning it's unhealthy for anyone, regardless of health conditions. The smoke is coming from fires that are burning primarily in Canada but also in northern Minnesota. A lingering high pressure system has trapped the smoke close to the ground, said Steven Freitag, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Detroit, where air quality was among the worst in the world for major cities.

“Sure enough, it arrived in force here and it’s really pretty extreme levels,” said Freitag, who noted that visibility in some areas was reduced to a half mile.

“It’s scary,” Omar Mitchell, 50, said as he looked to the sky. He wore a mask while walking to his restaurant in Detroit. “You don’t know necessarily what the side effects may be. That’s days or months later.”

Microscopic particles can lodge deep in the lungs and enter the bloodstream, leading to heart and lung problems and contributing to other long-term health issues.

The air stinks and the sky glows yellow in some places

All of Michigan and much of Minnesota were under a hazardous air quality alert. In the Chicago area, air quality ranged from very unhealthy to hazardous.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jake Petr said even if winds from the northwest clear skies as expected later this week, the smoky air could keep returning until the fires are out. That could take months, until it snows in Canada and northern Minnesota, officials have said.

Bill Ostrowski, 76, wore a mask as he walked through downtown Chicago, where wildfire smoke shrouded skyscrapers. “It stinks. It’s not a good sign when you wake up in the morning and you can smell the air,” said Ostrowski.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, the sky was “glowing yellow,” said Brent Williams, head of the soil, water and climate department at the University of Minnesota. The area “could be looking at weeks to months of continued smoke and flare-ups off and on as the winds blow in different directions,” he said.

A study published this year found that long-term exposure to tiny particles from wildfire smoke contributed to an average of 24,100 deaths a year in the lower 48 states. Long-term exposure can make existing health problems worse and lead to a range of chronic and deadly issues, including respiratory illness, cardiovascular and neurological diseases, and premature death.

New York City cancels activities and hands out masks

In the New York City area, a thick haze tinged the morning sky orange and yellow and partly obscured Manhattan’s skyline.

City officials opened cooling centers as health officials urged New Yorkers to limit strenuous and prolonged outdoor activities. The city’s schools, parks and other agencies moved activities indoors, rescheduled events and adjusted operations. State officials distributed tens of thousands of face masks at transit hubs and other major locations.

Gwen Moseley, 65, was among the first patrons at Rosedale Library in Queens to take advantage of the free masks, saying she’s on the road much of the day working as a therapist for children with autism.

“Who wants to be breathing this? It’s not healthy,” Moseley said as she waited to meet a young client. “When I’m out walking, I can feel the scratchiness in my throat.”

Smoke eased a bit but was expected to thicken again by late afternoon or evening, possibly lasting overnight, weather service meteorologist Maureen Hastings said. She said it might move south for a while on Friday but return at night.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation warned that there was a potential for temporary spikes of “very unhealthy” air quality from Buffalo in the state's western corner to Rochester by Lake Ontario, Syracuse in the central region and down to the greater New York City area.

Philadelphia officials urged people to avoid strenuous activity and stay inside or wear N95 or KN95 masks outside.

“Today is not the day to start your marathon training plan,” said Dr. Palak Raval-Nelson, the city's public health commissioner.

Minnesota fires are spreading

In Minnesota, forest rangers on Thursday combed a remote wilderness area for anyone who might still be there days after wildfires led to its closure.

Officials closed the Boundary Waters along the U.S.-Canada border on Tuesday. At the time, 6,000 to 10,000 people were inside, but Superior National Forest staff estimated Wednesday that they’d reached 90% of them, said Karen Harrison, a spokesperson for state and federal agencies involved in the response.

She said Thursday that smoke is making it difficult for helicopters to fly and that fires are spreading despite firefighting efforts.

“There will be fire on the landscape until fall, and some fire will be burning until snow cover,” Harrison said.

The Royal Canadian Air Force successfully evacuated 11 Minnesota teenagers and four staff members Wednesday from wildfires in an Ontario provincial park about 175 miles (282 kilometers) north of the Minnesota border.

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Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan. Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit, Jacqueline GaNun in Lansing, Michigan, and Cybele Mayes-Osterman in Chicago contributed to this report.

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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 United States said Wednesday it would impose a new 25% tariff on certain imports from Brazil, citing unfair trade practices by the world’s 10th-largest economy.

The tariffs, first proposed last month, will take effect next Wednesday. The order exempts some goods that are not produced in the U.S. or that officials worry would disrupt supply chains — including coffee, beef, oranges and orange juice and aircraft components.

Brazil's government said the decision hits about 3,000 items, but is yet to decide whether and how it could retaliate with a law its Congress passed in 2025 in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Brazil’s industry minister, Márcio Elias Rosa, said Thursday the U.S. move hits about 18% of the country’s exports — or an estimated $7.4 billion worth of products, based on 2024 data.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's office on Wednesday denied U.S. allegations of unfair trade practices. It said 76% of imports from the U.S. entered Brazil duty-free in 2025, and that the average tariff effectively applied to U.S. products was only 3.1%.

The statement also said it has taken steps to impose reciprocal tariffs, along with other trade-related countermeasures, through its own law and through the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement mechanism.

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira accused the Trump administration of pressuring the South American nation to give American companies exclusive access to some sectors of its economy. He said Brazil has never left the negotiating table.

Vieira said Rubio made statements that are “unacceptable, offensive to the Brazilian people and the Brazilian government” after the new tariffs were announced. Rubio said in a post on X that the tariffs were the result of Lula putting “his own ego ahead of making a deal” and not negotiating with the U.S. in good faith.

“Rubio launches a crude and arrogant attack on the Head of State of a friendly nation, who has personally sought to open channels for dialogue on several occasions," Vieira told a news conference in the capital, Brasilia.

"What Secretary Rubio dismisses as ‘ego’ is, in fact, President Lula’s steadfast resolve to defend Brazil’s sovereignty and the interests of our businesses and workers,” Vieira said.

US has a robust trade surplus with Brazil

The U.S. has for years run a massive trade deficit with the rest of the world, and Trump has cited the lopsided trade numbers to justify his aggressive use of tariffs.

But Brazilian imports make an unusual target: The U.S. has persistently piled up trade surpluses with Brazil. Last year, in fact, U.S. exports to Brazil exceeded imports by nearly $42 billion; only U.S. trade surpluses with the Netherlands and the United Kingdom were higher.

The new tariff puts pressure on national exports and increases insecurity for companies in both countries, Brazil’s National Confederation of Industry said in a statement Thursday.

The Trump administration first imposed a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports last July. Trump cited what he called a “witch hunt” against former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump's ally on trial at the time for attempting a coup despite his 2022 electoral defeat to Lula. Bolsonaro was later convicted and some of those U.S. tariffs were later rescinded.

Trump at the time also accused Brazil of unfair trade practices and said he had directed U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to initiate an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

That led the office to charge Brazil with lax anti-corruption enforcement and unfair tariffs, among other things, in June. One of the targets of the investigation is Brazil's popular PIX payment system, which is run by the country's central bank and is overwhelmingly free of charge.

Scott Lincicome, a trade analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the U.S. administration might have had a legitimate Section 301 case if it narrowly targeted Brazil’s restrictions on trade in digital services. Instead, it threw in a bunch of other allegations.

“It’s a pretty clear case of the administration simply finding an excuse and finding a law that allows them to impose the tariffs they want to impose,’’ Lincicome said.

Welber Barral, a trade lawyer and former Brazilian foreign trade secretary, said the move comes as his country's exports to the U.S. are now less than 10% of its total for the first time in two centuries.

“Brazil is diversifying to other destinations,” Barral said. “Brazil is negotiating with Canada through the Mercosur. Other deals will also come out as the American market closes.”

Brazil elections may be impacted

Brazilian officials have blamed the Bolsonaro family — Lula's main political opponents — for the latest round of tariffs. Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, a presidential hopeful in October's elections and son of the former president, visited Trump, Rubio and other U.S. officials in Washington in May.

The senator reposted Rubio’s statement, adding that “Lula is no longer fit to be the president of Brazil. We are on a plane without a pilot.” He also described Lula as “the Brazilian Biden” and said he “is grumpy, reckless, and has become a danger to our nation.”

Flávio Bolsonaro is expected to be confirmed as Lula's main election rival on July 25 at his Liberal Party's convention in Sao Paulo, though his bid has struggled to overcome the findings of a police investigation, which showed he received millions of dollars from a disgraced banker to finance a movie about his father. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Thomas Traumann, an independent political consultant and former Brazilian minister, said he thinks the tariffs could ultimately hurt Lula's opponent, describing two issues he sees as working against Flávio Bolsonaro.

"The first was the revelation of his involvement with the disgraced banker,” Traumann said. “And now he has U.S. tariffs with Bolsonaro fingerprints. Now Brazil's business understands he will be submissive to Trump.”

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Savarese reported from Sao Paulo.

Paul Wiseman contributed to this report from Washington D.C.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

In the latest maneuver, video spreading widely on social media shows a jet from the Navy's demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels, flying so low over a crowded beach in Pensacola on Wednesday that chairs and tents went flying, sand kicked up and children held their hands over their ears.

The U.S. Navy said in a statement shortly afterward that it was “conducting a thorough safety review." Then on Thursday morning, a host of Trump administration officials heaped praise on the maneuver.

“The flyovers will continue until morale improves,” Hegseth wrote on his personal X account, without elaborating.

The Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, wrote “Carry on Patriots” on social media alongside a photo showing a Blue Angels jet with a wingtip just feet above the heads of beachgoers.

The White House tweeted a cartoon showing people on a beach taking photos of a Blue Angels jet, with the words “Freedom” and “It's okay to love America.”

It is at least the third time that Hegseth and others have voiced support for military aviators performing maneuvers that, while often popular with the crowds experiencing them, have drawn public scrutiny and military investigations.

In two prior cases, Hegseth's remarks led to the end of the safety investigations. In the Florida flight, acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, a Trump administration political appointee, said the Navy had “no problem” with the flight and there would be no reprimands or firings. His social media post was retweeted by Hegseth.

