Manchester City beat Chelsea 1-0 at Wembley Stadium on Saturday thanks to a moment of magic from Antoine Semenyo.

The forward brought to life a final that had produced little in the way of chances or excitement with a spectacular back-heeled goal in the second half.

Running onto a cross from Erling Haaland in the 72nd minute, Semenyo flicked his heel at the ball and directed it low into the far corner past diving Chelsea goalkeeper Robert Sanchez.

Victory kept City in the hunt for a domestic trophy treble, having already won the English League Cup. Pep Guardiola’s team is also second in the Premier League, two points behind Arsenal with two rounds to go.

This was Guardiola’s 17th major trophy in 10 years at City and his 35th in his career overall.

City has won the Cup eight times and moved level with Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham as equal third on the all-time winners' list.

Defeat means Chelsea will end the season trophyless — a year after being crowned Club World Cup champion — in what has been a crisis-ridden campaign.

After firing two coaches since the turn of the year, Chelsea went into the final with a novice on the sideline in Calum McFarlane, a former youth coach taking charge of only his seventh first team game.

The turmoil at Chelsea led to supporters staging a protest against its American owners outside the stadium before kickoff.

In that sense it was commendable that McFarlane was able to frustrate Guardiola for such long periods.

That was until Semenyo's match-winning moment.

The Ghana international joined City from Bournemouth only in January and made an immediate impact — scoring 10 goals and helping the team to two trophies.

After the final whistle City fans sang the club anthem “Blue Moon” loudly, and cheering Bernardo Silva and John Stones as they lifted the famous trophy. Both players are leaving at the end of the season.

“Since I arrived it’s been 20 trophies, which isn’t bad. I care a lot about Manchester City," said Bernardo, counting Community Shield victories as well.

Triumph for City came after back-to-back losses in the final in the previous two years. This was the record fourth year in a row it reached the final, having last won it in 2023.

Arsenal has won soccer's oldest knockout competition a record 14 times. Manchester United was second with 13.

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

Not yet, at least, though a path is now open for Andy Burnham, the popular mayor of Greater Manchester, to try to unseat beleaguered Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

It’s far from a sure thing, as there would be big hurdles to clear.

Burnham first needs to return to Parliament, where he could mount a challenge to Starmer's leadership, potentially alongside others, including former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who confirmed Saturday that he would stand in any race if and when it is triggered.

Starmer, who has vowed to lead on, has been on the ropes, facing plummeting approval ratings and questions about his judgment. His unpopularity was undoubtedly a key reason why Labour took a beating in U.K.-wide local elections this month. More than a fifth of the party's lawmakers in the House of Commons have urged him to stand down.

A return home yields a new look and nickname

Burnham, 56, is seen as Starmer's biggest would-be rival, partly because he's perceived to be to the political left of the prime minister.

The mayor is known as the “King of the North,” and his Labour backers will hope that moniker reaps rewards.

The allusion to the popular Jon Snow character in “Game of Thrones” is a sign of respect — earned for Burnham's fierce backing of northern England, its working class culture and heritage. It projects an image that he’s not part of the London political establishment. For many northerners, that counts for a lot.

His three sizable mayoral victories since 2017 show he can win.

But he hasn't always. Burnham, who was in the Cabinet of Gordon Brown’s government from 2007 to 2010, ran twice for the leadership of the Labour Party and lost badly — first in 2010 and then in 2015. Looking back on those campaigns, he was pretty stiff.

Ending his 16-year tenure in Parliament yielded a more polished performer and a sleeker look. Suits and ties were largely replaced by a smart-casual look, often paired with sneakers.

That may seem superficial, but it broke down barriers with voters.

More importantly, his stint as mayor made him a more effective operator and, arguably, the best communicator in Labour’s ranks.

His standing grew during the COVID-19 pandemic when he became the de facto spokesman for northern England by constantly haranguing Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson over what he called a “London-centric” approach to the crisis.

Burnham would have to quit his job as mayor if he wins a special parliamentary election in the constituency of Makerfield, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of Manchester.

The road of return to Parliament runs through Reform UK

His route back to the House of Commons opened up Thursday when Labour lawmaker Josh Simons said he would step down to make way for Burnham. Though Burnham was blocked from running for a seat earlier this year, Labour’s executive body has said he can this time in the special election expected within weeks.

It will likely be a bruising battle and one of, if not the most, consequential special elections in U.K. history.

“We need to fix politics, to fix the economy, get the basics back under public control so that people can afford their rent, energy bills, etc," Burnham told the BBC on Saturday. “We’ve got to see this as a moment to reclaim the Labour Party, to save it from where it’s been. we can’t just carry on as we are.”

Simons secured the seat by about 5,400 votes two years ago, but that was in Labour’s landslide victory of 2024 that swept Conservatives out after 14 years.

Times have changed dramatically, and Labour’s recent battering came at the hands of the ascendant anti-immigrant Reform UK party on the right and, to a lesser-extent, the eco-populist Greens on the left. All the wards in the Makerfield constituency were won by Reform in the local races.

Reform’s leader, Nigel Farage, said the party would “throw absolutely everything at it.”

Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said Burnham can capitalize on his “big name” reputation and as someone who gets things done.

“There will be a lot of people who would like to see him get back into Parliament, not least to take down Keir Starmer,” Bale said. “In some ways, it’s a useful test for Burnham because if he can’t beat Reform in that constituency, then quite frankly, he’s not much use to the Labour Party as leader.”

One battle after another

Labour has never ousted one of its leaders while in government, but there is a process.

If Burnham wins, he would either trigger a leadership contest or join one. To do so, a member of Parliament needs the support of a fifth — or 81 — of Labour's 403 members. Starmer, who has vowed to fight on, would automatically be entitled to run.

Wes Streeting, who resigned as health secretary on Thursday but did not directly challenge Starmer, confirmed he would be a candidate in the likely leadership election.

“We need a proper contest with the best candidates on the field, and I’ll be standing," he said.

Streeting insisted he had enough support to trigger a contest, but suggested he would “lack legitimacy” without Burnham having a chance to return to Parliament.

Streeting said the future of the U.K. was at stake in the next general election and that Labour risked being “the handmaidens of Nigel Farage” if the party did not heed the electorate's warnings last week. He also voiced his hope that the U.K. would go back into the European Union.

Others said to be considering doing so are former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, defense minister Al Carns and former party leader Ed Miliband.

For now, all permutations go through Makerfield and that result could have a seismic impact.

“Were Burnham to win the by-election, it’s unlikely that Keir Starmer will actually stand in that leadership contest,” Bale said. “If Burnham fails, then Starmer might feel he has a chance against Streeting and Rayner.”

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Associated Press writer Danica Kirka contributed to this report.

Armored vehicles, police horses, dogs, drones and helicopters were deployed along with at least 4,000 officers as the Metropolitan Police aims to avoid clashes. Hundreds more are on standby.

Police tried to make sure there was no crossover between the march organized by far-right agitator Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known by his pseudonym Tommy Robinson, and the annual demonstration to commemorate Nakba, the Arabic term for “catastrophe” that marks the exodus of some 700,000 Palestinians from what is now Israel in 1948.

So far, there's not been much trouble

As of mid afternoon, police said 31 people had been arrested for a variety of offenses.

“While this may seem high, to this point both protests have proceeded largely without significant incident," the Met said.

The marches took place at a particularly radicalized time in British politics, with the extremes on the right and the left advancing across the U.K. in elections last week.

Those protesting are motivated by a variety of issues, including anger at the number of would-be asylum-seekers making the dangerous crossing across the English Channel from the French coast to the U.K. in small boats, to Israel's actions in Gaza that have devastated the Palestinian enclave and killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 72,700 people,

As the marches progressed through the afternoon, police said they will be mindful of splinter groups coming in contact.

Some foreigners were barred from entering UK

Prosecutors have been told to consider whether protest placards, banners and chants viewed on social media may amount to offenses of stirring up hatred during the rallies.

“This is not about restricting free speech," said the Crown Prosecution Service's director, Stephen Parkinson. “It is about preventing hate crime and protecting the public, particularly at a time of heightened tensions.”

The British government has also blocked 11 foreign nationals from entering the country for the “Unite the Kingdom” rally. Right-wing figures claiming to have been barred include Polish politician Dominik Tarczynski, Belgian politician Filip Dewinter, anti-Islam commentator Valentina Gomez and Dutch activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek.

“We will block those coming into the U.K. who seek to incite hatred and violence," said Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is fighting for his political life following those disastrous election results earlier this month. "For anyone who sets out to wreak havoc on our streets, to intimidate or threaten anyone, you can expect to face the full force of the law.”

On Friday, Starmer visited the Met's command center to discuss policing arrangements for the rallies alongside Met Commissioner Mark Rowley and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Live facial recognition will be used for the first time in a protest policing operation, with cameras set up in the north London neighborhood of Camden that is not on the route of the “Unite the Kingdom” march, but which is expected to be used by a lot of people attending the event.

Farther north in the capital at Wembley, police will be hoping that there won't be any incidents following the conclusion of the FA Cup Final, in which Manchester City beat Chelsea 1-0. A little more than 83,000 fans were in attendance.

Heart of Midlothian was denied a first Scottish league title since 1960 on Saturday after losing a showdown game 3-1 at Celtic, which had to win and got the go-ahead goal in the 87th minute.

Add 2026 to 1986 and 1965 on the list of cruel ways fans of the unheralded Edinburgh club have seen title dreams dashed in the final minutes of the season.

Daizen Maeda, who is going to the World Cup with Japan, scored the crucial goal at Celtic Park that ultimately ensured the Glasgow giant would be crowned champion for the fifth year in a row and 14th time in 15 seasons. The goal was confirmed by video review to annul a raised offside flag.

Celtic extended its lead with an empty-net goal in the eighth and last minute of stoppage time when Hearts goalkeeper Alexander Schwolow went to the other end in search of a title-winning equalizer.

Callum Osmand putting the ball into the unguarded goal sparked wild celebrations from Celtic's fans, and hundreds invaded the field. Hearts captain Lawrence Shankland was reportedly punched by a Celtic fan as he tried to leave the field.

Shankland’s header in the 43rd gave Hearts a lead in a game it needed only to draw. Celtic leveled in first-half stoppage time when Arne Engels slotted a penalty awarded for handball.

‘That’ penalty in midweek

The buildup to one of the most eagerly anticipated games in Scottish soccer history was dominated by the hugely controversial penalty that gave Celtic a key win on Wednesday.

It changed the balance of the title race and gave Celtic an easier path to its record 56th Scottish league title.

Deep into stoppage time in the second-to-last round, Celtic was tied at Motherwell 2-2. Then a penalty was awarded on video review for what the officials eventually judged was handball by Motherwell's Sam Nicholson.

Video evidence was inconclusive, to say the least, and furiously debated since late Wednesday when Celtic forward Kelechi Iheanacho scored from the spot in the 99th minute.

Soccer great Gary Lineker later called it possibly the worst VAR call he ever saw, and Hearts coach Derek McInnes said it was "actually quite disgusting.”

Had Celtic not won at Motherwell, the gap to Hearts would be three points. Celtic would then have needed to win by three clear goals on Saturday to edge the tiebreaker on goal difference.

Instead, Celtic needed just a win by any score.

Hearts' cruel run

Celtic and its city rival Rangers have won every Scottish league title since Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen was champion in 1985. That four-decade run started with severe trauma for Hearts fans.

In 1986, just as in this season, a surprising Hearts led the standings for months and needed just a draw on the last day.

In both cruel climaxes, Hearts held that draw in its hands beyond the 80th minute. Forty years ago, Hearts conceded two late goals to Dundee substitute Albert Kidd, and Celtic won the title on goal difference by winning its game 5-0.

Older fans recall another Hearts-breaker in 1965. Hosting second-placed Kilmarnock, Hearts knew a 2-0 loss was the result that could deny the title on the now-defunct tiebreaker of goal average. The result? 2-0 to Kilmarnock.

The latest 3-1 loss at Celtic added an unwanted chapter in the history of a club now majority owned by fans, with a fascinating minority owner: Tony Bloom, the professional gambler, who also owns English Premier League club Brighton. Bloom's data analytics firm found transfer market gems for Hearts, including the league player of the year Cláudio Braga.

Celtic's season of turmoil

Celtic's league title came in a chaotic season that saw two coaches leave: Brendan Rodgers, in open conflict with the club's board, and Wilfried Nancy, who lasted just weeks after being hired from Columbus Crew of Major League Soccer.

Long-time chairman Peter Lawwell left in December citing “intolerable” levels of “abuse and threats” from fans toward him and his family.

Club icon Martin O’Neill was twice appointed as interim manager and, at the age of 74, this was his fourth league title with the team — coming 22 years after his previous one. Celtic can do the double next weekend, in the Scottish Cup final against second-tier Dunfermline.

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

Trump announced the joint operation in Africa’s most populous country in a late-night social media post. He said Abu Bakr al-Mainuki was second-in-command of the Islamic State group globally and “thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing.”

Al-Mainuki was viewed as the key figure in IS organizing and finance, and had been plotting attacks against the United States and its interests, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share sensitive information.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu confirmed the operation and said Al-Mainuki was killed alongside “several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin."

The joint operation is the latest by both countries since their new security partnership that kicked off last year after Trump claimed Christians were being targeted in Nigeria’s security crisis and threatened U.S. military intervention. Residents and security analysts have said Nigeria's security crisis affects both Christians, predominant in the south, and Muslims, who are the majority in the north.

According to the spokesperson for the Nigerian military task force that carried out the Friday operation, the mission was a "highly complex precision air-land operation" and was carried out during three hours of darkness early Saturday without any casualties or loss of assets.

“His elimination represents the single most consequential counterterrorism outcome" in the region since the inception of the operation in 2015, Sani Uba, the spokesperson for the task force, said in a statement.

United Nations experts in their latest report said IS had intensified efforts in West Africa, citing more than 500 attacks between January and October last year.

Questions over Al-Mainuki's exact status in IS

Born in Nigeria’s Borno province in 1982, al-Mainuki took the helm of the IS branch in West Africa after his predecessor, Mamman Nur, was killed in 2018, according to the Counter Extremism Project, which tracks militant groups.

Al-Mainuki was based in the Sahel area, the monitoring group said, adding that it is believed that he fought in Libya when IS was active in the North African nation more than a decade ago. He was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2023.

Trump, in his social media announcement, said Al-Mainuki was “second in command globally,” hiding in Africa, a claim that some analysts say is off the mark. The Nigerian military, in a statement, also said intelligence shows that earlier this year, Al-Mainuki might have been “elevated to the position of Head of the General Directorate of States, placing him the second most senior leader within the ISIS global hierarchy.”

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said Al-Mainuki was the senior ISIS General Directorate of Provinces Emir — “the number two for ISIS globally — responsible for overseeing the planning of attacks, directing the hostage-taking and managing financial operations."

There is no way to verify his position within IS independently. Analysts say Al-Mainuki was the deputy to Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the leader of the Islamic State West African Province who was reported to have died in 2021. He is regarded as one of the central proponents of the formation of ISWAP, after its split with Boko Haram in 2016.

“If confirmed, the killing of Al-Mainuki is huge because this is the first time a security agency has killed someone this high in the ranking of ISWAP,” Malik Samuel, a senior researcher at Good Governance Africa who specializes in insurgent groups in Nigeria, said.

“The potential to cause chaos within the group is also there because the operation must have been carried out in the heart of ISWAP’s fortified base, which is very difficult to access.”

Trump in December directed U.S. forces to launch strikes against the Islamic State group in Nigeria, though he released little detail then about the impact.

US and Nigeria step up joint operations

The Nigerian military said the operation was a result of recently formed U.S.-Nigeria partnership and intelligence-sharing efforts. Samalia Uba, the military spokesperson, said in a statement that the operation has also “disrupted a violent terrorist network that endangered Nigeria and the broader West African region.”

Nigeria has been battling multiple armed groups, including at least two affiliated with IS, as it has grappled with a multifaceted security crisis. IS affiliates in Africa have emerged as some of the continent's most active militant groups following the collapse of the so-called IS caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2017.

The U.S. in February sent troops to the West African nation to help advise its military, and in March, the U.S. also deployed drones there after Trump's allegations about Christians being targeted in Nigeria.

The Friday night operation was the latest instance in a string of covert missions abroad that Trump has announced this year, starting with the stunning overnight raid in January to capture and remove Venezuela's then-leader Nicolás Maduro and whisk him to the U.S., followed nearly two months later by the launch of strikes that kicked off the war with Iran.

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Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria. Associated Press writers Dyepkazah Shibayan in Abuja, Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.

The railroad, which serves New York City and its eastern suburbs, ceased operations just after midnight after five unions representing about half its workforce walked off the job.

The unions and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the public agency that runs the railroad, have been negotiating for months on a new contract. President Donald Trump’s administration tried to broker a deal, but the unions were legally allowed to strike starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

Kevin Sexton of the National Vice President of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said no new negotiations have been scheduled.

“We’re far apart at this point,” Sexton said early Saturday. “We are truly sorry that we are in this situation.”

MTA Chairman Janno Lieber said the agency “gave the union everything they said they wanted in terms of pay” and that to him it was apparent the unions always intended to walk out.

The walkout, the first for the LIRR since a two-day strike in 1994, promises to cause headaches for sports fans planning to see the Yankees and Mets battle this weekend or to watch the Knicks’ playoff run at Madison Square Garden, which is located directly above the railroad’s Penn Station hub in Manhattan.

If the shutdown continues into the work week, the roughly 250,000 people who ride the system to and from work each weekday will be forced to find alternative routes to the city from its Long Island suburbs.

For many, that likely means navigating the region’s notoriously congested roads.

“People are still going to commute, but if everybody starts driving now, the traffic is only going to get worse,” said Rich Piccola, an accountant who commutes into the city as he waited at Penn Station for a train home Thursday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, blamed the Trump administration for cutting mediation short and pushing the negotiations toward a strike. Trump, a Republican, responded on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that he had nothing to do with the strike and “never even heard about it until this morning.”

“No, Kathy, it’s your fault, and now looking over the facts, you should not have allowed this to happen,” Trump wrote, renewing his endorsement of Long Island politician Bruce Blakeman, who's challenging Hochul’s reelection bid. “If you can’t solve it, let me know, and I’ll show you how to properly get things done.”

Hochul urged Long Islanders to work from home if possible. The MTA has said it will provide limited shuttle buses to New York City subway stations, but that contingency plan wasn't envisioned to handle all the riders the system normally carries on a workday.

And while remote work options greatly expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers still need to show up in person, said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, a commuter advocacy group.

“You work in construction, you work in the healthcare industry, you work at a school or you’re about to graduate from school, that’s not always possible,” she said of telecommuting. “People need to get where they need to go.”

The most recent contract talks have stalled on the question of worker’s salaries and health care premiums.

The MTA has said the unions’ initial demands would have led to fare increases and impacted contract negotiations with other unionized workers.

The unions, which represent locomotive engineers, machinists, signalmen and other train workers, have said more substantial raises were warranted to help workers keep up with inflation and rising living costs.

Duane O’Connor, who was picketing on Saturday morning at Penn Station, said that while he regrets the impact on commuters, workers are simply asking for fair wages.

“I feel terrible. Terrible. This is going to hurt. This is going to hurt the island, this is going to hurt the city ... All we are asking for is fair wages. Record inflation the last few years. Our contract goes back three years, it’s not going forward, so we went through those record inflationary years and they’re trying to lowball us,” he said.

Some riders, while sympathetic to the union’s affordability concerns, worry they’ll bear the brunt of any pay raises.

If the unions get the pay increases they are looking for, "it will come at the expense of our riders who will see next year’s 4% fare increase doubled to 8%,” Gerard Bringmann, chair of the LIRR Commuter Council, a rider advocacy group, said in a statement. “Like the union workers, we too are burdened by the increase in the cost of living here on Long Island.”

With Hochul running for reelection, the pressure might be on the MTA to strike a deal to end the shutdown, said William Dwyer, a labor relations expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where commuter rail workers staged a three-day strike last year.

“She’s up for reelection, and Long Island is a critical vote for her,” he said. “So if there’s a significant fare hike, that does not bode well for her on Election Day.”

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Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo

“The analyzed virus corresponds to the viruses already known and monitored in South America,” Health Minister Stéphanie Rist said Friday on X. “At this stage, no element suggests the emergence” of a form of the virus that could be more transmissible or more dangerous, she said.

Pasteur said genomic analysis confirmed that the virus found in the French passenger matched the virus detected in other cases aboard the ship and closely resembled known Andes virus samples circulating in South America.

“This sequencing work allows us to better understand the virus and to ensure close health monitoring,” Rist said. She added that the data would be shared with the international scientific community.

Pasteur said the viruses detected in patients from the ship were identical to each other and about 97% similar to some Andes viruses circulating in South America, including those identified in rodents. Jean-Claude Manuguerra, who heads Pasteur’s Environment and Infectious Risk unit, said the remaining variation appeared to reflect natural viral variation and did not seem to affect the characteristics of the virus detected among travelers.

The French passenger tested positive after traveling aboard the MV Hondius and has been treated in Paris. French authorities previously said she was in serious condition.

Pasteur said virological investigations were continuing with French health authorities and international partners.

A memorial of flowers dedicated to Andrew Cross was left outside of the Morrill Volunteer Fire Department. First responders and other community members lined a highway and local roads Saturday to honor Cross as his remains were escorted about 46 miles (74 kilometers) east from Augusta to a funeral home in Belfast, Maine. The procession was routed to pass through Morrill to allow residents to pay their respects, the fire department said on Facebook.

Roughly two dozen fire departments had responded to the massive flames that tore through a silo at Robbins Lumber in a rural area, according to the state fire marshal's office.

MaineHealth Maine Medical Center in Portland, which has a Level 1 trauma designation, said Friday it was treating 10 patients who were transferred from local hospitals. Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor had been treating one patient who was in critical condition but that patient was transferred to another facility, a spokesperson said in an email.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Robbins Lumber’s website describes the company as a “high-tech lumber manufacturer” that has been in existence since 1881 and family-owned for five generations. The mill in Searsmont, a town of about 1,500 people about 95 miles (150 kilometers) from Portland, will not be operating in the near future.

Christian Halsted, a family spokesperson, said the fire was a “hugely devastating day for the family” and they were cooperating with authorities on the investigation.

Lumber and wood products are a critical and historic industry in Maine. The Maine Forest Products Council said it contributed more than $8 billion to the state's economy in 2024 and provides about 29,000 jobs.

Previously a somewhat rowdy event with throngs of fans and live music on the infield, the second race of the Triple Crown is being contested in a more subdued atmosphere this year at Laurel. That's because Pimlico in Baltimore is being rebuilt.

Laurel has a rich horse racing history, but its future is in doubt — it may be converted into a training facility. Attendance for Saturday's race has been capped at 4,800.

There's no possibility of a Triple Crown this year because Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo isn't running in the Preakness. Instead the morning-line favorite was Iron Honor at 9-2.

The race appears to be wide open, with Taj Mahal (5-1), Chip Honcho (5-1), Incredibolt (5-1) and Ocelli (6-1) also among the top picks in the 14-horse field. Ocelli finished third in the Derby as a 70-1 long shot, and Incredibolt was sixth. Robusta was 14th in the Derby and is a 30-1 shot in the Preakness.

Great White is a 15-1 shot after being scratched moments before the start of the Derby.

Taj Mahal, with trainer Brittany Russell, is a bit of a hometown favorite. He's won all three of his races, and all were at Laurel.

The Preakness is set to air on NBC and Peacock, with post time scheduled for 7:01 p.m. EDT.

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

A week later, Cabrera picks through the charred scraps of her life, salvaging pots, woven cloths and a small wooden cross. She knows that it's the last time she'll return to her home of 60 years.

“Oh God, why have you abandoned me,” she said through heartbroken sobs, wandering past burned ashes of what was once her mattress in a small room with a collapsed roof and a melted refrigerator just through the door. “How are we going to rebuild? We don’t have money, we don’t have anything.”

She joined a growing number of people displaced in conflict-torn regions of Mexico forced to flee their homes. Experts have described the phenomenon as an invisible crisis with long-term humanitarian consequences — there are few official figures on the number of displaced people, who have almost no resources to turn to once violence forces them to leave.

‘We can’t live here anymore’

Cabrera fled her small town Friday after years of mounting cartel violence in Tula. This town of around 200 native Náhuatl people is among many in the central state of Guerrero ravaged by decades of fracturing rival criminal groups warring for territorial control.

Last week, a group known as Los Ardillos attacked her town and a handful of others with drone-fired explosives, opened fire on local community police forces, killed livestock and burned homes like Cabrera’s to an undistinguishable crisp.

Cabrera carefully handed bags of belongings to soldiers escorting a small group of families returning home to gather their things. She prayed as armed men in camouflage loaded her possessions into the back of a truck. As she wandered through her garden for the last time, she begged forgiveness from the dogs and chickens she was forced to leave behind.

“We don’t want to abandon them,” she said. “But we suffered through everything. We can’t live here anymore.”

Scattering across Mexico

A local human rights group, Indigenous and People’s Council of Guerrero-Emiliano Zapata, or CIPOG-EZ, estimated that at least 800 people, including children and the elderly, were forcibly displaced along with Cabrera, and three community police officers — groups often formed to protect themselves in the wake of state absence — fighting back against the mafia were killed.

The official numbers are far lower: Mexico’s government said Tuesday that only 120 people were forced to flee and confirmed no deaths. One community leader sleeping at the basketball court on Friday told a local government official that in their town alone they estimated around 280 people had been forced to flee.

Some families ran into the mountains, not looking back. Hundreds sought shelter under a local basketball court, hoping that it might be safe to eventually return home. Others — some wounded by gunfire — boarded cars, buses and trucks, scattering to different regions of Mexico.

Videos published on social media this week show groups of crying women and children pleading for help.

The images pushed the government to deploy 1,200 military and police officers to the region. Officials say they have provided aid to those displaced, largely contained the violence, established a “safe corridor” for humanitarian aid to enter and paved the way toward defusing the region’s convoluted conflict.

“What we do not want is a confrontation that would affect the civilian population. Above all, we must preserve people’s lives,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said at a news conference last week.

An invisible crisis

Critics say that it was the latest example of government inaction and efforts to downplay the depth of the displacement crisis in Mexico. Unlike Colombia, Mexico doesn’t have a comprehensive registry of displaced people. Government figures are often cited as being insufficient by entities like the U.N. refugee agency, human rights groups and researchers documenting the crisis.

A 2025 government National Survey of Victimization and Public Security Perception estimated that nearly 250,000 households were forced to flee their homes in 2024 alone to protect themselves from crime.

Between 2024 and 2025, the Ibero-American University documented at least 44,695 people who had fled their homes to other parts of Mexico. Many more migrate to the U.S.

In a May report, the university noted that forced displacements are on the rise in Mexico at a time when Sheinbaum’s government has sought to highlight security gains — like sharp dips in homicides — in an effort to offset threats by the Trump administration to take military action on Mexican cartels.

“There’s no more life in these communities,” said Prisco Rodríguez, a local representative for CIPOG-EZ. “The government says people have already returned to their houses, but there’s no one here. People don’t say where they’re going out of fear ... and the majority never appear.”

Cabrera and her husband, 75-year-old Alejandro Venancio Bruno, were scrambling to figure out where they would go. Cabrera said that her children plead with her to come live with them in Mexico City, around 350 kilometers (220 miles) from their home, or the state of Queretaro, and rebuild their lives elsewhere.

But Venancio said that he’s spent his life working his land, and without money, a home or his most valuable possessions — his goats — any other life outside of Tula seems unfathomable.

“It’s like starting from zero,” he said.

Top-ranked Sinner is one victory away from becoming only the second man after Novak Djokovic to win all nine Masters 1000 titles. Djokovic has won each Masters tournament at least twice.

Sinner led 4-2 in the third set when the match was suspended late Friday. The Italian finished off the match in 15 minutes on Saturday, sealing it on his third match point after Medvedev fended off two on his serve.

“It was a very different challenge and a tough challenge,” Sinner said. “Usually, during the night, I don’t struggle to sleep but this time it was not easy.

"You are in the third set, nearly done, but you still have to show up again and you never know what is happening. It is like the start of the match as there are nerves again. I am very happy with how I handled this situation and that I am back in the final.”

Earlier Friday on the red clay of the Foro Italico, Ruud routed home player Luciano Darderi 6-1, 6-1.

Coco Gauff plays Elina Svitolina in the women’s final later Saturday.

The men’s final is scheduled for Sunday.

Sinner is also attempting to become the first Italian man to raise the Rome trophy since Adriano Panatta in 1976. Panatta will present the trophy on Sunday, with Italian President Sergio Mattarella also slated to attend the men's final.

Sinner appeared exhausted

After winning the first set easily on Friday, Sinner appeared fatigued as Medvedev stepped up his game and started running him around the court with drop shots and groundstrokes to the corners.

After several points Sinner bent over in apparent exhaustion and leaned on his racket for support. Sinner had his right thigh treated by a trainer midway through the second set.

Sinner came back from a 3-0 deficit only to be broken again in the 12th game and concede the set to Medvedev.

A bad bounce helped Sinner break Medvedev early in the third and take control for good.

Sinner 4-0 against Ruud

Sinner has won all four of his career meetings with Ruud without dropping a set — including a 6-0, 6-1 rout in the Rome quarterfinals last year.

“Jannik is chasing history,” Ruud said. “I have to be the guy to try to stop him, and it will not be easy playing here in his home country. ... Last year, he really (routed me) here on the same court, so of course I’m looking for revenge. But at the same time I realize that he’s an incredible player and a unique talent.”

Sinner lost last year’s final to Carlos Alcaraz, who is sidelined due to a right wrist injury. Jasmine Paolini in 2025 became the first Italian woman to raise the trophy in 40 years.

Sinner hasn’t lost since Feb. 19 in the Qatar Open quarterfinals. He has won 28 straight matches and a record five successive Masters titles. He could become the second man to win all three Masters tournaments on clay — including Monte Carlo and Madrid — in the same season after Rafael Nadal in 2010.

Sinner has won 10 of his last 11 meetings with Medvedev.

After Rome for Sinner is the French Open, the only Grand Slam event he hasn’t won. The titleholder, Alcaraz, will also miss it.

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

Kim, who has never finished better than 17th in any major, was outside the cutline in Round 2 until he chipped in for eagle on his final shot to extend his weekend.

He took advantage of his early start on moving day and cracked the top 10, well before leaders Alex Smalley and Maverick McNealy were set to tee off in the afternoon. Kim made more birdies on the front nine Saturday than he did in the first two rounds combined. He opened with three straight birdies before a bogey on four.

Kim nearly holed out from the rough on the seventh and finished with his sixth birdie in the first seven holes. He put the move in moving day, jumping from 93rd after one round to 53rd after the second to ninth through the first nine holes at Aronimink.

Two long days at Aronimink produced the highest 36-hole score to par to lead the PGA Championship in 14 years. The 15 players separated by two shots made it the biggest logjam going into a weekend at a major since 2002.

The difference between first and worst among 82 players who made the cut was only eight shots, unusually tight for any tournament, much less a major.

Kim's blistering start was an early sign that low scores might allow more golfers to zip into contention in an already crowded leaderboard.

There was some serious cash at stake, as well as the prestige of winning a major.

The PGA Championship raised its total prize fund this year to $20.5 million, a $1.5 million increase from last year but still third among the three American majors.

The winner’s share will be $3,690,000.

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

The group of five Italian divers is believed to have died while exploring a cave at a depth of about 50 meters (160 feet) in Vaavu Atoll on Thursday, according to Italy’s Foreign Ministry. The recreational diving limit in the Maldives is 30 meters (98 feet).

Maldives presidential spokesman Mohammed Hussain Shareef said that Mohamed Mahudhee, a member of the Maldivian National Defense Force, died of underwater decompression sickness after being transferred to a hospital in the capital.

“The death goes to show the difficulty of the mission,” he said.

Earlier, Shareef said the searchers had prepared a plan based on their progress exploring the cave on Friday. Mahudhee was part of the group that briefed Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu on the rescue plan when he visited the search site on Friday.

Rough weather has repeatedly hampered rescue efforts.

Search operations on Saturday involved eight local divers who worked in shifts to locate the missing Italians, the Italian Foreign Ministry said. Initial teams had already dived to identify and mark the entrance to the cave system where the Italians disappeared.

Additional divers were expected to continue sequential dives in an effort to find and recover the bodies and bring them to the surface. The cause of the deaths remains under investigation.

Italy's Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said everything possible would be done to bring the victims home. He offered his condolences for the death of the Maldivian diver during the rescue efforts.

The victims are described as experienced divers

The victims have been identified as Monica Montefalcone, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Genoa; her daughter, Giorgia Sommacal; marine biologist Federico Gualtieri; researcher Muriel Oddenino; and diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti, according to the Maldivian government.

Benedetti’s body was recovered on Thursday. His body was found near the mouth of the cave and authorities believed the remaining four had entered the cave.

Montefalcone and Oddenino were in the Maldives on an official scientific mission to monitor marine environments and study the effects of climate change on tropical biodiversity, the University of Genoa said in a statement Friday. However, the scuba diving activity during which the deadly accident occurred was not part of the planned research and was “undertaken privately,” it said.

The statement also said the two other victims — student Sommacal and recent graduate Gualtieri — were not involved in the scientific mission.

Carlo Sommacal, Montefalcone’s husband and Giorgia’s father, expressed doubts over the accident, saying that “something must have happened down there” given his wife and daughter's extensive experience.

Speaking to Italian TV, he described Montefalcone as a careful and highly disciplined diver who would never put her daughter or other colleagues at risk.

Tour operator says it didn't authorize deep dive

The Italian tour operator that manages the Maldives' diving trip denied authorizing or knowing about the deep dive that violated local limits, its lawyer told Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Saturday.

Orietta Stella, representing Albatros Top Boat, said the operator “did not know” the group planned to descend beyond 30 meters. That threshold requires special permission from Maldivian maritime authorities and the tour operator “would have never allowed it,” she said.

The dive far exceeded what was planned for a scientific cruise focused on coral sampling at standard depths, Stella added. The victims were experienced divers, but the equipment used appeared to be standard recreational gear rather than technical equipment suited for deep cave diving, she said.

She also clarified that Albatros only marketed the cruise and neither owned the vessel nor employed the crew, which was hired locally.

Cave diving is a highly technical and dangerous activity that requires specialized training, equipment and strict safety protocols. Risks increase sharply in environments where divers cannot head straight up and at depth, particularly when conditions are poor. Experts say it’s easy to become disoriented or lost inside caves, particularly as sediment clouds can sharply reduce visibility.

Diving at 50 meters also exceeds the maximum depth recommended for recreational divers by most major established scuba certifying agencies, with depths beyond 40 meters (131 feet) considered technical diving and requiring specialized training and equipment.

The Italian Foreign Ministry said the cave is divided into three large chambers connected by narrow passages. Recovery teams explored two of the three chambers on Friday, but the search was limited due to considerations over oxygen and decompression.

Two Italians, a deep-sea rescue expert and a cave diving expert, were expected to join the recovery efforts, the ministry said.

Italian officials said that around 20 other Italians on the same expedition aboard the vessel “Duke of York” were safe. Italy’s embassy in Colombo was providing assistance to those onboard and had contacted the Red Crescent, which offered to deploy volunteers to help provide psychological aid.

The Maldives Tourism Ministry said it suspended the operating license of the “Duke of York” pending an investigation.

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Zampano reported from Rome.

As for today, temperatures will be above average, but we will hold off our stretch into the 90s until tomorrow.

The highest temperature will occur around 4pm this afternoon and will last through dinner time. Even as we approach 10pm tonight, temperatures will still be in the 70s, making for a great night to head out on the town!

A warm front is passing off to our west and is bringing up moisture from the Gulf, but it will not reach most of us due to a high pressure system off of the coast.

With that being said, a couple pop-up showers are possible in the Highlands and could extend into the NRV later this afternoon.

A large chunk of our region has been upgraded on the drought monitor. Now, areas including Rocky Mount and Bedford have been included in the severe drought.

If it feels like we have been in a chronic drought, you’d be correct!

There are several areas that are in over a foot of deficit for rainfall this past year; and despite it seeming like we get loads of rain, many of the showers we have experienced have not produced measurable rainfall.

Fortunately, we have another weathermaker on the way that will bring forth some rain.

Sunday through Wednesday we will remain in the 90s. Later Wednesday evening, a cold front will pass through aiding in some shower and thunderstorm development, as well as drop our temperatures back into a seasonable range to finish out the week.

Izz al-Din al-Haddad was killed on Friday, Israel’s army said, describing him as one of the senior Hamas military commanders who directed the planning and execution of the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and saw more than 250 taken hostage.

A Hamas spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, confirmed the killing on social media.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas remains fragile, and the top diplomat overseeing it says it has stalled because of the deadlock over disarming Hamas. Both sides have traded accusations of violations. Gaza has seen near-daily Israeli fire with more than 850 people killed in the Palestinian territory since the ceasefire went into effect in October, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.

The ministry is part of Gaza’s Hamas-run government, but staffed by medical professionals who maintain and publish detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community. The ministry overall says Israel’s retaliatory strikes in the war have devastated the Palestinian enclave and killed more than 72,700 people.

Israel said that al-Haddad had assumed the role of Hamas commander after his predecessor, Mohammed Sinwar, was killed. The army said that al-Haddad had surrounded himself with Israeli hostages during the war as a shield against an attack.

Al-Haddad’s family confirmed his death in Friday's strike to The Associated Press. Six other people, including his wife and daughter, were also killed. His two sons were killed earlier in the war.

His body was wrapped in Hamas and Palestinian flags as it was carried by mourners at Saturday's funeral in Gaza City.

Al-Haddad joined Hamas when it was established in the 1980s, and was a member of the Qassam Brigades' Majd section tasked to go after collaborators with Israel. He was also a member of Hamas’ Military Council, the highest group of commanders that played a key role in the attacks that sparked the war.

Israel's army chief of staff called his killing a significant operation, and said that Israel would continue pursuing its enemies to hold them accountable.

Palestinian man killed in West Bank

Violence flared Saturday in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli troops shot and killed a 34-year-old Palestinian in the Jenin refugee camp, according to the Palestinian Health ministry.

Hassan Fayyad was fatally shot in a thigh, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. Israel's military said that troops first fired warning shots at a person trying to infiltrate the camp and shot him when he didn't comply. They provided him with medical treatment as he was transferred to a hospital, it said.

Israeli troops on Thursday shot and killed a 15-year-old boy in Eastern Lubban town in Nablus, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Israel's military said that it identified three people hurling rocks toward Israeli vehicles and “endangering lives,” and troops fired at them, killing one.

On Friday, settlers set fire to a mosque and vehicles in the village of Jibiya, northwest of Ramallah, Palestinian religious authorities said. Security camera footage showed people pouring flammable material on the mosque and at least two vehicles, said Sabir Shalash, the head of Jibiya’s municipal council. Spray-painted Hebrew slogans were found on the mosque’s walls, he said.

The Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs described the attack as “a cowardly terrorist act” and criticized the international community’s inaction over mounting Jewish settler attacks against Muslim and Christian sites in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Israeli military and police said that they were deployed to the area and didn't locate any suspects, but were investigating. The army said that it “strongly condemns” attacks on religious institutions.

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Samy Magdy reported from Cairo.

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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

After a week’s buildup, acts from 25 countries will take to the stage at the Wiener Stadthalle arena in Vienna to battle for the continent’s pop crown. Millions of viewers around the world will cast judgment on a fiery Finnish violinist, a Moldovan folk rapper, a Serbian metal band and many more at Eurovision’s 70th anniversary event.

The campy, colorful contest has been likened to the World Cup with songs instead of soccer. And like global sports, it often becomes entangled in politics. The contest has been clouded for a third year by calls for Israel to be excluded over its conflicts in Gaza and elsewhere, with five longtime participants — Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Iceland and Slovenia — boycotting in protest.

Finnish favorites fan the flames

Newcomers looking to grasp the essence of Eurovision and its interplay of pop and politics should look no further than two of the fan favorites to emerge during a week that saw two semifinals ahead of the grand finale.

Rapper Satoshi’s “Viva, Moldova” combines “a stunning high energy performance with a subtle pro-European political message,” from a country moving toward the European Union after decades in Moscow’s orbit, said Eurovision historian Dean Vuletic. Greek artist Akylas’ song “Ferto,” or “Bring It,” provides a playful take on conspicuous consumption in a country still scarred by the economic wounds of the 2008 financial crisis.

Both are likely to score highly with viewers, though national juries, which tend to be more impressed by technical excellence, may be less impressed. Winners are chosen by a mix of votes from the two, translated into points by a system confusing even to Eurovision fans. The act with the most points wins, and their country gets to host the competition next year.

Finland is the favorite in betting odds with “Liekinheitin,” or “Flamethrower,” a fiery duet between the singing of pop star Pete Parkkonen and the fiddling of classical violinist Linda Lampenius.

But Eurovision often produces surprises.

“Eurovision has never really been a contest for big stars. It’s largely been a contest for underdogs,” Vuletic said. “People like to see the underdog on stage. They like to the artist-in-the-making on stage or an artist from a smaller, poorer country on stage.”

A wild card would be a win by Australia, a Eurovision participant since 2015, which has sent established star Delta Goodrem. Her slick midtempo ballad “Eclipse” — and a bravura performance that sees her raised into the air above a glittery piano — has been rising up the betting odds. A European country would likely host for Australia next year if she wins.

Protests express opposition to Israel

Israeli competitor Noam Bettan has been warmly received in the auditorium, though four protesters were ejected after trying to interrupt his performance during Tuesday’s semifinal.

Street protests opposing Israel’s inclusion over the conduct of its war against Hamas in Gaza have been smaller in Vienna than at the 2024 contest in Malmo, Sweden and last year’s event in Basel, Switzerland.

A demonstration against Israel’s participation is planned ahead of Saturday’s final, and pro-Palestinian groups staged an outdoor concert on Friday under the banner “No stage for genocide.”

“Inviting Israel on such a beautiful stage as the Eurovision Song Contest stage is an affront to all the people who believe in humanity, who believe in love and togetherness,” said Congolese-Austrian artist Patrick Bongola, one of the organizers.

The five-nation boycott is a revenue and viewership blow to an event that organizers say was watched by 166 million people around the world last year. This year’s field of 35 contestants is the smallest since 2003.

Still, Eurovision is eyeing expansion, with a spinoff Eurovision Song Contest Asia due to take place in Bangkok in November.

Vuletic says political controversy is nothing new. The first Eurovision boycott was in 1969 — ironically, by Austria, which refused to send a delegation to Spain under dictator Francisco Franco.

“We’ve seen very politicized editions of the contest in the recent past,” Vuletic said, including the 2009 contest in Russia, Azerbaijan’s turn as host in 2012 and the 2024 competition in Sweden, marred by protests and the expulsion of a competitor after a backstage altercation

“All of them were very much mired in political controversy, yet Eurovision continues,” he said.

How to watch and vote

Eurovision airs at 1900GMT (3.p.m EDT) on national broadcasters in participating countries, on Peacock in the United States and on the Eurovision YouTube channel in many territories.

Viewers in participating countries can vote up to 10 times by phone or text message during and for a short time after the show, but aren’t allowed to vote for their own country’s act. Viewers in the U.S. and other nonparticipating countries can vote online at www.esc.vote.

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Hilary Fox and Philipp Jenne in Vienna contributed to this story

Trump made the comment in a Fox News interview with Bret Baier that aired right after the U.S. president wrapped up a high-stakes visit to China on Friday.

China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province, to be retaken by force if necessary. The U.S., like all countries that have formal ties with Beijing, doesn’t recognize Taiwan as a country but has been the island’s strongest backer and arms supplier.

Trump is now suggesting that is open to negotiation.

Asked if he would approve a $14 billion arms package to Taiwan that has been held up for months, Trump said that’s up to China.

“I’m holding that in abeyance and it depends on China,” he said. “It’s a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly. It’s a lot of weapons.”

The U.S. is bound by its own laws to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself and sees all threats to the island as a matter of grave concern.

By conditioning U.S. arms sales to Taiwan on his negotiations with China, Trump may play into one the island’s “nightmare scenarios,” said William Yang, a Northeast Asia senior analyst for International Crisis Group: that Taiwan, instead of being at the negotiating table, is on the menu.

Although Trump didn’t say specifically what he would want from China in return for denying Taiwan the weapons, he has been pressing Beijing to buy more American goods and to help put pressure on Iran.

Trump and the U.S. Congress already approved in December a separate $11 billion arms sales package to Taiwan. Beijing reacted furiously by staging live fire drills around the island.

China warned of ‘clashes and even conflicts’ over Taiwan

China has framed Taiwan as “the most important issue in China-U.S. relations” during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent summit with Trump. The visit is to be followed next week by a trip by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Beijing.

In one of his strongest statements to date, Xi on Thursday warned Trump of “clashes and even conflicts” if the issue of Taiwan is not handled properly.

Taiwan’s presidential office on Saturday sought to smooth over the tensions by highlighting “that the consistent U.S. policy and position toward Taiwan remain unchanged.”

“The Republic of China is a sovereign, independent, democratic country; this is self-evident, and Beijing’s claims are therefore without merit,” said Presidential Office Spokesperson Karen Kuo, referring to Taiwan’s official name. She added that the island remains grateful to Trump for his support and stressed that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are stipulated by law.

Trump wants Taiwan’s microchip makers to move to the U.S.

Another statement that raised concerns on the island was Trump’s call for Taiwan’s microchip sector — the world’s largest and most advanced — to pick up and move to the U.S.

“I’d like to see everybody making chips over in Taiwan come into America,” Trump told Fox News, describing such a move as “the greatest thing you can do.”

Trump has long pressed Taiwanese chipmakers, which produce more than 90% of the world’s most advanced chips, which are used for artificial intelligence, smartphones and military equipment, to base some of their production in the U.S.

Taiwan’s leading chipmaker, TSMC, has committed an investment of $165 billion in a mega-campus in Arizona. The island’s government, in a sweeping trade agreement with the U.S. earlier this year, pledged $250 billion in investment in the U.S. microchip sector, which included TSMC’s previous commitment.

Trump also reiterated older accusations that Taiwan “stole” its chipmaking sector from the U.S. decades ago.

Trump seems to embrace Xi’s narrative on Taiwan

While Trump during his summit with Xi did not alter U.S. policy wording on Taiwan — which many observers had feared he would — he did seem to adopt some of the Chinese president’s own narrative about the island’s government.

Beijing has branded Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te as a “Taiwan independence diehard,” and warned that he would bring war and destruction to the island.

Trump and other top U.S. officials don’t usually communicate with Taiwanese leaders but have shown support in the past for example by allowing former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to transit on U.S. soil en route to visiting Latin American countries. Lai, who is about to reach his presidency’s two-year mark, has yet to set foot on the U.S. mainland, and some observers have interpreted that as a rollback of support by the Trump administration.

In his interview with Fox News, Trump stressed that he didn’t want to see a change of status quo between Taiwan and Beijing. “But they have somebody there now that wants to go independent,” he said, likely referring to Lai.

“They’re going independent because they want to get into a war and they figure they have the United States behind them.” He added that he is not looking to fight a war thousands of miles away.

Trump’s worrying statements about Taiwan may be another instance of “his transactional rhetoric being turned up to the max,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a fellow with the Atlantic Council. “What matters more is the substance, which Taiwan is holding its collective breath for.”

Trump endorsed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow over Cassidy, in an unusual attempt to dislodge an incumbent senator. Cassidy voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, stemming from the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Cassidy, a doctor, has also clashed with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, even though he provided crucial support to help Kennedy get confirmed.

The president unloaded on Cassidy on Saturday morning, calling him “a disloyal disaster" and “a terrible guy" on social media. Trump criticized the senator's impeachment vote and said “he's going to get CLOBBERED,” adding that Letlow is “a winner who will NEVER let you down.”

A third candidate is state Treasurer John Fleming. If no one gets at least 50% of the vote, a runoff will be held June 27.

The winner will almost certainly take the November general election because of the state's Republican leanings.

The election was scrambled by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision gutting a part of the Voting Rights Act that affects how congressional maps are drawn. Although the Senate primary is moving forward, Louisiana leaders decided to delay House primaries until a future date to allow them to redo district lines ahead of time, a shift that could cause confusion for voters on Saturday.

A senator tries to hang on

Cassidy has waged an aggressive campaign to convince voters he should not be counted out.

“Four months ago I would have told you it’s impossible for Cassidy to win this,” said Mary-Patricia Wray, who has consulted for Republican and Democratic candidates in Louisiana. “I still think it’s statistically unlikely, but no longer impossible.”

Paul Begue, a 41-year-old in New Orleans who works in the agriculture industry, said he planned to vote for Cassidy. He was bothered by a video of Trump saying Letlow was “as loyal as can be.” For Begue, that was “the final nail in the coffin.”

“I don’t care about her loyalty to President Trump,” he said, adding, “I like elected officials that seem to make their own decisions.”

The senator's campaign is expected to have spent roughly $9.6 million on advertising through May 16, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. And Louisiana Freedom Fund, a super PAC supporting him, is on track to spend $12.3 million.

By comparison Letlow’s campaign, which launched Jan. 20, has spent roughly $3.9 million, while a super PAC backing her, the Accountability Project, has spent about $6 million since then.

Fleming's campaign has spent about $1.5 million.

Cassidy and Louisiana Freedom Fund ran ads attacking Letlow within days of her entering the race for supporting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which Trump has tried to root out of the federal government.

Letlow, a college administrator before her election to the House, said she supported DEI while interviewing for the position of president of University of Louisiana-Monroe in 2020.

The ads, an attempt to characterize Letlow as a progressive trying to pass as a conservative, are one way Cassidy is trying to flip the script in a race where he's on the outs with Trump.

The president targets Cassidy

The senator's vote in favor of convicting Trump after his 2021 impeachment over the Jan. 6 Capitol siege has shadowed Cassidy throughout his second Senate term.

John Martin, a 68-year-old retired engineer in south Louisiana, said he would vote for Letlow because he was still upset by Cassidy's decision. He waved a flyer from Letlow’s campaign showing her standing alongside the president.

“I know a lot more about Cassidy than I do about her,” Martin said. “But if she’s endorsed by Trump, I’m going to believe that.”

Cassidy steered clear of Trump’s ire last year, supporting Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services despite his public reservations about the nominee’s anti-vaccine views.

Mark Workman, a 75-year-old retired infectious disease physician in the New Orleans suburbs, said he backs Fleming. Had Cassidy “stood up and blocked RFK,” Workman said, he would have supported the senator for taking a strong and courageous stance.

“He had the ability to stop him,” Workman said, “and he was too weak to do that.”

As chair of the Senate health committee, Cassidy has been more publicly critical of Kennedy, including over funding cuts for vaccine development.

Trump blamed Cassidy for the failed nomination of his second choice for surgeon general, Casey Means, who raised doubts about vaccinating newborns for hepatitis B, a practice Cassidy supports.

Trump withdrew the Means nomination and blasted Cassidy.

“Hopefully all of the Great Republican People of Louisiana, which I won, BIG, three times, will be voting Bill Cassidy OUT OF OFFICE in the upcoming Republican Primary!” Trump posted on social media.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry's decision to postpone the congressional primaries may weigh against Cassidy. It could dampen turnout among voters who are less fervently pro-Trump, Wray said, especially if there is confusion about the schedule.

“Suspending the congressional primaries hurts Cassidy,” she said. “Some people believe the Senate primary is canceled.”

Cassidy complained Friday that the new primary system enacted last year was confusing voters by requiring them to ask for a partisan ballot instead of the previous all-party primary that had been in place. He said some called his office to say they had been unable to vote for him.

“The process that was set up was destined to be confusing,” Cassidy told reporters.

A challenger waited for Trump's backing

Letlow considered running last year but only entered the race after Trump announced his endorsement in January.

By that time Fleming, a former House member and Trump administration official who was elected state treasurer in 2023, was already in the race as a Trump devotee. But Landry was looking for a better-known challenger, and he suggested Letlow to the president.

Letlow had an unconventional and tragic entry into politics.

In 2020, while she was a college administrator, her husband Luke was elected to the U.S. House but died of COVID-19 before he could be sworn in. Letlow ran for and won the seat in a March 2021 special election and was reelected in 2022 and 2024.

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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

Oklahoma City and San Antonio will play for the West title, their series beginning Monday on the Thunder's home floor.

Meanwhile, Detroit and Cleveland are headed to a Game 7 on Sunday for the right to play the Knicks for the East crown.

There are no games on Saturday.

Saturday's schedule

— No games scheduled

Sunday's schedule

— Game 7, Cleveland at Detroit, 8 p.m. EDT (Prime)

— Series: Tied, 3-3.

— Odds: Detroit by 4.5.

Cleveland has won five consecutive Game 7s, including two on the road. Detroit is 6-1 in its last seven Game 7s. Both teams won a Game 7 in Round 1 and the winner will be the 20th team in NBA history to prevail in multiple Game 7s in the same postseason.

Monday's schedule

— Game 1, San Antonio at Oklahoma City, 8:30 p.m. EDT (NBC, Peacock)

— Odds: Oklahoma City by 6.5.

The Spurs went 4-1 against the Thunder (the teams played five times because of the NBA Cup) during the regular season. If the series goes the full seven games, it'll mark only the second instance in the last 30 years of two teams meeting 12 times in the same season (Golden State and Houston did it last season).

Friday's recap

— Pistons 115, Cavaliers 94 to tie series 3-3.

— Spurs 139, Timberwolves 109 to win series 4-2.

Conference finals schedule

The NBA Finals will start on June 3. And — thanks to San Antonio closing out Minnesota on Friday night — it's now certain that there will be at least two off days between the end of the conference finals and the title series.

— The Eastern Conference finals will start Tuesday, then have Game 2 Thursday, Game 3 on May 23, Game 4 on May 25, Game 5 on May 27 (if necessary), Game 6 on May 29 (if necessary) and Game 7 on May 31 (if necessary). Detroit will host Games 1, 2, 5 and 7 if it reaches that series; otherwise, New York will play host to Cleveland in those four games.

— The Western Conference finals will start Monday in Oklahoma City, with Game 2 there on Wednesday. Game 3 is at San Antonio on Friday, Game 4 is at San Antonio on May 24, Game 5 is at Oklahoma City on May 26 (if necessary), Game 6 is at San Antonio on May 28 (if necessary) and Game 7 would be May 30 in Oklahoma City (if necessary).

— The Oklahoma City-San Antonio winner will have homecourt advantage in the NBA Finals.

Awards watch

Finally, a big update here — the MVP announcement is coming on Sunday night, with either Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama or Denver's Nikola Jokic set to win the award.

Other awards handed out so far:

— Defensive Player of the Year: Wembanyama.

— Clutch Player of the Year: Gilgeous-Alexander.

— Sixth Man of the Year: Keldon Johnson, San Antonio.

— Sportsmanship Award: Derrick White, Boston.

— Most Improved Player: Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Atlanta.

— Rookie of the Year: Cooper Flagg, Dallas.

— Executive of the Year: Brad Stevens, Boston.

— Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year: DeAndre Jordan, New Orleans.

— Hustle Award: Moussa Diabaté, Charlotte.

Among the announcements still to come:

— Coach of the Year: San Antonio's Mitch Johnson, Detroit's J.B. Bickerstaff, or Boston's Joe Mazzulla.

— Social Justice Champion Award: Miami's Bam Adebayo San Antonio's Harrison Barnes, Boston's Jaylen Brown, Detroit's Tobias Harris or Cleveland's Larry Nance Jr.

— The All-NBA, All-Defensive and All-Rookie teams.

Betting odds

Defending champion Oklahoma City (-165) is favored to win the NBA title, according to oddsmakers.

The Thunder are followed by San Antonio (+300), New York (+600), Detroit (+3000) and Cleveland (+6000).

Key dates

— Monday: Western Conference finals begin on NBC and Peacock.

— Tuesday: Eastern Conference finals begin on ESPN and ABC.

— June 3: Game 1, NBA Finals on ABC. (Other finals dates: June 5, June 8, June 10, June 13, June 16 and June 19).

— June 23: Round 1, NBA draft.

— June 24: Round 2, NBA draft.

Quote of the day

“We have never seen the likes of this guy.” — Prime analyst Stan Van Gundy, raving about the defensive ability of Wembanyama.

Stats of the day

— Friday saw two teams (Detroit by 21, San Antonio by 30) win on the road by 20 or more points. There hadn't been two road teams win by 20 or more — after the first round of the playoffs — on the same day since April 9, 1972 (New York beat Baltimore by 24, Milwaukee beat the LA Lakers by 21).

— The Spurs have reached 70 wins on the season, including playoffs — the league-best ninth time they've done that since 1994-95. The league's other 29 teams have combined for 40 such seasons in that span.

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

The winner's share will be $3,690,000.

The Masters raised its total purse to $22.5 million this year, the highest payout of golf's four majors and a $1.5 million increase from the previous year. The U.S. Open next month and the British Open in July — typically the smallest of major purses — have not announced their plans.

The U.S. Open had a $21.5 million purse last year, and the British Open purse was at $17 million.

Prize money in golf began spiking when Saudi-funded LIV Golf launched in 2022 with its $20 million purses and $4 million payouts. The PGA Tour now has eight “signature” events with a $20 million purse that pays $3.6 million to the winner ($4 million in three such tournaments).

The Players Championship had a $25 million purse, and the PGA Tour last year decided the FedEx Cup finale at the Tour Championship would count as official money instead of a bonus, making it a $40M prize fund.

Terry Clark, the new CEO of the PGA of America, was asked earlier this week about staying competitive with the other majors while being fiscally responsible. He offered little along those lines except to say, “It’s not always in comparison to all of those. It’s what are the factors that make sense. We do look at it as an annual focus around how do we get at competitive purses.”

The player finishing last among the 82 players who made the cut will get $23,900. The 74 players who missed the cut, including 19 club professionals, were paid $4,300.

The PGA Championship is at Aronimink for the first time since 1962, when the total prize fund was $69,400 and Gary Player won $13,000. It also was the third-highest purse among majors then.

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

The announcement comes less than 24 hours after U.S. President Donald Trump finished his own state visit to China, where he also met Xi to discuss trade and the U.S. and Israel’s war in Iran.

In a statement, the Kremlin said that Putin’s trip, planned for May 19-20, had been scheduled to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship.

It said that the two leaders would discuss bilateral relations as well as “key international and regional issues” and economic cooperation.

Relations between China and Russia have deepened in recent years, particularly since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 left Moscow shunned on the global stage and heavily reliant on Beijing for trade due to Western sanctions.

When Putin visited China in September 2025, Xi welcomed his counterpart as an “old friend.” Putin also addressed Xi as “dear friend.”

The Russian leader is also scheduled to visit China for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the city of Shenzhen in November.

Continued strikes and returned remains

Ukraine repatriated the bodies of fallen soldiers Saturday following an earlier exchange with Moscow involving prisoners of war.

Russia returned 528 bodies that “according to the Russian side, may belong to Ukrainian servicemen,” Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement.

Experts will now “take all necessary measures aimed at identifying the deceased who have been repatriated,” it said.

It comes after Russia and Ukraine swapped 205 prisoners of war on Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was the first phase of a planned swap of 1,000 POWs from each side. Some of the Ukrainians had been held by Russia since 2022 and fought in some of the war’s fiercest battles, he added.

Meanwhile, Russia launched overnight drone attacks against Ukraine’s southern Odesa region on Saturday, regional authorities said.

Russian drones struck a five-story apartment block and a one-story residential building, injuring two people, said regional head Oleh Kiper. The city’s port was also damaged, he added.

Russia launched 294 drones overnight, Ukraine’s Air Force said, adding that 269 of them were shot down.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that its forces shot down 138 Ukrainian drones overnight over 14 Russian regions, including Moscow. Drones were also destroyed over the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, as well as the Black and Azov seas, it said.

Ukrainian attacks killed two civilians in Russia's Belgorod region on the western border with Ukraine, local officials said. One man was killed when a Ukrainian drone hit a vehicle in the village of Krasnaya Yaruga, while another died when his home was hit in a strike on the village of Dubovoye. An apartment block in the region was also damaged in a separate attack, officials said.

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

The conflicting advice is at least partly because guidelines for breast cancer screening are designed for women at average risk and with no possible cancer symptoms. But breast cancer is so common that it is hard to know who is really “average” and how to balance the pros and cons of screening.

"Breast cancer is not one disease,” said Dr. Laura Esserman of the University of California, San Francisco. “So how in the world does it make sense to screen everybody the same when everyone doesn't have the same risk?”

Esserman is leading research to better understand the nuances of who is at low or high risk or somewhere in between and eventually offer more tailored screening advice.

More than 320,000 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, according to the American Cancer Society. Death rates have been dropping for decades, thanks largely to better treatments. But it is still the second-most common cause of cancer death in U.S. women -- and diagnoses are inching up.

For now, here are some things to know.

When to get a mammogram

The newest guidance comes from the American College of Physicians, which recommends that average-risk women ages 50 to 74 get an every-other-year mammogram. For those 40 to 49, the guideline says to discuss pros and cons with a doctor and if they choose screening, to go every other year.

That advice, issued last month, was a surprise. Most other U.S. health groups have urged women to start earlier, in their 40s. The influential U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently switched its guidance to start every-other-year mammograms at age 40 instead of 50.

The American Cancer Society has long recommended yearly mammograms for 45- to 54-year-olds -– but says they can choose to start at 40. For those age 55 and older, the cancer society says women can switch to every other year or choose to keep going for yearly checks.

The new American College of Physicians guidelines also say doctors can ask if women 75 or older wish to stop routine screening. In contrast, the cancer society says there is no reason to stop if they are still healthy.

Why don’t experts agree?

The higher a woman’s risk of eventually developing breast cancer, the more benefit she will derive from more frequent screenings. But beyond some well-known factors like the cancer-causing BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, it is hard for women to know their true risk. Age has long been a proxy because the risk of breast cancer rises as women get older.

Mammograms aren’t perfect. Sometimes they miss cancer or an aggressive tumor pops up after a routine mammogram. But guidelines seek to balance the benefits of catching cancer early with possible harms, such as stress and pain from investigating suspicious spots that don't turn out to be cancerous.

“We’re not saying there’s no benefit” from mammograms in the 40s, cautioned Dr. Carolyn Crandall of the University of California, Los Angeles, who chaired the American College of Physicians report. But “there’s a narrower balance between the benefits you could get and the harms in 40- to 49-year-olds.”

The American Cancer Society recommends starting yearly mammograms at 45 because it found breast cancer incidence in 45- to 49-year-olds was higher than in the early 40s – more like what 50- to 54-year-olds experience, said public health researcher Robert Smith, the society’s expert on early cancer detection.

What is missing is a way to tell if someone is more likely to develop an aggressive breast cancer or a slow-growing one, Smith noted.

How dense breasts affect mammogram advice

Nearly half of women over 40 have dense breast tissue, which can make it harder to spot a tumor on a mammogram and can slightly increase the risk of developing cancer.

After a mammogram, women are notified about their breast density. Many experts say it is not yet clear if women with dense breasts would benefit from adding ultrasounds or MRIs to their screening. But the new American College of Physicians guidance advises considering 3D mammography – what doctors call digital breast tomosynthesis or DBT.

What’s next for breast cancer screening

In the future, adding a gene test — one that looks at more than just those well-known BRCA genes — along with broader risk factors may help refine women’s optimal mammogram schedule.

A recent study of nearly 46,000 women, called the WISDOM trial, used age, genetic testing, lifestyle, health history and breast density to classify women as low, average, elevated or high risk. That risk level determined if they waited to start mammograms at 50, went every other year or every year – and the highest-risk group was told to screen twice a year, once with a mammogram and again with an MRI scan. Risk-based scans were compared to standard yearly mammograms.

Risk-based screening worked as well as yearly screening, Esserman's team reported in the medical journal JAMA. One surprise: About 30% of women whose gene testing indicated increased risk didn't report relatives with breast cancer. While more research is underway, Esserman hopes the early findings will start influencing guidelines soon.

Also in the pipeline are AI tools being crafted to assess a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer in the next few years based on clues in her mammogram, another possible way to identify who might qualify for more or less frequent screening.

For now, women can talk with their doctors about close relatives who have had cancer, their own overall health and other risk factors such as whether they have had children and at what age.

Whatever mammogram age and interval they choose, the best advice is to stick with it, the cancer society's Smith said: “Breast screening works best when it’s done regularly.”

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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.

Meanwhile, Associated Press journalists in Ituri’s capital, Bunia, interviewed locals who recounted their fears and constant burials.

“Every day, people are dying ... and this has been going on for about a week. In a single day, we bury two, three, or even more people,” said Jean Marc Asimwe, a resident of Bunia. “At this point, we don’t really know what kind of disease it is,” said Asimwe.

Congolese Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said late Friday that there have been eight laboratory-confirmed cases, among them four deaths.

Test results confirmed the Bundibugyo virus, a variant of the disease that has been less prominent in Congo’s past outbreaks. This is Congo’s 17th outbreak since Ebola first emerged in the country in 1976.

Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood, or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal.

The suspected index case in the latest outbreak is a nurse who died at a hospital in Bunia, Kamba said. He said the case dates back three weeks to April 24.

He did not say whether samples from the nurse were tested, but said the person presented symptoms suggestive of Ebola.

The outbreak has spread to neighboring Uganda

Uganda confirmed Friday an Ebola case that authorities said was “imported” from Congo. The person died at the Kibuli Muslim Hospital in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, on May 14.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control ​and Prevention had said it is concerned about the risk of further spread due to the proximity of affected areas to Uganda and South Sudan.

The body of the patient who died in Kampala was later taken back to Congo and no other local case has been confirmed, Uganda’s Health Ministry said.

On Saturday, people were being screened at the entrance of the Kibuli Muslim Hospital.

Ismail Kigongo, who resides in Kampala, said the new outbreak reminded him of his father, whom he lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I really get scared because I remember burying my father without looking at his body,” he said.

Kenya, Uganda's neighbor, said Saturday that there is only a “moderate risk of importation” of the Ebola virus due to regional travel. Kenya’s government said it has formed an Ebola preparedness team and has strengthened surveillance at all points of entry.

Congo is a large country that often faces logistical challenges

Congo has experience managing Ebola outbreaks but often faces logistical challenges in delivering expertise and supplies to affected regions.

As Africa’s second-largest country by land area, Congo’s provinces are far from one another and mostly battling conflict. Ituri, for instance, is around 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, and is ravaged by violence from Islamic State-backed militants.