Cao's post said Thursday that the Blue Angels conducted a “flight debrief.” Navy officials would not say if that debrief — typically a routine occurrence after every flight — was the “thorough safety review” the Navy said it would conduct the day prior.

Military leaders are excusing reckless behavior, one safety expert says

Flyovers at low altitudes like these have been linked to a number of past crashes, said Jeff Guzzetti, an aviation safety consultant who used to investigate crashes for both the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.

“It’s shocking to me as an aviation safety professional that the top leaders of the military would excuse this type of reckless behavior,” he said. “A cavalier attitude like that can only lead to accidents in my view.”

The Florida flyover comes after video emerged in March of two Army helicopters hovering near Kid Rock’s Tennessee home during a training run while he clapped and saluted. The Army initially said that the helicopter crews were suspended pending a safety investigation.

Days later, Hegseth lifted their suspension and ended the investigation saying, “No punishment. No Investigation. Carry on, patriots.” The singer is an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump.

Months later, eight South Carolina National Guard helicopter pilots were suspended following a low-flying sweep by Army Apache helicopters over beachgoers as part of a July 4 event honoring service members.

Less than a week after the event, Hegseth again said he was intervening, writing on social media: “We’ll fix this." The next day, Parnell posted that "effective immediately, the suspension of all involved South Carolina pilots has been lifted.” He added to his social media post, “Carry on Patriots.”

When asked if Thursday's posts, which use the same phrasing as the prior two cases, meant that Hegseth's office was halting another safety investigation, Jacob Bliss, a Pentagon spokesman, said he had “nothing further to provide at this time.”

Guzzetti said the military's top leaders are excusing unprofessional and dangerous behavior from military aviators.

“That sends out a powerful signal that this type of deviant behavior is acceptable and, in fact, desired," he said. “And that’s dangerous. That’s the antithesis of a good safety culture.”

Flyovers might not violate rules but that doesn't make them safe

Former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo said these flyovers probably don’t violate military rules because the Pentagon doesn’t have the same restrictions on flying low over people that the FAA imposes on civilian flights. But that doesn’t mean they are a good idea — particularly the risky maneuvers that Blue Angels pilots perform.

“They are air demonstration teams, and what they do is exceedingly dangerous — amazing and wonderful — but dangerous," said Schiavo, who is also a pilot and used to work in air shows years ago. “And so it is really not something to be performed over people.”

Florida beachgoer Alexandra Belcher, 34, called the Blue Angels flyover this week a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“I didn’t realize how close it was, until everyone around me was like, ‘That was so cool,’” she said. “It was not normal, but it was such a blessing to be able to witness that with everybody that I was with.”

A Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share internal planning, said the Blue Angels’ next show on Saturday will go on as scheduled.

The military has been involved in previous deadly aircraft accidents

The Army was sharply criticized by the NTSB during the investigation of last year’s midair collision between a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines jet near Washington for failing to identify and address the hazards that contributed to the crash that killed 67 people.

The NTSB said it found that “the Army’s aviation safety system failed to consistently detect, interpret, and act on signals of latent hazards, resulting in degraded safety assurance, organizational learning, and safety culture.”

Even basic flyovers, like the kind Hegseth is defending, have been known to turn deadly.

In April 2025, a Japanese woman was killed after the propeller wash from an Air Force HH-60W helicopter knocked her down on a concrete walkway, causing severe head injuries.

A subsequent Air Force investigation noted that key factors leading to the mishap included “allowing deviation from safe spectator distances” as defined by the Air Force and “an operational mindset fostering a false confidence of safety.”

In 2011, Cmdr. Dave Koss, then-head of the Blue Angels, voluntarily stepped down days after a performance at a regional air show where he carried out a low-altitude maneuver that was called “unacceptable” in a Navy statement at the time. The Blue Angels had to cancel several of their air shows that year as a result.

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Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska. AP writer Beatrice Dupuy contributed from New York.

“If you ask any of my 29 counterparts across the league if they would be interested in having Christian Pulisic on their team, I’m pretty sure you’d get 29 yesses,” NYCFC president Brad Sims said Thursday at a Major League Soccer event to promote the resumption of the league's season.

“Would MLS from a league standpoint love to have Christian Pulisic here? I think the answer to that would be yes," Sims added. "If AC Milan doesn’t want to give him up, then it's dead in the water. And so I think ultimately we’re believers that Christian wants to play in MLS, wants to be back home and at whatever the point in time that is, we would think and hope that New York City FC would be very high on his list of teams that he would want to play for..”

An attacking midfielder from Hershey, Pennsylvania, Pulisic turns 28 in September. He is entering the fourth season of a five-year deal with AC Milan after playing for Borussia Dortmund from 2016-19 and Chelsea from 2019-23.

Pulisic has 33 goals in 90 international appearances but is coming off a disappointing World Cup in which he failed to score and had one assist. Because of injuries, he missed one of the five U.S. games and came out of two others early. Pulisic left last week's round of 16 loss to Belgium after fracturing his right leg.

“I felt really good this summer with the guys and I thought my level was high,” he said after the game. “It’s disappointing I didn’t quite have the moments I was hoping to and to try to help us to get over this next step of beating a really good team.”

Pulisic scored 10 goals in his first 15 appearances for AC Milan last season, but ended his club season in career-worst scoreless streak, failing to get a goal in 19 games after Dec. 28.

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

Franklin certainly delivered, coming out of the gates with a declaration that the Hokies had won the offseason, and that the blueprint of Virginia Tech football was changing.

“We’ve been able to hit the ground running,” said Franklin. “We are bigger, we are stronger, we are faster than we have been. There’s no doubt about that. I feel like we have won the off-season. The reality is we have to make sure all that translates to the season and go out and play a style and a brand that’s going to make Coach Beamer proud.”

In order to put Tech back on the national landscape, however, they’ll need to play a vintage style of Hokie football; one that blends modern ideas with the classic culture of past teams.

“One of the things that’s great about Virginia Tech is there is so much history, there is so much tradition,” said Franklin. “I think that’s one of the challenges, right, when you are trying to make the program more of a modern football program that’s going to be able to compete at the highest level, you got to find the balance of those two things. How can we make sure we’re paying respect to the past, but how are we building for the future as well. That’s a delicate balance.”

Franklin’s ideals have already been heavily instilled in Hokies players, each of them echoing the lessons they’ve learned.

“He’s challenged us on the details,” said senior defensive lineman Kemari Copeland. “Every day he’s harping on the details, winter workouts, touching cones, spring ball. He’s been harping on us on details. That’s how you win games. If we all lock in and do details in the game, that’s how you win games. That’s how you lose games, too. He’s been harping on us on that.”

“You have to focus on what you can control,” added senior safety Tyson Flowers. “All you can control is the present moment. I think if you can focus on being as present as possible, I think the rest of the things later on in the season things will fall into place. I think that’s just a battle to stay present and to win every single day.”

The Hokies rank 4th in the country in percentage of snaps returned, and are the only team in the country to rank top 10 for offensive and defensive snaps returned, proving to be a key piece to the puzzle.

They’ll have the chance to start off on the right note when the Hokies host VMI on September 5th.

A 19-year-old from Covington was up for days, officially breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest 10-pin bowling marathon of 134 hours and 57 minutes. 10 News was there as he made history.

A small device that takes just seconds to install could add another layer of protection inside your home.

Buena Vista Police Corporal Josh Guttman says a gun lock can help prevent situations where children may accidentally access a firearm.

“Instances where children are just playing with a weapon and don’t realize it’s loaded, and they accidentally fire the weapon,” Guttman said.

It’s the type of situation Virginia’s new secure firearm storage law aims to prevent.

House Bill 871 requires firearms to be securely stored when a minor or someone prohibited from possessing a firearm is known to be in the home.

“If you are at home and you are carrying a weapon, obviously it is safely stored. It’s when you’re walking away from the weapon; it’s somewhere safe to store it. That way, prying hands, kid hands don’t get into it,” Guttman said.

But what does safe storage actually look like?

Guttman says gun owners have options, including storage containers with biometric or combination locks.

“If you want to keep your weapon loaded and essentially ready to go at any time, then you want a storage container - biometric locks, combination locks,” he said.

Another option: a gun lock.

Unlike a safe, this type of lock requires the firearm to be unloaded before it’s installed.

Buena Vista Police are offering free cable gun locks to anyone who wants one - and Guttman showed us how they work.

The lock is placed through the firearm, preventing it from being fired until it is removed.

Residents can stop by the Buena Vista Police Department lobby to pick up a gun lock at no cost.

But Guttman says safety starts with education.

“A lot of times it’s just bringing it out, talking to them about what this is: don’t play with this,” he said.

Police say combining secure storage with conversations about firearm safety can help keep firearms out of the wrong hands and protect families.

The drug from Merck was OK'd on Thursday for patients with artery-clogging cholesterol that persists even after taking statins, the standard medications for cutting heart attack risk. Merck will market its pill under the brand name Lipfendra.

It's the first noninjectable medication that works by blocking a liver protein called PCSK9. That protein limits the body's ability to clear cholesterol from the blood, and biotech injectables targeting it have been available from Amgen and other drugmakers for more than a decade. But patient access has been stymied for years by high prices, insurance restrictions and limited prescribing by doctors.

Statins block some of the liver’s production of cholesterol and are the cornerstone of treatment. But even at the highest doses, many people need additional help lowering their LDL, or bad, cholesterol enough to meet medical guidelines.

Merck, which has headquarters in Rahway, New Jersey, won approval based on two studies in high-risk patients who added the company's pill to their standard treatment, including statins. In one study of 3,000 patients, those taking Lipfendra saw their levels of LDL cholesterol drop more than 55% after six months. In a second study, patients averaged a reduction of 59% compared with patients who received a dummy pill.

That benefit dropped only slightly over a year, and side effects — including dizziness and diarrhea — were similar between those taking the pill or a placebo, researchers found. One caveat: The pill must be taken on an empty stomach.