The disease has so far been confirmed in three health zones in Ituri province, including the capital city, Bunia, and the areas of Rwampara and Mongwalu, where the outbreak is concentrated.

Only 13 blood samples have been tested at the National Institute of Biomedical Research; 8 tested positive for the Bundibugyo strain. The remaining five could not be analyzed due to insufficient sample volume, the health minister said.

In Bunia, Ituri's main city, businesses and regular activities in public places appeared normal on Friday.

Resident Adeline Awekonimungu said she hopes the outbreak is quickly contained. "My recommendation is that the government take this matter seriously and that it takes charge of the hospitals so that this matter can be brought under control,” she said.

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Associated Press writers Chinedu Asadu in Abuja, Nigeria; Patrick Onen in Kampala, Uganda; and Evelyne Musambi in Nairobi, Kenya contributed.

Consumer inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, higher than what he inherited as the Iran war and the Republican president’s own tariffs have pushed up prices. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains and effectively making workers poorer. The Cleveland Federal Reserve estimates that annual inflation could reach 4.2% in May as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.

Trump’s time with Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears unlikely to help the U.S. economy much, despite Trump's claims of coming trade deals. The trip occurred as many people are voting in primaries leading into the November general election while having to absorb the rising costs of gasoline, groceries, utility bills, jewelry, women’s clothing, airplane tickets and delivery services. Democrats see the moment as a political opportunity.

“He’s returning to a dumpster fire,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank focused on economic issues. “The president will not have the faith and confidence of the American people — the economy is their top issue and the president is saying, ‘You’re on your own.’”

The president’s trip to Beijing and his recent comments that indicated a tone-deafness to voters' concerns about rising prices have suggested his focus is not on the American public and have undermined Republicans who had intended to campaign on last year’s tax cuts as helping families.

Trump described the trip as a victory, saying on social media that Xi “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes," as the U.S. president has praised their relationship.

Trump told reporters that Boeing would be selling 200 aircraft — and maybe even 750 “if they do a good job” — to the Chinese. He said American farmers would be “very happy” because China would be "buying billions of dollars of soybeans.”

"We had an amazing time," Trump said as he flew home on Air Force One, and told Fox News' Bret Baier in an interview that gasoline prices were just some “short-term pain” and would “drop like a rock” once the war ends.

Inflationary pain is not a factor in how T

rump handles Iran

Trump departed from the White House for China by saying the negotiations over the Iran war depended on stopping Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

That remark prompted blowback because it suggested to some that Trump cared more about challenging Iran than fighting inflation at home. Trump defended his words, telling Fox News: “That’s a perfect statement. I’d make it again.”

The White House has since stressed that Trump is focused on inflation.

Asked later about the president's words, Vice President JD Vance said there had been a “misrepresentation” of the remarks. White House spokesman Kush Desai said the “administration remains laser-focused on delivering growth and affordability on the homefront" while indicating actions would be taken on grocery prices.

But as Trump appeared alongside Xi, new reports back home showed inflation rising for businesses and interest rates climbing on U.S. government debt.

His comments that Boeing would sell 200 jets to China caused the company’s stock price to fall because investors had expected a larger number. There was little concrete information offered about any trade agreements reached during the summit, including Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as liquefied natural gas and beef.

“Foreign policy wins can matter politically, but only if voters feel stability and affordability in their daily lives,” said Brittany Martinez, a former Republican congressional aide who is the executive director of Principles First, a center-right advocacy group focused on democracy issues.

“Midterms are almost always a referendum on cost of living and public frustration, and Republicans are not immune from the same inflation and affordability pressures that hurt Democrats in recent cycles,” she added.

Democrats see Trump as vulnerable

Democratic lawmakers are seizing on Trump’s comments before his trip as proof of his indifference to lowering costs. There is potential staying power of his remarks as Americans head into Memorial Day weekend facing rising prices for the hamburgers and hot dogs to be grilled.

“What Americans do not see is any sympathy, any support, or any plan from Trump and congressional Republicans to lower costs – in fact, they see the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday.

Vance faulted the Biden administration for the inflation problem even though the inflation rate is now higher than it was when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 with a specific mandate to fix it.

“The inflation number last month was not great,” Vance said Wednesday, but he then stressed, "We’re not seeing anything like what we saw under the Biden administration.”

Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden, a Democrat. By the time Trump took the oath of office, it was a far more modest 3%.

Trump's inflation challenge could get harder

The data tells a different story as higher inflation is spreading into the cost of servicing the national debt.

Over the past week, the interest rate charged on 10-year U.S. government debt jumped from 4.36% to 4.6%, an increase that implies higher costs for auto loans and mortgages.

“My fear is that the layers of supply shocks that are affecting the U.S. economy will only further feed into inflationary pressures,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.

Daco noted that last year’s tariff increases were now translating into higher clothing prices. With the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s ability to impose tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, his administration is preparing a new set of import taxes for this summer.

Daco stressed that there have been a series of supply shocks. First, tariffs cut into the supply of imports. In addition, Trump’s immigration crackdown cut into the supply of foreign-born workers. Now, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off the vital waterway used to ship 20% of global oil supplies.

“We’re seeing an erosion of growth,” Daco said.

Thai news reported the crash happened in the late afternoon near an airport railway station in the central area. The city’s emergency services, Erawan Medical Center, said at least eight people were killed and more than 20 others were injured.

Footage of the moment of the crash shared on social media showed a line of vehicles had stopped at a railway crossing when a cargo train struck an orange bus. The impact also dragged several nearby vehicles along the tracks before the bus was engulfed in flames. Several motorcycles and their riders were also seen being thrown onto the road after the collision.

Later videos showed a group of rescuers entering the charred bus after the flames were brought under control.

Deputy Transport Minister Siripong Angkasakulkiat told reporters at the crash site that all the bodies were found on the bus. He said it was still unclear how many people were on board.

When asked about reports that the bus had stopped on the railway tracks and that the barriers, used to keep motorists away from the tracks when the trains are passing, may not have lowered properly, Siripong said the matter still needs to be investigated.

Kittipong Raksa said he parked his car near the train tracks when he heard the signal indicating the train was about to pass.

“I heard a thud and then another. I heard something hitting my car," said Kittipong. "Then I saw the train pass, dragging the bus with it.” He said after the collision, he found someone caught under his car, with a broken leg.

Kittipong said he did not see the barriers being lowered.

The trial centered on whether Weinstein raped Jessica Mann, a hairstylist and actor, in 2013 during a relationship between the then-married Weinstein and the decades-younger Mann. Weinstein’s lawyers argued that the encounter was consensual, while Mann described a hotel-room encounter when he forced himself upon her.

The current jury heard nearly three weeks of testimony, including from Mann. Weinstein decided not to testify.

Here’s what you need to know about the case:

Why has the case gone to trial three times?

Weinstein was initially convicted in 2020, but an appeals court overturned that verdict after the court ruled the trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against Weinstein based on allegations that weren’t part of the case.

Jurors at a retrial last year convicted Weinstein of one count of criminal sex act and acquitted him of another. But they stopped deliberating on Mann's rape charge when the foreperson refused to participate further, leaving the case unresolved and leading to the retrial that ended as a mistrial Friday.

Why did this case ended in a mistrial?

On the third day of deliberations, the jury told the judge they were stuck, but he told them to keep trying. Ultimately, they sent another note saying: “We feel that no one is going to change where they stand.”

When a jury in criminal court cannot reach a unanimous decision, the judge typically declares a mistrial.

Some jurors on the majority-male Manhattan jury questioned the credibility of Mann’s testimony and said outside court that nine out of 12 wanted to acquit Weinstein.

A juror, Josh Hadar, said Mann had an “incredible memory” when she testified for the prosecution but “forgot a lot of things” when questioned by defense attorneys.

Mann underwent five days of fraught, often tearful testimony that included hours of questioning at a time.

Will there be a fourth trial?

District Attorney Alvin Bragg said his staff will consult Mann about another trial and also take into account what happens to Weinstein when he is sentenced for his conviction from the last trial.

A hearing was set for June 24 for prosecutors to decide if they will go to a fourth trial.

Is Weinstein still in prison?

Weinstein had been in a New York prison serving a 23-year sentence after his initial conviction in 2020. After that was overturned, he remained behind bars because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of rape and sexual assault and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He is currently being held at the Rikers Island jail while awaiting further legal proceedings.

What crimes has Weinstein already been convicted of?

During a retrial last June, Weinstein was convicted of one count of criminal sex act, when a jury found he forcibly performed oral sex on a TV and movie producer and production assistant, Miriam Haley, nearly two decades ago.

She had worked on the Weinstein-produced show “Project Runway" and testified that he assaulted her in July 2006 after inviting her to stop by his SoHo apartment before a flight. Weinstein is appealing the conviction.

In Los Angeles, he was convicted during a December 2022 trial of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault against an Italian actor and model. The woman said he arrived uninvited at her hotel room during a 2013 film festival in the run-up to the Oscars, talking his way in and assaulting her.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they choose to make their names public, as Mann and Haley have done.

The Vatican said Leo had decided to create the in-house study group because of the acceleration in AI's use, “its potential effects on human beings and on humanity as a whole (and) the church’s concern for the dignity of every human being.”

The announcement came a day after Leo signed his encyclical, 135 years to the day after his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, dated his most important encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” or Of New Things. That document addressed workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers owed workers as the Industrial Revolution was underway.

It became the foundation of modern Catholic social thought, and the current pope has already cited it in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes poses the same existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed over a century ago. The new encyclical is expected to place the AI question in the context of the church's social teaching, which also covers issues such as labor, justice and peace.

“I think that the Catholic Church in many ways is going to be the adult in the room on some of these debates about how we are going to integrate AI into the rest of our society,” said Meghan Sullivan, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame who directs its ethics institute. “For sure, the pope is going to be one of the most forceful advocates for human dignity in these discussions.”

Just days after his 2025 election, Leo told the cardinals who made him pope that the Catholic Church owed it to the world to offer the “treasury of its social teaching” to confront the challenges posed by AI on “human dignity, justice and labor.”

The public release of the encyclical, expected in the coming weeks, will likely become a new flashpoint between the Chicago-born Leo and the Trump administration, which has made the rapid development of AI a matter of vital national economic and security strategy. The United States has strongly rejected international regulatory efforts to rein in AI and the Trump administration has removed bureaucratic roadblocks slowing its development domestically.

The flurry of Vatican activity came as U.S. President Donald Trump wrapped up a visit to China that included AI business. Traveling with Trump on Air Force One were, among others, Elon Musk, whose social media platform X features his AI chatbot Grok, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who recently secured federal approval to sell H200 AI chips to Chinese buyers.

The Vatican wants its voice and values in the AI debate

Since the AI boom kicked off with ChatGPT’s debut, the technology’s breathtaking capabilities have amazed the world. Tech companies have raced to develop better AI systems even as experts warn of its risks, from existential but far-off threats like rogue AIs running amok to everyday problems like bias in algorithmic hiring systems.

The United Nations last year adopted a new governance architecture to rein in AI after previous multilateral efforts, including AI summits organized by Britain, South Korea and France resulted only in nonbinding pledges. In 2024, the EU adopted its own Artificial Intelligence Act, applying a risk-based approach to its AI rules.

The Vatican has sought to add its voice to the debate, offering ethical guidelines for the application of AI in sectors from warfare to education and healthcare. The underlying call has been that the technology must be used as a tool to complement, and not replace, human intelligence.

The Vatican has also warned of the environmental impact of the AI race, noting the “vast amounts of energy and water” required by AI data centers and computational power.

“There are almost a billion and a half Catholics in the world, so that alone is reason to pay attention,” said Thomas Harmon, theology professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. “But beyond the numbers, the Catholic Church has a deep and sophisticated tradition of thinking through what it means to be human.”

In 2020, the Vatican enlisted tech companies to sign on to an AI pledge, known as the Rome Call for AI Ethics, which, among other things, outlined core principles for AI regulation, including inclusiveness, accountability, impartiality, and privacy. Microsoft, IBM and Cisco were among the private sector companies that signed on.

In his final years, Pope Francis called for an international treaty to regulate AI, saying the risks of technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness were too great to merely trust in the morality of AI researchers and developers.

He also brought his authority to bear on the Group of Seven, addressing a special session on the perils and promises of AI in 2024. There, Francis said politicians must take the lead in making sure AI remains human-centric, so that decisions about when to use weapons or even less-lethal tools always remain made by humans. He called ultimately for a ban on the use of lethal autonomous weapons, colloquially known as “killer robots.”

AI-savvy Leo is concerned with peace, truth and human relations

In-house, Leo has warned priests against using AI to write their homilies. But the math major pope, who does spend free time scrolling on his phone, has also raised his voice on the broader implications of AI on world peace, labor and the very meaning of reality.

For the Augustinian pope, generative AI’s ability to misinform and deceive through deepfake imagery is particularly worrisome, given that the search for truth is a fundamental element of his religious order's spirituality.

In a June 2025 speech to an AI conference, Leo acknowledged generative AI’s contributions to healthcare and scientific discovery. But he questioned “its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our distinctive ability to grasp reality.”

Leo, who has emphasized a constant appeal for peace, has also called for monitoring how AI is being used and developed in warfare in the Middle East and Ukraine, where automated weapons systems are using everything from aerial drones and maritime and ground platforms.

“What is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon and in Iran illustrates the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation,” he said this past week at La Sapienza, Europe’s largest university.

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AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien in Providence, R.I. contributed to this report.

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

Speaking like a coach who knows his days are numbered, Arbeloa told reporters in Madrid on Saturday that “if he (Mourinho) is the one who is here next season, I will be happy to see him back home.”

Arbeloa played for Madrid when Mourinho was in charge from 2010-2013, a tumultuous time in which Madrid won Spanish league and Copa del Rey titles but was overshadowed by Pep Guardiola’s great Barcelona side. Mourinho's abrasive attitude to opponents like Guardiola as well as some of his own players turned off many in Spain. He also had his faithful backers, like Arbeloa and some hardcore fans.

The Madrid sports papers are rife with rumors that Mourinho is the leading candidate to replace Arbeloa, who was always seen as an interim coach after he was promoted from the club’s reserve team midseason to fill in for the fired Xabi Alonso.

Second-place Madrid has two more Spanish league games to play this campaign, which it will finish without a major title. It visits Sevilla on Sunday and concludes the season at home against Athletic Bilbao on May 23.

The 15-time European Cup winners have been embarrassed in recent weeks by series of unseemly events. There was a fight between players, and a loss at Barcelona that allowed its fierce rival to clinch the league title. Kylian Mbappé was also jeered by fans, while the star striker called out Arbeloa publicly for not playing him more.

Club president Florentino Pérez added to the sense of a club in crisis by giving a press conference to announce he would call early elections, which he is expected to win, while blasting the media for what he considered a campaign to force him to quit.

Pérez is expected to make a coaching change soon, and it is understandable that he believes Mourinho’s strong personality is what the squad needs.

Mourinho, who led Porto and Inter Milan to Champions League titles in 2004 and 2010, is finishing his season with Benfica this weekend. The 63-year-old coach said on Friday that he had received an offer from the Lisbon-based club to continue, but that he will decide his future in the coming days.

When asked what he thought about Mourinho’s possible return, Arbeloa reiterated similar praise he has lavished on Mourinho on other occasions.

“For me as a player, and above all as a Madrid supporter, I feel and think that he is the number one,” Arbeloa said.

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

Labor unions representing about half the system’s workers announced the walkout after negotiations with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority ended Friday without a new contract. The five unions, which represent about half the system’s 7,000 workers, including locomotive engineers, machinists and signalmen, weren't legally allowed to go on strike until 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

Kevin Sexton of the National Vice President of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said no new negotiations have been scheduled.

“We’re far apart at this point," Sexton said. “We are truly sorry that we are in this situation.”

Janno Lieber, the MTA chairman, said the agency “gave the union everything they said they wanted in terms of pay” and that to him it was apparent the unions always intended to walk out.

The strike will force the roughly 250,000 people who ride the system each weekday to find alternative routes into New York City from its Long Island suburbs or to work from home. That means more cars on traffic-choked highways and longer work commutes.

“It’s gonna be such a nightmare trying to get in,” said Rob Udle, an electrician who takes the LIRR at least five days a week into Manhattan.

The strike could make it challenging for some sports fans to get into Manhattan to watch the NBA’s New York Knicks playoff run or see the baseball rivals the New York Yankees battle the crosstown Mets this weekend.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has urged LIRR riders to work from during the walkout as the MTA plans to provide free but limited shuttle buses during the work day rush hours geared toward essential workers.

In a statement she blamed the strike on union leadership.

“Commuters are dealing with unnecessary dysfunction and thousands of union LIRR workers are being forced to go without a paycheck because of decisions made by a small group of union leaders," Hochul said. "I stand with LIRR riders and will fight to preserve the long term stability of the MTA.”

Dispute over wages

Both sides said the fight was over wage increases and health care premiums.

Details on exactly where each side stood late Friday weren't released, but the union had gone into the talks demanding a total raise of 16% over four years, saying it was needed to help workers keep up with inflation.

The MTA has argued that the union’s initial demands would lead to fare increases. Lieber said that while the MTA had met the pay demands, it had asked for new hires to the LIRR to pay higher health care premiums to offset some costs. The union rejected that idea.

Commuters brace for the worst

Susanne Alberto, a personal trainer from Long Island, said she has already made plans with her Manhattan clients to hold virtual sessions in the event of a shutdown.

She said the union likely has the upper hand.

“The MTA is going to cave, and they know that,” Alberto said. “Why don’t they just do it now instead of waiting until virtually millions of people get inconvenienced?”

Udle, the electrician, said he will likely use his vacation days rather than navigate the “nightmare” of commuting into Manhattan if the rail service shuts down.

A union member, he sympathized with the unions’ affordability concerns, but he said he didn’t agree with their strong-arm tactics.

“I get it, the cost of living is going up and stuff like that,” Udle said while waiting at Penn Station for a train home. “But they shouldn’t hold everybody hostage to do it. There’s a better way. You’re affecting a lot of other people."

A strike was temporarily averted in September when President Donald Trump’s administration agreed to help with negotiations. Those efforts ended without a deal, giving both sides 60 days — ending 12:01 a.m. Saturday — to again try to resolve their differences before the union is legally allowed to go on strike or the agency could lock out workers.

LIRR workers last went on strike in 1994, for about two days.

Workers on the commuter rail system connecting Manhattan to New Jersey, New Jersey Transit, went on strike last year. It lasted three days.

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The first reference to the rail system has been updated to correct to Long Island Rail Road, from Long Island Railroad.

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Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo

Among the stacks of beef boxes and red meat cuts hanging from metal hooks, chicken and pork are increasingly present.

Red meat consumption in Argentina — historically one of the world’s biggest consumers of beef — has fallen to its lowest level in two decades amid economic austerity measures imposed by libertarian President Javier Milei.

As of April 2026, annual per capita beef consumption fell to 44.5 kilograms (98 pounds), down from 49.5 kilograms (109 pounds) during the same month a year earlier, according to the Agricultural Foundation for Argentina’s Development. In 2006, it was 63.4 kilos (139 pounds) per person.

“People are switching to cheaper proteins. They’re eating pork, they’re eating chicken,” said García.

Analysts attribute the decline to soaring beef prices, lower cattle supply and weakened household purchasing power. The opening of Argentina’s beef market to international trade has also pushed domestic prices closer to global levels.

“Beef moved into a completely different purchasing-power category. Workers’ wages fell far behind,” said Juampi Quintero, 25, a meat distributor who estimated consumption among his clients has fallen by more than half.

Less money for beef

Since coming into office in December 2023 with an annual inflation at 211%, Milei promised to eliminate what he called “the cancer of inflation” through an adjustment plan that included cuts equivalent to nearly one-third of public spending, symbolized by the image of a chain saw.

The government succeeded in reversing the fiscal deficit and achieving a budget surplus — a rare result in Argentina’s recent history — but the social cost of the austerity measures has drawn criticism.

Within months, Milei’s administration eliminated 13 ministries, laid off about 30,000 public employees, halted public works projects and reduced funding for key areas such as education, healthcare and science, while also cutting subsidies for basic services such as electricity, gas, water and transportation.

“That affects household income because families now have to pay more for services that were previously subsidized by the state,” said economist Camilo Tiscornia. “As a result, they have less disposable income and must give up certain more expensive goods, such as beef.”

At the same time, household incomes did not rise at the same pace as beef prices, helping drive down consumption.

Wages for registered workers increased an average of 1.8% in February, the latest available data, compared with monthly inflation of 2.9%.

“Before, I had the freedom to buy what I wanted,” said Alberto Brajin, a 61-year-old retiree who runs a streetside barbecue stall in Buenos Aires.

Brajin said he now has to “trade down” to cheaper proteins such as chicken.

Incomes drop, beef prices surge

Beef prices rose more than 60% over the past year, reaching an average of 18,500 pesos ($13) per kilogram in Buenos Aires in May, according to the Argentine Beef Promotion Institute.

In July 2025, Milei’s government reduced export taxes on beef and poultry and removed production quotas to encourage overseas sales, reversing part of the restrictions imposed under former President Alberto Fernández to curb rising domestic prices. The easing of export regulations came just as Argentina's beef production dropped by more than 10 percent due to floods and droughts, according to CICCRA, the nonprofit organization that represents Argentina’s beef producers.

Argentina’s government said this week that beef exports rose 54% in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, totaling nearly 200,000 tons worth more than $1 billion. The increase followed a U.S. decision earlier this year to expand Argentina’s tariff-free beef quota amid American cattle shortages.

With the market opening up, producers began selling beef — once affordable across much of Argentina’s social spectrum — at prices closer to international levels.

“Previously, all meats had similar prices, which encouraged high beef consumption that did not reflect its real production costs,” agricultural consultant Iván Ordóñez explained.

Shop owners learn to adapt

As beef becomes increasingly expensive for many Argentine families, chicken and pork are gaining ground as cheaper alternatives.

“We’ve chosen to buy pork and chicken because beef is too expensive,” said shop owner Ruth Simon.

Chicken costs an average of 4,900 pesos ($3.50) per kilogram, while pork ribs cost around 8,900 pesos ($6.30).

García, the butcher shop owner, said he began selling chicken and pork less than a year ago after noticing changes in customers’ eating habits.

“You have to adapt,” he said. “We can’t just sit around crying. No crying. We have to work. We have to keep our dignity. We have to fight.”

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said contradictory messages have “made us reluctant about the real intentions of Americans.”

“We are in doubt about their seriousness,” he told reporters in New Delhi, adding that negotiations would move forward if Washington was ready for a “fair and balanced deal.”

U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week dismissed Iran's latest formal proposal as “garbage.” While Iran was said to include some nuclear concessions, Trump has said he wants to remove highly enriched uranium from the country and prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

In separate negotiations in Washington between Israel and Lebanon, both sides agreed Friday to extend their ceasefire until early June, U.S. officials said.

With talks between Iran and the U.S. at a standstill during the shaky ceasefire, tensions remain high and threaten to tip the Middle East back into open warfare and prolong the worldwide energy crisis sparked by the conflict.

Iran still has a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway where a fifth of the world’s oil passed through before the war, and America is blockading Iranian ports.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who finished talks on Friday, agreed the strait needs to be reopened.

China could play a diplomatic role, Iran says

Araghchi said Friday that Iran would welcome diplomatic support from other countries, particularly from China, citing Beijing’s previous role in facilitating the restoration of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Beijing has shown little public interest in U.S. requests to get more involved, even though Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Xi had in their conversations offered to help.

Pakistan said Thursday it was continuing diplomatic efforts to help ease regional tensions. But it declined to disclose details of the discussions or say whether the U.S. had formally responded.

“The clock on diplomacy has not stopped. The peace process is working,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told reporters in Islamabad.

Iran says uranium is a sticking point

Trump has demanded a major rollback of Iran’s nuclear activities while Iran says it has a right to enrich uranium.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who launched the war with Trump on Feb. 28, also wants Iran’s highly enriched uranium removed from the country.

Iran’s foreign minister said Friday that the issue of its enriched uranium stockpile is one of the most difficult subjects in negotiations with the U.S.

Russia has previously offered to take the stockpile if Iran is willing to give it up. Araghchi said Russia’s proposal was not currently under active discussion, but could be revisited.

“When we come to that stage, obviously we will have more consultations with Russia and see if the Russian offer can help or not,” he said.

Israel and Lebanon extend ceasefire as strikes continue

Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend the expiring Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire for another 45 days to allow for negotiations on a broader peace agreement, the U.S. State Department said.

After two days of meetings, the department said it would reconvene the two sides for discussions on June 2 and 3, while a military track — between the Israeli and Lebanese armies — by the Pentagon will begin on May 29. Hezbollah opposes Lebanon’s direct negotiations with Israel and has not been part of the talks.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said the talks were frank and constructive. “There will be ups and downs, but the potential for success is great,” he said in a social media post. “What will be paramount throughout negotiations is the security of our citizens and our soldiers.”

The ongoing ceasefire hasn’t stopped Israel and Hezbollah from trading strikes.

The Israeli military said Friday it hit Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon after reporting hostile aircraft alerts and launches from across the border. Lebanon’s health ministry said three paramedics were killed in a strike near the city of Harouf. Other strikes around the coastal city of Tyre wounded nearly 40 people, destroyed a health center and damaged the neighboring Hiram Hospital, wounding six medical workers, the ministry said.

Chinese-owned ship taken into Iranian waters

A Chinese-owned ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates was seized this week and taken toward Iranian waters.

Chinese private security company Sinoguards said it had “been informed through relevant channels" that the vessel Hui Chuan, which it was operating as an offshore work platform, was taken into Iranian waters for documentation and compliance inspection by the authorities.

The company's emailed statement said there was no indication of any injuries on the ship and that it was cooperating.

Honduras, where the ship was flagged, said the ship had 17 crew including people from Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam and Sri Lanka.

The seizure happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the Strait of Hormuz and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S.

The U.S. seized vessels in the Gulf of Oman last month and on Friday the foreign minister of Pakistan said it had secured the return of 11 Pakistani nationals and 20 Iranian citizens who were aboard those vessels. “All individuals are in good health and high spirits,” said the foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, said.

UAE speeds up construction of oil pipeline

The United Arab Emirates is speeding up the completion of a new pipeline that will allow the Gulf federation to export more oil without routing it through the Strait of Hormuz.

Sheikh Khaled bin Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, directed state oil company ADNOC to accelerate work on the pipeline, the Abu Dhabi Media Office said Friday.

The oil company already runs a pipeline designed to carry 1.5 million barrels a day from its oil fields to the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman.

The new pipeline, expected to double the company’s export capacity through that port, will become operational next year, the media office said.

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Schreck reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press reporters Munir Ahmed in Islamabad; Koral Saeed in Abu Snan, Israel; Matthew Lee in Washington; and Mae Anderson in New York contributed.

For the first time in seven years, Silvia Díaz won’t get together with friends to watch the Eurovision Song Contest finals on Saturday night. Their host called off their annual gathering after Spain’s public broadcaster withdrew from the festival, protesting Israel’s participation over its war against Hamas in Gaza. Díaz will watch on YouTube, but only if she has no other plans.

“It’s not the same watching it alone at home as it is with friends. That’s the only thing that upsets me.”

The five-day song competition drew 166 million viewers last year — considerably more than Super Bowl viewership in the U.S. Spain hasn't won since 1969; nevertheless, after months of television, radio and newspaper play for Spain’s song, friends and families usually watch the final at home and bars, and their contestant's performance dominates the day-after headlines. Spaniards at the event wave the country's flag, wear red clothing, or don the occasional bullfighter costume.

Spain announced its boycott in December, after the European Broadcasting Union said Israel would be allowed to compete, and has been joined by Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Iceland. Some Spanish fans respect the choice to take a stand by sitting out the cherished event, even if it’s bittersweet.

Media blackout in Spain and elsewhere

Spain's broadcaster has repeatedly expressed disapproval over Israel’s participation. In last year's semifinals, RTVE's commentators introduced Israel's singer in the same breath as they mentioned Palestinians killed in the war. Before airing the final, the network transmitted the message “Peace and justice for Palestine” on a black background to hundreds of thousands of Spanish televisions.

As Eurovision finals take place in Vienna, RTVE will air a tribute to the network's musical history. It will feature a performance by Tony Grox and Lucycalys, the musicians who RTVE would have dispatched to represent Spain at Eurovision.

Ireland's public broadcaster will air a film about one couple's life in the Irish countryside. Slovenians will be shown an episode of a 10-part program about Palestinians. People can still watch Eurovision on the European Broadcasting Union's YouTube channel, but the lack of a performer or commentator from their own country renders the vibe decidedly less passionate.

Israel has been competing for 50 years and won four times. Israelis gather in bars to watch and are enthusiastic about the country’s participation, which is seen by many as a sign of international acceptance and normalcy. Its contestant each year becomes a national celebrity and a strong showing — even if not an outright victory — is a source of pride.

Fans are divided by the boycott

Among Spain's Eurovision fans, this year's boycott has supporters and detractors.

For Rebeca Carril, who enjoys replaying performances from the 1960s and 1970s, before she was born, the turning point came a few years ago with the influx of Israeli sponsors. She didn't want to support their marketing efforts by tuning in.

“I have Palestinian friends and I began to understand a little better how things worked,” said Carril, a 42-year-old marketing executive in Madrid.

For others, like Guillermina Bastida, music and politics should be separate. She drove 3 1/2 days from northern Spain in a van with her two daughters to last year's competition in Basel, her third time attending. This year, she will settle for YouTube.

“It’s a song festival, period,” Bastida, a 47-year-old who works in communications, said by phone from Asturias province. “I also have my own stance, which is critical, but not to the point of boycotting the festival.”

Eurovision’s motto is “United by Music,” and organizers strive to keep politics out, vainly, in recent years. Months after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the European Broadcasting Union disqualified Russia, and it hasn’t been allowed to return. Contest rules ban overtly political lyrics or symbols, and organizers stress it is a competition among national broadcasters, not governments.

Spain is one of the so-called “Big Five” countries that contribute the most financially to Eurovision. In addition to missing out on big bucks for broadcasting rights, Eurovision is losing publicity and credibility, said Jose García, co-director of a website that provides news about the competition, whose main social media channels have a combined total of almost 100,000 followers.

That doesn't mean people will tune out completely, he added.

“It has marked the television and personal history of many people, and fans will watch it via international channels or YouTube. But it’s one thing to be able to watch it and another to agree with what’s happening,” García said.

The absence of Spaniards is felt

On the streets of Vienna, the lack of Spaniards is noticeable, said Vicente Rico after attending the first night of the semifinals.

“We’re a group that, just like at other events, makes its presence felt — we’re among the happiest, the loudest and the most fun,” said Rico, 40, who runs a perfumery in Madrid.

This is Rico's 18th Eurovision, and he had been torn before embarking on his annual pilgrimage because he believes the boycott is morally right. Still, it doesn't sit well.

“It bothers me that Eurovision is being used as a scapegoat,” he said, noting the lack of action by international organizations and boycotts at other events like the FIFA World Cup, which kicks off in a month.

And who will Rico support, with Spain absent?

“I think Finland is going to win, but the support for Italy is crazy,” he said. If Sweden, Serbia or Australia prevails, he would return to Spain happy.

“This year, we’re rooting for everyone except Israel.”

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Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Jill Lawless in Vienna contributed to this report.

The young Spurs left no doubt they're already a serious NBA title contender.

Stephon Castle had 32 points and 11 rebounds to highlight another dominant performance from the backcourt, and Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs romped past the Timberwolves 139-109 on Friday night to finish in the second-round series in six games.

“I just tip my hat to them,” Edwards said. “They were just the better team.”

De'Aaron Fox added 21 points and nine assists and rookie Dylan Harper had 15 points off the bench for the Spurs, who set their franchise postseason record for 3-pointers made by going 18 for 38. They will face defending champion Oklahoma City in Game 1 on Monday night. The Thunder swept their first two series.

“Of course we’re confident, but we need to keep the right confidence level,” Wembanyama said. “Right now, I’m not even thinking about it. I’m just thinking about recovering.”

Wembanyama, who bounced back from his stunning Game 4 ejection with 27 points, 17 rebounds, five assists and three blocks in the Game 5 blowout, was well-guarded by the Wolves in Game 6 and had a quiet 19 points in 27 minutes. But he still served as a constant defensive deterrent in the paint, and he dutifully joined the Spurs in transition whenever they had the opportunity to run — which was often.

The size, smarts and shooting touch of the Spurs guards were too much for the Wolves, who predictably had their hands full with the 7-foot-4 Wembanyama.

Castle made his first five 3-pointers and finished 11 for 16 from the floor. Fox was 3 for 3 from deep, and Julian Champagnie made four 3s among his 18 points for the Spurs, who outscored the Wolves by a whopping 97 points in the series and never once trailed by double digits. The Spurs breezed by Portland Trail in five games in the first round.

“It shows that we already gained a little bit of experience from our short playoff time," Wembanyama said. "I feel like we put ourselves in the best conditions, as simple as that.”

Anthony Edwards had 24 points on 9-for-26 shooting for the Wolves, who got another spark from reserves Terrence Shannon (21 points) and Naz Reid (18 points) but were again flustered by the Spurs and their relentless switch-heavy defense. Julius Randle had just three points on 1-for-8 shooting.

“It just felt like we kind of ran out of bullets as this series went on,” coach Chris Finch said.

This no-show in the elimination game might’ve felt familiar to Wolves fans, who’ve otherwise enjoyed an unprecedented run of success in the playoffs over the last three years.

Minnesota trailed by 33 points at halftime in a 30-point loss at Oklahoma City in the Game 5 ouster in the Western Conference finals last year and were down by 29 points at the break to Dallas in losing the Western Conference finals in 2024 in a 21-point loss in Game 5.

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

Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the reigning MVP and he's one of the three finalists for the award this season — along with Spurs center Victor Wembanyama and Denver's Nikola Jokic. Amazon Prime Video announced that it would reveal the MVP winner during its pregame show Sunday, which starts at 7:30 p.m. EDT.

No matter who wins, it'll be the eighth consecutive season in which a player who was born outside the U.S. takes the MVP trophy.

This international run of MVPs started with Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo (born in Greece, of Nigerian descent) in 2019 and 2020, then Denver’s Nikola Jokic (Serbia) in 2021 and 2022, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid (born in Cameroon but has since become a U.S. citizen) in 2023, Jokic again in 2024 and Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada) last year.

Wembanyama would be the first French player to win MVP, and Jokic is seeking a fourth MVP — something only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (six), Michael Jordan (five), Bill Russell (five), Wilt Chamberlain (four) and LeBron James (four) have done.

It'll also be the 12th MVP award overall for an international player. Before this current run, Nigeria's Hakeem Olajuwon won in 1994, Canada's Steve Nash won in 2005 and 2006, and Germany's Dirk Nowitzki won in 2007.

The scheduling of the announcement may be a hint that Gilgeous-Alexander might be the winner, because it would have the same time-frame that the MVP reveal followed a year ago. In 2025, Gilgeous-Alexander was announced as the winner May 21, and he was formally presented with the trophy before Game 2 of the West finals in Oklahoma City on May 22.

This year, the Sunday announcement comes a day before the Thunder plays host to Game 1 of the West finals on Monday night.

Awards so far this season

A breakdown of the awards already announced by the NBA this season:

— Defensive Player of the Year: Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio.

— Clutch Player of the Year: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City.

— Sixth Man of the Year: Keldon Johnson, San Antonio.

— Most Improved Player: Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Atlanta.

— Rookie of the Year: Cooper Flagg, Dallas.

— Executive of the Year: Brad Stevens, Boston.

— Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year: DeAndre Jordan, New Orleans.

— Hustle Award: Moussa Diabaté, Charlotte.

— Sportsmanship Award: Derrick White, Boston.

The league's Coach of the Year award (San Antonio's Mitch Johnson, Detroit’s J.B. Bickerstaff, or Boston’s Joe Mazzulla) has yet to be announced, as have the All-NBA, All-Rookie and All-Defensive teams.

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

The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, first brought attention to the strengthening ties between Israel and the UAE by revealing that Israel had sent Iron Dome air-defense weapons and personnel to operate them to help protect the UAE from Iranian attacks.

Then, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had quietly visited the UAE during the war, prompting a hasty public denial from the Gulf nation.

As Netanyahu and the Trump administration ballyhoo their alliances as part of an effort to bolster the region's anti-Iran factions, the Gulf states prefer to downplay these partnerships — a sign of how public ties to Israel remain deeply controversial in the region.

Here’s what you need to know about the Israel-UAE relationship:

Why would the UAE deny Netanyahu’s visit?

Netanyahu’s decision to reveal his wartime trip to Abu Dhabi rocked the boat, particularly coming after Huckabee confirmed military cooperation between the two countries. Reports swirled that Israel’s security chiefs had also visited.

The UAE’s official WAM news agency posted an article denying “reports circulating” about the visit. The agency wrote that the country’s relations with Israel “are public and conducted within the framework of the well-known and officially declared Abraham Accords, and are not based on non-transparent or unofficial arrangements.”

The report also denied any Israeli military delegation was received in the UAE.

“It complicates Abu Dhabi’s wartime-frame posture by forcing it into the open — which is why the denial was issued so quickly and worded so carefully,” said Hesham Alghannam, a Saudi Arabia-based scholar at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.

Though the UAE normalized relations with Israel in 2020, its rulers like to keep the alliance somewhat quiet.

Antipathy toward the Jewish state runs high in Arab and Muslim countries across the Middle East. The negative feelings were magnified by the war in Gaza, which began after Hamas, a militant group backed by Iran, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

Israel’s ensuing offensive in Gaza flattened much of the territory and has killed over 72,700 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilian and militant deaths. That conflict spilled across the region, with Israel waging deadly and damaging campaigns against Iran-backed militants in Lebanon and Yemen, and striking militant targets in Qatar and Syria.

“We are the ugly duckling of the Middle East,” said Dan Diker, the president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, a conservative Israeli think tank.

Diker, who has had extensive talks and relationships with Abraham Accord countries in the region, said the regional officials with whom he often negotiated always asked to keep things under the radar.

What is the Israel-UAE alliance based on?

Israel and the UAE collaborated militarily during the war with Iran. Israel benefited from having a defense foothold in a country geographically closer to its archenemy. The UAE, meanwhile, gained access to Israeli military technology, like the Iron Dome air-defense system.

The alliance has also been a boon for both countries’ economies, with trade between them rising steadily since 2020.

Israel, long isolated in the Middle East, gains legitimacy by partnering with an Arab country. And the UAE gains power in Washington.

The UAE was the third Arab country, after Egypt and Jordan, to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel.

Why did Netanyahu publicize his visit?

Netanyahu faces fierce domestic opposition headed into an election season in Israel. He believes his image is bolstered if he can show his base that he is a Middle East power broker.

The Iran war did not much help the leader’s domestic popularity. One thing that could help it — while strengthening his strained relationship with President Donald Trump — would be more regional powers following the UAE’s lead. Israel is currently in talks with Azerbaijan to join the Abraham Accords.

But if Netanyahu was hopeful that broadcasting close Israel-UAE ties could serve as a model for other countries, he may need to temper expectations.

Saudi Arabia, a leader in the region that has resisted joining the Abraham Accords, has taken a different approach throughout the war. It has maintained open lines of communication with Tehran, and has supported Pakistan’s mediation between the sides, said Alghannam, the Saudi Arabia-based scholar.

“The aim is not to take a posture on Israel, per se. It is to refuse entanglement in a war whose dynamics Riyadh did not set and cannot control,” he said.

“Riyadh discussing the full range of options openly, with partners, without locking into one track, is itself a strategic signal," he said. "The regional security architecture will be designed regionally, not inherited from whatever Washington and Tehran negotiate bilaterally.”

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Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg will be replaced as FDA's acting drug center director by Dr. Mike Davis, who has been serving as deputy director, according to an email sent to agency staff Friday that was obtained by The Associated Press.

Hoeg said in a social media post late Friday that she was “fired,” from the agency, adding: “I learned so much and leave with no regrets.”

Hoeg's departure is the latest in an ongoing shake-up at the powerful regulatory agency. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned earlier in the week, and Dr. Vinay Prasad, the agency's vaccine and biotech chief, stepped down last month following intense criticism from drugmakers, patients and investors.

The agency also announced Friday that Karim Mikhail would take over as acting director of the vaccines center. Mikhail, a longtime pharmaceutical executive, was hired by Makary last spring.

Makary's ouster from his role atop the FDA followed weeks of complaints from President Donald Trump's political allies, including anti-abortion groups and vaping lobbyists, who are frustrated with the direction of the agency.

Hoeg, who is closely aligned with Makary and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had been leading FDA's drug program since December, the latest official to briefly hold that position amid a revolving door of FDA leadership changes.

Hoeg's rapid rise through the agency was engineered by Makary, who quickly promoted her from serving as his special assistant to overseeing the agency's largest center, responsible for regulating most U.S. prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

FDA center directors are typically career agency scientists with decades of experience. Hoeg had no previous government or management experience.

Since arriving at the FDA last March, Hoeg led investigations into the safety of injectable RSV drugs for children, antidepressants and COVID-19 vaccinations.

Those inquiries reflected Hoeg’s longstanding interests and concerns from before joining government.

A sports medicine physician and public health scientist, Hoeg first gained attention during the pandemic as a critic of masking, school closures, vaccine mandates and other government measures. She co-wrote papers with other medical contrarians who would go on to join the Trump administration, including Makary and Prasad.

Like Makary and Prasad, Hoeg also frequently expressed her opinions in blog posts and podcasts, including one titled “Vaccine Curious.” The podcast discussed a number of discredited ideas, including that mRNA vaccines may contain harmful DNA contaminants.

A Danish American citizen, Hoeg was instrumental in the Trump administration’s recent effort to drop a number of federally recommended shots for children, including those for the flu and hepatitis B at birth. Those changes have been temporarily blocked by a federal judge in Boston, though the administration plans to appeal the decision.

At the FDA, Hoeg led an “initial analysis” of vaccine injuries that linked COVID-19 shots to 10 reported deaths in children — without providing the supporting evidence. The findings were discussed in an internal memo Prasad sent to staffers last November, though the FDA has not formally announced the findings or explained how they were developed.

Officials from the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have previously concluded that serious side effects from the vaccines are extremely rare.

More recently, Hoeg was involved in the agency’s review of a formal petition to add bold new warnings to antidepressant drugs about unproven pregnancy risks, including fetal abnormalities that could lead to autism and other disorders.

In March, she attempted to hire the author of the petition to serve as a senior adviser at the FDA, according to people familiar with the situation. The matter raised concerns among some agency staff because Hoeg had repeatedly referred to the person as a friend, according to the people who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential FDA matters.

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

“It’s a huge blow. He’s been one of our most consistent guys that we have in our rotation,” manager Carlos Mendoza said.

Perhaps the Mets' best pitcher this year, Holmes got nailed just above the right foot on a leadoff single in the fourth inning by New York Yankees rookie Spencer Jones during the Subway Series opener at Citi Field.

Holmes chased after the ball as it caromed past the first-base line into foul territory. Mendoza and an athletic trainer came out of the dugout to check on the right-hander, who threw two warmup pitches and remained in the game.

His next six pitches were balls, but Holmes then got consecutive strikeouts and retired Aaron Judge on a flyball with the bases loaded to finish a scoreless inning.

Holmes was lifted following a one-out walk in the fifth. He threw 95 pitches, including 26 while facing seven batters after getting hit by Jones' line drive.

“He said he was fine. That’s the crazy part. We went out, checked him out, threw a couple pitches, was able to finish the inning," Mendoza said. “Comes back in and he didn’t even give me a chance. He said, ‘I’m good to go back out,’ and he goes back out there. Sent him for X-rays and this is what we’re dealing with now.”

Mendoza said those X-rays showed a fractured right fibula that will sideline Holmes “for a long time.”

“That’s the hard part to understand. He was fine, we checked him, finished the inning, he goes back out because he feels good. And then the last pitch, something didn’t look right. He came out, I’m talking to him in the dugout, he’s like, yeah, something didn’t feel right,” Mendoza said.

A former Yankees reliever, Holmes has been a dependable member of the rotation since converting to a starting role after signing a $38 million, three-year contract with the Mets as a free agent before the 2025 season. He entered Friday third in the National League with a 1.86 ERA.

“We all know how tough he is. He’s not going to come out that easy,” Mets slugger Juan Soto said. “But whenever I saw him coming out of the game in the next inning is when I was thinking something is wrong.”

Holmes (4-4) was charged with four runs and seven hits over 4 1/3 innings in a 5-2 loss, raising his ERA to 2.39. He struck out eight and walked two.

Holmes had lasted at least five innings and permitted no more than two runs in each of his first eight starts this season. His contract includes a $12 million player option for 2027.

“It’s tough to hear,” said Jones, who called Holmes a friend and noted they work out together during the offseason in Nashville, Tennessee. “I hit the ball and then I saw it come back towards me. It sounded loud.

“He’s a tough guy. Workhorse. Competitor. Says a lot about who he is to go back out there again the next inning with a broken leg. It’s incredible.”

After opening the season with baseball's biggest payroll, the Mets dropped to 18-26. Four projected regulars are already on the injured list — shortstop Francisco Lindor, catcher Francisco Alvarez, first baseman Jorge Polanco and center fielder Luis Robert Jr. — along with ineffective starting pitcher Kodai Senga and backups Ronny Mauricio and Jared Young.

“It’s tough, man. Clay is a guy who shows up every day and is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Soto, who was also teammates with Holmes on the Yankees. “It’s part of the game. We’re going to support him, we’re going to be right there for him in any way that he needs us. But it just sucks.”

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AP freelance writer Jerry Beach contributed to this report.

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

White, a 27-year-old screenwriter, knew she had to go. She wasn't the only one. More than 150 women — buoyed by the viral video — attended the tryouts in January, a five-fold increase from previous turnouts.

Five months later, White is one of a handful of women who have packed their bags and moved to Florida to join USA Handball's national residency program, hoping to eventually be selected to represent the United States at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Handball is popular overseas but not in the US

As the host nation, the U.S. automatically qualifies for every sport.

The last time the United States had a women’s handball team at the Games was in 1996. Finding the money and resources needed to field a competitive U.S. team is a constant challenge. Athletes are often dual citizens from Europe who play professionally overseas.

While handball is little known in the U.S., it is popular in Germany, France, Norway and Denmark as well as Balkan nations in southeastern Europe. These countries usually dominate at the Olympics.

Men’s handball was introduced in the 1936 Olympics, and women started participating at the 1976 Games. But while many Olympic athletes start training in childhood to compete for their country, handball athletes in the U.S. often pivot to the sport later in life.

The game involves two teams of six players who use their hands to pass a ball — covered in a sticky resin — to get it into the other team’s goal, protected by a goalkeeper. It’s fast, full-contact and can draw tens of thousands of spectators overseas.

Former athletes take a gamble

Many female handball players were Division One athletes in college or are former professional basketball players. Most are in their 20s and 30s, but some play into their 40s.

White had hoped to have a college athlete career playing basketball and lacrosse but was hindered by injuries and several surgeries on her knees. Handball felt like her chance to play competitive sports again.

“I think a lot of people would describe me as the most competitive person they’d ever met,” White said. “I definitely was raised in a house where we had big, big dreams.”

She told the coach after tryouts: “I’m ready to go do this and I will work as hard as you want me to work.”

The goal of the residency is for players to improve enough to be paid to play professionally overseas.

Many have left partners behind to pursue their dreams, including White.

“I told him I’m going to take him to Europe with me,” she said.

As for the Olympic team roster, that won’t be finalized until a few months ahead of the LA Games. While dozens of women are training in the residency, only about 14 to 18 can represent the country in a tournament. It’s a big gamble.

Multisport athletes tend to make the best handball players

Sarah Gascon, who played on the women’s national team for years, recently became its head coach. Her goal is to rebuild the team and the program in the U.S. after years of decline.

“We’ve had great successes in my career and some really great moments but still didn’t get an opportunity to play in the Olympic Games because we just weren’t good enough,” Gascon said.

The best players, Gascon has found, are multisport athletes. Basketball teaches you how to dribble, volleyball teaches you how to block a ball when someone is shooting, and softball or rugby teaches you how to throw. Handball incorporates all of these skills.

“It’s really about their athleticism,” Gascon said. “Do they have a good foundation that we could build upon? And how are they able to adapt with learning something new at 22 or 23 years old?”

A lack of funding is the biggest hurdle

While Gascon has rounded up enthusiastic athletes in Florida, the biggest challenge they face is resources.

USA Handball is the only national governing body for an Olympic sport that doesn’t receive any funding from the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, and the women’s team is the only one that doesn’t receive any support, such as access to elite athlete health insurance, Gascon said. The committee did not respond to an Associated Press email request for comment.

Gascon and her staff are all volunteers, and the athletes have to work full-time while training.

“Some of our best athletes haven’t been able to go to tournaments or go to events because they can’t afford it,” Gascon said.

Devyn Holbrook had also never heard of handball before the tryouts.

The 30-year-old self-proclaimed “queen of side quests” grew up doing ballet, soccer, basketball, softball, and javelin for track and field. She quickly became obsessed with handball after playing for just a few days.

“I just loved it and then I couldn’t stop watching videos online of past Olympic Games,” Holbrook said. “You don’t get a lot of chances to do like women’s team sports later in life.”

She figured she had nothing to lose.

“There will never be a chance again that I could go to the Olympics in this capacity,” Holbrook said. “So why not give it everything that I have? And if I don’t make it, then I don’t make it.”

There’s a lot that's noteworthy: Women lead the nominations for a second year in a row. Shania Twain will host for the first time, taking over for Reba McEntire. The awards ceremony will also take place May 17 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, leaving the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas, just north of Dallas, after three years.

And the ACM festivities actually began ahead of Sunday's event.

Before the show, a few trophies were handed out. Jessie Jo Dillon was named songwriter of the year, becoming the first artist to win three times in a row. Stephen Wilson Jr. was awarded visual media of the year for “Cuckoo.” And Avery Anna and Tucker Wetmore were presented with new female and new male artist of the year, respectively.

Here’s what you need to know before the main ACMs attraction begins.

How to watch the ACMs

The 2026 ACM Awards will stream on Prime Video and the Amazon Music channel on Twitch, as well as the Amazon Music app, on May 17 at 8 p.m. EDT.

This year’s ACM Awards nominees

Women dominate the 2026 ACM Award nominations. First up: Megan Moroney, who leads with nine nods.

She’s followed by Miranda Lambert, the most-decorated artist in ACM Awards history, with eight, as well as Ella Langley and Lainey Wilson with seven each.

Then there's Chris Stapleton with six, Zach Top with five and Cody Johnson with four.

In addition to Moroney, those competing for entertainer of the year are Wilson, Stapleton, Johnson, Luke Combs, Jelly Roll and Morgan Wallen.

In the album of the year category, Wallen’s “I’m the Problem” faces off against Top’s “Ain’t in It for My Health,” Riley Green’s “Don’t Mind If I Do,” Parker McCollum’s “Parker McCollum” and first-time nominee Carter Faith’s “Cherry Valley.”

Who’s performing at the ACM Awards

Performers will include Lambert, Langley, Top, Wilson, Johnson, Green, Faith, Anna, Wetmore, McCollum, Kacey Musgraves, Little Big Town, Blake Shelton, Dan + Shay, Jordan Davis, Kane Brown, The Red Clay Strays, Thomas Rhett and Lee Ann Womack.

McCollum and Womack will perform “Killin’ Me” from his 2025 self-titled album. All the nominees in the album of the year category will perform, except for Wallen.

Who’s presenting at the ACM Awards

Ashley McBryde, Keith Urban, Lauren Alaina, Michael Bublé, Shaboozey, The War and Treaty, and TJ Osborne are among this year's presenters.

There will also be a few non-musician presenters: Super Bowl champion Andrew Whitworth, NASCAR Hall of Famer Carl Edwards, NASCAR driver and podcast host Corey LaJoie and former NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick.

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For more coverage of this year’s ACM Awards, visit https://apnews.com/hub/academy-of-country-music-awards.

The show was part of the monthly Mercadito sessions put on by the Fiesta Fresh Market, a family-owned store in the Philadelphia metro-area city of New Castle, far away from the massive music industry hubs typically associated with artistic opportunity and exposure. But the excitement of new music, paired with the colorful, unassuming stage, has rapidly engaged an international following for the 2-year-old store — with up-and-coming bands traveling from far away to perform, and tens of thousands tuning in online.

Jose Luis Aguilar Garcia, one of the store's owners, hopes the series highlights the persistence of joy and creativity in Latino communities at a time when they're often only brought up on the news in the context of immigration crackdowns, he said.

Tiny Desk Concert inspired

Jose Luis Aguilar Garcia has worked with both food and music for most of his life.

Born in Mexico, Garcia grew up in an apartment adjacent to where he would eventually open Fiesta Fresh Market. Garcia worked at farmers markets and grocery stores since he was a teenager, and ran a photography and videography company that also produced regional Mexican music like mariachi, corridos tumbados and banda.

“We did a lot of quinceañeras, weddings, that sort of thing. Music was always like something I wanted to do as a passion project, but especially here in Delaware, there’s really no industry for that,” Garcia said.

In 2023, an artist on Garcia’s label — DannyLux — was invited to perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, a semiprivate music series filmed in the middle of the radio station’s bustling Washington, D.C., bureau, and then distributed to a massive following on YouTube. It was then that Garcia realized the special appeal of an unconventional, acoustic setup.

With the capital his label got from producing DannyLux's music, Garcia opened the store in 2024 with his sister and father. And eventually, he used his experience with the Tiny Desk Concerts at the store too, merging the two otherwise disparate aspects of his life.

Showcasing culture

Garcia initially hoped the shows would attract business, but it was hard to sell local artists on performing in such a quirky context, Garcia said.

But soon, the premise caught on. All of the acts in an April show had heard about the small store on social media before they were asked to perform.

While the shows initially featured almost exclusively the Spanish-language music that Garcia produced with his label, the Mercadito sessions now showcase a broad range of artists and genres.

“I found that super interesting that no matter who the artist was that was playing, people would gather to hear,” Garcia said.

Global audiences

Luna Luna, which has earned recognition from outlets like Billboard and Rolling Stone, was one of three bands performing at the late April show. It was a vastly different from the other stops on their sprawling United States tour.

Large piñatas hung from the ceiling above the group as they performed — a vastly different ambiance from the stages and lights that normally set the scene for Luna Luna’s hypnotic, indie-pop ballads. The performance was illuminated with the fluorescent grocery-store lighting, which customers used to shop in the background as Luna Luna sang in both Spanish and English.

The unconventional platform was part of the appeal for lead singer Kavvi Gonzalez, along with many in the series’ rapidly growing fanbase, for whom the unique venue evokes a kind of nostalgia.

“I actually grew up shopping at stores like this, so to be able to play in one is kind of crazy,” said Gonzalez, who was born in Colombia and moved to Texas when he was 6.

The charm is in the surprising romance of the mundane, Gonzalez said.

“To see people just actually be shopping around and just living regular life while we’re doing a performance here, you know, it’s cool. It’s combining real life and music culture,” Gonzalez said.

The curveball to Joc Pederson missed wide of the strike zone, but Arrighetti’s confidence in his best pitch soared.

“I was like, dang, that felt pretty good,” Arrighetti said. “Spinning good. I looked up and saw the shape, and I was like, oh, that’s better than it’s been, so I had a pretty good feeling about it.”

Arrighetti generated a swinging strike to get ahead 1-2 on Pederson before freezing him with a curveball that nicked the outside corner.

The 26-year-old took a no-hitter into the eighth inning of the Astros' 2-0 victory. The no-hit bid ended when Rangers rookie Justin Foscue hit a line-drive single to left field.

Arrighetti was pulled after Foscue’s base hit. He walked four while throwing 102 pitches — one shy of his career high — and 62 for strikes. The native of nearby Katy, Texas, received a rousing ovation from the announced crowd of 32,555 at Daikin Park.

“It was a strike and I needed it to be a strike because I was getting tired, and honestly, I thought it was a pretty good slider,” Arrighetti said of his final pitch. “It could’ve been better. He broke his bat on it. In another world, maybe it goes right at somebody.”

Foscue grounded out in each of his first two at-bats and entered the game batting .182 this season in 11 plate appearances.

Arrighetti (5-1) lowered his ERA to 1.50 in six starts after beginning the season with Triple-A Sugar Land. The longest start of his career was on Aug. 28, 2024, when he struck out 11 over 7 2/3 scoreless innings against the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Astros went ahead 1-0 on Isaac Paredes’ third-inning solo homer, and Braden Shewmake added an eighth-inning RBI single.

Left-hander Bryan King replaced Arrighetti and kept the Rangers off the board in the eighth by getting Pederson to fly out to right field, and then Astros catcher Christian Walker picked off Foscue at first base. King retired the side in order in the ninth for his fourth save.

Astros left fielder Zach Dezenzo kept the no-hit bid alive when he made a diving catch on a line drive by Alejandro Osuna for the second out of the fifth inning.

“Dezenzo makes that catch, I’m like, there’s always one play when you look back at (no-hit) bids,” Arrighetti said.

First baseman Christian Walker took a tough hop on a ground ball off the bat of Brandon Nimmo to start an inning-ending double play in the sixth.

There have been 17 no-hitters in Astros history, with the last coming from Ronel Blanco on April 1, 2024.

The Rangers have been no-hit five times since moving to Texas in 1971, most recently by Corey Kluber of the New York Yankees on May 19, 2021.

Arrighetti, whose wife gave birth to twin boys last month, said Friday’s performance meant more than normal because his grandparents, who live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, attended the game.

“I don’t really get to see them very often,” Arrighetti said. “I got a little emotional. I can’t hide it.”

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

“The bottom line is we are seeing a full-fledged, coordinated attack on Black political power that can actually reshape the entire political landscape, not just on the South but throughout the nation,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter.

The rally will begin in Selma, where a violent clash between law enforcement and voting rights activists in 1965 galvanized support for passage of the Voting Rights Act. It will then move to the state Capitol, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “How Long, Not Long” speech that same year.

“We’re picking up where it was left because we still have unfinished business,” Brown said. “There will not be a new Jim Crow.”

A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving Louisiana hollowed out voting rights law that was already weakened by a separate decision in 2013 and then narrowed further over the years. That helped clear the way for stricter voter ID laws, registration restrictions, and limits on early voting and polling place changes, including in states that once needed federal preclearance before they could change voting laws because of their historical discrimination against Black voters.

Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement are alarmed by the speed of the rollbacks, noting that protections won through generations of sacrifice have been weakened in little more than a decade.

Kirk Carrington, 75, was a teen in 1965 when law enforcement officers attacked marchers in Selma on what became known as “Bloody Sunday.” A white man on a horse wielding a stick chased Carrington through the streets.

“It’s really just appalling to me and all the young people that marched during the ’60s, fought hard to get voting rights, equal rights and civil rights,” Carrington said. “It’s sad that it’s continuing after 60-plus-odd years that we are still fighting for the same thing we fought for back then.”

Montgomery is home to one of the congressional districts that is being altered in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

A federal court in 2023 redrew Alabama's 2nd Congressional District after ruling that the state intentionally diluted the voting power of Black residents, who make up about 27% of its population. The court said there should be a district where Black people are a majority or near-majority and have an opportunity to elect their candidate of choice.

But the Supreme Court cleared the way for a different map that could let the GOP reclaim the seat. While the matter remains under litigation, the state plans special primaries Aug. 11 under the new map.

Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who won election in the district in 2024, said the dispute is not about him but rather people's opportunity to have representation.

“When Republicans are literally turning back the clock on what representation, what the faces of representation, look like, what the opportunities, legitimate opportunities for representation look like across this country, then I think it starts to resonate with people in a little bit of a different way,” Figures said.

Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter, a Republican, said the Louisiana ruling provided an opportunity to revisit a map that was forced on the state by the federal court.

“People tend to forget what happened. When this thing went to court, the Republican Party had that seat, congressional seat two,” Ledbetter said last week. “There’s been a push through the courts to try to overtake some of these red state seats, and that’s certainly what happened in that one.”

Evan Milligan, the lead plaintiff in the Alabama redistricting case, said there is grief over the implosion of the Voting Rights Act but it is crucial that people recommit to the fight.

“We have to accept that this is the new reality, whether we like it or not,” Milligan said. “We don’t have to accept that this will be the reality for the next 10 years or two years or forever.”

“It's a great question,” Schwarber said.

One the Philadelphia Phillies slugger isn't particularly interested in answering. All he knows is that he's found a little something. Even more importantly, so has his team.

So even on a night the Phillies designated hitter smashed a pair of two-run homers that boosted his season total to a major league-leading 20 and drew a bases-loaded walk during a ninth inning rally, Schwarber was quick to deflect attention to all that was happening around him during an 11-9, 10-inning victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday night.

Schwarber reached 20 homers on the earliest date in MLB history, according to Stats Perform, bettering Arizona's Luis Gonzalez, who hit his 20th on May 17, 2001. The Phillies slugger also tied a club mark with 20 homers in the team's first 45 games, first set by Cy Williams in 1923.

Bryce Harper, batting behind him, had four hits, including a tying single after Pirates closer Gregory Soto walked Schwarber on four pitches to pull the Phillies within two. Backup catcher Rafael Marchan delivered a two-run single in the 10th. Orion Kerkering picked up his first save of the season and just the third of his career.

“There’s so much good that went on today that we were able to respond and fight back,” Schwarber said. “That’s a really positive thing for us.”

The win pushed Philadelphia's record to 13-4 since Don Mattingly replaced Rob Thomson as manager and pulled the Phillies to within a game of .500 (22-23). The fact that surge has come in lockstep with Schwarber going off is not a coincidence.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Mattingly said. “He’s a different cat from the standpoint of how he does it. ... He's dangerous all the time. Doesn’t matter really lefties or righties, either one.”

Schwarber went deep off both to fuel Philadelphia's rally from a six-run deficit. He took Pittsburgh right-handed starter Braxton Ashcraft over the fence in the fifth. The Pirates pulled Ashcraft in favor of left-hander Mason Montgomery with one on and two outs in the seventh. It didn't matter. Schwarber turned on a 96 mph fastball that caught too much of the plate and sent it into the seats in right-center field to draw the Phillies within three.

The two blasts gave Schwarber nine home runs in his last eight games. It's the second time in his career he's had that many homers in an eight-game span. Former slugger Albert Belle is the only other player in major league history to have that kind of prolific run twice.

“One of the cooler things I’ve seen in baseball,” Harper said. “Just the ways he puts the bat on the ball. Yeah, it been pretty fun to watch.”

For Schwarber, the fun part isn't watching the ball sail from the barrel of his bat to the farther reaches of the ballpark but what the scoreboard reads at the end of the night.

A 10-game slide in April cost the popular Thomson his job. Mattingly — who'll miss Saturday's game to attend his son's graduation at Purdue — has steadied things. It's helped that one of baseball's best (and most expensive) lineups is starting to produce.

Yet even as hot as Schwarber is at the moment, he's not getting ahead of himself. His most impressive at-bat Friday might have been the one where the bat never left his shoulder.

With the Phillies down three in the ninth, Schwarber let four consecutive sinkers from Soto go by rather than take a hack and try to make something happen. He trotted to first base and Harper followed with a long single off the top of the wall in right-center to pull Philadelphia even.

“Greg’s got great stuff and he’s got a really nasty sinker in the bigger slider, so it’s just kind of really keying in on what you want,” Schwarber said. “And once I get 3-0, I was happy with the take.”

He was even happier with what came next as the Phillies took another step toward looking like the team that has been a postseason fixture the last four years. While front-running Atlanta remains well ahead in the NL East, Philadelphia's early season funk has passed and momentum seems to be building, which Schwarber is far more concerned about than whatever home-run total is next to his name.

“Obviously we know it’s not anywhere near complete, right?” Schwarber said, later adding, “It's been really cool to see the guys go out there and getting their results and us as a team, to be able to kind of get the results that we want.”

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

After two scoreless innings, the Hornets broke through in the third inning. Benton Jones drew a leadoff walk, stole second and third base, and scored on a double to left-center field by Joe Munitz. Sean Pokorak followed with an RBI single through the right side to push the lead to 2-0.

Penn State Behrend answered in the fourth inning when Adam Cooper delivered an RBI double to cut the deficit to 2-1. Lynchburg responded decisively in the fifth inning, scoring four runs to seize control.

Jones opened the inning with a triple to right field before Munitz added a two-run single up the middle, scoring both Jones and Jack Pokorak. Later in the inning, Kyle Flora was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to force in another run, and Kyle Moshier lifted a sacrifice fly to extend the advantage to 6-1.

The Hornets added three more runs in the eighth inning. Quinn Madden singled before Munitz laid down a bunt single. Madden later scored on a wild pitch, and Flora followed with an RBI double to left field that brought home Munitz. Moshier capped the scoring with another sacrifice fly for the final 9-1 margin.

Lynchburg finished with 11 hits and drew 10 walks in the victory. Munitz paced the offense with three hits, three RBIs and three runs scored. Jones added two hits, including a triple, and stole two bases, while Sean Pokorak collected two hits and an RBI. Flora drove in two runs and Madden scored twice.

On the mound, Tyler Kaltreider earned the win after allowing one run on five hits across seven innings while striking out seven. Trent Judd and Davis Watson each pitched a scoreless inning in relief.

Lynchburg advances to face Maryville on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. Maryville earned a 13-inning comeback victory over Christopher Newport earlier Friday. The winner of Saturday’s matchup advances to championship Sunday, while the loser will face the winner of the Penn State Behrend-Christopher Newport elimination game later Saturday evening.

The decisive game is Sunday in Detroit.

“It’s going to be a fun environment for us and we’re excited to get back to the crib,” Cunningham said.

The Pistons’ 21-point victory tied a 66-year-old NBA playoff record for the largest Game 6 road win by a team trailing 3-2 in a series. The St. Louis Hawks beat the Minneapolis Lakers 117-96 in a the 1960 West Division finals.

Jalen Duren had 15 points and 11 rebounds while Daniss Jenkins also scored 15 for the Pistons, who have won four games this postseason when facing elimination.

They were down 3-1 to Orlando before winning the last three to advance out of the first round.

“We did what needed to be done. When we’re at our best, it’s the defense and the physicality that’s going to carry us,” coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “I was pleased that we were allowed to play our style of basketball tonight where we can be legally physical and handsy, and just make it difficult on people.”

Cunningham made five 3-pointers as the Pistons went 16 of 36 from beyond the arc, tied for their most this preseason. Duncan Robinson, who missed Wednesday's Game 5 with a lower back injury, had four 3-pointers and scored 14 points off the bench.