The FDA reviewed the drug under its program that promises ultra-fast reviews for promising medications that serve the public interest. The pathway was created by then-FDA chief Dr. Marty Makary, who resigned from the agency in May after months of pressure from drugmakers, patients and other outside groups.

Heart disease is the nation’s leading cause of death, and high LDL cholesterol, which causes plaque to build up in arteries, is a top risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. While an LDL level of 100 is considered fine for healthy people, doctors recommend lowering it to at least 70 once people develop high cholesterol or heart disease — and even lower for those at very high risk.

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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.

Though there is praise for the courses at Carvins Cove and Explore Park, the riders say Elmwood Park in downtown Roanoke is uniquely satisfying.

"Oh, it was great. I love being here in downtown Roanoke," said racer Thomas Savage.

Roanoke had to compete with other cities to attract Cycling USA, as many regions would like to be known as the home of the National Championships. Riders say they can feel the love.

"The whole community just embraces the riders and the whole cycling scene and USA Cycling National Championships to the area," racer Robert Marion said.

In particular, they like the downtown short course where the fans can see most of the race from a single place on the course.

“It’s incredible to feel that warmth and welcomeness and with the way they set the courses and being prepared," Marion said.

That love is not lost on USA Cycling – which is bringing the races back for a third year in 2027.

Kyle Knott with USA Cycling said he likes the downtown venue because of the way spectators can enjoy the racing.

"I think the access to it, I mean you can be in your office, you can see it from the windows, Carilion can watch it out their windows, you can walk downtown, you can go have something to eat and come in here and then you’re inches away from where the riders are racing, whereas a lot of times in mountain bike, they go off into the woods, you don’t see them for a while," Knott said.

And from here, riders can already see all the way to next year.

"The folks here in Roanoke have just done a stellar job with everything," Savage said.

"Doing an incredible job and looking forward to it being back for 2027," said Marion.

Conditions at the Pontiac home were so offensive that police evidence specialists wore hazmat suits when the children were discovered in February 2025.

The kids, ages 15, 13 and 12, had lived on their own since 2020 or 2021, with occasional food drops on the porch and amid trash and feces, police said. Sheriff's deputies entered when a landlord said he hadn't been paid in months.

Kelli Bryant, 35, who was living elsewhere in Pontiac, pleaded no contest to abuse and will return to court in September for her sentencing. A message seeking comment from her attorney was not immediately returned.

“This plea will spare the children from testifying at trial and ensures Bryant remains incarcerated until they are all adults,” Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said. “I’m hopeful the children she victimized will continue to have the space and resources to heal from this abhorrent trauma.”

The father lost contact with the kids while in prison in an unrelated matter and was barred by their mother from seeing them when he was released, Sheriff Mike Bouchard said when Bryant was arrested.

Reports from the National Transportation Safety Board were not final and do not identify a definitive cause of the crash. But they describe evidence that supports bird strikes before the helicopter plummeted into the river on April 10, 2025.

The Federal Aviation Administration has said that helicopters are especially vulnerable to bird strikes because they fly at low altitudes. Strikes can turn out to be devastating.

“It seems pretty clear to me that the breakup of that helicopter was precipitated by several bird strikes,” said aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, who read the key findings. “Not just one but several — and birds of a different feather.”

He noted damage to the aircraft's horizontal stabilizer, a key part of the helicopter.

“Without it, the helicopter could become very unstable and difficult to fly,” Guzzetti said.

The victims of last year’s accident included a Siemens business executive from Spain, his family and the pilot, Seankese Johnson, 36, a U.S. Navy veteran who received his commercial license in 2023.

Passengers Agustin Escobar, 49; his wife, Mercè Camprubí Montal, 39; and their three children, Victor, 4; Mercedes, 8; and Agustin, 10, all died.

The crash renewed safety concerns about the popular sightseeing flights and prompted New Jersey’s governor to ask for additional restrictions on nonessential helicopter flights.

Remains of several geese were found on the helicopter’s rotors and left horizontal stabilizer. One witness told the NTSB that just minutes before the crash a large flock of geese took flight in the area.

“The geese were big and there were many of them. When the helicopter went bang, I immediately thought it was a bird strike,” the witness told NTSB investigators.

The Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Lab identified remains from different breeds of geese on the wreckage, including a female Canada goose, which can average nearly 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms).

Guzzetti said it's reasonable to conclude “the pilot is not culpable here.”

“Birds are everywhere, and pilots have limitations with their eyesight,” he said.

The report, however, noted that a control panel switch to turn on pulsing lights to help deter birds was missing. The tour company's former chief pilot said the light system was not mandatory during daylight rides, according to investigators.

The NTSB has investigated 24 helicopter bird-strike crashes in the past 25 years, including three fatal ones. Helicopter pilots are encouraged to try to avoid areas where birds are known to be present and fly slower to minimize the potential damage from an impact.

The “ miracle on the Hudson” highlighted the danger of bird strikes when a US Airways jet hit a flock of birds and lost power in both engines shortly after takeoff in 2009. Pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger was hailed as a hero after he landed the powerless plane in the Hudson River and all 155 people on board were rescued.

In last year’s crash, the helicopter took off from a downtown heliport that afternoon and flew north along the Manhattan skyline before heading south toward the Statue of Liberty. Less than 18 minutes into the flight, parts of the aircraft were seen tumbling into the water.

Rescue boats circled the submerged aircraft within minutes of impact and recovered the bodies from the water. Later recovery crews hoisted the mangled Bell 206L-4 helicopter out of the river for investigators to examine.

New York Helicopter Tours shut down after the crash, and the FAA issued an emergency order to ground all the company’s flights after learning it had fired its operations director minutes after he had agreed to suspend flights during the investigation.

The FAA said at the time that it suspected the firing was retaliation for a safety decision.

___

Associated Press writer Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story.

The Pentagon confirmed the extension in an email Thursday, saying the mission will continue until Jan. 20, 2029, “or until terminated by the President.” The deployment was set to expire at the end of this year after previously being extended.

The deployment in Washington, D.C., has been contentious since Trump issued an executive order in August 2025 to deal with what he called a crime emergency, calling up the Guard and additional federal law enforcement officers. The administration has said crime has rapidly fallen since then, although local officials have argued that crime was already going down before Trump ordered 2,500 troops into the city.

During their deployment, Guard members have responded to medical emergencies, assisted with arrests, helped with snow removal and carried out beautification projects.

“Taxpayers are paying more than a million dollars a day to have them walk around,” Phil Mendelson, chairman of the District of Columbia Council, said in April, adding that “the presence of armed soldiers on American streets is not a good look.”

Deployments to other cities have ended or been paused by courts in California and Illinois, while more limited operations are ongoing in cities including New Orleans. But in Washington, Guard members still walk city streets and patrol metro stations, tourist attractions, neighborhoods and parks.

A Guard member was fatally shot and another was wounded in November after authorities said a man drove from Washington state to D.C. and opened fire outside a subway station three blocks from the White House. Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, who was killed, and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe were deployed from West Virginia.

Because the city of Washington is a congressionally established federal district, Trump has much greater influence over the police and D.C. National Guard, which he can control directly. This has enabled him to sidestep the legal challenges he has faced in some states.

While the Guard members do not make arrests, the Trump administration has argued their support to the broader mission has helped reduce crime. The White House said in April that 12,000 arrests have been made by a joint task force since operations began, including 62 known gang members, and thousands of illegal firearms were seized.

But officials disagree over how much credit the deployment can be given in Washington, a heavily Democratic city. Figures have shown that crime was already on the decline before, although those figures sparked an investigation after claims arose against local police that they may have been manipulated.

The NBA's career scoring king and current free agent spoke publicly for the first time in weeks Thursday afternoon, indicating that a decision is close — though stopping short of revealing which team he'll choose to play for this fall, despite at least one cry from someone in a jampacked room shouting for him to “pick a team.”

“I won’t hold you guys up too much longer," James said.

The four-time NBA champion had a pair of appearances Thursday: He recorded an episode of his “Mind the Game” podcast alongside guest co-host Tyrese Haliburton of the Indiana Pacers in New York on the opening day of Fanatics Fest, then spoke at the Game Plan Summit presented by CNBC and Boardroom later in the afternoon.

At the summit, he told Boardroom co-founder Rich Kleiman in an on-stage conversation that making this decision has a slew of layers — many of which, it seems, are off the court.

“It’s not just about the team,” James said. “There’s so many other factors that I’m factoring in right now on what best fits me as a player, what best fits me as a person and what best fits my happiness, and also my family as well.”

At Fanatics Fest, an 11-year-old in the crowd asked James about free agency and his next team — “first of all, that was a hell of a question and some of the media people here probably should learn from the young fella," James said — and the youngster got perhaps the best answer of the session, with James indicating that the 2026-27 season may not necessarily be his last as a player.

“It's a big decision for not only myself, but for my family as well,” James said. “Just for the last part of my career and where I want to spend the last few years or the last year or the last two years of my NBA career ... I'm going to try to fit into whatever team I'm going into — but also give them all the tools and give them all the knowledge that I've been able to grasp over the last 23 years. I know the game. I know the ins and outs of the game of basketball.”

James playfully chided Haliburton for asking him about his future — “didn’t we talk about this in the back?” James asked, and Haliburton said he would ”leave it alone.”

Of course, they didn't leave it alone. James made reference to a slew of teams such as Cleveland, Miami, Philadelphia and Golden State, though didn't appear to give much in the way of hints. He did sip from a bottle of red wine that he opened and shared with Haliburton, calling it one of his podcast traditions.

And when fans shouted out suggestions for James' next team — one even asked him to play for the New York Yankees — no clues were forthcoming.

“We'll see,” he said.

In Miami, where the Heat introduced Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis Jr. as their newest forwards on Thursday, team president Pat Riley acknowledged there have been talks about a reunion with James.

But the Heat don't seem to have any hints either.

“Right now, I think we’re like everybody else,” Riley said. “We’re just waiting to see what he does and then we’ll see what happens.”