Paul Reed also had 17 points as Detroit’s reserves outscored Cleveland’s 48-19.

“It has been a collective effort. We needed every bit of it. Great team win,” Cunningham said.

James Harden scored 23 points for Cleveland, which suffered its first home loss of the postseason. Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley scored 18 apiece.

“We never really kicked it to that second level. And we need to get to that third and fourth level. It was never just a consistent flow at either end of the floor, which is frustrating,” Harden said.

Detroit asserted its will on the offensive boards and took advantage of Cleveland turnovers. The Pistons converted 13 offensive rebounds into 20 points. The Cavaliers had 20 turnovers, which resulted in 28 Detroit points.

The Pistons were up 54-41 at halftime and started the second half with a 12-2 run. The Cavaliers rallied to get within 74-68 before the Pistons put it away with a 13-2 spurt.

Mobley missed a dunk and Marcus Sasser drove the length of the floor for a layup at the buzzer to give Detroit a 84-70 lead at the end of the third quarter.

“It starts with us in the starting lineup. We got hit in the mouth and we didn’t punch back,” Mitchell said.

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

The four-time WNBA MVP scored 45 points to help the Las Vegas Aces beat the Connecticut Sun 101-94 on Friday night. Wilson was an incredibly efficient 15 for 18 from the field, hitting both of her 3-point attempts. She also made all 13 of her free throws.

“Finding shots in our system and letting the flow of the game take over,” Wilson said. “That's big to me. I want to be efficient. It's beautiful to rack up all these points, but to be efficient, that's what is key.”

It was the fifth time she has scored over 40 points — a WNBA record, breaking a tie with Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi. Her career high is 53 on Aug. 22, 2023 against Atlanta.

Wilson's boyfriend, Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat, was at the game on Friday, just as she attended his 83-point effort in March.

“She was unbelievable,” Aces coach Becky Hammon said. “Really happy with the free throws. The 3s, she just continued to sprinkle those in. She got a lot of early touches.”

When Connecticut cut a 13-point deficit to 72-70 late in the third quarter, Wilson hit a 3-pointer out of a timeout and then followed it up with a three-point play, igniting a 16-4 run that put the game away.

“It wasn’t really designed to be like that,” Wilson said of her 3. “I was trying to take what the defense was giving me. (Raegan) Beers was playing a little bit off, so why not?”

Wilson has had a lot of big moments at Mohegan Sun Arena. This was potentially her last game there, with the Sun set to move to Houston next season.

“This building has been special to me for a while,” Wilson said. “Got my first WNBA point in this building and championship in this building. It's fun coming here. ... Going to miss this place.”

Chelsea Gray has had a front-row seat to Wilson's amazing play over the last five seasons.

“You can't get bored with watching greatness,” the Aces' star point guard said. “I'm around it all the time, but I'm surprised every day. I never want to get to the spot where I'm comfortable, like, yeah, that's unheard of.”

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AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.

In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.

But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.

The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.

The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.

Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.

That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.

The state's attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, slammed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was another example of what he described as a national attack on voting rights and the rule of law.

“Let’s be clear about what is happening. Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain,” Jones said in a statement issued late Friday night.

The state’s top Democrats had disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.

A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.

Spanberger reacted to Friday's decision by saying both courts had nullified the votes of the more than 3 million Virginians who cast ballots in the April 21 special election.

“These Virginians made their voices heard — casting their ballots in good faith to push back against a President who said he’s 'entitled' to more seats in Congress before voters go to the polls,” she posted on her X account.

The leader of the state Republican Party said the justices made the right call.

“Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.

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Associated Press writer Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.

Philadelphia trailed by six early. Schwarber led the comeback, smashing a pair of two-run homers. The designated hitter went deep off Braxton Ashcraft in the fifth and again off Mason Montgomery in the seventh.

Schwarber has nine home runs in the past eight games, the second time in his career he's achieved that feat. He also did it in 2021 while playing for Washington. Albert Belle is the only other player in MLB history to hit nine homers in an eight-game stretch twice.

The Pirates were so wary of Schwarber while holding onto a three-run lead in the ninth that closer Gregory Soto walked him on four pitches with the bases loaded. Bryce Harper followed with a two-run single off the top of the wall in right center to pull Philadelphia even.

The Phillies pounced on Pirates reliever Dennis Santana (2-3) in the 10th. Brandon Marsh led off with an RBI single and Rafael Marchán followed with a two-run single. Jose Alvarado (1-1) pitched a scoreless ninth. Orion Kerkering worked the 10th for his first save as Philadelphia won for the fifth time in six games to improve to 13-4 since Don Mattingly replaced Rob Thomson as manager last month.

Brandon Lowe homered twice for the Pirates. Marcell Ozuna added a 438-shot to the Pirates' bullpen that reliever Yohan Ramirez caught with a traffic cone.

The traffic cones have become a fixture in both the Pittsburgh dugout and the stands at PNC Park this season in Pittsburgh after outfielder Jake Mangum brought one into the clubhouse in Cincinnati in early April, which coincided with an offensive explosion in a victory over the Reds.

Up next

The series continues Saturday. NL Cy Young runner-up Cristopher Sánchez (4-2, 2.11 ERA) was set to start for the Phillies against Pittsburgh's Bubba Chandler (1-4, 4.62).

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The starting forward missed the final two games of the Knicks' second-round sweep of the Philadelphia 76ers after straining his right hamstring late in Game 2. He took part in some of practice when the Knicks returned on Wednesday, but sat out the portions when they went full speed.

But coach Mike Brown said Anunoby did everything with the team on Friday.

Anunoby won't have to be ready to play until Tuesday, because the Detroit-Cleveland series is going to a Game 7 that will be played Sunday.

Anunoby is averaging 21.4 points per game in the postseason while shooting 61.9% from the field and 53.8% from 3-point range.

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What to expect the rest of the weekend? Pretty much anything.

“Anyone who makes the cut, they’ve got to feel they have a shot in the tournament,” said Rory McIlroy, who found himself only five shots behind with 29 players — including Scottie Scheffler and six other major champions — ahead of him.

Two long days at Aronimink produced the highest 36-hole score to par to lead the PGA Championship in 14 years. The 15 players separated by two shots made it the biggest logjam going into a weekend at a major since 2002.

There's more traffic at Aronimink than Philadelphia's Schuylkill Expressway at rush hour.

The difference between first and worst among 82 players who made the cut was only eight shots, unusually tight for any tournament, much less a major.

Smalley, in only his fifth major championship, overcame three straight bogeys after making the turn and closed with a birdie for a 1-under 69. McNealy, who has never been among the top 25 in any major through 36 holes, fell back with a pair of late bogeys in his round of 67.

They were at 4-under 136, the highest 36-hole score to par for co-leaders in the PGA since 2012 at Kiawah Island.

Chasing them? It's a long list.

Hideki Matsuyama, the 2021 Masters champion, and world No. 10 Chris Gotterup were among those one shot behind. They were followed by Scheffler, two-time PGA champion Justin Thomas and Cameron Young, who has won The Players Championship and at Doral the last two months.

Jon Rahm and Ludvig Aberg. Patrick Reed and Patrick Cantlay. And on it goes.

“A bunched leaderboard like this, I think it’s a sign of not a great setup,” McIlroy said after a 67. “It's easy to make a ton of pars, hard to make birdies, and ... it feels like bogey is the worst score you’re going to shoot on any one hole.”

It was tough to hit shots close. And then it was tough to get long putts close.

“This is the hardest set of pin locations that I’ve seen since I’ve been on tour,” Scheffler said after salvaging a 71. “And that includes U.S. Opens. That includes Oakmont.”

McNealy became the only player to reach 6 under at any point this week. He holed a bunker shot for eagle on the par-5 16th and remarked to his brother and caddie, Scout, that he was amazed and how well he was playing. And then he added three birdies over his next five holes until some mistakes caught up with him, as they did just about everyone.

“This is unfamiliar territory for me,” McNealy said.

Gotterup and Matsuyama had the toughest time by playing in the morning, when the temperatures barely cracked 50 degrees (10 Celsius) and the wind was ripping. Gotterup, who played college golf at just up the New Jersey Turnpike at Rutgers, played had enough Jersey toughness to handle it just fine, and he poured it on at the end with three straight birdies for a 65, the low round of his championship.

“Today would definitely be one of those days where I would be on the couch and I would be like, ‘How did he hit it there?’ and ‘How did he do this?’ And then you’re out there, and it just feels like it’s impossible,” Gotterup said.

Scheffler had a share of the 18-hole lead for the first time in a major, and then looked like anything but someone with consummate control of his game. He didn't hit a fairway until his ninth hole (No. 18), and dropped three shots in four holes after driving into the thick grass.

He might have saved his round on the par-3 14th when he hit a beautiful lag putt from 80 feet for a two-putt par. That settled him, and he closed with an up-and-down birdie on the par-5 ninth.

Scheffler was joined by Thomas and Young at 2-under 138, and Aberg, the polished Swede who had four birdies in a five-hole stretch on the tougher back nine for a 66.

The cut was at 4-over 144. Among those headed home was Bryson DeChambeau who was 10 over at one point. He closed with three straight birdies, far too late for the two-time U.S. Open champion.

Garrick Higgo's two-shot penalty for being late to the first tee on Thursday cost him a share of the lead on Thursday, and it cost him the cut on Friday. He shot 76 and missed by one.

McIlroy and Jordan Spieth (73) were tied for 30th, both with the Grand Slam on their minds. Spieth needs the PGA for the career slam, McIlroy as the Masters champion is the only one with a shot at the calendar slam, which has never been done.

But they still had a chance. So many of the pin positions were hard to reach — from the fairway and at times from the putting surface — that no one was safe.

McIlroy, who opened with a 74, played bogey-free with one goal in mind — stay in the mix and see what the weekend presents. He feels the PGA of America already used up several of the toughest pin positions. With slightly calmer conditions, the race could just be starting.

“Yes, it's bunched,” he said. “But you get on a run with wedges on that front nine and you shoot 4, 5 under and all of a sudden you’re right in the thick of things.”

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He had four bogeys, three birdies, two double bogeys and was in jeopardy of missing the cut after ending up in the thick rough 25 yards from the pin on his final hole.

Standing a few feet from the edge of a fairway bunker, Rose dug deep with his wedge, and his golf ball took three bounces on the green and tracked into the hole for an eagle 3.

The spectacular shot put the 45-year-old Englishman at 3-over par and propelled him into the weekend in his 24th appearance at the championship.

The last-hole theatrics weren't limited to Rose. Michael Kim holed out from 65 feet, just off the left side of the same par-5 ninth, securing a spot for the final rounds, one stroke under 4-over cut line.

A total of 82 players were among the top-70 and ties headed to the weekend.

Bryson DeChambeau is among those who won't be around for the final rounds. The two-time U.S. Open champ missed the cut for the third time in four majors with rounds of 76 and 71 for 7 over.

Former PGA champions Jimmy Walker (5 over), Keegan Bradley (6 over), Jason Dufner (8 over), Y.E. Yang (9 over) and Shaun Micheel (10 over) also missed the cut.

Cam Smith ended a streak of six missed at majors with an even-par 140 for the first two days. And, Luke Donald, who is headed into his third term as European Ryder Cup captain, had a two-round score of 4 over, which was good enough to make the cut for the 13th time in 18 PGA appearances.

Rose is a Philly favorite after winning the 2013 U.S. Open at nearby Merion Golf Club, and he has a good history at Aronimink, where he won his second PGA Tour title in the 2010 AT&T National. He lost to Bradley in a playoff in Newtown Square in the 2018 BMW Championship.

Rose's found Friday was in many ways fitting for a golfer whose career has been long been defined by many highs and lows and gritty, grind-it-out performances. He missed the first 20 cuts of his career, then became a major and Olympic champion and has enjoyed a mid-40s resurgence that has yielded multiple runner-up finishes in majors in recent years.

Rose got off to a rocky start Friday, driving into a bunker right of the difficult 10th hole and taking two shots to get out before eventually making a 6, the first of his two double-bogeys. Then, the rollercoaster round really took off.

His birdies on the 12th and 16th holes sandwiched a bogey, double-bogey, bogey, and he closed his front nine at 4-over 39.

The fun continued on the front nine, his back, when he followed three straight pars with a birdie before stumbling again. He posted bogeys at Nos. 6 and 8 and tumbled down the leaderboard.

Then, he hit the shot of his second round on the par-5 ninth hole. His 310-yard drive found the fairway, but his second shot traveled 267 yards and landed in the thick left rough before he converted his next shot for eagle.

Then, the waiting game began for Rose. When the round finished, his fabulous finish was enough to extend his stay.

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The win also guaranteed Villa a place in next year’s Champions League.

The win just five days before Villa faces Freiburg in the Europa League decider means Unai Emery’s side ensured a top-five finish in the Premier League.

"It’s a great performance and a great way to end the season at Villa Park,” captain John McGinn told broadcaster Sky Sports “We’ve just made this club a Champions League club again, and it allows us to be excited and enjoy the game on Wednesday.

Liverpool was three points behind in fifth and still sweating whether it will make it into next year’s Champions League.

Liverpool had the better of the opening exchanges with Cody Gakpo seeing a goal ruled out for offside and Emiliano Martinez pushing away a swerving long-range effort from Dominik Szoboszlai.

However, Villa found its composure as the half went on and took the lead three minutes before halftime. Morgan Rogers placed a perfect right-foot shot beyond the reach of Giorgi Mamardashvili after a well-worked corner kick.

Virgil van Dijk’s header eight minutes into the second half brought Liverpool level but Villa started to dominate as the game opened up. Watkins had a goal chalked off for offside but made up for it just a few minutes later when he took advantage of a slip by Szoboszlai that set Villa free on the counterattack.

He added a third in the 73rd when he side-footed home from point-blank range after Mamardashvili made two excellent stops.

It was Watkins’ sixth goal in his last seven league games and he was a constant threat to a Liverpool rearguard that looked shaky every time Villa stormed forward.

“We’ve conceded far too many games, but we also haven’t scored enough goals," said Liverpool coach Arne Slot, who admitted his team lacked backbone after going behind in the second half.

"(After) the 2-1 we crumbled, we struggled. In the end made it 4-2, so they did not give up, but we struggled to control their pace, intensity and quality.”

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Texas Children's Hospital, based in Houston, said in a statement that it had agreed to a legal settlement “to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.” The hospital, which serves more than 1 million patients a year, stopped providing hormone treatments for transgender children and teens in 2022, a year before the state banned such care, but still faced a yearslong investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office.

Paxton and the Trump administration said the hospital would pay Texas $10 million and would be required to open what he called a "detransition clinic” to “reverse the damage” from gender-affirming care, which he's described as child abuse.

Most major medical groups say access to gender-affirming care as important for people with gender dysphoria. Transgender teens, parents and providers have described it as life-saving for kids who are depressed or suicidal because their gender identities do not match the sex assigned them at birth.

Gender-affirming care may include counseling, medications that block puberty, hormone therapy to produce physical changes or surgeries, although those are rare for minors.

Twenty-seven states have limited or banned gender-affirming care for minors, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2025 that they could do so under the U.S. Constitution. But in Kansas, state District Court Judge Carl Folsom III ruled Friday that the state's ban, passed last year, is likely to violate the state Constitution. Folsom's order blocking the ban is set to remain in place until a lawsuit filed by two transgender teenagers and their parents is over. The trial has not yet been scheduled.

President Donald Trump has aggressively sought to roll back transgender rights. During his second term, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has moved to use its regulatory power to block gender-affirming care for minors, and the DOJ has demanded access to providers’ private records, putting pressure on hospitals that often rely on federal funding to operate.

A Kansas judge protects gender-affirming care

Republican Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach promised to appeal the decision Friday, calling it “a stark example of judicial activism" that “invented a new constitutional right."

“Even though the Kansas Constitution says nothing about it, the judge created a new right of parents to obtain otherwise-illegal treatments for their children,” Kobach said in a statement.

The judge said the law interferes with parents' right to make medical decisions for their children. In a lengthy opinion, he described gender-affirming care as “the treatment with the most evidence of being helpful to treat gender dysphoria.”

“The Kansas Constitution protects personal autonomy,” Folsom wrote, citing the state's Bill of Rights. “This personal autonomy includes the fundamental right of parents to the care, custody and control of their minor children.”

Kansas courts have previously declared that the state Constitution offers more protection for individual rights than the U.S. Constitution. In 2019, the state Supreme Court declared that Kansas protects a person's bodily autonomy, which guarantees access to abortion.

Kobach, like other opponents of gender-affirming care for minors, portrayed it as “experimental” and harmful, but Folsom disagreed.

His order said the teenagers who sued, identified as Lily Loe and Ryan Roe, had to go to Minnesota and Colorado for treatment, both costing them more for out-of-state care and causing anxiety.

“It is harmful to withhold medical treatment or withdraw medical treatment in progress that is safe, effective and medically indicated,” Folsom wrote.

A children's hospital in Texas buckles under AG pressure

In Texas, Paxton, a Republican, hailed the settlement with Texas Children's Hospital as “historic" and said it's a "fundamental shift away from radical ‘gender’ ideology.”

Paxton is running for the U.S. Senate, and he announced the settlement less than two weeks before a May 26 runoff in a tight race to unseat GOP incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. Trump has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the race.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement Friday that the DOJ would “use every weapon at its disposal” to stop gender-affirming care for children.

The leader of the LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Texas said the settlement "ignores the actual science and years of data about the overwhelming benefits of gender-affirming care.”

"Paxton is blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for,” CEO Brad Pritchett said in a statement.

The hospital said it fully cooperated with Paxton's office and the DOJ, produced more than 5 million documents and did its own internal investigations. All of them showed that it never violated the law, the hospital said.

Its statement said the settlement will allow it to redirect “precious resources” to "life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists.”

Paxton said the agreement also requires Texas Children's to fire — “and never again hire” — five doctors who provided gender-affirming care, and to automatically strip privileges from any doctor violating the state ban.

The $10 million payment will go to the state's Medicaid program. Paxton had accused the hospital of submitting false billings, an allegation it rejected.

The East Roanoke River Greenway now connects from the former regional landfill area off Rutrough Road through Explore Park to Rutrough Point, completing the final segment needed to link four separate projects into one continuous route.

Assistant Director of Planning with Roanoke County, Megan Cronise, said the effort required multiple phases of construction.

“It’s four separate pieces that we built between 2023 and 2025. So all combined, they’re continuous.”

County officials say the idea dates back to 1995, when long-term planning first identified the Roanoke River corridor for greenway development.

The project has since moved forward in phases over several years, involving coordination between Roanoke County, the Virginia Department of Transportation, the National Park Service through the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority, and the Virginia Recreational Facilities Authority, along with support from the Roanoke Valley Greenway Commission.

Engineering, design, and construction were completed across multiple phases by firms including AECOM, Balzer and Associates, McDonough Bolyard Peck, and Allegheny Construction Company.

The completed route is already open to the public and features river views, tunnel crossings, and quiet stretches of natural scenery throughout Explore Park.

Visitors say the improvements are noticeable.

“It looks good. Cleaned up. It used to be a lot overgrown and real steep and they flattened it out pretty good. It looks nice,” said Tyler Harris, who was visiting the park.

He added he plans to use the space primarily for “mostly fishing”.

The connected trail is expected to expand outdoor recreation opportunities and improve access across the region.

A ribbon cutting ceremony is scheduled for Monday afternoon at Explore Park to officially mark the completion of the project.

The pin was tucked all the way back and to the right of the 215-yard hole, behind a bunker. A cold wind was in his face and the hole was atop a ridge at the highest point of the green.

Three bogeys in four holes caused enough stress. And now this.

“That was one of the craziest pins that I've seen,” Scheffler said.

His tee shot found the middle of the green, well below the ridge, just under 80 feet away. He lagged that to 3 feet for a par. Given his start, it was as important a par as he made all day. “Extremely good,” Scheffler said.

He was unequivocal in his assessment of how he rated the difficulty of the pins: “This is the hardest set of pin locations that I’ve seen since I’ve been on tour, and that includes U.S. Opens.”

The PGA Championship hasn't seen leading scores this high at the midway point since Kiawah Island in 2012. Players were three-putting roughly 6% of the holes on Friday.

The wind is difficult, sure. A relatively dry week makes it firm and fast and harder to control shots. But it's the greens, undulating with knobs and valleys, and the locations of the pins that have been a real monster.

“There were some pins that didn't even look like they were on the green,” Chris Gotterup said after his 65, the low round of the championship.

The 11th hole was a popular reference. The green already had everyone's attention at the start of the week because of the severe false front that sent golf balls some 40 yards down the fairway.

On Friday, the hole was on a small shelf front and to the right. Players hit a nothing more than a wedge. If anyone was closer than 8 feet — usually a stock shot with a wedge for the world's best — consider it a happy accident.

“Impossible to get close,” Gotterup said.

Justin Thomas tried to lay back off the tee for a full sand wedge from 124 yards. That didn't work out for him. He tried to be so exacting, but it came up short and in a bunker. The next one didn't get on the green. He had to scramble for bogey.

“It's not hard to hit it to 20 feet past the hole, but it’s really, really hard to hit it close,” Thomas said.

“So it just kind of speaks volumes to how this course can be throughout the entire day.”

It's been that way for two days. It doesn't take much for the PGA of America to set tough pins that will affect the scoring. Not all of them are brutal. The opening two holes Thursday were accessible. The pin on the par-5 ninth was on the easier side.

The par-3 eighth hole was tucked behind a bunker, but the tee was moved up 72 yards to play at only 173 yards on Friday. Gotterup hit a 5-wood on Thursday and made bogey. He 7-iron to 4 feet on Friday for birdie.

Scheffler had 140 yards on the second hole to a back right pin. He hit it to 30 feet and was pleased. He had the same yardage two holes later to a more accessible pin and went after it, the shot settling 5 feet below the hole for birdie.

It's about picking the right shot for the right pin. And it changes by the day.

“I love hard tests of golf, but it’s also the hardest game in the world and we’re trying to make it harder, and there’s different ways you can do that,” Scheffler said. “You can do that on a golf course like this. I mean, I truly believe they could have the winning score be whatever they want it to be. It could be over par if they want it to be, just based purely upon pin locations.”

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Scott McLaughlin needed just seven laps in the middle of the afternoon to send his message on Indianapolis Motor Speedway's iconic 2.5-mile oval — Team Penske intends to reclaim the pole.

Rosenqvist posted the fastest lap of the day, 233.372 mph though it came with a tow, and the fastest four-lap average, 232.828 in the final practice before qualifying. But it was McLaughlin who waited through the two-hour rain delay and two more hours of inactivity before turning heads with the fastest no-tow lap of the week, 232.674, and the second fastest four-lap average, 232.572.

It sets up a potentially dramatic qualifying weekend between the New Zealander who won Indy's pole in 2024 and Rosenqvist, who will try to put Meyer Shank Racing on the front row.

“It was better than going upside down, that was the last time I was here on this boost level," McLaughlin said after finishing his day with three hours of practice time still left. “I think we got a really good test point for the team and we'll go back, scratch our heads a little bit more. But it's just going to get harder as the weekend goes on.”

The only other driver with a faster lap than McLaughlin was Alexander Rossi with a 232.93. Rossi and McLaughlin both changed engines earlier this week because of mechanical problems.

Penske's cars were so dialed in that McLaughlin and his teammates — two-time Indy winner Josef Newgarden and David Malukas, last year's Indy runner-up — logged the fewest laps of any team after IndyCar officials gave each driver an additional boost of about 100 horsepower.

But most of the 33 drivers attempting to make the traditional starting grid for the May 24 race recognize things could change quickly Saturday.

Rain is in the forecast for the first four scheduled hours of qualifying. If it stays dry for the final three hours, the weather conditions could be quite similar to what they had Friday. Then it's expected to heat up substantially Sunday, causing even more changes.

“It's going to get hotter, a bit of rain coming in as well, so we've just got to make every run count,” McLaughlin said, who got a boost by drawing the No. 6 spot in the qualifying line — ahead of Rosenqvist at No. 11, Rossi at No. 20 and points leader Alex Palou at No. 31. “I felt like that was my best run of the weekend, so really happy to do that at that (increased) boost level.”

What else could be in play? New strategies to comply with the revised qualifying format.

Race organizers have eliminated the last row shootout because there are only enough driver-car combinations to fill the traditional 33-car starting grid, meaning none will be bumped.

Instead, there's a new wrinkle in pole qualifying. The fastest 15 cars will advance to Sunday's round with the top nine locked into the 12-car pole shootout and the other six vying for the final three spots. The six fastest cars in Round 2 will compete to determine the pole winner.

“Our goal is to be solidified in the top nine, to be honest,” Andretti Global driver Kyle Kirkwood said. “I think that’s probably everyone’s goal. You know, in the past couple of years we’ve had chances to be at the front and it just kind of hasn’t materialized when Saturday comes along, but I think this year feels a little bit different.”

Kirkwood is second in points heading into next weekend's race, but struggled to stay with the Fast Friday leads.

Palou, the defending 500 champ, had the second fastest no-tow lap at 23

The Spaniard who drives for Chip Ganassi Racing has won three of this season's first six races and posted the second-fastest no-tow lap Friday at 232.532.

“Qualifying sims on yesterday’s boost, I don’t want to say it’s easy, but you feel like there’s a ton of grip, like the car is not on the limit," Palou said. "Today or this weekend it’s going to feel like the car doesn’t like it, it’s not as happy, you start sliding, need to work more with your tools. You cannot go aggressive with the amount of trim you are doing.”

And it will set up a memorable qualifying weekend for one lucky driver.

“I've kind of gone through every emotion possible in the last two weeks,” Rosenqvist said, reflecting on the recent birth of his first child. “It's cool, it's kind of hard to explain and it becomes like the No. 1 coolest thing you've ever done. But I feel like a driver it kind of makes you a bit calmer, a bit more confident or a little less worried about things. You just kind of go out and drive.”

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The people spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because the league had not made an announcement. The Hockey News first reported the development earlier in the day.

With the addition of San Jose, the PWHL increases to 12 teams, doubling the league's size since it started in 2024 and broadening its geographical reach.

The city is home to the NHL's Sharks and gives the league a four-team foothold in the West. Las Vegas is another expansion market, and Seattle and Vancouver, joined the league last year. The team would likely play at the Sharks' arena, the SAP Center.

The PWHL also added franchises in Detroit and Hamilton, Ontario, over the past two weeks.

Executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer previously told the AP that the league's priorities include geographic diversity and reducing travel time between markets. Scheer also said the PWHL has been exploring splitting into two conferences or divisions.

The PWHL’s original six franchises are Boston, New York, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Minnesota.

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Korda had two late birdies in a 67 in the morning session at Maketewah Country Club. She won The Chevron Championship for her third major, then followed with a victory in Mexico before taking last week off.

“There have definitely been some loose shots,” Korda said. “Not really happy with the way I’m hitting it right now, but overall, I mean, I’m not complaining with the position I’m in. Hopefully, I can go figure something out again on the range after today.”

Ko had a bogey-free round in the morning to reach 7-under 133 on the first-year venue. The 30-year-old South Korean player has 15 LPGA Tour victories, winning two majors in 2019.

“Getting older, like little more afraid and think too much," Ko said. “I’m just trying to be like the time, like 2018 through 2021. So, brave is good key for me, and just have fun.”

Doherty had five birdies and a bogey in the afternoon session, closing with a birdie on the par-3 18th. The 28-year-old former Florida State player is winless on the tour. She's fighting to secure higher tour status to avoid missing events.

“I’m really excited,” Doherty said. “I’m just excited to be teeing it up this week after reshuffling after Mexico. I’m going in with that mindset I think and just happy to be here and happy to be playing.”

Lottie Woad was a stroke back after a 64. She played the first 10 holes in 6 under. Lydia Ko, playing alongside Korda and Jeeno Thitikul, was another shot back after a 67.

Korda and Thitikul (67) were 4 under with Jennifer Kupcho (66), Chella Choi (70) and Rio Takeda (70). Thitikul won the Mizuho Americas Open last week in New Jersey

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“Paul McCartney and Wings,” which opened Friday in Cleveland, explores the musician's reinvention after leaving the iconic British rock band through displays of instruments, handwritten songwriting notes and photographs taken by his wife, Linda McCartney, who was keyboardist and harmony vocalist for Wings during its decade-long run from 1971 to 1981, when the band produced hits including “Band on the Run,” “Silly Love Songs” and “Live and Let Die.”

After the breakup of The Beatles, Paul McCartney was no longer just the musician who had been known around the world since his teenage years, but a husband and father of a young family. What he built with Wings reflected that new stage of life, said Andy Leach, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s senior director of museum and archival collections.

Leach said the band’s embrace of domestic life — bringing children on tour, having a married couple perform together and writing songs inspired by his wife, who was also a member of the group — was “remarkable and unusual” for the era, when rock music remained overwhelmingly male-dominated and family life was rarely incorporated so visibly into a band’s public identity.

“What’s interesting about Wings is that they were formed around the idea of reinvention, renewal, risk-taking, experimentation, but collaboration,” Leach said. “And family was at the center of it, too.”

Leach traveled to London to work with McCartney and his team to prepare and transport guitars along with clothing worn during performances to Cleveland. The vast majority of the artifacts are from McCartney’s personal collection.

Leach said Wings helped pioneer the large-scale production that came to define 1970s arena rock, using increasingly elaborate lighting and stage design on tours such as Wings Over the World and Wings Over America.

Leach said it was amazing to see and handle guitars that “I’ve heard on record my whole life.”

Visitors will also be able to step into a recreation of the farmhouse that McCartney still owns in Scotland, where Paul and Linda retreated after The Beatles' breakup in 1970 and set up a recording studio.

In the home, photos of Paul and Linda McCartney and their children line the walls. Linda’s camera sits inside a case on the makeshift kitchen table.

The photographs taken by Linda, an acclaimed artist in her own right and the first female photographer to have a photo featured on the cover of Rolling Stone, in 1968, showcase her role “at the center of the family, and in some ways, at the center of the band," Leach said.

Linda McCartney was married for three decades to Paul, who taught her to play the keyboard after The Beatles' breakup. She died in 1998 of breast cancer.

Another of Leach's favorite artifacts is the handwritten scores by famed Beatles producer George Martin for the songs “Uncle Albert” and the James Bond theme “Live and Let Die,” which became one of Wings' most enduring songs.

Other items were lent by longtime Wings roadie John Hamill, former band members and the widow of Denny Laine, the co-founder of Wings and The Moody Blues, who played guitar, bass and keyboards and contributed both lead and backing vocals.

The Hall of Fame said the exhibit will be open for at least a year with the hope of keeping it open through the summer of 2027.

Leach said the exhibit is “perfect timing” because of what he described as “a nice kind of renaissance or at least a new appreciation for them among fans and a new understanding about how remarkable and important” Wings’ musicians were.

He pointed to the release of the Amazon Prime documentary Man on the Run, a new box set and the 2025 book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, co-written by Paul McCartney and historian Ted Widmer.

__ Willingham reported from Boston.

Trump has championed the case of Peters, a 70-year-old former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years behind bars after being convicted in a scheme to make a copy of her county’s election computer system. She gets released June 1.

In April, a Colorado appeals court upheld her conviction but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud, a decision that Polis praised.

In a letter to Peters, Polis wrote that Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison. “However, this is an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed nonviolent crimes,” the governor wrote.

He added Peters' application “demonstrates taking responsibility for your crimes, and a commitment to follow the law going forward.”

President Donald Trump posted around the time of the announcement on his Truth Social platform: “FREE TINA!”

‘Affront to the rule of law’

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said “it was a dark day for democracy” and ”selling out our state’s justice system for Trump is an affront to the rule of law.”

“A clear message is being sent to those willing to break the law and attack democracy for the president — they will likely not face consequences for their actions,” Griswold said at a news conference.

Peters has been serving her sentence at a prison in Pueblo after being convicted in 2024 by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump.

Peters snuck in an outside computer expert, an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, to make a copy of her county’s Dominion Voting Systems election computer server as state officials updated it in 2021. After Peters joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof of election rigging, video and photos of the upgrade, including passwords, were posted online.

After the commutation, Peters issued a statement through her attorney thanking Polis and apologizing.

“Five years ago I misled the Secretary of State when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong,” Peters said. “I have learned and grown during my time in prison and going forward I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past.”

She also condemned threats and violence against voters, county clerks and election workers.

Gubernatorial candidates weigh in

Sen Michael Bennet, a Democrat who is running for Colorado governor, said he vehemently disagreed with the commutation and that Peters knowingly broke the law, undermined elections and was convicted by a jury.

“Lawlessness only breeds more lawlessness,” Bennet said. "With President Trump continuing to attack Colorado, we must do everything we can to stand strong for our institutions and the rule of law.”

A Republican candidate for governor, state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, said she would have preferred that the trial judge revisit Peters' sentence as ordered by the appeals court before the governor considered any commutation.

“A commutation or pardon by a governor should be reserved for truly extraordinary circumstances," Kirkmeyer wrote in a statement. “The governor has a responsibility to apply justice fairly, consistently, and without bias.”

Trump championed her cause

Peters was convicted of state, not federal, crimes, which put her beyond the reach of Trump’s pardon power that he used to free those convicted of crimes for the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. But the president still championed her cause.

Trump has lambasted both Polis, calling him a “Scumbag Governor,” and the Republican district attorney who prosecuted her, Daniel Rubinstein, for keeping Peters in prison. He has referred to Peters, as “elderly” and “sick.” Earlier this year, Trump uninvited Polis from a White House meeting with governors over the case.

The president said Colorado was “suffering a big price” for refusing to release her. His administration has been choking off funds, ending federal programs and denying disaster aid. It also announced the dismantling of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.

Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said the commutation “signals that it is open season on our election and election officials.”

“Gov. Polis is bending the knee to the same political voices and conspiracy theories that are undermining belief in our democratic institutions,” Crane said. “This is now Gov. Polis’ legacy. He will not be able to run from it.”

Tina Peters' declining health in prison

Peters’ lawyers have said her health has declined in prison. Peters, who had part of her right lung removed in 2017, started coughing frequently after the prison’s heating system was turned on for the winter and has had trouble sleeping on her mattress because of chronic pain from fibromyalgia, her lawyers said.

In January, Peters was involved in a scuffle with another inmate but was found not guilty of assault following a prison disciplinary hearing, Colorado Department of Corrections spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia said. Peters was found guilty of being in a location without authorization.

The federal Bureau of Prisons tried but failed to get Peters moved to a federal prison. But in January, Polis said he was considering granting clemency for Peters, calling her sentence “unusual and harsh“ for a first-time, nonviolent offender. In March he repeated those arguments in a lengthy post on the social media platform X.

Polis defended his decision on Friday in a social media post.

“I’ll always stand for free speech and to make sure that we live in a country that no matter what your viewpoints are, you are not incarcerated longer because of them," Polis said.

In contrast to some other Democratic governors, Polis, who prides himself on being a political iconoclast, has taken a sometimes accommodating stance toward Trump. While he criticized Trump’s stance on tariffs and immigration, Polis praised earlier moves by the president such as the Department of Government Efficiency, run by billionaire Elon Musk, and the nomination of vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Service.

____

Associated Press writers Ali Swenson in New York, Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed.

A lot of sunshine and blue sky is on deck today, with nothing more than variable cloud cover.

Even though our weather is fairly calm, we do have breezy conditions. Winds will gust around 20-25 MPH today, with sustained wind speeds around 20 MPH. Be sure to hold onto your hats!

Today will be the coolest day of the next week, as temperatures this weekend and next week reach into the 80s and 90s. Have a great weekend!

The measure allows current owners to keep firearms they legally possess. In some cases, those weapons may also be transferred to immediate family members.

Supporters, including state lawmakers who backed the legislation, say the goal is to gradually reduce the number of high-capacity firearms in circulation.

“I think that is going to make a big difference,” said Saddam Salim, who helped guide the bill through the General Assembly. “What I believe it’s going to do is over time in the next five to 10 years, it’s going to reduce the number of the high capacity assault weapons that are going to be available to folks.”

Salim said lawmakers narrowed the bill’s language after reviewing similar laws in other states and considering concerns from gun owners. He emphasized that the law does not require the surrender of currently owned firearms.

“No one is ever going to go to your home and say, ‘Where did you get your weapons from?” Salim said. “You can still carry it. You can still have it in your possession.”

Gun owners in Southwest Virginia, however, argue the law unfairly targets lawful owners who use firearms for hunting, recreation, and self-defense.

“I don’t think it’s going to make anybody safer, really,” said Curtis Gillespie. “You’re trying to solve a cultural and societal issue with a legislative problem.”

Gillespie said lawmakers should instead focus on measures such as safe storage requirements, universal background checks, and additional training standards.

“I think that you have a really strong case for safe storage laws, universal background checks and maybe even certification and training requirements,” he said. “Focus on the policies that might actually make a difference without limiting people’s rights.”

The law has already faced legal opposition. Within hours of being signed, the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups filed lawsuits in state and federal court challenging the measure, arguing it violates Second Amendment protections.

NRA-ILA Executive Director John Commerford said the organization plans to fight the law in court. “Abigail Spanberger isn’t going to ban America’s rifle on our watch,” he said.

Lawmakers said they anticipated legal challenges.

“We are sending a version that we feel comfortable that the courts are going to look and say, they did everything they could without infringing on someone else’s rights, while also protecting someone else’s freedom and rights,” said Salim.

The law is set to take effect July 1, though ongoing court challenges could determine whether parts of it are ultimately enforced.

Beginning June 12, 2026, the 611 will power passenger excursions departing from Staunton and Louisa, Virginia, offering riders a rare opportunity to experience mainline steam railroading in the Commonwealth.

“We are thrilled to bring the 611 back to the rails for summer excursions in partnership with the Virginia Scenic Railway and the Steam Railroading Institute,” said Mendy Flynn, Executive Director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation. “This collaboration allows us to share the power and beauty of steam railroading with new audiences while honoring Virginia’s rich rail heritage.”

The Steam Railroading Institute and the Virginia Scenic Railway are providing passenger coaches. Prices and seating options will vary, and will include the following classes of service: Coach, Premium Coach, Table Class, and Dome Class.

Specific details about the schedule, price, and route descriptions are available on the Virginia Scenic Railway website. Tickets are expected to be released on April 15, 2026 for more information, click here.

The deal represents a breakthrough in the U.S. aerospace company's efforts to reenter a market once central to its long-term growth.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned from Beijing, Trump said China also reserved the right to buy as many as 750 Boeing aircraft as part of the deal. Boeing confirmed the 200-plane order later Friday but did not specify the types of planes or provide any other details.

“We had a very successful trip to China and accomplished our major goal of reopening the China market to orders for Boeing aircraft," the company said in a statement, adding that looked forward to "continually addressing China’s aircraft demand.”

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg was among a large group of American CEOs who joined Trump during the president's trip to Beijing, seeking to sell products and services to China.

Trump said the potential aircraft deal also would benefit General Electric, which he said would supply 400 to 450 engines to China. GE Aerospace Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp also joined the president on his trip. The company did not immediately comment on the agreement.

Last month, Ortberg expressed confidence that any broad U.S.-China trade agreement to emerge when Trump and Xi met would be a “meaningful opportunity” for Boeing.

“President Trump has been very focused on supporting us in international campaigns, and he’s been very successful in doing that,” Ortberg told investors.

Since Trump began serving his second term, his administration has made Boeing a focus of its plans to revive U.S. manufacturing.

A visit to the Middle East a year ago culminated in major aircraft agreements, including a Qatar Airways order for up to 210 Boeing jets in what the planemaker described at the time as its largest-ever widebody aircraft order. Saudi Arabia also placed commercial jetliner orders during the trip.

Other major Boeing agreements have followed meetings between Trump and foreign leaders. In August, Korean Air formalized a roughly $50 billion deal to buy more than 100 Boeing aircraft, spare engines and long-term maintenance services during South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s visit to Washington.

The following month, a day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with Trump in Washington, Turkish Airlines said it planned to add 225 Boeing aircraft to its fleet.

In another win for Boeing, the biennial Dubai Air Show opened in November with hometown airline Emirates ordering 65 of Boeing’s upcoming 777-9 aircraft. Days later, FlyDubai, the lower-cost sister carrier of Emirates, announced it had ordered 75 additional Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly a third of the narrowbody airliners Boeing delivered went to China. But the company's business there plummeted as U.S.-China relations soured.

China also was the first country to ground the 737 Max in 2019 after two of the then-new models crashed less than five months apart in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing 346 people. Chinese airlines did not resume Max flights until January 2023, much later than carriers in many other countries.

Ortberg took over as Boeing's CEO in 2024, a calamitous year for the company. In January of that year, a panel known as a door plug blew off a 737 Max shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon. Boeing faced mounting financial pressure as it came under intensifying scrutiny over alleged production and quality failures.

While there were some hopes this week's U.S.-China summit would result in concrete trade deal announcements, the president's trip ended with a lot of uncertainty about what the two sides agreed on, said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund.

Glaser told a media briefing Friday that there had been little concrete information about trade agreements from the summit, including on Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as soybeans, liquefied natural gas and beef.

“All that we have is really what the president has told the world that China has agreed to,” Glaser said.

___

Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this story.

Attorneys representing voters asked a state judge to block the new districts from being used in the midterm elections and instead reinstate districts used for previous elections. Such a move would create a significant wrinkle in President Donald Trump's attempt to hold on to a narrow House majority by redrawing voting districts to the GOP's advantage. The judge gave no timetable for when he will rule.

Florida's new House map is part of a national redistricting battle that gained steam last year when Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw the state's congressional districts. On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court refused to declare that Democratic lawmakers had vacated their offices when they briefly fled the state to block a redistricting vote.

The Florida Legislature approved a new House map on April 29 — the same day the U.S. Supreme Court weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities while striking down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana. Since then, several Southern states have taken steps to try to eliminate minority districts that have elected Democrats.

On Friday, Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee announced that he is ending his reelection bid. His decision came a week after Tennessee Republicans enacted a new U.S. House map that carves up Cohen’s majority-Black district in Memphis. The new map gives Republicans a shot at winning all nine of Tennessee's U.S. House seats.

Republicans already hold 20 of Florida’s 28 U.S. House seats. New voting districts signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis after a swift two-day special legislative session could improve the GOP’s chances to win four additional seats in the November elections.

Congressional districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census, to rebalance populations. But since Trump urged mid-decade redistricting last year, Republicans think they could gain as many as 15 seats from new House maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama. Democrats, meanwhile, think they could gain six seats from new maps in California and Utah.

Democrats had counted on winning up to four additional seats in Virginia. But the Virginia Supreme Court last week struck down a Democratic redistricting plan approved by voters, ruling the legislature violated procedural requirements when placing it on the ballot. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request to restore the map favoring Democrats.

Florida bans partisan map-making

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that it has no authority to decide whether partisan gerrymandering goes too far. But it said partisan gerrymandering claims could continue to be decided in state courts under their own constitutions and laws.

Florida voters approved a state constitutional amendment in 2010 that prohibits U.S. House districts from being drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent. The amendment bars districts from diminishing the ability of racial or language minorities to elect the representatives of their choice. It also requires districts to be compact and, where feasible, use existing political and geographic boundaries.

Lawsuits filed on behalf of voters seek a temporary injunction against the new House map for violating that amendment. Their arguments focus heavily on political favoritism.

Under the new House map, 82% of voters in districts represented by Republicans remain in the same districts as under the previous map, said attorney Chris Shenton, who represented Common Cause and other groups challenging it. Just 41% of voters in districts represented by Democrats are kept in their same districts, he said.

“It shows that Democratic districts are being targeted for reconfiguration. And why? To favor Republicans and disfavor Democrats. That is unconstitutional,” Shenton said.

Fair Districts Amendment called into question

Attorneys representing Florida's state lawmakers and executive officials argued that partisan intent had not been proven and that a temporary injunction against the new districts is not appropriate in advance of a fully developed trial.

Though DeSantis called lawmakers into session before the Supreme Court's ruling in the Louisiana case, he anticipated an eventual outcome weakening Voting Rights Act protections for minority districts. Among other changes, Florida's new map reshapes a southeastern district that DeSantis’ office said was created to help elect a Black representative in an attempt to comply with federal law.

DeSantis' office said no racial data was used to prepare the new map he presented to the Legislature. In a memo to lawmakers, DeSantis’ General Counsel David Axelman asserted that Florida's constitutional provision about racial redistricting violates the U.S. Constitution. If one element is invalid, Axelman wrote, then the entire 2010 amendment is void.

Attorney Mohammad Jazil, representing Florida's executive officials, emphasized a similar argument in court. He said the provision against partisan gerrymandering in Florida's Fair Districts Amendment cannot stand if the section protecting racial minorities is now invalid.

“It is intertwined, it is interlocked, it is interwoven,” Jazil said.

South Carolina meets in special session for redistricting

The South Carolina House began debate Friday on a bill that would reshape U.S. House districts to try to help Republicans to gain a seat and sweep all seven of the state's congressional districts. The proposal, pushed by Trump, would pull the congressional primaries out of the June 9 statewide primary and move them to August. Debate is expected to continue into next week.

Several Democrats gave speeches against the bill Friday, including state Rep. Justin Bamberg, who denounced Trump's influence in the matter.

“How did we get here? One man made the call. He didn’t call every state in this country. He didn’t make calls across the North,” Bamberg said, later adding: “Where’d he go? The place that since the beginning of this country, you go to take this country backwards. He went to the South.”

Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who called lawmakers into a special session for redistricting, said it's important for South Carolina to send as many Republicans to Washington as possible to try to prevent Democrats from taking control of the House and attempting to impeach Trump.

“We have to have a functioning Congress,” McMaster said.

___

Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri, and Collins from Columbia, South Carolina.

Taiwan remained the most important issue for China in the talks. Xi privately warned Trump that differences over the self-governed island, which Beijing claims as its own territory, could bring the U.S. and China into clashes or conflict.

Trump told reporters that he had not yet made a determination on whether a major U.S. sale of arms to Taiwan can move forward.

On Iran, Trump said Xi told him that China wants to help negotiate an end to the war and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has previously expressed hope that China would use its leverage as Iran’s biggest trading partner to prod Tehran into a deal on U.S. terms. Trump also said Xi assured him that China wouldn’t provide Iran with military equipment.

Here's the latest:

US suspends enforcement of sanctions against independent UN investigator

The Treasury Department says it has suspended the implementation and enforcement of sanctions the Trump administration had imposed on the U.N. rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza following a court order this week.

Two days after U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, Treasury said Friday that her designation “is not being implemented or enforced while this order is in effect.”

In his ruling, which came in response to a lawsuit filed by Albanese’s family earlier this year, Leon said the sanctions could be a violation of Albanese and her family members’ First Amendment rights.

The sanctions were imposed after the State Department said Albanese, who has been highly critical of Israel’s operations in Gaza, had engaged in a “campaign of political and economic warfare” against the U.S. and Israel by urging other countries to sanction Israel over alleged war crimes in Gaza and several U.S. companies for being “complicit” in those actions.

Trump says the US needs to retrieve Iran’s highly enriched uranium for ‘public relations’

The president said in an interview with Fox News Channel that Iran told him it does not have the capability to get to its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under the rubble of a facility bombed in strikes Trump ordered last year.

Trump said that was “good enough” for trying to stop Iran from using it to make a nuclear weapon and said that the U.S. is able to closely monitor if someone tried to access the site.

But, he said he still wants to go retrieve the material from Iran because, “It’s not good enough, public relations-wise. It’s important.” He also suggested there have been media reports speculating that Iran could retrieve the material.

Trump says he won’t let midterms influence what he does in Iran

The president seemed to acknowledge that the war could hurt his Republican Party in November, saying he warned “my people” that he may “screw up your numbers for a little while.”

Trump made the comment in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier that was taped before leaving China but aired Friday evening.

He said it was necessary to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

“I’m not going to let the election determine what’s going to happen with respect to Iran because they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he said.

Trump says ‘everybody agrees’ higher gas prices are worth stopping Iran from having a nuclear weapon

Trump defended the statement he made before leaving for China that economic considerations would not go into any peace settlement with Iran, saying the sole goal was to prevent the country from getting a nuclear weapon.

“When people hear me say it, everybody agrees,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, saying that higher gasoline prices were just “short-term pain.”

Trump had responded to a reporter’s question on Tuesday outside the White House by saying, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

He told Baier that the question that prompted the earlier response was “fake.”

Supreme Court rejects Virginia’s bid to restore congressional map favoring Democrats

The map would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives.

The court’s order is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.

In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.

But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment voters narrowly passed last month.

The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.

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Air Force One lands outside Washington

Trump is back in Washington after his whirlwind trip to China.

Air Force One touched down at Joint Base Andrews a little before 6:30 p.m. EDT, nearly 16 hours after departing from Beijing. The journey included a fuel stop in Anchorage, Alaska.

Trump says China doesn’t want Taiwan to ‘go independent’

The president in an interview that aired Friday evening on Fox News Channel appeared to downplay the threat that China may use force to reunite Taiwan, a self-governing island, with the mainland.

“It’s not a takeover. They just don’t want to see this place — we’ll call it a place because nobody knows how to define it — but they don’t want to see it go independent,” Trump said.

He said that he didn’t think China would do anything if things remained status quo. But he said if the country did, “they probably would do something pretty harsh, and then they would be met harshly and bad things will happen.”

Trump also suggested Xi would hold off on making any aggressive moves on Taiwan while he remains in the White House. That echoes comments he has made about the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel and Russia’s war with Ukraine, declaring neither would have happened if he was in office at the time.

“I don’t think they’ll do anything when I’m here. When I’m not here. I think they might, to be honest with you,” Trump said.

Colorado governor commutes sentence of former elections clerk

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has commuted the sentence of election conspiracy theorist Tina Peters following pressure from Trump, the latest instance of the president using his powers to reward those who echoed his baseless claims of mass fraud as the cause of his 2020 loss.

Trump has championed the case of Peters, a 70-year-old former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years behind bars after being convicted in a scheme to make a copy of her county’s election computer system. She gets released June 1.

In April, a Colorado appeals court ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud, a decision praised by Polis. The court upheld her convictions, though.

Peters has been serving her sentence at a prison in Pueblo after being convicted in 2024 by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump.

Hegseth will attend USS Gerald R. Ford homecoming

The defense secretary will meet the world’s largest aircraft carrier as it returns from an 11-month deployment on Saturday, the Pentagon said.

The Ford’s 326 days at sea will make its deployment the longest for an aircraft carrier in the last 50 years and third longest since the Vietnam War, according to data compiled by USNI News, a news outlet run by the U.S. Naval Institute, a nonprofit organization.

The only longer ones were the 1973 deployment of USS Midway at 332 days and the 1965 deployment of USS Coral Sea at 329 days.

The Ford took part in the military operation to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Then it saw more battle, heading toward the Middle East as tensions with Iran escalated. While in the Red Sea it also experienced a fire that sidelined it for weeks in the Mediterranean Sea.

Washington activists question escalating surge

Free DC, one of the primary organizations that has opposed the surge of federal law enforcement and military personnel into Washington, said plans to expand the surge are wrongheaded.

“The people of D.C. don’t want anything from this corrupt and lawless regime. We want them to stay the hell away from our children, stay out of our communities, and quit their jobs,” the activist group said in a statement.

The organization’s stance came in response to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s press conference Friday announcing the additional surge of more law enforcement officers. That announcement said there would be more prosecutions, including holding some parents responsible for the juvenile curfew violations of their children.

U.S. Marshals Director Gadyaces Serralta said the number of military troops in the city would increase to 5,000 from 3,500. There were about 2,500 National Guard members in the city a month ago.

US says Israel and Lebanon agree to 45-day extension of ceasefire

It comes after two “productive” days of talks in Washington and will be followed by more negotiations June 2-3, State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.

A shaky truce between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon had been due to end on Sunday.

“We hope these discussions will advance lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and establishing genuine security along their shared border,” Pigott said on social media.

U.S. eyes indictment against Raul Castro amid pressure by Trump administration, sources tell AP

The Justice Department is preparing to seek an indictment against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press.

The indictment would require approval by a grand jury. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. One of the people said the potential indictment is connected to Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of planes operated by the Miami exile group.

Prosecutors in Miami have been building cases against senior Cuban officials amid renewed pressure from south Florida Republicans and a pledge earlier this year by President Donald Trump to orchestrate a “friendly takeover” of the communist-run island.

Second day of Israel-Lebanon talks underway in Washington as ceasefire end looms

The State Department says the second and final of two days of talks between Israel and Lebanon are underway in Washington ahead of the weekend expiration of a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

US halts Army deployment to Poland as part of troop reduction in Europe, AP sources say

The Pentagon is drawing down thousands of troops in Europe by stopping units from deploying to Poland and Germany as opposed to yanking those already stationed there.

Several U.S. officials confirmed that 4,000 troops from an Army brigade are no longer en route to Poland this week. The Trump administration had previously said it was cutting U.S. forces only in Germany.

The canceled deployment came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo directing a brigade combat team to be moved out of Europe, according to two U.S. officials who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.

One of them said the choice of which unit was left to military leaders. The memo also led to the cancellation of an upcoming deployment to Germany of a battalion trained in firing long-range rockets and missiles, the two officials said.

Some congressional Republicans watch with worry Trump’s deliberations on Taiwan arms sale

Lawmakers who have supported Taiwan’s efforts to build up its military defenses say that the decision to follow through with the sale of $11 billion in arms for the island should be an easy one for the president.

“We have to support Taiwan, just like we have to support Ukraine,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican. “These are the fortresses of democracy and they’re on the front lines and we have to protect and defend them.”

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas said he was not surprised that Chinese President Xi Jinping had come out with an aggressive posture on Taiwan.

“We’ve got to arm Taiwan so they can defend themselves for deterrence,” McCaul said.

Vance honors fallen officers during police week

The vice president was speaking at the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service at the U.S. Capitol.

During his remarks, Vance praised the sacrifices of police officers who were killed in the line of duty, along with their families and loved ones.

“We love you, we’re thankful for you,” Vance said. “We’re sorry for what you sacrificed but we will never forget what your officer laid down.”

Vance underscored the law-and-order policies of the Trump administration and said society’s attitude toward law enforcement has now changed.

“We shifted attitudes across our society when it comes to dealing with and most importantly, honoring our law enforcement community,” he said. “We stopped handcuffing the police and started handcuffing more violent criminals.”

The vice president spoke while Trump was returning to Washington from Beijing.

Federal officials announce summertime ’law enforcement surge in Washington, DC

The Justice Department has announced a surge of law enforcement in the nation’s capital this summer timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

Officials made the announcement at a news conference at the Justice Department headquarters on Friday, saying there would be extra personnel on city streets and additional resources such as drones.

Congressman says Poland was ‘blindsided’ by cancelled troop deployment

“It’s an embarrassment to our country what we just did to Poland,” Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said during Friday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing.

“They called me yesterday. They did not know. They were blindsided. These are some of our best allies, and they had no idea,” Bacon said. “They still don’t know what the plan is.”

Bacon said the committee needs to hold Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accountable for the decision.

“It’s wrong,” Bacon said.

Congressman criticizes abruptness of decision to cancel troop deployment to Poland

Speaking Friday during the House Armed Services Committee hearing, Republican Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia noted how advanced elements of an Army brigade were already overseas and equipment was in transit.

Scott pressed Army leaders on when the cancellation was made. Army Secretery Dan Driscoll and Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s chief of staff, said discussions occurred over the last two weeks while the decision was made in the last couple days.

Scott questioned the truth behind a Pentagon statement that it was not a last-minute, unexpected decision. Driscoll said the decision was not unusual because discussions over troop deployments are happening throughout the year.

“These are major decisions that appear to many of the members of this committee to be last-minute decisions,” Scott said.

Justice Department to seek death penalty for man charged with killing 2 Israeli Embassy staffers

Elias Rodriguez faces federal hate crime and murder charges in the killings of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim as they left an event at a Jewish museum last May, prosecutors said in a court filing Friday.

Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” during the shooting and later told police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”

The charges against Rodriguez include a hate crime resulting in death. His indictment also includes notice of special findings, which allows prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.

The hate crimes charges mean prosecutors will have to prove that Rodriguez was motivated by antisemitism when he opened fire on Lischinsky and Milgrim, a young couple who were about to become engaged. Milgrim was a U.S. citizen. Lischinsky was an Israeli citizen working in the U.S.

Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen ending reelection campaign after redraw of his Memphis district

His career was upended by the redistricting battles that are sweeping the country after last month’s Supreme Court decision.

Earlier this month, Republicans in Tennessee enacted a new U.S. House map that carves up a Cohen’s majority-Black district, reshaping it to the GOP’s advantage as part of President Trump’s strategy to hold on to a slim majority in the November midterm elections.

“I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me,” Cohen told reporters in his Washington, D.C. office.

Cohen is challenging the state’s redistricting effort in court and said he would reenter the race if that lawsuit succeeded in restoring his old congressional district.

▶ Read more

Texas high court rejects removal of Democratic lawmakers who led quorum break over redistricting

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday refused to declare that Democratic lawmakers who briefly fled the state in 2025 to block a vote on new congressional voting maps pushed by President Trump had vacated their office.

The all-Republican court dealt a blow to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and state Republicans in their efforts to severely punish the more than 50 Democrats who bolted for New York, Illinois and Massachusetts in a bid to stop a vote on the maps during a special session. State Republicans had sought their arrest and threatened fines to bring them back to the state Capitol.

Abbott had argued in a lawsuit filed directly to the state’s highest civil court that state Rep. Gene Wu, the leader of the House Democratic caucus, and others had effectively abandoned their office.

▶ Read more

China says two sides to set up trade and investment boards to address ag goods trade and tariffs

The two countries agreed to establish boards on trade and on investments to address each other’s concerns on agricultural goods’ market access and to promote expanded trade under a framework of reciprocal tariff reductions, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

The two sides have yet to announce any concrete trade deals, but the boards are expected to serve as a channel of communications to address economic and trade issues.

Wang said the economic and trade teams from the two sides have reached results that are “overall balanced and positive.”

l mulling US arms sale to Taiwan

President Donald Trump says he’s not yet made a determination on whether a major U.S. sale of arms to Taiwan can move forward, following his three-day visit to China.

Speaking to reporters as he flew back on Air Force One on Friday, Trump said he’d not decided on the sale, but added, “I will make a determination.”

The Trump administration has authorized the sale but it has yet to move forward. China opposes the deal and has suggested that Washington’s relationship with the self-governing island is the key factor in China-U.S. relations.

The Hokies improved to 47-10 on the season while South Alabama ended its year at 32-26.

Virginia Tech broke through in the third inning when Kylie Aldridge launched a grand slam to give the Hokies a 4-0 advantage. The long ball capped the game’s decisive rally and highlighted a four-RBI day for Aldridge, who finished 2-for-3 at the plate.

The Hokies added to the lead in the fourth inning on a two-run homer by Zoe Yaeger, extending the margin to 6-0.

Virginia Tech managed six hits in the victory, with Yaeger finishing 2-for-3 with two RBIs. Jordan Lynch, Aldridge, Rachel Castine and Annika Rohs each added hits for the Hokies.

In the circle, Bree Carrico earned the win after tossing four scoreless innings. Carrico allowed two hits while striking out three and walking two to improve to 15-1 on the season.

Avery Layton closed out the final three innings to secure her second save of the year. Layton surrendered two hits and struck out four as the Hokies completed the shutout.

South Alabama collected four hits but went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position. Presley Lively led the Jaguars with a 2-for-3 performance, while Kara Wine and Lillie Stagner each recorded doubles.

RyIey Harrison took the loss for South Alabama after allowing six runs — two earned — over six innings. Harrison struck out six and walked one.

Virginia Tech’s defense also played a clean game, committing no errors while South Alabama committed two miscues in the field.

The Hokies won their seventh consecutive tournament opening game and advances further into the Baton Rouge Regional winners bracket where they will play LSU or Akron on Saturday.

Hamas did not immediately acknowledge or comment on the strike.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said an airstrike carried out by the military Friday evening targeted al-Haddad, the leader of Hamas’ Qassam brigades.

There were at least two Israeli strikes Friday evening in Gaza City, one of which Israel said targeted al-Haddad. One strike targeted a residential building and another a vehicle. Seven people were killed and dozens of others wounded, according to health officials in the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s Saraya Field Hospital and Shifa hospital, where the casualties were taken

In a statement, Netanyahu and Katz said that al-Haddad was “one of the architects” of the Oct. 7 attack.

Gaza has seen near-daily Israeli fire despite a fragile ceasefire agreement reached in October. More than 850 people have been killed since then, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The Health Ministry is part of Gaza’s Hamas-run government, but staffed by medical professionals who maintain and publish detailed records, viewed as generally reliable by the international community.

Netanyahu and Katz threatened that Israel will continue to work against all those who took part in the Oct. 7 attack, in which militants killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. Over 72,700 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive in response to Hamas’ 2023 attack.

“Sooner or later, Israel will reach you,” the statement read.

Palestinian citizens reported more airstrikes that followed the one that targeted al-Haddad. It was not immediately clear what the Israeli military was targeting.

Since the shaky ceasefire was reached, both Israel and Hamas have traded accusations of violations. Israel has targeted Hamas members inside the coastal enclave, the last of whom was the son of Hamas’ lead negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya.

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Ezzidin reported from Cairo.

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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

The conglomerate also dumped a number of other stocks, including Visa, Mastercard, Domino's Pizza, Amazon and United Healthcare after the departure late last year of Todd Combs, who was one of the two investment mangers Buffett hired to help manage the portfolio.

Buffett was always reluctant to invest in tech companies because he said he didn't understand them well enough to predict the long-term winners. Buffett did make an exception to that rule near the end of his career by buying a massive Apple stake after he recognized how devoted consumers are to that company's iPhones and computers.

Abel appears to be more comfortable because by the end of March Berkshire owned nearly 58 million Alphabet shares worth almost $17 billion. Just three months earlier, Berkshire held only 17.8 million Alphabet shares worth $5.6 billion.

Berkshire picked up nearly 40 million shares of Delta stock during the first three months of the year. Buffett has something of a sordid history with airline investments over the years after having bought their stocks heavily more than once before eventually dumping them.

Buffett told shareholders in 2008 that “if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down” because every airline has struggled to maintain a competitive advantage ever since the Wright brothers took to the air.

Berkshire also established a small new stake in Macy's that was worth nearly $55 million at the end of March.

Berkshire never comments on the moves it makes to its $280 billion stock portfolio from quarter to quarter because it doesn't want to discuss what it is buying and selling. Earlier this month, Abel just led his first shareholders meeting as CEO while Buffett sat on the floor with the rest of the board of directors.

Many investors have followed Berkshire's portfolio closely over the years because they liked to copy Buffett's moves. That may not be the case going forward at least until Abel establishes more of a record as a stock picker. He has spent his career operating companies like Berkshire's collection of major utilities.

But a couple of the stocks that Berkshire just revealed new stakes in Friday did jump after the conglomerate detailed its investments in a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Macy's and Delta stock prices both popped after Berkshire's disclosure, but Alphabet's stock price hardly changed.

The Omaha, Nebraska-based company also owns dozens of other businesses including major insurers like Geico, BNSF railroad, huge manufacturers like Precision Castparts and an assortment of retail and service businesses that includes such well-known brands as Helzberg Diamonds, See's Candy and Dairy Queen.

ACSO is requesting more information surrounding the murder of 21-year-old T’Khira Monique Browley, who was killed in a shooting incident in March 2022 that left four others injured in Madison Heights. The sheriff’s office said in 2022 that they were having “a tough time getting information.”

Authorities said there are some “new developments” in the case and are optimistic they may be one step closer to bringing closure and justice to the Browley family. Because of this, law enforcement is asking anyone with additional information to come forward.

There is also an award for additional information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the individual or individuals involved in this case. The Amherst County Sheriff’s Office has posted a $10,000 reward, and the FBI has posted an additional $20,000 reward.

If you have any information regarding this case, contact the Amherst County Sheriff’s Office at 434-946-9300.

There are dozens of new laws to sort through, but here are four new laws and vetoes you need to know.

The first bill deals with marijuana resentencing.

“We’re really trying to reduce the harm that’s been caused in the past 60-some years,” Nolef Turns executive director, Sheba Williams said.

The new law creates a process for some people still serving sentences for certain marijuana-related felonies committed before July first, 2021, to have their cases reviewed by a judge.

“This is a good example of putting people at the center of it,” Williams said.

Williams is the executive director of Nolef Turns - an organization focused on criminal legal system reform in Virginia.

She helped lobby for the bill, saying as Virginia’s cannabis industry continues to grow, some people are still behind bars for minor marijuana-related offenses.

“This is a huge thing, because we kept hearing, ‘retail market,’ ‘retail market,’ and we keep hearing nothing about the people who have been impacted, so I’m excited about it,” Williams said.

Another bill signed by the governor targets the cost of insulin.

The new law lowers the monthly cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs from $50 to $35 for people with state-regulated health insurance plans.

It also creates a $35 cap for certain diabetes equipment and supplies - a move supporters say could help Virginians who rely on daily medication manage rising healthcare costs.

The governor also signed a bill creating new protections for workers who face threats or coercion based on their immigration status.

The law makes it illegal for employers to use immigration status as a way to intimidate workers while violating Virginia wage laws - including cases involving unpaid wages or minimum wage violations.

Workers who believe they were threatened can file a complaint with the state, and employers found in violation could face thousands of dollars in civil penalties.

But while she signed several bills into law, Governor Spanberger also used her veto power.

She rejected a measure that would have expanded collective bargaining rights for public employees - including firefighters and other first responders.

It’s a decision that Roanoke Firefighters Association President Todd Reighley says they did not expect.

“Firefighters in Virginia feel betrayed,” Reighley said.

He tells 10 News the Virginia Professional Firefighters endorsed Spanberger on the campaign trail - saying it was based on the expectation that she would support and sign collective bargaining legislation.

“We just wish we had a governor that stood behind us in that mission to help us improve our working conditions,” he said.

Governor Spanberger also signed a controversial bill, placing a ban on assault weapons. You can read more about that bill here.

Smith will remain in a Dallas-area hospital until he has returned to full health, which is expected to be within 7-10 days, the team said Friday. A plan for return to play will be determined once Smith resumes physical activity.

The Rangers said Smith went to a doctor Wednesday after feeling ill.

“Our only concern right now is Josh’s health,” president of baseball operations Chris Young said. “This is obviously an unexpected illness, but we hope to see him return to full health and rejoin the club very soon.”