Same goes for the NBA: Commissioner Adam Silver spoke at the Game Plan Summit not long after James on Thursday. Silver said he has a bit of an “inkling” on which way James is leaning, but no concrete word.

The league office, Silver said, would like to know for one specific reason.

“We have to finish up the schedule and where LeBron plays will affect the schedule,” Silver said. “So, I would like him to make his announcement already so we can finish the schedule. As you can imagine, the teams are calling us, the networks are calling us, and everybody wants to lock in the schedule. It will influence how we set the schedule, how we set opening week, Christmas Day, etc. I need him to make a decision. But the direct answer is I have no inside information.”

James is the NBA’s oldest active player at 41 and the only player in league history to have a career spanning 23 seasons; this coming season will be his 24th. Speculation has been rampant for more than two months about his future, officially starting in May when the Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated from the NBA playoffs.

At that time, James said he didn’t know what he would be doing.

And the only developments that he’s revealed since came on June 30, when he said he would play this coming season and that he was leaving the Lakers after an eight-season run highlighted by the 2020 NBA title.

For more than two weeks, the NBA has been waiting to hear what comes next. James, as he did in a social media post at the time, lauded his time with the Lakers, who also offered him well wishes as he moves forward.

“I spent eight great years with the Los Angeles Lakers,” James said.

James’ resume is beyond compare in NBA history. He’s a 22-time All-Star, a 21-time All-NBA selection, a four-time Most Valuable Player, a four-time NBA Finals MVP, a three-time All-Star Game MVP, and was a member of the NBA’s 75th anniversary team.

He’s also coming off a season where he averaged 20.9 points, 6.1 rebounds, and 7.2 assists per game. For his career, he’s averaged 26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 7.4 assists in more than 1,600 games.

James started his career in Cleveland in 2003 and spent seven seasons with the Cavaliers before heading to Miami for four seasons — where he won his first two titles. He then returned to Cleveland for four more seasons, leaving in 2018 to start an eight-season run with the Lakers.

Cleveland and Miami are believed to be on James' radar again as he weighs this decision, as are several other teams including Philadelphia, Minnesota and Golden State.

“I’m looking forward to what comes next as I wind down my journey,” James said.

___

Reynolds reported from Miami.

___

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

The Appomattox County Sheriff’s Office have made two arrests for a shooting that occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning July 12.

The arrests and charges are as follows:

17-year-old Appomattox male:

• 2 counts of felony aggravated malicious wounding
• 2 counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony

16-year-old male of Madison Heights:

• Reckless handling of a firearm
• Brandishing a firearm
• Underage possession of a firearm

ACSO said that multiple firearms have been recovered and more arrests are coming. The ACSO said if you were in attendance that night and would like to get in front of your charge to call 434-352-8241.

Orginial:

Law enforcement is investigating a shooting that occurred in Appomattox County on Sunday morning after two teens arrived at hospitals for treatment of gunshot wounds, Appomattox County Sheriff’s Office said.

ACSO said they received notification around 1:38 a.m. on Sunday from the Lynchburg General Hospital that a 19-year-old man had arrived for the treatment of a gunshot wound to the leg. Only about one minute later, the sheriff’s office was notified of a 16-year-old boy also being treated for a gunshot wound to the leg at the Southside Community Hospital in Farmville. The current extent of the injuries is unknown.

Investigators said the two incidents are related to an altercation that occurred at a party on Chesnut Grove Road in Appomattox County. Investigators also believe it is an isolated incident with no ongoing threat to the public.

Law enforcement is continuing to investigate. If you have any information regarding this incident, please contact Investigator Harris with the Appomattox County Sheriff’s Office at 434-352-8241 or Crime Stoppers at 1-888-798-5900.

The complaint filed Wednesday with the Tennessee Department of Health by Tonya Hervey says Tony Carruthers suffered excruciating pain during the May 21 attempt to administer a lethal injection and the family believes he now has partial paralysis that they attribute to a stroke.

It does not specifically say how or when they believe the stroke occurred, and Hervey declined an interview request.

During the attempted execution, the IV team established a primary line right away but then worked for more than an hour trying to insert a backup line.

Maria DeLiberato, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing Carruthers, witnessed the attempts and said the team tried to insert an IV in Carruthers' arm, hand and foot before Dr. Mark Fowler attempted to insert a central line.

In the end Gov. Bill Lee called off the execution and gave Carruthers a one-year reprieve.

The complaint accuses Fowler of violating medical ethics by participating in an execution; by injecting Carruthers with the anesthetic lidocaine without first establishing that he was not allergic to it; and by continuing the search for a vein despite his “visible agony and distress.”

The complaint also says he was unqualified to place a central line because he had not done so in over a decade.

Fowler declined to comment on the complaint when reached by telephone.

Dr. Ervin Yen, a retired cardiac anesthesiologist who has witnessed many executions in Oklahoma and was not involved in the Carruthers case, said the fact that Fowler had not placed a central line in years is not necessarily disqualifying. He also said it is very unlikely that the attempts to place an IV could have resulted in a stroke.

The Tennessee Department of Correction declined to comment on the allegations. The Health Department said information on all complaints and investigations is confidential until formal charges are filed, including whether an investigation exists.

Carruthers, 58, was found guilty of the 1994 kidnapping and murder of Marcellos Anderson; Anderson's mother, Delois Anderson; and Frederick Tucker. Authorities said Marcellos Anderson was a drug dealer and Carruthers was trying to take over the illegal trade in their Memphis neighborhood.

Carruthers has maintained his innocence. He was forced to represent himself at trial after repeatedly complaining about court-appointed attorneys and threatening to harm several of them.

Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington framed the proposal as one last push to deliver for voters ahead of the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. It advanced on a vote of 20-14.

"We are rallying to finish what we started when the American people sent us here,” said Arrington, R-Texas.

With Iran war funding making up the bulk of the package, some $60 billion, Arrington acknowledged that people can debate “why we're there” in the overseas conflict. But he said the money is needed for basic supplies — "just the bombs, bullets and battlefield readiness for our men and women in uniform to finish the fight successfully and return home safely — that’s it."

The resolution, which sets out instructions for the various congressional committees to draw up proposals, also calls for $13 billion for Intelligence, $12 billion for Agriculture, and $10 billion for Administration, which handles voting and elections.

Speaker Johnson goes it alone, trying to push past Democrats

The proposal is the third budget reconciliation package Republicans in control of Congress have put forward this session to steamroll Trump's priorities past Democratic objections using a legislative procedure that allows for simple majority votes for passage.

It's the same process House Speaker Mike Johnson used to pass Trump's big tax cuts bill last year and to advance Homeland Security money after Democrats refused to fund the department following the deaths of Americans protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions earlier this year.

Johnson is pushing the effort almost single-handedly, without full backing from his slim House Republican majority or the Senate. He held lengthy meetings with Trump this week at the White House and hosted a private session for Republicans at the president's Camp David retreat to hash out details.

But the 47-page package remains a long-shot effort — too meager for some, too costly for others — ahead of voting in the full House expected next week.

Key Republican Rep. Chip Roy, an influential member of the Freedom Caucus who has expressed reservations about the package, did not vote at the Budget Committee session, as his home state of Texas deals with flooding.

Democrats argue Americans are paying for Trump's plans

Democrats are ready to vote against the proposal, as they did Thursday during committee action.

Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, said the document, some 6,500 words, never once mentions the issue that's top of mind for many Americans: affordability.

“People know this is a failed presidency, and a failed Republican majority,” Boyle said.

Democrats offered more than a dozen amendments to the package during the hourslong Budget Committee session and raised questions about how the new spending will ultimately be paid for — either via budget cuts to other programs or by piling onto the nation's debt.

Boyle offered an amendment to reverse healthcare cuts from the Republicans' big tax breaks bill. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., sought to reinstate funding for food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., suggested funding for immigration enforcement at Department of Homeland Security could be used to offset costs elsewhere.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, blamed the high costs of living on the Iran war and said every time Americans open their refrigerators or go to the gas pump they are “paying for a war that should never have been started.”

Senate pans House plan, leaving next steps uncertain

Next steps are highly volatile, as the House holds a rare Saturday pro forma session, which is a largely administrative meeting that will allow the resolution to be filed in time for consideration next week.

Johnson can only lose a few detractors on his side of the aisle as he relies on Republicans only, without Democrats, for passage.

But the resolution would also have to be agreed on by the Senate, and Republican senators have largely panned the House effort, waiting to see if Johnson can heave it to passage.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said senators have “a lot of questions” about it – from defense hawks concerned about the military to deficit hawks who want to offset costs.

“It’s a very uneven path,” he said. “We’ll see what the House can execute on,” he said, but “I can’t make any guarantees over here.”

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who is expected to take over the Senate Budget Committee after the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, has been a leading budget hawk concerned about the nation's rising deficits.

The House plans to have its committees work on bill text over the August recess and bring the whole package back to the floor for a final vote in the fall.

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

This focus comes even as studies show that there are very few reported cases of such incidents in the U.S., especially compared to historically higher levels of far-right violence.

With sweeping statements about the “alarming rise” of political violence by the left, Rubio and other U.S. officials painted a dark image of the future if the “communists and Marxists” perpetrating these supposed acts are not defeated. He urged officials in attendance — mostly from European and Latin American countries — to unite to address the issue, which he says has been a “blind spot” in counterterrorism doctrine.

“So many people in positions of power have repeatedly dismissed acts of violence and even terrorism as legitimate forms of political expression, so long as they served a left-wing cause," Rubio said in opening remarks. “A bomb planted by a neo-Nazi group was ‘a nefarious and murderous act of evil.’ It is, but a bomb planted by a Marxist revolutionary; well, that’s just merely a tragic excess of idealism.”

A report published last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that left-wing terrorism attacks as of July 4, 2025, had surpassed those from the far right for the first time in more than 30 years. However, a closer look at the data reveals that the uptick reflects a very low starting level and a concurrent drop on the far right.