Meningitis is a swelling of the protective lining of the brain and spinal cord that can be caused by a viral infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Smith has been on the 10-day injured list since May 4 with a right glute strain. The 28-year-old in his fifth major league season has dealt with left wrist inflammation during the rehab process.

Smith took over at second base after the Rangers traded Marcus Semien to the New York Mets in the offseason. He is hitting .217 with no homers and six RBIs in 31 games.

The Rangers were set to open a three-game series at the Houston Astros on Friday night.

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

The project is set to begin in June with construction expected to wrap up next summer. Once it is done, leaders say it will be a modernized finish with more natural light coming through the building.

The current Hollins Library location will close next Wednesday, May 20, before briefly re-opening at Green Ridge Recreation Center in meeting room “C” on May 23.

We were able to consider building the library on the same spot with almost, I’d say, a 90% renovation down to the walls. When you see the library, you’re going to think it’s brand new."

In the meantime, visitors can stop by and sign the memory wall. Staf will also have time capsule memories on display.

The ruling came after a packed courtroom hearing in which Jones’ attorney argued the recall petition did not meet the signature threshold required under Virginia law. The recall effort had temporarily suspended Jones from Martinsville City Council for about two months while the case moved through court.

“Today is a victory not only for myself, but also for the citizens of Martinsville,” Jones said outside the courtroom following the decision.

Jones’ attorney, Mark Krudys, argued the 401 signatures submitted on the January recall petition fell hundreds short of the number needed based on the 2022 election in which Jones won his council seat. Krudys called the ruling a “total vindication.”

“This whole case was dismissed, and it was dismissed with prejudice,” Krudys said. “It’s gone. It’s not coming back. It should never have been brought.”

At the center of the dispute was how to calculate the required number of signatures needed for the petition to advance. Under state law, petitioners needed signatures equal to 10% of the votes cast in the election where Jones was elected.

In the 2022 Martinsville council race, voters could select up to two candidates on the ballot. the judge ruled the threshold should be based on the total number of votes cast, rather than the number of physical ballots submitted, meaning one voter could account for multiple votes.

Recall petition organizer Patti Covington said she was disappointed by the decision.

“I feel like citizens of Martinsville have been penalized by trying to get transparency or accountability,” Covington said.

The court also addressed Jones’ request for reimbursement of legal fees. Jones’ legal team sought about $81,000 from the city, but the judge awarded $40,000.

Special prosecutor Alfred Collins III criticized the decision to require taxpayers to cover part of the legal costs.

“To hold them accountable for trying to do the right thing as citizens, to hold their government accountable, seems to be counter to what we’re doing here in the justice system,” Collins said.

Despite Friday’s ruling, Jones still faces a separate criminal investigation by the Virginia State Police.

One of the people told the AP that the potential indictment is connected to Castro's alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Castro was defense minister at the time.

All three people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. The Cuban government did not respond to a request for comment on the potential indictment, which was reported earlier by CBS.

Any criminal charge against Castro, which would need to be approved by a grand jury, would dramatically escalate tensions with Havana and ramp up expectations of U.S. military action in Cuba like the one carried out in January in Venezuela to bring President Nicolàs Maduro to New York on drug trafficking charges.

Following Maduro’s ouster, the Trump administration quickly turned its attention to his ally Cuba and ordered an economic blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba, leading to severe blackouts, food shortages and a collapse in economic activity across the island.

Iran war gave Cuba a breather

The U.S. war in Iran appeared to have given Cuban leaders something of a reprieve from U.S. talk of regime change.

As Trump seeks to wind down that conflict, speculation has been growing that he may soon turn his attention back to Cuba after pledging earlier this year a “friendly takeover” of the country if its leadership didn’t open up its economy to American investment and kick out U.S. adversaries.

Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus specializing in Latin America at the University of California-San Diego, said that any indictment of Castro will play well with voters in south Florida but is unlikely to persuade career war planners in the Pentagon to pursue a second war of choice — this time just 90 miles from Florida.

“There’s no easy Venezuela copy,” said Feinberg. “There's no clear line of succession and it's hard to imagine regime change without U.S. boots on the ground.”

The AP reported in March that the U.S. Attorney in Miami had created a special working group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement to build cases against top Cuban officials amid calls by several south Florida Republicans to reopen its investigation into Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown.

Trump calls Cuba ‘a declining country’

Trump declined to discuss a potential indictment on Friday, deferring to the Justice Department.

“But they need help, as you know, and you talk about a declining country — they are really a nation or a country in decline, so we’re going to see,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We have a lot to talk about on Cuba, but not maybe for today.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials, including Castro’s grandson, during a high-level visit to the island on Thursday.

Castro, 94, took over as president from his ailing brother, Fidel Castro, in 2011, and then handed power to a handpicked loyalist, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in 2019.

While he largely has avoided the spotlight since retiring in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely believed to wield power behind the scenes, a fact underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who previously met secretly with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Florida straits shootdown a watershed moment in Cuba-U.S. relations

Cuba's shootdown in 1996 of two Cessna aircraft operated by the Brothers to the Rescue was a watershed moment in decades of hostilities between the two countries.

At the time, President Bill Clinton had been cautiously exploring ways to reduce tensions with a Cold War adversary but faced stiff opposition from exiles who organized publicity-seeking flyovers of Havana, dropping anti-Castro leaflets, and aiding Cuban rafters fleeing economic deprivation and single-party rule.

The Cubans had warned the U.S. government for months that it was prepared to defend against what it considered deliberate provocations. But those calls went unheeded and on Feb. 26, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes just beyond Cuba's airspace, according to an investigation conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization. A third plane, carrying the organization’s leader, narrowly escaped.

“With hindsight, it appears the Castros' motive was to slow down the Clinton outreach because they needed the U.S. as an external enemy to justify their national security posture,” said Richard Fienberg, who worked on Cuban issues at the National Security Council at the time.

They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, said Feinberg.

Shortly after the shootdown, Congress passed what became known as the Helms-Burton Act, which codified a U.S. trade embargo enacted in 1962 and made it far more complicated for successive U.S. presidents to engage with Cuba.

To date, the U.S. has convicted only a single person of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown. Gerardo Hernández, the leader of a Cuban espionage ring dismantled by the FBI in the 1990s, was sentenced to life in prison but was released by President Barack Obama during a prisoner swap in 2014 as part of an attempt to normalize relations with Cuba.

Two fighter jet pilots and their commanding officer have also been indicted but are outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement while living in Cuba.

Castro previously investigated for drug trafficking

Castro has been under U.S. criminal investigation before. In 1993, federal prosecutors in Miami considered charging him and several other senior Cuban military officials with cocaine trafficking based on testimony from Colombian traffickers that emerged in the drug trial of former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the AP reported in 2006.

But an indictment never followed amid concerns about the witness’ credibility as well as fears that it could risk U.S. intelligence operations and derail Clinton’s tentative outreach.

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Tucker and Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed.

“This is part of the restructuring we announced last month to align our operations with what our top customers need from us today,” an AP spokesman, Patrick Maks, said in an email.

“It’s never easy to part ways with valued colleagues — we are appreciative of their contributions to the AP and wish them all the best,” wrote Maks, the news outlet’s director of media relations and corporate communications.

AP declined to give numbers, but the News Media Guild, the union that represents AP journalists, said 20 guild-covered staffers had been laid off. The layoffs had been completed by the end of the business day Friday.

The layoffs, which had been expected, come about a month after AP, one of the world’s oldest and most influential news organizations, offered buyouts to more than 120 journalists based in the United States. About 40 subsequently volunteered and were accepted, according to the guild.

Tony Winton, the guild’s administrator, said the union had received an email just before 10 a.m. Friday from an AP human resources official saying the company was planning to implement layoffs, and the last day of work was Friday. He said no other information was provided.

“Today’s cuts show just how directionless AP’s leadership has become," said a statement from Kimberlee Kruesi, an AP reporter and the guild's acting president. “The company touts that it is prioritizing visual journalism, yet among the 20 employees sacked today are experienced photographers."

Julie Pace, executive editor and senior vice president of the AP, said in an interview last month that AP’s goal was to reduce its global staff by less than 5%. The company does not say how many journalists it employs.

Pace said at the time that the AP “is not in trouble.”

“We’re making these changes from a position of strength, but we’re doing so now to recognize our changing customer base,” she said.

Over the past four years, the AP’s revenue from newspapers has declined by 25%. Gannett and McClatchy, two of the largest traditional newspaper publishers, dropped AP in 2024.

AP customers now are dominated by broadcast, digital and technology companies. Kristin Heitmann, senior vice president and chief revenue officer, said last month that the company had seen a 200% growth in revenue from technology companies over the same period.

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Former AP media writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

According to a complaint unsealed Friday in federal court in Manhattan, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi sought to attack a New York City synagogue last month and provided an undercover law enforcement officer with photos and maps of Jewish centers in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona, that he planned to target.

Al-Saadi is also accused of involvement in two recent attacks in Canada: an attack on a synagogue and a shooting at the U.S. consulate in Toronto in March. U.S. prosecutors said he directed and urged other people to attack U.S. and Israeli interests, including by killing Americans and Jews.

Al-Saadi posted about the attacks on Snapchat and Telegram and spoke about them in phone calls recorded by an FBI informant whose help he solicited in planning attacks in the U.S., the complaint said. Al-Saadi told the informant he was willing to kill people in any such attacks, the complaint said.

Al-Saadi, 32, is charged with conspiracy to provide material support to Kata’ib Hizballah, an Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militant group, and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, both of which have been designated by the U.S. government as foreign terrorist organizations. U.S. prosecutors said Al-Saadi was a Kata’ib Hizballah commander.

He is also charged with conspiring and providing material support for acts of terrorism and conspiring to bomb a place of public use. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.

FBI Director Kash Patel described Al-Saadi as a "high-value target responsible for mass global terrorism" and said his arrest was the product of "a righteous mission executed brilliantly” by the agency's agents and law enforcement partners.

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whose officers investigated Al-Saadi as part of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, said the case “puts into stark relief the global threats posed by the Iranian regime and its proxies like Kata’ib Hizballah.”

Al-Saadi smiled throughout his initial court appearance but did not speak.

Through his lawyer, he called himself a political prisoner and a prisoner of war and said the U.S. is persecuting him for his relationship with Qasem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guard leader who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2020.

Al-Saadi was not required to enter a plea. He will remain jailed but could request bail.

His lawyer, Andrew Dalack, said Al-Saadi was arrested in Turkey and turned over to U.S. authorities. In his statement, Patel thanked U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, calling him "instrumental in bringing this successful mission home to the United States.”

Al-Saadi has been kept in solitary confinement since he arrived at a federal jail in Brooklyn on Thursday night, Dalack said, adding that such treatment was “unusual given the nature of charges in the complaint."

According to the complaint, Al-Saadi and unnamed associates planned, coordinated, and claimed responsibility for a barrage of attacks in the name of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, a component of Kata’ib Hizballah, since the war started on Feb. 28.

They include the bombing of a Bank of New York Mellon building in Amsterdam in mid-March and a thwarted bomb attack on a Bank of America office in Paris on March 28, the complaint said. Teenage suspects were previously arrested in both cases.

The Amsterdam attack caused a fire and significant damage to the building, but no injuries, according to local media reports. It followed an explosion outside a Jewish school in Amsterdam, which Al-Saadi celebrated on Snapchat with an Ashab al-Yamin-branded video showing the blast and the assailants fleeing on a motorcycle, the criminal complaint said.

In Paris, police found a homemade bomb consisting of a gasoline-filled container taped to a powerful firework. Forensic experts said the device contained 650 grams (about 23 ounces) of explosives and that it could have produced a large fireball and ignited a significant blaze.

Last month, Al-Saadi set his sights on bombing Jewish sites in the U.S. and offered the undercover law enforcement officer $10,000 in cryptocurrency for what he envisioned as simultaneous attacks on the New York synagogue and the Jewish centers in Arizona and California, the criminal complaint said.

After paying the officer an initial installment of $3,000 for the synagogue attack, Al-Saadi encouraged him to strike as soon as possible, telling him in an April 6 text message: “I wanna see good news tonight . . . not tomorrow bro,” the complaint said.

Pat Concannon and his friends — two who made the trip from Europe just to watch the golf major — positioned their ladder and the bed of their Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck just a short putt away from the temporary fence that lined the first hole at Aronimink Golf Club.

“This is the best seat in the house,” Concannon said. “Everyone can watch it from over there. Not everyone can watch it from over here.”

The friends were getting thirsty early Friday and time for a beer run was getting tight before the world's No. 1 golfer was about to traipse through their backyard.

“Make it quick,” one reveler yelled, “because I think Scottie Scheffler is coming next.”

Cold beers were delivered and Concannon and his friends toasted the day and the unobstructed — and absolutely free — view as they peered like Wilson from “Home Improvement” over the fence to watch the second round where the best golfers in the world touched down a short walk from his uncle's garage.

No old man cries here of, get off my lawn!

Enterprising home owners in the tony neighborhood that lined Aronimink set up ladders, rented platforms and turned their streets into the sites of the block party of the weekend — just respect the quiet please sign — just off the cart-worn path of the 130-year-old course.

The volume could get cranked to 11 later in the night.

Once play was concluded, a Bruce Springsteen cover band — the E Street Shuffle Band — was set to take the stage. Or is it a lawn?

The home owners decided to think outside the tee box when it came to affordable golf, though some of them are Aronimink members and had purchased tickets that stretched well over $1,000 each, depending on the day.

Jim Hageney moved into his home outside the first hole two years ago and is in the midst of renovations that essentially gutted the inside. Up near the chimney, construction workers paused on their lunch break for a birds-eye view some 50 feet above the chip shots and booming drives below.

Hageney and his guests mingled about 10 feet up on one of three platforms — for about $2,000 total — rented by his family and two neighbors.

They are about the most popular people at Aronimink not named Rory or Rickie or Scottie. Golf fans shout — well, it's golf, so mildly raise their voice — at Hageney and friends asking how they can snag a spot outside the course and inside the fence at the property.

If they could find the opening along the fence near the fourth hole and turn left, they might have some luck at getting close to the neighborhood.

Or, they can empty their pockets and buy a house where one on the market advertised it was at Aronimink's fourth tee.

Party crashers have been kept in check.

Roads were mostly closed — no parking by temporary police order signs dotted the street — and the Hageney family put up a “Private By Invite Only” sign in their driveway.

Hageney said nine trees were removed around their property line ahead of the PGA.

“It’s great for me,” Hageney said. “Great view. Unobstructed view.”

And no long line at the concession stand!

The Hageneys had their platform delivered last week and there were no issues with the viewing risers or other towering platforms like it — one without railings went up near the 14th green — and the occasional golfer even politely waved back to their well wishes.

“We had checked with the PGA, and the people were very, very polite,” the 63-year-old Hageney said. “They said be respectful.”

One local family hired a company to build a raised platform dubbed the “sky deck" and invited their new best friends for drinks and nibbles and hanging out in genteel surroundings.

The Bellew family even created a website where fans could RSVP for an American Evening on the Fairway.

“Experience golf, atmosphere, and an unforgettable weekend,” the website read. “In celebration of the 2026 PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, join us at our home for a memorable weekend of gathering, championship viewing, and celebration.”

Headed into the weekend, there were no reports of inebriated patrons falling over the fence or course marshals trying to keep the noise down — just the ladders up.

“It's pretty safe, right," Concannon asked.

___

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

The S&P 500 fell 1.2% from its all-time high set the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 537 points, or 1.1%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.5% from its own record.

Technology stocks tumbled in a sharp turnaround from their meteoric rises for much of the year, which had carried markets worldwide to records but also raised criticism that they had gone too far.

Nvidia, the stock that quickly became the face of the AI revolution, dropped 4.4% and was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500. It had come into the day with a gain of more than 26% for the year so far.

Micron Technology was another one of the heaviest weights on the market after falling 6.6%. It’s nevertheless still up nearly 154% for the year so far.

“To us, it looks like markets have pushed into overbought territory,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management. He said the strong corporate profits and durable U.S. economy that launched U.S. stocks to records remain intact, but “the path is unlikely to be smooth. Periods like this call for discipline more than hope.”

In the meantime, rising oil prices are raising the pressure after already worsening inflation by more than economists had feared. The war with Iran is continuing, and the Strait of Hormuz remains shut to oil tankers, which is preventing them from delivering crude to customers worldwide and driving up oil’s price.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose 3.3% to settle at $109.26 and is well above its level of roughly $70 from before the war.

Many big U.S. companies have been saying their customers have been able to keep spending on their products and services despite having to pay higher prices for gasoline. But U.S. households have also been telling surveys they’re feeling discouraged about the economy and the pressures building on them because of the war and tariffs.

The worries were most clear Friday in the bond market, where Treasury yields climbed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.59% from 4.47% late Thursday. That’s a notable move for the bond market, and it’s well above its 3.97% level from before the war.

The yield on the 30-year Treasury reached 5.13% and is back to where it was in 2007, before the financial crisis sent yields crashing toward zero in the ensuing year.

Higher yields can make mortgages and other kinds of loans going to U.S. households and businesses more expensive, which slows the economy. They also tend to push downward on prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments.

Stocks of smaller companies had some of Friday’s sharpest drops. Many of them need to borrow cash to grow, which means higher borrowing costs can hurt them more than their big rivals. The Russell 2000 index of the smallest U.S. stocks fell 2.4%, double the S&P 500’s loss.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 92.74 points to 7,408.50. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 537.29 to 49,526.17, and the Nasdaq composite sank 410.08 to 26,225.14.

Yields have been climbing since the war on worries about higher inflation and how it may tie the Federal Reserve’s hands when it comes to short-term interest rates. Not only have traders abandoned virtually all expectations that the Fed will resume its cuts to interest rates this year, they’ve been building some bets that it may even hike rates in 2026, according to data from CME Group.

A couple of reports on the U.S. economy that came in better than expected also helped to lift yields. One said U.S. industrial production improved by more last month than economists expected, while another said manufacturing in New York state is expanding at a faster rate.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell by more than 1.5% across much of Europe and Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi dropped 6.1% for one of the biggest moves. It’s set records this year because of the influence of AI beneficiaries like SK Hynix. But it quickly reversed momentum Friday after briefly topping the 8,000 level for the first time.

Some on Wall Street have been warning about a possible break in momentum for tech stocks in general and AI winners in particular.

“If nothing else this should be a ‘shot across the bow’ for how volatility works both ways,” according to Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at BTIG.

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AP Business Writer Chan Ho-him contributed.

Now, as Powell steps down from the post after eight tumultuous years, the U.S. economy is transformed: Inflation soared after the pandemic and has remained above the Fed's 2% target for more than five years, angering voters and making rents, cars, and groceries harder to afford. The Fed's key short-term rate rose to a two-decade high in 2023, even as unemployment fell to a half-century low.

Along the way, Powell shrugged off relentless personal attacks from President Donald Trump that began just months after his appointment. But in January, he pushed back against an unprecedented legal investigation by the Justice Department, becoming one of the few top officials in Washington to stand up to the Trump White House.

Powell, who was named chair pro tempore on Friday until his successor Kevin Warsh is sworn in, said he will continue serving on the governing board until he is confident the Fed’s independence is truly restored. His success at protecting the central bank from day-to-day politics will be a key part of his legacy.

“It is not an unblemished record, but in an extremely challenging context, he’s performed exceedingly well," said David Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and director of research at Bloomberg Economics. “And my overall assessment is that the country has been lucky indeed to have him as chair.”

Unlike many of his predecessors, Powell, 73, is not a trained economist, but a lawyer who also worked in finance before joining the Fed's board of governors in 2012. Unassuming in public and private, Powell often introduces himself as “Jay” and would display his guitar-playing skills, honed as a student busking through Europe, at the Fed's holiday parties.

‘Transitory’ inflation proved persistent

An inescapable part of Powell's legacy will be the post-pandemic inflation surge, when consumer prices rose by a four-decade high of 9.1% in June 2022.

Overall prices are now 27% higher than just before the pandemic six years ago, a staggering change for a country that had experienced little inflation for generations. Prices rose just 10% in the six years before the pandemic. Groceries are 30% more expensive than six years ago, after they rose just 3.6% in the six years preceding COVID.

Powell and other Fed officials — and indeed most economists — initially said the inflationary surge was “transitory,” a result of supply chain snarls brought about by the pandemic, as COVID shut down factories and slowed ports around the world.

Their immediate priority was supporting the economy in a crisis.

In two moves in March 2020, they slashed their benchmark interest rate by 1.5 percentage points to near zero. The Fed also bought large amounts of Treasury debt and government-backed mortgage securities to reduce longer-term interest rates and took other steps to pour money into the financial system to keep credit markets functioning during pandemic chaos.

In April 2020, Powell said that the Fed would "continue to use these powers forcefully, proactively, and aggressively until we are confident that we are solidly on the road to recovery.''

Even as inflation zoomed past the Fed's 2% target in 2021, the central bank kept its key interest rate near zero until March 2022, when inflation hit 6.9%, according to the Fed's preferred measure.

The Fed's delay in raising rates was largely informed by a traditional economic view that inflation, stemming from a supply shock, would be temporary and if a central bank cranked up borrowing costs to fight it, the higher rates would just harm the economy and lift unemployment even as the supply crunch faded.

Misreading tea leaves

Meanwhile, the Trump and Biden administrations pumped about $5 trillion in government spending into the economy, in the form of multiple stimulus checks, support for small businesses, and other aid. The flow of dollars fueled a spending spike just as supply chains were unable to deliver on the demand.

By keeping its key rate near zero for so long, Powell's critics charge, the Fed contributed to that excess spending and worsened inflation.

“Even though there was all the evidence there in the data that aggregate demand was going through the roof, they still said it was a transitory supply shock,” said Mickey Levy, a former top economist at Bank of America and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. “The Fed contributed to that inflation and completely misread the tea leaves.”

As inflation began to spread into items such as apartment rents and surveys showed Americans increasingly worried it would last, Powell pivoted and oversaw the sharpest increase in interest rates since the early 1980s to combat the price spike.

Still, many leading economists, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, worried that defeating inflation would require a recession and a sharp increase in unemployment. Instead, inflation dropped to 2.3% by September 2024, according to the Fed's preferred measure, nearly reaching its 2% target.

By reducing inflation without a sharp economic downturn, Powell largely achieved an elusive “soft landing." Inflation then moved higher after Trump imposed sweeping tariffs last April.

Focusing on unemployment

Fighting inflation was a sharp shift for a Fed chair that began his term more focused on the Fed's mandate to pursue maximum employment. Before the pandemic, Powell often lauded the benefits of a strong job market for disadvantaged workers, winning plaudits from many progressive economists.

Yet some economists argue the Fed's focus on employment contributed to its delayed response to post-COVID inflation. In an August 2021 speech, Powell said the then-elevated unemployment rate of 5.4% was a reason to avoid hiking rates too early.

Still, many analysts defend Powell's support for the maximum employment mandate. Julia Coronado, president of MacroPolicy Perspectives and a former Fed economist, said Powell was right to keep rates low before the pandemic, even as unemployment steadily declined, because there were no signs inflation was worsening.

“If you can actually push a little harder for a little longer with no consequences for inflation, then you should damn well do it,” she said. “He was absolutely right about that. He’s still right about that.”

For his part, Powell said in late April that “overweighting the employment market” had nothing to do with the inflation spike.

“It was a global shock that happened essentially very, very similarly all over the world,” he said.

Fighting for Fed independence

Last July, in an image that will likely prove the most enduring of his time as Fed chair, Powell and Trump stood before cameras in hard hats at the site of the Fed's extensive $2.5 billion building renovation, which Trump had criticized as excessive.

Trump claimed the project would cost even more -- $3.1 billion — and showed Powell a paper listing the costs. Powell took out his reading glasses and corrected the president, on camera, by noting that he had included a third building that had already been renovated.

It was emblematic of Powell's willingness to push back against Trump's unprecedented attacks. Economists have long supported an independent Fed because it allows the central bank to take difficult steps — such as sharply raising interest rates to combat inflation — that politicians often oppose because they can be painful.

Powell benefited from strong relationship-building with Congress. Research by University of Maryland economist Thomas Drechsel has found that Powell met with senators more than twice as often as his two predecessors, with the meetings evenly split between both parties.

During one visit, Powell even endeared himself to North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis' dog, a move that paid huge dividends. Tillis essentially blocked Senate approval of Kevin Warsh, Trump's pick to replace Powell, until the investigation of the building project was dropped. The Justice Department eventually gave up on its probe.

Even those who fault Powell on some policy decisions credit him for defending the Fed.

“The big plus is the way he has protected central bank independence,” said Don Kohn, a former vice chair of the Fed. “That is the most important thing for the future of the Federal Reserve and for protecting the public interest in having an independent central bank.”

Powell hasn't said when he may leave the Fed, though he could remain on the governing board until January 2028.

“You want people to ... set interest rates to benefit the general public," Powell said at his last news conference, "and focus only on that and ignore political considerations. This isn’t bipartisan, this is nonpartisan.”

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AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this story.

“Well, I mean, biking to work, I think it’s a great option. One, because it’s incredibly fun. It’s a wonderful day way to start your day. It also helps everybody who feels like a little bit time crunched and maybe they can’t get a workout in before or after work,” said Rob Issem, Complete Streets and Vision Zero Coordinator for the City of Roanoke and organizer of the ride.

To help promote the day, volunteers set up aid stations in five different sections of the city offering doughnuts, enthusiasm and coffee.

“It is so important to have people commuting to work on bikes because it creates a safer and cleaner community,” said Allison Duvall one of the aid station volunteers.

This ride is not actually a bike to work ride for most of us. It’s a tour of new cycling lanes and other infrastructure to help cyclists navigate the city safely. It’s a part of the city’s Complete Streets and Vision Zero programs. For instance, a bike lane over Gainsboro Bridge is less than a week old. Behind the Taubman Museum of Art there’s a special lane that allows cyclists to go against traffic on a one-way street. It’s called a contra flow bike lane.

Among the riders, Roanoke Mayor Joe Cobb.

“Well, I love to cycle. I love the Vision Zero work we’re doing in Complete Streets to make Roanoke a bike-friendly city, to make it safer for pedestrians, for cyclists, to be a multimodal city,” Cobb said.

“All of this infrastructure we’re doing continues to be a priority for the city, and today’s an opportunity with National Bike to Work Day to see just how critical this is as a cyclist, to see what the challenges are on our roadways, the safety challenges, and what the opportunities are, Cobb said.

One aid station was manned by Pedalsafe Roanoke.

“So really safe cycling in Roanoke, it means a couple of things. It means a connected network, not just spread apart infrastructure. It means something that’s safe enough to take your son and daughter, your grandchild, your niece,” said Tyler Breeding, a Pedalsafe board member.

Over the course of about 17-miles our group took in greenways, new bike lanes and even a railroad tunnel.

We saw and experienced things that people in cars just don’t take in. It’s kind of like the difference between watching a movie -- and actually being there.

While the former Hollywood mogul has been convicted of other sex crimes on two U.S. coasts and remains behind bars, the mistrial leaves the New York rape charge in limbo. Prosecutors were pondering whether to try the case a fourth time, after some jurors said outside court that nine out of 12 wanted to acquit Weinstein.

Weinstein, 74, showed little reaction as he was ushered from court, but his attorneys said later that he was pleased with the outcome.

“Maybe it’s not the win that he wanted, but it’s a win, and we’re going to keep fighting,” attorney Marc Agnifilo said, adding that the defense believed it has "outstanding” prospects if the case is retried.

The majority-male Manhattan jury weighed whether Weinstein raped Jessica Mann, a hairstylist and actor. Weinstein’s lawyers argued that the encounter was consensual. It happened in 2013 during a fraught relationship between the then-married Weinstein and the decades-younger Mann.

Deliberations began Wednesday. On Friday, after the jury sent two notes in 90 minutes saying it was stuck, Judge Curtis Farber declared a mistrial.

What stood out to jurors

Some jurors said they were struck by gaps in what Mann recalled, particularly when defense lawyers were questioning her.

“The prevailing thought was that the witness had a lot of inconsistencies in her story,” said juror Josh Hadar, 57. He favored acquittal: “I don't come to that easily, but it just seemed that there was enough reasonable doubt.”

Another juror, Sarae Perez, 25, noted that she studied feminism and is well versed in #MeToo, but she also couldn't overcome uncertainties about Mann's account.

“There were places where we couldn’t trust her word for it,” she said.

Accuser's reaction: 'I deserve justice'

Mann said in a statement that the mistrial “doesn’t in any way detract from the truth I told.”

“I deserve justice, which is why I stand up and face unbearable public scrutiny in the name of a greater good,” she said.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg hailed Mann's “perseverance and bravery” and said in a statement that prosecutors will consult her about next steps. They're due to say next month whether they will retry the case.

How the case returned for a third trial

As an Oscar-winning movie producer and studio boss, Weinstein was one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures and a significant Democratic donor before the long-suppressed sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations against him cascaded into public view in 2017. The revelations galvanized the #MeToo movement ’s demands for accountability for sexual misconduct, made Weinstein a pariah, bankrupted the studio and ultimately led to criminal charges against him in New York and Los Angeles.

He was convicted of some and acquitted of others. Yet Mann’s allegation lingered. Weinstein was convicted of the charge in 2020. Then an appeals court overturned that verdict, and jury deliberations broke down at a 2025 retrial. That paved the way for this year’s retrial.

Weinstein has said he was unfaithful to his then-wife and “acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone.”

The accuser's account

Mann, now 40, met Weinstein at a Los Angeles party in early 2013, when she hoped to build a handful of acting credits into a big career. She said his pushy intimate overtures discomfited her at first, but she acceded to them and decided to develop a relationship with him.

However, she said she made it clear she didn’t want sex on March 18, 2013, when he unexpectedly got a room at a Manhattan hotel where she was staying with a friend.

“I said ‘no,’ over and over, and I tried to leave,” she told jurors during five days of intense testimony. She said Weinstein slammed the door, grabbed her arms and ordered her to undress. Scared, she gave up protesting, she said and alleged that he ultimately raped her.

Weinstein’s lawyers highlighted an introspective, private note that Mann wrote herself two days later. While saying nothing about the alleged rape, the note discussed her conflicted feelings about becoming “emotionally attached” in a nonexclusive relationship with a man she didn’t name. She testified that she hadn't needed to write down the alleged rape.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they choose to make their names public, as Mann has done.

Weinstein's defense

Weinstein didn’t testify. In his lawyers’ telling, Mann was a willing partner in a close, supportive relationship with a show-business insider who opened doors for her, but she turned on him once he became an outcast.

In the months and years after the New York encounter, Mann kept seeing and communicating with Weinstein, emails and testimony showed. At times, she pulled away to pursue another relationship; at others, she turned back to Weinstein, who validated her acting dreams and comforted her when her father was terminally ill.

“I love u. Anything u need,” Weinstein wrote.

He helped Mann land a movie audition — it went nowhere — and a hairstyling job. She asked him for help with such things as a car problem, though she declined cash that he tried to send when she couldn’t make rent.

In one of her last emails to Weinstein, in February 2017, she wrote: “I love you, always do. But I hate feeling like a booty call.” When he responded by suggesting she was “joking” and should stop using his company email, she said it was a joke and apologized.

Eight months later, news reports about other women's allegations prompted her to go to the police.

Mann never sued Weinstein, but after his 2020 conviction, she filed for and got about $500,000 from a sexual misconduct settlement fund set up during his company’s bankruptcy. His lawyers didn't mention the payout at this trial.

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Associated Press journalists Ed White in Detroit and Joseph B. Frederick in New York contributed.

The Gulfstream long-range business jet carrying them from the Netherlands landed at RAAF Base Pearce outside the Western Australia state capital, Perth. The passengers, crew and a doctor who accompanied them were taken by bus to the nearby Bullsbrook quarantine facility.

Australian Health Minister Mark Butler said the government would implement one of world's strongest quarantine responses to the outbreak.

He said passengers of the cruise ship MV Hondius who returned to the United States and most European countries would spend a few days in a quarantine center before they were sent home.

"We have taken the decision to take a stronger approach to quarantine arrangements than that because we are determined to ensure there is no risk at all of any transmission of this virus into the Australian community,” Butler told reporters in his hometown of Adelaide.

The five Australians and one New Zealand citizen will spend the three-week quarantine period in the facility that had remained largely unused since it was built in 2022 is response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A decision had yet to be made on what precautions should be taken for the remainder of the 42-day period of potential incubation that the World Health Organization had identified, Butler said.

The six passengers all tested negative for the virus before they left the Netherlands, had been assessed by a doctor during the flight and would undergo more detailed health assessments at Bullsbrook, Butler said.

In America, health officials transferred the two passengers who were originally sent to Atlanta to the National Quarantine Center in Omaha on Thursday. Nebraska Medicine spokeswoman Kayla Thomas said those two were medically cleared to move to the facility here at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, but she wouldn't say whether they tested negative.

Thomas said that health officials were comfortable bringing all the passengers here to Omaha now that no one is being treated in the hospital’s biocontainment unit. Initially one of the passengers had been placed there after he tested positive on the ship, but he has since tested negative for hantavirus.

The MV Hondius ship was on a cruise from Argentina to the Antarctic and then to several isolated islands in the South Atlantic Ocean when the hantavirus outbreak was identified. Three people among the 11 cases from the ship have died.

With the evacuation of all passengers and many crew members completed, the MV Hondius is now sailing back to the Netherlands, where it will be cleaned and disinfected.