There was an average of 0.6 left-wing incidents annually from 1994 through 2000, compared with an average of 20.6 on the right, the report shows. From 2016 to 2024, there were an average of four per year on the left and 22.7 per year on the right. Those numbers had dropped dramatically on the right as of early July 2025, with only one incident. Meanwhile, there had been five from the left.

But the report’s authors note that right-wing terrorism could easily return to elevated levels and that it is important to fight terrorism on both sides of the political spectrum.

A Republican push before midterm elections

President Donald Trump and his allies have prioritized talking points against the far left ahead of the congressional elections this November. Trump has repeatedly stated that the Democratic Party’s ascendant left are communists who want to “completely destroy the traditional American way of life” and even engage in assassinations.

Vice President JD Vance has similarly called out communism as a political shift that is “something we haven’t seen in the U.S.” House Speaker Mike Johnson has decried “radical candidates” who are “self-described, self-identifying Marxists.”

For Rubio, his worldview on this issue has been largely shaped by his own history: He is the son of Cuban immigrants who arrived in Miami in May 1956, a few years before communist leader Fidel Castro rose to power in Havana. The former Florida senator said Thursday that it was that same government’s sprawling intelligence and ideological network that “helped to build the far left in our country and in our hemisphere.”

Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and main architect of the administration's immigration policy, followed Rubio's remarks, aiming to drive home the immediacy of the perceived threats he saw to American institutions coming from the left, and what response is needed in return.

“If your civilization is your home, you must defend it with the same passion and force as if an enemy intruder is inside your own house where your family lives,” Miller said. “That is the level of dedication and urgency that is required.”

This ideological focus has repeatedly conflated democratic socialism — which often centers on securing universal healthcare, higher taxes on the wealthy and stricter corporate regulation — with communism, under which private ownership is largely eliminated.

It has only intensified in the last year, following the election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to become New York City mayor and several of his proteges winning their New York City congressional primaries last month, beating out incumbents.

One of the ways the administration has started to target left-wing efforts is through sanctions. In November, the State Department designated four antifa or anti-fascist groups in Europe as foreign terrorist organizations. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in his remarks Thursday that targeting these groups and entities' financial networks is the best way to circumvent their efforts.

Later Thursday, Rubio announced a new policy that would give the department a wide latitude to restrict visas to members of these supposed groups who have supported or incited acts of terrorism, including those who have supported those efforts financially, aided recruitment or provided logistical assistance.

“We have spent decades developing the world’s most sophisticated financial counterterrorism capabilities, and now we are mobilizing some of the same tools that we have deployed against terrorists abroad to confront this emerging threat here at home,” Bessent told the conference.

___

Amiri reported from New York and Kinnard from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed to this report.

“Dream it Work it, Build it” is a summer program offered by Roanoke City Public Schools at the Charles W. Day Technical Education Center.

This program helps kids with special needs gain hands-on experience in the world of manufacturing.

The effort is part of a National Program Called “Spark Force” that works with local partners across the country to open doors in manufacturing for young people who might not otherwise get the chance.

During the program, campers got the opportunity to weld items such as toolboxes and lamps, and even got to take what they made home to their families.

Here’s what campers and their teacher had to say about it.

“When you spend time with them and learning their strengths and their weaknesses, you can always, just like any student you build on their strengths and that helps to build the weakness by implementing them as well,” Jess Traux, Work-Based Learning Coordinator for Roanoke City Public Schools, said.

“I feel like the biggest takeaway from this place is that, if you’re unsure about what you want to do for a career path, try.... It’s a small piece of the big picture, but that small piece just might be what you need to fill in your big picture,” Xzavier Stokes, a Junior at William Fleming High School, said.

For more information, click here.

According to officials, the suspect fled on foot from his vehicle in the area of Quarles Road and Union Church Road in the Thaxton area of Bedford.

The suspect has been identified as Roger Lee Ray, who is described as a 6-foot-tall white male who weighs 262 pounds. Ray has brown hair and brown eyes.

Ray is wanted on a capias, driving while suspended, and additional charges related to this incident, officials say.

The sheriff’s office is asking anyone with information on the whereabouts or Ray to contact 540-586-7827. There is no immediate danger to the public related to this incident.

It was not clear how fast-paced a practice Spain held. Media members are only able to observe the first 15 minutes of what was scheduled to be a hourlong session in East Hanover beginning at 11 a.m. EDT.

Argentina remained in the Atlanta area to work out less than 24 hours after rallying to beat England and reach the final for a second consecutive tournament. Marietta, Georgia, is far enough south to avoid the effects of the fire, which are being windblown to the southeast from northern Ontario, triggering warnings from the U.S. Midwest through the Northeast.

Officials urged people to stay inside or wear masks outside as air quality reached unhealthy to hazardous levels, meaning it’s unhealthy for anyone, regardless of health conditions. Experts expressed concern over holding practice outdoors.

“These are high-level athletes who are moving a lot of air through their lungs during every practice in every game, and really they shouldn’t be practicing outside if the air quality levels are at hazardous sort of ranges for wildfire-related air pollution,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency room physician and Global Climate and Health Alliance official. “That’s the time to schedule a practice inside. You could put an N95 mask on them, but trying to make sure that everybody’s mask is well-fitted, I suspect that’s not the best choice. I would go find an air-conditioned indoor facility that’s a clean-air shelter.”

Messages sent to FIFA and the Spanish Football Association asking whether that was considered or possible were not immediately returned. The smoke is expected to clear the area well before the championship game Sunday in East Rutherford, New Jersey, with kickoff scheduled for 3 p.m.

The air quality in East Hanover on Thursday started early in the morning as “unhealthy” but got cleaner, so by mid-afternoon it was merely “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Now monitoring system. Particle pollution in New Jersey on Thursday was more than seven times higher than the World Health Organization standard. The forecast calls for an improvement to “moderate” for Sunday.

Smoke from wildfires — which are burning more of North America as Earth warms — attacks nearly every system in the body, killing tens of thousands of people a year, numerous medical studies show.

It attacks the body immediately, spiking asthma cases with increased ambulance runs within hours. Smoke can trigger inflammation in different parts of the body, often attacking a person’s weakest points, which can then cascade into different effects of an immune system trying to fight a nasty irritant, doctors and scientists said.

“It’s not healthy for anyone to be in the smoke, especially if you’re exercising,” Harvard School of Public Health environmental health research scientist Mary Johnson said. “You're exchanging more air, so you’re being exposed to even more pollutants, and even healthy individuals at some point will have some type of health effect from the exposure to the smoke. So, even though these are healthy, young individuals, it’s not a good idea to be exercising in this type of environment.”

Scientists have counted at least 1,000 toxins in wildfire smoke, according to Colorado State University environmental toxicologist Luke Montrose.

“If I gave you a list you would recognize some of these as being very bad often times associated with the burning of diesel fuel or cigarette smoke things like formaldehyde or volatile organic compounds,” Montrose said. “Just the smoke itself can be bad.”

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Climate video producer Teresa de Miguel in Washington and SNTV videographers Lissette Romero in East Hanover, New Jersey, and Max Feliu in Marietta, Georgia, contributed to this report.

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

They are the Juárez Cartel, on the border with Texas, and Los Viagras, a criminal group from the western state of Michoacán. The Federal Register, the U.S. government's gazette, published the designation on Thursday.

They joined six other Mexican criminal organizations that the U.S. considers terrorist groups, including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Gangs in other Latin American countries, including Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador and El Salvador, also have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump began to extend the terrorist label to Latin American cartels in February 2025 to allow U.S. authorities to take more aggressive action against them or against anyone who the U.S. sees as aiding the groups.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that both criminal groups either have committed terrorist acts or pose a serious risk of committing acts that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.

The measure represents a further increase in pressure on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s administration following the indictment of 10 current and former officials from the state of Sinaloa for alleged ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, as well as the controversies about U.S. operations in Mexico.

Higher pressure on the Texas border

Juarez Cartel is one of Mexico’s oldest drug trafficking organizations, which for decades has controlled a key crossing point in the central part of the Mexico-U.S. border: Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas. One of its factions is considered responsible for the 2019 deaths of nine U.S. citizens, six of whom were children.

Both its founder, Amado Carrillo Fuentes — known as “El Señor de los Cielos” for smuggling massive drug shipments by light aircraft in the 1990s — and the brothers and sons who succeeded him, turned the trafficking of tons of drugs into a multimillion-dollar business. Despite the arrests of many of its leaders, the cartel and its allied gangs maintained control of a vast infrastructure for smuggling illegal shipments into the U.S..

According to Mexican analyst David Saucedo, the designation is key to enabling the United States to take more decisive action along the border, where two other groups both located at the eastern end of the border with Texas — the Gulf Cartel and the Northeast Cartel — were declared terrorist organizations in February 2025.

The US again targets Michoacan

Los Viagras is a local cartel in the western state of Michoacan, which is already home to two other criminal groups designated as terrorist organizations: Cárteles Unidos and La Nueva Familia Michoacana. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel and partners of Sinaloa Cartel also operate in this state.

Los Viagras emerged following the 2013–2014 armed uprising led by farmers who succeeded in driving out many of the old cartels, only to see them replaced by new ones.

The cartel is led by Nicolás Sierra Santana, who faces a formal indictment in the District of Columbia for conspiracy to traffic drugs, filed in June 2025. The State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

The group has shifted its loyalties and alliances to consolidate its regional control of the territory through extortion affecting key exports to the United States, such as avocados. It also produces synthetic drugs, which sells to other cartels that traffic them into the United States.

But the company's shares declined sharply in after-hours trading as the video streaming company's forecast for the current quarter fell below Wall Street's expectations.

Netflix earned $3.4 billion, or 80 cents per share, in the March-June period. That's up 9% from $3.13 billion, or 72 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Revenue grew 13% to $12.56 billion from $11.08 billion.

Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of 79 cents per share on revenue of $12.58 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

For the current quarter, Netflix is forecasting revenue growth of about 12%. Analysts are expecting revenue to grow by about 13%, to $13 billion.

The Los Gatos, California-based company said its advertising business remains a top priority and it expects to bring in about $3 billion in ad revenue this year. Netflix added that it's seeing strong interest in its live events offerings, including the Women's World Cup.

Netflix said animated film “Swapped” is on its way to becoming its second-most viewed original animated movie, behind last year's wildly popular “ KPop Demon Hunters. ”

The quarter's most popular streams included Harlan Coben’s "I Will Find You," “Legends” from the U.K., "The Polygamist" from South Africa and the K-drama “Teach You a Lesson."

Netflix said it is using large language models to improve how its subscribers find things to watch and it's adding voice search functionality and artificial-intelligence powered natural language search.

In February, Netflix walked away from its offer to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business.

Shares of Netflix fell $5.33, or 7.2%, to $69.02 in after-hours trading.

Messi, to him, is greatness. And Antetokounmpo wants to follow Messi's path.

Antetokounmpo got his welcome-to-Miami ceremony Thursday at the team's arena, with a few fans chanting his name as he walked along his new home court for the first time after he got a tour of his new city.

“I need pressure at this time of my career," Antetokounmpo said. "I think in order for me to go to the next level, I've got to get out of my comfort zone — and I feel like Miami was the place for me to be.”

Messi came to Inter Miami three years ago, adding to his already copious resume by winning a couple of Major League Soccer MVP awards and another championship. Antetokounmpo has now joined him in Miami, hoping his relocation comes with the same level of success.

“That's the blueprint," Antetokounmpo said. “LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, they set the blueprint and you just got to follow, right? It’s hard. You have to be disciplined. You have to be dedicated to your craft, but it’s there. And if you want to follow, you follow. If you don’t want to follow, then you go home.”

He didn't go home. He's in a new home.

Antetokounmpo got his formal Heat introduction a couple of weeks after Miami swung the trade that landed the two-time MVP along with Bobby Portis Jr. from the Milwaukee Bucks in exchange for Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware, Kasparas Jakučionis and draft capital.

For the Heat, it's another on a long list of superstar acquisitions made since Pat Riley arrived to take over as team president in 1995.

“I think this is just part of who the Heat are in the pursuit of excellence," Riley said. "But you don’t win championships unless you have greatness on the court and on the bench. ... I'm just so excited for this challenge.”

Antetokounmpo entered the NBA in 2013. His career totals to date: 21,531 points, 8,882 rebounds and 4,484 assists. The point and rebound totals are both fifth best in the NBA over that span, while the assist total is 13th best — and those numbers are just part of the reason why the Heat consider him to still be one of the five best players in the league.

If all that wasn't enough, has simply been a nightmare for defenses. Nobody has drawn more fouls over those 13 seasons than Antetokounmpo, which is absolute music to the ears of Heat coach Erik Spoelstra.

“A little while ago Pat called me into his office and he looked at me," Spoelstra said. “He said, ‘Do you want to coach Giannis?'”

Spoelstra's no-brainer answer: “Yes.”

And then he walked out, waiting for Riley, Heat general manager Andy Elisburg and the rest of the front office to get a deal done. When Antetokounmpo arrived early Thursday morning for his first workout as a member of the Heat, Spoelstra was waiting for him.

“I just want to be coached hard,” Antetokounmpo said. “I'd rather you tell me the ugly truth than a beautiful lie. ... I'm excited to be coached by him."

Antetokounmpo's run in Milwaukee ended with him having, by far, the most points in franchise history, more than 7,000 ahead of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s total during his tenure with the Bucks. Antetokounmpo is also Milwaukee’s all-time leader in rebounds and assists, plus he ranks second on the team’s career list in steals.

He had a ton of success there. He's looking for more success in Miami, which is one of the reasons why Portis felt like the Heat were the best place for him as well.

“The conversations I have with Giannis have always been about winning. ‘Where can we go to win? How can we impact winning? How can you get another ’chip? That’s always been the talk,'” Portis said during his introductory news conference earlier Thursday. “It hasn’t been about anything else but winning. ... All he cares about is winning.”

By all accounts, the Giannis-in-Miami era is off to the right start.

Antetokounmpo was thrilled by the welcome he and his wife got when their plane landed in Miami after watching Messi and Argentina beat England in Atlanta on Wednesday. He says he already loves the Miami weather ("warmer than Milwaukee," he said) and isn't a fan of iguanas, which are everywhere in South Florida ("those guys, stay away from me," he said).

Riley told him the Heat are looking to win and win big. That was all Antetokounmpo needed to really hear. He has one ring. He wants more.

“You’ve got to work," Antetokounmpo said. "They show you, they show you the way. It’s not hard. Just listen and open your eyes. It's something that I wanted. I was able to accomplish it once in my career. Hopefully, it will happen a second time.”

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

Organizers Commodore P.J. and Lady Cristina Nagel, owners of Capt. Party in Roanoke, said they have been planning Pirate Days for the past 10 years and have never before had to move the event completely off the water.

“We’ve added some new stuff, but it’s just not going to be on the water,” the Nagels said. “We’ve been monitoring it (water levels) for a year, and we realized that it’s not something that’s going to change overnight.”

The unusually low water levels have created hazards for some boaters, exposing rocks and shoals that are typically submerged.

Barry Bridges, a local boater and Sea Tow captain who has lived on the lake for 26 years, said the prolonged low water is unlike anything he has experienced.

“I’ve lived out on the lake for about 26 years now,” Bridges said. “I’ve not seen it this bad. I’ve seen it close back in the early 2000s, but I’ve never seen it last this long.”

Bridges said he recently responded to a call after a boat became stranded on a shoal in the middle of the lake.

“It happens at night when people are maybe going a little bit too fast to be able to watch where they’re going, and they’ll run up on the shore,” Bridges said. “Thankfully, we haven’t had any serious injuries so far.”

Despite those incidents, Bridges said the vast majority of Smith Mountain Lake remains safe for recreational boating.

“Probably 95% or 98% of the water on the lake is perfectly safe to be boating in,” he said.

Although the traditional on-the-water activities have been canceled, organizers said attendees will still have plenty of pirate-themed entertainment.

The event will feature a pirate dunk tank, water gun battles between children and pirates, and kiddie pools for children ages 3 and younger.

Additional water-themed activities are planned throughout the weekend, including a water battle at noon at Goodhue Boat Company Blackwater, formerly Crazy Horse Marina, and another at 1:30 p.m. at Portside Marina with the Virginia Dare.

Pirate Days will have events all weekend long, starting with the Pirate’s Ball on Friday at 7 p.m. at Mango’s Bar & Grill, and continuing on Saturday and Sunday starting at 10 a.m. at Wind Vineyards.

The Argentina superstar responded to critics who have been bashing the reigning World Cup champions over perceptions of beneficial officiating and favoritism by the soccer establishment. He said the team’s ability to overturn late-game deficits, most recently the semifinal victory over England, is the result of championship pedigree and nothing more.

After trailing 1-0 going into the 85th minute, Argentina rallied for a 2-1 win over England on Wednesday to reach the World Cup final.

The victory led tens of thousands to flood the streets of Buenos Aires in ecstatic celebrations, and marked another remarkable comeback that showed the perseverance of a team that is now one win from a back-to-back titles. Argentina faces Spain in Sunday's final.

Argentina earlier survived by beating Cape Verde and Switzerland in extra time, and rallied for an improbable 3-2 victory over Egypt after coming back from being down 2-0 with 11 minutes of regulation time to play. But both the Swiss and Egyptian coaches criticized the refereeing. Egypt's Hossam Hassan went as far as to say that his team was the victim of a soccer establishment that favored Messi and Argentina.

The comments fueled criticism sparked by fans who argue that the FIFA bracket favored La Albiceleste, and unfounded allegations on social media claiming that the soccer governing body wants Argentina to once again become World Cup champion.

“We’ve been the best over these past four years, either you like it or not, and no matter what anyone says,” Messi said after the win over England.

“Once again, we’ve established ourselves among the top two teams in the world. That proves that everything we’ve done is no fluke and that nothing was handed to us."

The game against Switzerland swung on a call that riled up those who believe Argentina has been favored by World Cup officials.

The Swiss had just tied the game at 1-1 on Dan Ndoye’s goal in the 67th minute when Leandro Paredes was shown a yellow card for a tackle on Breel Embolo. But video showed the Swiss player falling before the Argentina midfielder made contact with him, and since Embolo received a yellow card earlier in the match, he was sent off and Switzerland was left to defend with 10 players.

“We were punished because of a rule that in my opinion is completely unacceptable,” Swiss coach Murat Yakin said after the game. “It’s very painful that we were eliminated that way. I don’t think we deserve that today, and in my opinion, my boys are the real heroes."

Meanwhile, the Egyptian Football Association had said it “cannot remain silent” after what it believed was unfair and biased officiating in Egypt’s loss against Argentina.

Argentina's team had not acknowledged the complaints on officiating and FIFA. In previous press conferences, Argentine coach Lionel Scaloni had even advised journalists asking about the matter “not to consume so much social media.”

But after the victory over England, the reigning champions fought back.

“Reaching two consecutive World Cup finals is something very few achieve, and this group did it," Messi said. "If we had lost to England, there would have been people coming out to spout some nonsense, but we didn’t give them the chance.”

Wednesday’s semifinal was the latest chapter in a long-running feud that has transcended the field to encompass British control over the disputed Falkland Islands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas and claims as its sovereign territory.

The British government on Thursday urged FIFA to investigate Argentina’s team after players celebrating their victory over England posed with a banner handed over by fans, reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” — “The Malvinas are Argentine.”

Enzo Fernandez acknowledged that his goal celebration, which leveled the score at 1-1, was aimed at Argentina's critics. The Chelsea midfielder first cupped his hands to his ears, a gesture interpreted in soccer as a challenge to critics. Then, he opened and closed his fingers, as if inviting them to keep talking.

“There was a lot of talk; it was a mix of euphoria and frustration,” Fernandez said.

Scaloni, for his part, stated in the post-semifinal press conference that “this talk of ‘help’ will always exist; it doesn’t bother me.”

“With VAR today, it’s very difficult to get help; it would have to be glaringly obvious. We knew there was no help.”

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See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

The S&P 500 fell 0.5%, even though more stocks rose within the index than fell. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 105 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.5%.

Nearly three out of every four stocks rose within the S&P 500 after more of the country’s biggest companies reported better earnings for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Abbott jumped 10.7% after the healthcare company delivered a fatter profit than expected and raised its forecast for earnings over the full year. J.B. Hunt Transport Services climbed 8% after the freight company likewise topped analysts’ expectations for the latest quarter.

But a 1% move for Nvidia’s stock packs more punch on the S&P 500 than a 1% move for any other company because it’s the largest on Wall Street by value.

And Nvidia fell 2.4%, making it the heaviest weight on the index. Other AI winners also sank, giving back some of their stellar gains.

Micron Technology fell 5.6% to shave its gain for the year so far below 199%. Sandisk fell 12.6% but is nevertheless up 494% for the year so far. Western Digital sank 9.2% but is still up 171% for the year so far.

Such stocks have been under pressure for weeks because of worries that their prices shot too high and that voracious demand for computer memory and processors may not be sustainable if AI ends up not producing as much profit and productivity as promised.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 38.63 points to 7,533.77. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 105.67 to 52,552.97, and the Nasdaq composite sank 387.28 to 25,881.95.

The losses came even though Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a bellwether of the chip industry, reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its stock in Taiwan rose 1.2%, but its stock that trades in the United States fell 2.3%.

In South Korea, drops for AI winners like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dragged the Kospi index down 6.4%. It’s been among the world’s shakiest markets in recent weeks because of how dominant the two AI winners are in it.

The day before, the Kospi jumped 6.2%, but it’s had drops of 8.9%, 7.8% and 5.3% in the last couple weeks.

A hike to interest rates by the Bank of Korea also weighed on stocks in Seoul, the first by the bank since 2023.

Higher interest rates can keep a lid on inflation, but they also slow the economy and hurt prices for all kinds of investments. And worries are rising that the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world may have to raise rates to rein in the effects of expensive oil.

Oil prices are near their highest in a month because of worries that the war with Iran will keep oil tankers out of the Strait of Hormuz and prevent shipments of crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly climbed above $86 per barrel in the morning before erasing the gain and falling back to settle at $84.23, down 0.8% from the day before.

In the bond market, the 10-year Treasury yield edged up to 4.56% from 4.55% late Wednesday and just 3.97% before the war with Iran began. Higher yields have already sent the average 30-year mortgage rate to its highest level in nearly a year.

Reports on the U.S. economy came in mixed, which added to the eddies swirling through the bond market. One report said shoppers spent less at U.S. retailers last month than economists expected. But after ignoring sales at gasoline stations, spending by U.S. consumers remained resilient.

A separate report said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, an indication of a solid job market, while a third report said manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region is better than economists expected.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia, including drops of 1.8% in Shanghai and 2.8% in Tokyo.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was an outlier and rose 1.3%. Alibaba rose after China’s cyberspace regulator said Wednesday it had approved the Apple Intelligence AI tool for use in China. An Alibaba spokesperson said its Qwen model will be integrated into Apple Intelligence.

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AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

Bryson DeChambeau might be getting the hang of this, too, no matter what three-time British Open champion Nick Faldo thinks about his strategy.

An opening round lasting some 15 hours included just about everything during a warm and breezy start. Five of the leading 12 players were playing the British Open for the first time. Rory McIlroy missed three 4-foot putts in a four-hole span and had six bogeys in his round of 72. Scottie Scheffler opened with four birdies in six holes and didn't make another the rest of the way for a 68.

Most startling was Suber, a 26-year-old American who has yet to win anywhere since leaving Ole Miss and is playing in only his third major. He made a tough par save on the new par-3 15th with slopes off severely on both sides. He followed with a 6-foot birdie on the 16th and then choked up on a 4-iron from 233 yards and hit it to 6 feet for eagle.

Not bad for his seventh round in any major, and first on a links course as tough as Birkdale.

“Just kind of kept the ball in good spots and didn’t put much pressure on my game to make pars,” Suber said.

He led by one shot over Sungjae Im and Dan Brown of England. The nine players at 67 include four Open debutants — Alex Smalley, Ryan Gerard, M.J. Daffue, Pierceson Coody.

And then there was DeChambeau, who has missed the cut in all three majors this year and has chosen not to speak to the media since Friday at the Masters, except for on LIV Golf.

Turns out he had enough strategy to get in the mix, often ripping driver to take the fearsome bunkers out of play and doing enough right for a 67 that left him two shots behind.

Strategy became a talking point when Faldo told the Sky Sports Golf Podcast this week, “DeChambeau has zero clue of strategy. He said last year, ‘I’m going to go out and attack the links’. Well, I’ve never attacked a links. You thread it, don’t you? You feed it down the fairway. ... You don’t think, ‘Oh, I’ll just blast it down there.’”

DeChambeau hit only four fairways but missed only three greens, though he was rarely in big trouble when he wasn't in the short grass.

He twice blasted tee shots over the trouble and close to the green at the par-4 second and the par-4 10th, the latter a blind shot. He made birdie on both. And while Jon Rahm was among those who said going long can lead to trouble at some point, the only two shots DeChambeau dropped came from his putting (the par-5 14th) and chipping (the par-4 18th).

He was tied for the early lead until going from wispy rough over the back of the 18th, chipped weakly to 8 feet and missed the putt. He missed three birdie chances from around 10 feet or under, one of them on redesigned, 321-yard fifth hole, when he drove it just over the green.

DeChambeau agreed to take a few questions from the R&A and said, “I feel like I did a really good job today of being incredibly strategic and focused super hard on placing it in the right places. Besides 18, I placed the ball in some good areas. I just need to hit more fairways. Other than that, I feel like my strategy was nice today.”

Cameron Young, one of the hottest players in the spring but quiet the past two months, also was at 67 along with Robert MacIntyre, Thomas Detry and Francesco Molinari, the 2018 Open champion at Carnoustie, which also featured a baked links course.

Scheffler had few complaints after a 68, even not making a birdie over his last 12 holes, playing the two par 5s in 1 over and making a pair of soft bogeys. He also missed a 5-foot birdie putt. Whether he could have gotten more out of his round was of little concern.

“If I continue to strike the ball the way I did today and just keep giving myself looks, that’s part of it,” Scheffler said. “Golf is played over 72 holes, and I definitely liked what I saw today.”

Smalley, who took a two-shot lead into the final round at the PGA Championship, was leading until his drive on the 18th was fading with the wind and then the luck of links golf took over. One wild bounce sent it further right and out of bounds. He finished with a double bogey for a 67.

“Got up to where the ball was supposed to be and was told it hit a spectator fence and kicked another 15 yards right out of bounds. All three of us in our group actually hit it over there, and mine just got an unlucky break,” Smalley said. "Poor tee shot, poor break. Sometimes that's how it goes."

Scheffler played in the group with DeChambeau and they traded birdies early. For six holes, the world's No. 1 player had total control of his shots and looked as though he couldn't miss. He got to 4 under when he gave a leg kick as his 40-foot birdie putt dropped on No. 6.

But then he missed the seventh green — 139 yards, downhill — to the left between a pair of bunkers, and his pitch was so strong it flirted with going in a bunker on the other side. He missed a 5-foot birdie chance on the 11th, and then made a mess of the par-5 17th when his ball was buried so deep in the grass he thought someone might have stepped on it during the search.

“Sometimes you hit it over there and you get a clean lie and you’re able to give yourself a look, and then other times like today, you pay a pretty severe price,” he said. “But I guess don’t hit it offline.”

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

According to officials, the crash occurred at 6:20 p.m. on the 2000 block of Cove Road when a 2015 Suzuki Motorcycle driven by 54-year-old Leonard Heldreth was traveling Northbound on Cove Road and crossed the center line and hit a 2000 Ford F-150 traveling southbound head-on.

Heldreth, a Wythe County resident, died as a result of the crash. The condition or whether there were any other individuals in the 2000 Ford F-150 besides the driver were not given to 10 News by VSP.

The puzzled looks, shakes of the head and sagging shoulders said it all.

McIlroy was just 10 holes into his bid to win the British Open for the first time since 2014 and he was veering dangerously close to playing himself out of title contention.

Missing one putt from four feet wasn’t necessarily unusual. But doing it three times? In the space of four holes?

That trio of bewildering close-range mishaps — on Nos. 7, 8 and 10 — came either side of McIlroy driving the green to make birdie on the 415-yard No. 9. Go figure.

And it pretty much summed up the world No. 2’s wild late-afternoon ride in a 2-over 72 that included six bogeys and left him seven shots off the first-round lead, held surprisingly by 115th-ranked Jackson Suber on Thursday.

“Just too many stupid mistakes,” McIlroy said — and he was specifically referring to his putting on greens he described as “very inconsistent”

“I missed a couple early on that looked like they were going to break one way and they actually went another way, and then when you get the next one, you’re over it and it’s just very hard to trust that the ball is going to do what you think it’s going to do. Then you maybe don’t make quite as committed of a stroke.”

McIlroy arrived at the Open after a seventh-place finish at the Scottish Open, where he went viral by shouting “I’m so bad at golf” following a poor approach shot late in his final round.

The sixth player — and only European — to complete the career Grand Slam rarely hides his emotions and he cut a frustrated figure for most of his round Thursday, not least when he chipped through the green and into a bunker at the par-5 No. 17.

McIlroy managed to splash out to 8 feet while having one knee on the ground but a weakly struck par putt led to another dropped shot.

“It’s just hard to judge the speed sometimes,” he said.

Making birdie at the tough last hole after a brilliant approach to 5 feet sparked shouts of “Rory, Rory” from spectators in the grandstands and at least gave him something to cling to.

He barely raised a smile, though, after plucking the ball out of the cup. One stat spoke volumes: he ranked 148th in putting in the 156-man field.

McIlroy is playing a reduced schedule in 2026 and this is just his sixth event since winning the Masters for the second straight year, which moved his total of major titles to six.

A win this week would tie him with Harry Vardon as the European player with most majors in men’s golf.

He already has plenty of work to do, even if he tried to remain positive.

“Hopefully we’ll get the better conditions tomorrow and maybe the greens are a little bit smoother in the morning,” McIlroy said. “Go out there and shoot a good one and get myself right back in it for the weekend.”

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

The firm’s enforcement chief said Kalshi contacted federal regulators about bets allegedly made about what the president would say in public addresses.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president is aware of the situation, which she described as “unfortunate” and “a disgrace.”

“The White House has extremely strict ethical guidelines with respect to issues like this,” Leavitt told reporters, saying the aide is on unpaid leave.

ABC News reported Thursday that Gabriel Perez, who has been operating Trump’s teleprompter since 2016, used his inside knowledge to win more than $100,000 betting on what the president would say in big speeches, including the State of the Union address earlier this year.

Robert Denault, Kalshi’s lawyer and head of enforcement, said on X that the “Kalshi surveillance team promptly flagged, investigated and referred these trades” to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission that has regulatory authority over such matters.

His statement did not name Perez.

“We have been assisting regulators on this matter and provided all evidence that we collected, as we do with any referral,” Denault added.

ABC based its report on multiple sources who have knowledge of the matter but spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details.

The ABC report described suspicious activity on Kalshi's “Mentions” market, in which users can place bets on what phrases and specific words might be used in public speeches. Kalshi recently began requiring users to disclose their place of employment, and the platform's policy prohibits betting based on information that users gain because of their job.

Attention on members of the administration profiting from the presidency has reached all the way to Trump himself.

On Thursday, his media company announced it would charge for special high-speed access to Truth Social posts, including possibly his own affecting national security and financial markets.

In his most recent financial disclosures, Trump reported making $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses in 2025, raking in profits while his investors suffered losses in marketplaces that Trump has sought to shield from tighter federal regulation.

Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products, including “governance tokens,” according to the required annual disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. It also showed another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face. Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales.

The president has also profited from merchandising deals and high-dollar political and official events at his properties, significantly increasing his net worth since returning to power.

Trump's aides have stood by his personal and family business practices.

“The president is abiding by all conflict-of-interest laws that are applicable to the president,” Leavitt said earlier this year. It's "absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency.”

Clothed in jail garb and shackled, Tycen Proper, 19, of Danville, Ohio, and Chandler Scaggs, 21, of Chapmanville, West Virginia, entered the pleas before U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Sargus Jr. in Ohio, where the case has been consolidated. They and the other six defendants are each charged with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to commit murder on federal government territory and to murder a federal government official.

Sargus scheduled their trial to begin Sept. 14.

It remains unclear from the court record how close the would-be attackers were to being able to carry out the plan they are alleged to have hatched.

Scaggs' attorney, Eric Brehm, said in a statement that his office is only in the early stages of reviewing the case, “but one issue is already clear: there appears to be a significant disconnect between the severity of the alleged offenses and Mr. Scaggs' naivety, lack of sophistication, and judgment.” The first charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison; the second could mean prison for life.

In detailing the group’s July 9 indictments last week, U.S. Attorney Dominick Gerace II was asked how close the alleged plot came to fruition.

“What would have happened or could have happened, that's never going to be clear, because, thank God, there was an intervention here and this thing was disrupted,” he said. “But, in my view, when I look at what's been alleged there, it seems pretty likely that someone or multiple people were driving to Washington, D.C., to do something.”

Proper's lawyer, Joseph Patituce, said his legal team is waiting for the government to produce its evidence for review.

“Mr. Proper is a young 19-year-old man who, despite that youth, recognizes how serious these allegations are,” he said in a statement. “It is important for the public to remember that an indictment is simply the vehicle by which the government puts a citizen on notice of criminal charges and that Mr. Proper is protected by the presumption of innocence that is enshrined in our Constitution.”

According to the indictment, the plot began in May. Members of the group — citing grievances about government corruption, water-guzzling data centers and the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files — began amassing money, firearms, ammunition, body armor, explosives, drones, medical equipment, communications equipment and other items.

The attack was planned to take place at the cage-fighting show dubbed UFC Freedom 250, which was held on the South Lawn of the White House to celebrate the nation's 250th anniversary. Law enforcement officials said they learned of the possible threat four days before the event was scheduled to take place.

One of the defendants told investigators that they planned to fly explosive-laden drones into the event and then shoot panicked crowd members as they fled, according to a federal affidavit.

The Justice Department announced charges against seven people from across the country last month, including from Ohio, Missouri, Washington, Nebraska and California. Officials said the suspects harbored fringe conspiracy theories and hoped the attack would destabilize the government.

Four alleged conspirators charged in Missouri, Nebraska and California the weekend of the event and two more charged about a week later in Washington and Missouri are still in the process of being moved to Ohio to face charges. They are likely to be tried as a group.

Scaggs was arrested separately later, but was brought to Ohio ahead of the other out-of-state defendants.

One of the few smokers in golf, Brown went through “seven or eight" cigarettes during his 4-under 66 that left him tied for second place, one shot off the lead, after the first round at Royal Birkdale on Thursday.

After weeks of sunshine in this northwest corner of England, the fairways here are baked and parched — making them a potential fire hazard from discarded cigarettes.

“I’ve been making sure that they’re out,” the 31-year-old Englishman said reassuringly.

Not that he sounds too proud of a habit that makes him stand out on the circuit, but which he feels is needed to relieve some stress.

“Sorry, Mum,” he said with a cheeky smile.

The burly and bearded Brown is an interesting character, not least because of the 10 tattoos on his body — three of which are of little birds — and his YouTube channel called “BeersForeBogeys” which has around 4,000 subscribers.

Brown first came into widespread consciousness in golf in 2024 when, as the world No. 272, he shot a 6-under 65 for the outright first-round lead in his British Open debut at Royal Troon.

His name — one he shares with the author of “The Da Vinci Code” — was a headline writer’s dream and his dry humor proved popular, too. Brown was tied for second place heading into the final round at Troon and wound up in a tie for 10th.

That experience taught him he could compete with the best players in the world.

“I feel like I’m a better player now to what I was back then, two years ago,” he said. “So we’ll see.”

Brown arrived at the Open with no form from his first year on the PGA Tour — he missed the cut in his last four events — but has immediately taken to the Birkdale links.

He made seven birdies, including three straight around the turn, after being 1 over after seven holes.

“Today a few putts dropped, which was nice to see,” Brown said, “because I’ve not seen that for a while.

"(Hopefully), I’m in a sort of similar area on the leaderboard come Sunday."

That might mean continuing to have a smoke during his rounds.

“There might be a big drop off by Sunday if I’m not allowed," he said.

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

The policy, known as “public charge,” appeared on Thursday in the Federal Register. It will be formally published on July 20 and take effect Sept. 18. Under the policy, applicants for green cards have to show they wouldn’t be burdens to the country or “public charges.”

The policy was first implemented in February 2020 as one of President Donald Trump’s moves to limit legal immigration during his first administration, but it was reversed after Democratic President Joe Biden came to power.

Its return comes when the Republican administration is implementing a hard-line policy to curb both illegal and legal immigration, and when the cost of healthcare and food is rising.

The federal government “is reaffirming the requirement of self-reliance, protecting public resources and ending policies that encouraged dependency on the backs of hard-working American taxpayers,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said in a post published on its X account.

“Under President Trump, USCIS is restoring the basic principle that immigrants must be able to support themselves," the post said.

While the administration’s crackdown on immigration has an increased focus on deportations and immigration enforcement in cities across the country and at borders and entry points, it has also taken actions that target legal immigrants and mixed-status families, in which the parents are foreign nationals with U.S.-born children.

The rule expands disqualification options

Federal law already requires those seeking permanent residency or legal status to demonstrate that they will not become a public charge. The Trump administration’s rule, however, broadens the grounds for disqualification.

The new rule does not describe or specify by name the benefits and programs that could be considered a public charge. Instead, it says that officers who would implement the policy will make “individualized, fact-specific public charge inadmissible determinations, based on a totality of the alien’s circumstances.”

It says that, “using good judgment and discretion, officers will more accurately assess an alien's likelihood at any time of becoming a public charge.”

The Trump administration first promoted the rule in 2018 as a way to ensure that only those who were self-sufficient came to the U.S. Immigrant rights advocates criticized it, saying it amounted to a “wealth test.” Public health experts said it would lead to worse health outcomes.

Manatt Health, a group that provides advice to state and federal governments, estimated the policy would have deterred as many as 26 million people from seeking healthcare, food, housing or other aid through programs for which they qualified under federal law. About half were U.S. citizens, mostly children or adults living in a mixed-status family, according to the group.

Experts also noted that most people who receive benefits from the government are already legal residents.

A 2020 study from the Migration Policy Institute said that while the “chilling effects” may be vast, the number of immigrants who could be deemed ineligible for legal permanent residence based on use of one of the public benefits under the rule was small.

The institute estimated that no more than 167,000 people — less than 1% of the 22.1 million noncitizens residing in the United States at that time — could be determined ineligible for a green card based on their current use of a listed benefit.

There were 22.8 million noncitizens living in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Census Bureau.

Critics say the rule creates fear in the community

Nongovernmental organizations said the policy generated confusion and fear and caused many immigrants and their U.S.-born relatives to decide not to apply for benefits and services to which they were entitled.

Immigrant advocates condemned the government’s decision to revive the “public charge” rule and expressed concern.

“This regulation is a direct assault on immigrant families, and a threat to our country’s health and economic security,” said Adriana Cadena, executive director at the Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition. “The Trump administration is basing immigration decisions on bias and politics, regardless of the resulting harm.”

Sarah Krieger, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, said the rule would make immigrants afraid to go to the doctor, buy food at the grocery store and file taxes.

“With this new rule, they are sowing fear and chaos to ultimately reshape America into a country where only the few who are white and ultra-wealthy are welcome,” Krieger said. “The rule is not just deeply harmful, it also violates the law.”