Republicans in Tennessee this month enacted a new U.S. House map that carves up a Cohen's majority-Black district, reshaping it to the GOP’s advantage as part of President Donald Trump’s strategy to hold on to a slim majority in the November midterm elections.

“I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me,” Cohen told reporters in his Washington, D.C., office.

Cohen is challenging the state’s redistricting effort in court and said he would reenter the race if that lawsuit succeeded in restoring his old congressional district.

He lamented that Tennessee would likely shift to an entirely Republican congressional delegation after the next election, warning that it could also leave the state out of the loop once Democrats are able to regain the White House.

Redistricting targeted Cohen's district

Tennessee was the first state to pass new congressional districts after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities. But more Southern states could follow. Republicans in Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina also have taken steps toward redistricting.

Cohen has represented his Memphis-based district for about two decades, among the last of the white Democrats representing the South. He has been a longtime member of the House Judiciary Committee and has focused on strengthening voting access and civil rights.

“It’s unique in America that an African-American majority district has elected a white guy, and that we’ve got a great relationship, great amount of support,” said Cohen, who is also the first Jewish person to represent Tennessee in Congress.

He was facing a primary challenge from state lawmaker Justin Pearson, a Black progressive who represents much of Memphis in the state's General Assembly.

"The status quo is failing us,” Pearson told The Associated Press Friday. “It’s time for new energy, new voices, and new ideas to meet this present moment, and that’s why I started to run in the first place.”

Pearson said he still intends to run in Tennessee’s redrawn 9th Congressional District, which now includes multiple rural counties that backed Trump by double-digit margins.

“We’re going to win. It’s going to be harder, but as an ancestor once said, if the mountain was smooth, you couldn’t climb it,” said Pearson. He said his message would not change, but argued his agenda had some appeal to rural, working-class, white conservatives.

But Cohen predicted it would be nearly impossible for Tennessee Democrats to win a seat in Congress with the new districts. He added there was a chance the redistricting effort could “backfire on the Republicans” but that would require an “unbelievable registration effort among Democrats” and a massive vote turnout.

Cohen vows to oppose Trump

Sitting in his congressional office with staff looking on, Cohen pointed to photos of Memphis and local projects that he had championed during his career and expressed worry that Memphis voters would no longer have a voice in Washington. He also recounted how he had worked with the state's Republican leaders to win funding during the Biden administration for a larger bridge to cross the Mississippi River into Memphis.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement that Cohen was “a powerful champion for civil rights” and that “the City of Memphis, the Congress and the nation are better because of Steve’s commitment to making a difference.”

Cohen said the Republican's redistricting effort was being done “for Donald Trump to get one more vote, he thinks, to stop him from being impeached.”

Still, he vowed to use his remaining time in Congress to try to mount opposition to Trump, calling the president “the greatest threat to democracy and to decorum and grace that we’ve ever seen.”

Like many lawmakers, Cohen has often attracted attention with colorful outbursts during congressional debates and hearings. During Trump’s first term, in 2019, Cohen brought a bucket of fried chicken to a House Judiciary Committee hearing at which then-Attorney General William P. Barr was a no-show.

“The message is Attorney General Bill Barr is not brave enough to answer questions from a staff attorney and members of the Judiciary Committee,” he said in a statement at the time.

While Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress tried to certify the results of the presidential election, Cohen screamed angrily at his Republican colleagues to “Call Trump. Call your friend. Tell him to do something.”

Cohen was among the first Democrats to join impeachment efforts for Trump in his first term, and he has signed on to articles of impeachment against Trump this year as well.

Memphis activists respond to new map

Meanwhile, Memphis activists grappled with the new political realities after the Republican-led legislature’s decision to divide the city’s longtime congressional district into three neighboring districts.

Advocates said they believed they could work with — and pressure — any lawmaker who will represent the city.

“Things are going to change. We’re aware of that,” said Tierney Macon, an activist with The Equity Alliance, a local civil rights group.

Macon, who protested at the Tennessee statehouse for days following the unveiling of the redrawn maps, said activists aimed to hold the city’s new representatives in Congress accountable no matter their party.

“We just have to be engaged,” Macon said.

Demonstrations in the statehouse included chants accusing lawmakers of resurrecting Jim Crow, a system of state and local laws that for decades enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement across the South.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

Several U.S. officials confirmed that 4,000 troops from the Army's 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division were no longer en route to Poland this week. The Trump administration had previously said it was cutting U.S. forces only in Germany, and the decision spurred questions and criticism in both Warsaw and Washington.

Two officials told The Associated Press the Poland deployment was canceled after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo directing the Joint Chiefs of Staff to move a brigade combat team out of Europe. One of them said the choice of which unit was left to military leaders.

Besides the Army combat team based in Fort Hood, Texas, the memo also led to the cancellation of an upcoming deployment to Germany of a battalion trained in firing long-range rockets and missiles, according to the two officials, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.

Three U.S. officials said the canceled deployments were part of an effort to comply with a presidential order issued at the beginning of May to reduce the number of troops in Europe by about 5,000. The reasoning does not appear to have been well communicated because others based in Europe said they did not know if the halted deployment to Poland was part of the previously announced reduction in troops.

Trump and the Pentagon have said in recent weeks that they were drawing down at least 5,000 troops in Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized what he called a lack of strategy in the war.

The drawdown reflects a growing rift between the administration and traditional European allies, with the U.S. leader repeatedly criticizing fellow NATO members for a lack of support for the Iran conflict.

Polish officials on Friday insisted that the canceled U.S. deployment to Poland, which was reported earlier by The Military Times and other outlets, was not targeted directly at their country but was a consequence of Trump’s decision to reduce the number of troops in Germany.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he “received assurances” that the decision was of a logistical nature and said it does not directly impact deterrence capabilities and Poland’s security.

Military says the decision to cancel a unit heading to Poland was made recently

Joel Valdez, a Pentagon spokesman, said “the decision to withdraw troops follows a comprehensive, multilayered process” and he argued that it was “not an unexpected, last-minute decision.”

Speaking to Congress in a hearing Friday, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s chief of staff, said discussions around the halted deployment to Poland occurred over the past two weeks but that the decision itself was made in the past couple days.

Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said he spoke with Polish officials Thursday and they were “blindsided.”

The move also left some U.S. military personnel in Europe in the dark about how the Trump administration was reducing forces. A U.S. official based in Europe said a meeting was called with 20 minutes' notice on Monday to discuss the cancellation of the deployment to Poland.

At that time, troops had already been sent to Poland and some still in the U.S. were told shortly before departure not to travel to the airport, that official said. Another official said most of the Army unit’s equipment had already made it to Europe and was sitting in ports.

The change to troop deployment to Poland draws bipartisan criticism

Democratic and Republican lawmakers criticized the reductions as sending the wrong signal both to allies and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose forces this week have launched one of the deadliest attacks on the Ukrainian capital in the 4-year-old war.

At the House Armed Services Committee hearing Friday, LaNeve said he worked with U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander in Europe of both American and NATO forces, after Grynkewich received the instructions for the force reduction.

“I’ve worked with him in close consultation of what that force unit would be, and it made the most sense for that brigade to not do its deployment in theater,” LaNeve said.

Bacon called the decision “reprehensible” and said it was “an embarrassment to our country what we just did to Poland.”

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, who chairs the committee, said the military is required to consult with lawmakers and that did not happen.

“So we don’t know what’s going on here,” Rogers said. "But I can just tell you we’re not happy with what’s being talked about.”

A State Department official said Friday at a security conference in Tallinn, Estonia, that the U.S. reductions in Europe were “right there in black and white” but also noted that “the U.S. isn’t going anywhere.”

“We’ll continue to work with the Pentagon and work with our partners to make sure we get the right fit and right mix of what’s happening here on the ground,” said Thomas G. DiNanno, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

NATO says the change in Poland won't affect defense

With the halted deployments, the U.S. military presence in Europe will now be at pre-2022 levels, before Russia commenced its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one U.S. official said.

Europe has been bracing for a reduction since Trump returned to the White House, with the administration warning that Europe would have to look after its own security, including Ukraine's, in the future.

A NATO official said the U.S. decision to cancel its rotational deployment to Poland would not impact NATO's deterrence and defense plans. Canada and Germany have increased their presence on the alliance's eastern flank, which contributes to NATO's overall strength, the official said, insisting on anonymity in line with NATO regulations.

Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, said the move “reinforces the perception that the United States just does things without consultation with allies,” which ultimately “damages cohesion inside the alliance.” The decision would in the long run harm the U.S. defense industry as it reduces the trust of partners, he said.

Around 10,000 U.S. troops are typically stationed in Poland, the majority of them present in the country on a rotational basis. Only about 300 troops are permanently stationed in the country, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Polish officials had hoped they would be spared from any cuts as Poland spends the most in NATO on defense as a proportion of its economy — around 4.7% in 2025. Hegseth has called it a “model ally” in NATO for spending so much on defense.

When Poland’s conservative president, Karol Nawrocki, visited the White House in September, Trump said he didn't intend to pull U.S. troops out of Poland. “We’ll put more there if they want,” Trump said at the time.

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Burrows reported from Tallinn, Estonia, and Ciobanu from Warsaw, Poland.

Researchers in China used satellites and artificial intelligence to track and analyze oxygen levels in more than 21,000 rivers across the globe since 1985. They found oxygen levels have dropped an average of 2.1% since 1985, according to a study published Friday in Science Advances. That doesn't seem like much but it adds up and if it continues or accelerates, rivers in the Eastern United States, India and across the tropics could lose enough oxygen by the end of the century to suffocate some fish and create dead zones, the study said.

Basic chemistry and physics dictate that warmer water holds less oxygen, scientists said. Warmer water, which happens with human-caused climate change, releases more oxygen into the atmosphere.

If the oxygen loss rate continues at the current pace, the world's rivers on average will lose an additional 4% of their oxygen by the end of the century, and in some cases close to 5%, the study found. That's when oxygen loss — called deoxygenation — becomes problematic for fish and people who rely on rivers, according to the study's lead author Qi Guan, an environmental scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing.

More dead zones appear

Scientists worry that oxygen levels in rivers could fall so low that dead zones appear, as they have in the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie. Those are areas where fish struggle to breathe and die.

“Deoxygenation is a very slow process. If we have a long period, the negative impact will attack the river ecosystems,” Guan said. “The low level of oxygen can cause a series of ecological crises such as biodiversity decline, water quality degradation and maybe some fish will die.”

University of Arizona geoscientist Karl Flessa, who wasn't part of the study, said in an email that losing oxygen in rivers means “a future of more stinky dead zones (hypoxia), especially during heat waves.”

Some rivers are in such bad shape that “a small change can tip them into the danger zone,” Flessa said. “if your favorite fishing hole gets too warm, oxygen levels will go down and there won't be any fish to catch.”

India, Eastern US and the Amazon are hot spots

Earlier this century, India's heavily polluted Ganges River was losing oxygen more than 20 times faster than the global average, the study said. Even with moderate-to-high increases in global carbon dioxide emission rates — not the implausible worst-case scenario — rivers in the Eastern United States, the Arctic, India and much of South America are projected to lose about 10% of their oxygen by the end of the century, the analysis showed.

Guan said he worries about tropical rivers especially, such as the Amazon in Brazil. Since 1980, the number of days with dead zone spots in the Amazon rose by nearly 16 days per decade, a study last year found.

Hydrology professor Marc Bierkens of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said a study he and colleagues did last year showed oxygen stress in the world's rivers increased by 13 days every decade and dead zone occurrences increased by nearly three days a decade since 1980. As the world continues to warm, those numbers should jump even higher, said Bierkens, who didn't participate in the Chinese study.

Guan's study found several reasons for oxygen loss in the world's rivers, including nutrient pollution from fertilizer and urban runoff, along with dam construction, flow and wind issues. But nearly 63% of the problem is from warmer water, the study found.

Duke University ecologist and biogeochemist Emily Bernhardt, who wasn't part of the study, said “as rivers warm it becomes easier and easier for the same pollution problems as before to cause more severe, more long lasting or more widespread hypoxia and anoxia.” Anoxia is the total loss of oxygen.

“Water pollution reduction is more important than ever and will be harder as rivers warm,” 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.

The ceremony marked two milestones: the last commencement under outgoing University President Tim Sands, and the first of Spanberger’s term as governor. Spanberger opened her remarks by asking the crowd to recognize Sands, who will soon step down from the role.

A Hokie tradition — even for a Hoo

It is a Virginia Tech tradition for the newly elected governor to deliver the commencement keynote. The crowd’s reception when Spanberger was introduced was largely applause, though some vocal detractors were also present in the stadium.

Spanberger, a University of Virginia graduate, leaned into the friendly rivalry, telling graduates that half of her cabinet came from Virginia Tech. Graduates took that message to heart.

“Hokies are everywhere, even if they’re not visible,” said Caleb Waller, a Virginia Tech graduate. “They’re still doing the good work, and they’re still getting recognized.”

Most graduates said any school-rivalry hesitation quickly faded once Spanberger began speaking.

“I think even though she’s a UVA grad, it was great and she had a lot of great advice,” said Mackenzie Martin, a Virginia Tech graduate.

“I really enjoyed her speech, so I thought her coming was great,” said Kaitlyn Gibson, a fellow graduate.

“It was fun to have a Hoo here talking about Tech,” added Virginia Fehrer, another graduate.

James Martin, also a graduate, joked about Spanberger’s alma mater before praising her remarks. “Unfortunately, she went to the University of Virginia, but we’ll forgive her on that front,” he said. “I thought the speech was great.”

Memories made in Blacksburg

Beyond the keynote, graduates reflected on four years of friendships, shared challenges, and personal growth.

“Looking down the line of my friends sitting and just thinking of these people that I met freshman year, all the way to today — thinking of all we’ve accomplished, all the classes we’ve taken to get us here,” Fehrer said.

Martin and her roommate Kaitlyn Gibson graduated together after living side by side since their first year on campus. “We’re freshman year roommates, so getting here has been great. We’ve lived together all three years and are celebrating all of our hard work,” Martin said. Gibson summed up the feeling simply: “It’s so bittersweet.”

For Coleman Cook, the day carried extra meaning. Cook served four years as the Hokie Bird — Virginia Tech’s beloved mascot — before walking across the stage with his class.

“My whole childhood, all I wanted to be was a Virginia Tech Hokie, but little did I know I would be the Hokie Bird,” Cook said. “Being here with my best friends, my family was in town — everybody that came to speak for graduation just exceeded any expectation I had for the day. Completely blessed.”

Cook, whose parents and older sister are both Virginia Tech alumni, called it an honor to serve the university community before joining its growing list of graduates. “I really appreciate Governor Spanberger taking her time to honor all the graduates here,” he added. “Blacksburg and Virginia Tech — such a great honor, and I’m really glad the day was as good as it was.”

Parents in the stands shared that emotion. “Very inspiring, and I hope that they actually heard it because it was very moving,” said Caroline Martin, whose son graduated Friday. “She said a lot of good things. We are so proud of this young man.”

One last jump

The ceremony closed the way Virginia Tech commencements always do — with graduates jumping to the Metallica classic “Enter Sandman” for the last time as students, before tossing their caps skyward.

James Martin called the moment everything he had hoped for. “It’s a great feeling, my family came out. It’s great being with my buddies, graduating. I feel very proud, and I’m happy my family’s here,” he said

The National Transportation Safety Board was leading the review in Akron, alongside the Federal Aviation Administration and Ohio State Highway Patrol, officials said.

The white and blue Piper PA-28-180, commonly known as the Cherokee, took off from Akron Fulton Airport for a training flight at around 2 p.m. on Thursday, according to Aaron McCarter, an NTSB aviation accident investigator.

The two people on board — a certified flight instructor and the aircraft's pilot-owner — completed a number of standard training maneuvers in the area before making what appeared to be two different attempts to land at the airport. On the second approach, McCarter said, “something upset the aircraft” and it spiraled out of the sky from about 1,000 feet (305 meters), striking a road and then crashing into the house and catching fire.

Dark black smoke could be seen towering into the air near the crash, which was first reported by witnesses at the nearby Firestone Country Club, according to 911 calls provided by Akron police.

McCarter said that witness testimony and doorbell camera footage of the descent and crash will be used as evidence as investigators try to determine what happened. Thursday's high winds also will be considered. He said that Piper Aircraft is assisting with the review.

Three people were in the house at the time of impact — a father and two children, he said, and all managed to escape unharmed.

“It is incredible," McCarter said. "And they are blessed to have made it out of that house, considering the catastrophic nature of the accident.”

That family's home is still not habitable, as the aircraft was being removed from the site Friday to be taken back to the airport for evaluation. A second house also had to be evacuated due to the fire, according to the Akron Fire Department.

The Summit County Medical Examiner’s office said Friday that authorities had yet to identify the bodies of the two people who were killed or to notify their families.

The nearby American Winds College of Aeronautics alerted staff, students and families on Facebook late Wednesday that all of its airplanes were safe. Denise Hobart, of the North East Ohio Pilots Association, said on behalf of the school that they were praying for the pilot, anyone on board and their families.

They are ridiculous. They are addictively great. Comic books, of the superhero variety, are 100% American.

Compare the thin comic book to Europe’s graphic novels, and they come off looking flimsy, infantile. Compare the American comic to Japanese Manga and they appear innocent in their fixation with heroism; they hark back to a departed American age.

Once a nickel, a dime, a quarter, now the price of a latte, they are objects of American consumer capitalism. The comic is literature in junk-food version. Candy for the eyes, candy for the mind.

Yet what truly makes them American objects is what plays out in their 32 pages month after month, decade upon decade.

When the Fantastic Four took their fateful space journey in 1961 and “cosmic rays” transformed the quartet into unwilling superheroes, comics entered a weird realm where the all-powerful were also the unwilling, decidedly modern victims of science and circumstance.

Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine (the list goes on) were given supernatural abilities that made them outcasts, obliging them to be flawed messiahs.

They were, by some quirk of the American character, bound to Peter Parker’s moral imperative: “With great power comes great responsibility." They are versions of an American Sisyphus, bound to saving us over and over again.

What could be more American — that might, when lashed to a sense of justice, eventually, makes right? So honorable, so naïve.

To this day, though the tone is darker, Marvel and DC, the two mammoths of comics, continue to reimagine the American character.

Once side attractions in a world of leading white men, Gwen Stacy, Jean Grey and Susan Storm have in recent years emerged as leaders to reinvigorate the Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four sagas. Absolute Wonder Woman has broken ground with beautiful art. Miles Morales is Spidey for a new generation.

Yet the central fissures remain.

Bruce Wayne can't connect with anyone other than his butler; he is the lonely individual in an atomized America. Steve Rogers bears the burden of representing the “Greatest Generation” from World War II. He is a Captain America forever out of place, even in his own land.

And could there be a more iconic tech magnate toying with humanity's fate than Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor and his delusions of grandeur? If only our world had a bespectacled Clark Kent keeping an eye on things. Just in case.

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Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

Saturday and Sunday look similar. Both will be warmer. Both will see a mix of sun and clouds, with more sun in the morning and more clouds in the afternoon. Both will also have a slight chance for a couple of rogue PM t-showers, with the best chance to get a little wet lying in the mountains. Lynchburg and Southside zones should be dry all weekend.

Temperatures will climb into the middle 80s on Saturday, reaching the lower 90s on Sunday.

Early next week

Monday and Tuesday look similar to the weekend! Both days will be partly to mostly sunny, with more sun early and more clouds later on. Both days will also have the chance for isolated PM storms. Once again, the NRV and Highlands will have a slightly better chance to see these popcorn t-showers in comparison to the Piedmont.

And temperatures will remain hot, topping out in the low-to-mid 90s early next week. A heatwave could be cooking for us from late this weekend into the early-to-middle parts of next week!

Storms by the middle of next week

A better chance for showers and storms for everyone will lie Wednesday into Thursday as a cold front impacts the area. At this point, most of these t-showers look to lie in the afternoon and evening hours. And a couple of these storms could be on the strong-to-severe side with wind and hail looking to be the main threats this far out. We definitely need the rain, and the middle part of the next work week will be our best opportunity to get wet.

Partly to mostly cloudy skies are on tap for Wednesday and Thursday. And although temperatures may not be quite as hot, we will still be above average for this time of year. Highs will hit close to 90 on Hump Day, falling into the upper 70s on Thursday. We may be even cooler than that next Friday.

Want to share a dramatic sky photo or your own weather story? Pin it with 10 News at https://www.wsls.com/pinit/.

More than a century after a U.S. Army chaplain pushed for “dog tags” to become standard issue for troops, they remain one of the most powerful links for grieving military families to their lost loved ones.

“What they’re searching for is connection,” said Air Force Chaplain and Maj. Benjamin Quintanilla Jr. at Dover Air Force Base, where U.S. casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and now Iran have been repatriated. “So these dog tags become just a sacred symbol.”

From the World Wars to Vietnam and conflicts in the Middle East, military identification tags have also been a symbol of Americans’ sacrifice in global conflicts.

It’s unclear why the small metal rounded rectangles — hanging on ball chains and listing name, rank, company and other information, depending on the era — are called dog tags, according to the Pentagon.

The need to identify those fallen in battle had been spotlighted by the American Civil War, when staggering numbers of soldiers were buried as “unknown” — such as 75% of the 17,000 Union troops at Vicksburg National Cemetery, according to the National Park Service.

At the end of the Spanish-American War, the 1898 conflict that propelled the United States into global power, Chaplain Charles C. Pierce, then in charge of the morgue in the Philippines, first requested that Army soldiers be issued tags.

By the U.S. entry into World War I, all combat soldiers were required to wear them. They were an official part of the uniform by World War II.

Today, advances in forensics make tags less crucial for identification. But the religious affiliation on them is still useful for chaplains in the battlefield to provide appropriate prayers to dying or fallen troops, Quintanilla said.

And it’s the symbolism of connection that makes them irreplaceable. Surviving families treasure the dog tags their loved ones wore — and the new ones placed in honor on the casket at dignified transfer ceremonies — so much that some keep wearing them or even have them tattooed.

For troops, they’re the simplest sign of belonging.

“I can trust somebody who is wearing the same identification as me,” said Quintanilla, who first joined the Air Force as a dental technician. “It means that I was a part of something greater than myself.”

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Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

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

Neighboring Uganda later confirmed one death in an Ebola case it said was imported from Congo.

The deaths and suspected cases have been recorded mainly in the Mongwalu and Rwampara health zones, the Africa Centres for Disease Control ​and Prevention said in a statement. The agency said 65 deaths have been attributed to the outbreak and that four of those have so far been confirmed in a laboratory.

Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal.

Scientists were trying to determine exactly what virus was driving the current outbreak in Congo. The Ebola virus — also known as the Ebola Zaire strain — has been prominent in Congo’s past outbreaks. Results so far suggest some variant other than the Ebola Zaire strain, with sequencing continuing to give more clarity, the Africa CDC said.

The World Health Organization says the Ebola disease is caused by a group of viruses, and that three of them are known to cause large outbreaks: Ebola virus, Sudan virus and Bundibugyo virus.

Uganda on Friday reported one Ebola case involving a Congolese man admitted to a hospital in Kampala three days before he died. Officials said the case was “imported” from Congo, and that Uganda has not yet confirmed any local cases.

Uganda’s Health Ministry said the patient was tested posthumously on Friday after neighboring Congo confirmed its Ebola outbreak. All contacts linked to the man have been quarantined, the agency said. The deceased’s body has been taken back to Congo.

The ministry said the person was infected with the Bundibugyo virus, a variant of the illness that has been endemic in Uganda.

The WHO said last year that Congo has a stockpile of treatments and some 2,000 doses of the Ervebo Ebola vaccine. The Ervedo vaccine is effective against the Ebola Zaire strain — considered the most severe one — but not against the Sudan virus or Bundibugyo virus, according to health authorities.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization director-general, told reporters Friday that the WHO last week sent a team to help Congo investigate the outbreak and collect samples. While initial results did not confirm Ebola, a new analysis on Thursday did, he said.

Congo has “a strong track record in Ebola response and control,” Tedros said, adding that the WHO is releasing $500,000 to aid Congo’s response.

Affected areas are close to Uganda, South Sudan borders

The latest outbreak comes around five months after Congo’s last Ebola outbreak was declared over after 43 deaths.

Ituri is in a remote eastern part of Congo characterized by poor road networks, more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the nation’s capital of Kinshasa.

Africa CDC said it is concerned about the risk of further spread due to intense population movement, mining-related mobility in Mongwalu, insecurity in affected areas, gaps in contact listing and control challenges.

The proximity of affected areas to Uganda and South Sudan also raises concerns, it said.

The agency said it was convening an urgent coordination meeting Friday with health authorities from Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, together with key partners including U.N. agencies and other countries.

The acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jay Bhattacharya, said Friday that U.S. health officials are in contact with officials in Congo and Uganda and are “going to provide whatever they need and that we are capable of providing them.”

Congo has seen more than a dozen Ebola outbreaks

This is the 17th outbreak in Congo since the disease first emerged in the country in 1976. An Ebola outbreak from 2018 to 2020 in eastern Congo killed more than 1,000 people. The WHO said that outbreak was characterized by the main Ebola Zaire strain.

An earlier outbreak that swept across West Africa from 2014 to 2016 also killed more than 11,000 people.

The new outbreak creates more worry for the Central African country, which has been battling various armed groups in the east. The second-largest African country in land mass, Congo also faces logistical challenges. During last year's outbreak, which lasted three months, the WHO initially faced significant challenges in delivering vaccines due to limited access.

Dr. Gabriel Nsakala, a professor of public health who has been involved in past Ebola outbreak responses in Congo, said the country and health workers on the ground have a high level of experience, in addition to existing infrastructure such as laboratories.

“In terms of training, people already know what they can do. Now, the expertise and equipment need to be delivered quickly,” Nsakala added.

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Associated Press writers Chinedu Asadu in Abuja, Nigeria; Saleh Mwanamilongo in Bonn, Germany; Mark Banchereau in Dakar, Senegal; Mike Stobbe in New York City and Evelyne Musambi in Nairobi, Kenya contributed.

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For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. 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.

The great horned owl somehow made his way into the truck-mounted mixer in late October and was discovered by workers pouring concrete at a resort construction site. Lucky for him, a series of people gave a hoot about his predicament.

Workers hosed the bird down before it was wrapped in a towel. It took days for employees at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab to pick the concrete from the bird's face, chest and right wing, using forceps to carefully crack the dried debris and cleaning the feathers with toothbrushes and dish soap.

The owl started its long recovery at an aviary run by the organization, and employees anxiously waited for it to grow new feathers. But the bird didn't molt as predicted. In early May, he underwent a procedure called imping, which uses adhesive to graft donor feathers onto existing shafts.

“The first few feathers were extremely nerve-wracking, but as we got into the groove, the imping became more comfortable, and everything went smoothly,” said Bart Richwalski, a supervisor at the sanctuary.

Great horned owls typically have tufting on the edges of some of their feathers that allows them to fly quietly as they hunt. But the concrete frayed the rescued owl’s feathers and caused it to make a whooshing sound while flying.

To prepare for the imping procedure, sanctuary staff examined the owl's feather patterns every few weeks and snipped damaged shafts in advance. The owl was anesthetized and the donor feathers from a similarly sized owl that had died were laid out nearby to replicate each wing. The staff then cut the feathers to the necessary length, lined them up and adhered them to the bird.

By the end of the 90-minute procedure, the owl had 10 new primary feathers and a secondary feather on his right wing. But then came the real test: could he fly silently?

The bird was placed in a large aviary to recover from the anesthesia and quickly took flight after awakening. Richwalski used a decibel meter to measure the sound of the owl's wingbeat and determined its flight was quiet enough for it to safely be released. The owl hovered for a moment while the aviary roof was retracted, gained speed and then flew out into the wild.

“It feels so, so good. I think my heart finally started beating again. The nervousness was starting to overtake the excitement, but once I saw him fly out that opening in the roof, it just was, it was a sight to see. It was so fun,” said Richwalski, who has cared for the owl since picking him up at the construction site.

Karla Bloem, executive director of the Minnesota-based International Owl Center, said imping has been practiced by falconers “for eons” and is a very effective treatment.

“I've never heard of it not lasting, because you use some pretty good stuff when you're doing imping,” said Bloem, who has studied great horned owls for nearly three decades.

She added that it would be OK if a couple of the grafted feathers fell out. The bulk of them just need to stay put until the owl can grow new ones in the coming summer months.

“And now it just needs to figure out, ‘whoa, I’m back in the big world again, hunting,’" she said. “Find a territory ... you know, find one of the opposite sex and settle down and have kids.”

The Canadian Olympian goaltender, and first woman to appear in an exhibition game of any of North America’s four major sports, has spent the past four years working in the NHL's Los Angeles Kings hockey operations department. And Rheaume’s hiring represents a homecoming for the 54-year-old, who spent 11 years in a developmental role for the Detroit-based Little Caesars youth hockey girls’ program.

“She brings an unmatched resume, a championship mindset and a lifelong commitment to growing the women’s game,” said Jayna Hefford, PWHL executive vice president of hockey operations, who oversees the hiring process.

“Her experience at every level of hockey, combined with her leadership and vision, makes her the perfect person to lead PWHL Detroit into its inaugural season,” Hefford added.

In a separate announcement, the PWHL also hired women's player agent, Dominique DiDia, as GM of the league's expansion franchise in Las Vegas.

Rheaume’s hiring comes a little more than a week after the league announced Detroit as an expansion team. The PWHL has since added two more franchises in Las Vegas and Hamilton, Ontario, and is planning make one more addition in growing to a 12-team league for next season.

Of the PWHL’s 10 GMs now in place, eight are women.

“I’m incredibly honored to join the PWHL and help build something special in Detroit,” Rheaume said. “The city has such a deep hockey tradition, and the passion for hockey here is truly special.”

Among her first duties is preparing for an expansion free-agent signing process tentatively scheduled to begin on May 28, followed by the league’s draft, which will be held in Detroit on June 17.

Rheaume is from Beauport, Quebec, and began making her international mark in the early 1990s by signing with Trois-Rivieres of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. In 1992, she tried out for the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning, and allowed two goals on nine shots in one period of a preseason game against St. Louis. A year later, she made a second preseason game appearance against Boston.

Rheaume went on to win a silver medal representing Canada at the 1998 Nagano Games, the first to feature a women’s tournament. She also won gold medals at the 1992 and ’94 world championships.

DiDia takes over in Las Vegas

DiDia joins the PWHL after representing a number of league players including Boston goalie Aerin Frankel, Toronto forward Blayre Turnbull and Seattle teammates Cayla Barnes and Hannah Bilka. She worked for CAA Sports since 2022 and eventually launched the agency's women's hockey department.

“She understands the evolving landscape of women’s hockey and has a strong vision for building a team and culture that reflects both the ambition of the PWHL and the energy of the Las Vegas market," Hefford said.

From Los Angeles, DiDia grew up playing hockey and spent nine years working for the L.A. Kings in eventually becoming the team's director of marketing and content publicity.

“Las Vegas has embraced hockey with a rare intensity, and you can feel that the game has become part of this city’s heartbeat,” DiDia said. “Growing up as a player in Los Angeles, I witnessed the sport’s expansion across the Southwest, making this opportunity at the forefront of women’s hockey in Nevada deeply meaningful to me."

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AP women’s hockey: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-hockey

The New York Knicks already had a coach who could take them to the Eastern Conference finals — and they fired him immediately after.

Whoever replaced Tom Thibodeau would do so knowing he was inheriting a seat that was already warm, taking an undeniable win-now job where the only way he could demonstrate he made the team better was by reaching the NBA Finals. The pressure grew even more during the season, when the owner said he believed the Knicks should play for the title.

The expectations were clear, though Brown never needed to have them explained.

“People have talked about a mandate,” Brown said recently. “Like, I’m coaching to win, so it doesn’t matter what others say. I’m disappointed if we’re not in the finals and having a chance to win it.”

He has led the Knicks back to the conference finals, where they will play either Detroit or Cleveland. They were two losses from going home in the first round in what could have been a flop worthy of a firing. Instead, he changed some things, stuck with others, and the Knicks have reeled off seven straight wins, mostly in convincing fashion.

“He’s done a great job of adjusting our team to give us the best chance to win,” center Karl-Anthony Towns said, “and the spot we’re in now is because of his courage and the trust to change what we were doing and put us in a better position.”

Brown’s resume was certainly worthy of the job. He’s a two-time NBA Coach of the Year, the latter as the first unanimous winner in 2023 after leading the Sacramento Kings to their first playoff appearance since 2006, ending what was the longest active drought in North American pro sports.

But there was going to be skepticism with any hire, in part because many people weren't sure Thibodeau should've even been fired. The Knicks won just one playoff series between 2001 and his hiring in 2020, and he brought them to the postseason four times in five years, culminating last season with their first conference finals appearance in 25 years.

Yet the Knicks wanted a coach with a different style. Someone who would be the boss without being bossy. Someone who would make decisions about the team without the feeling that only he got to decide.

Brown gives everyone from the front office to the players a say.

“He’s always wanted to have open dialogue since day one," captain Jalen Brunson said. "And obviously he’s still the coach and he’s going to make the decisions and everything. But I mean, we give our opinions, and whether they’re good or bad opinions, they’re talked about and they’re decided on later.”

Brown, of course, makes the final call. And the ones he made when the Knicks faced their only adversity thus far in the postseason clearly turned out right.

Mikal Bridges was off to a terrible start against Atlanta, and after he was scoreless in just 21 minutes in Game 3, there were cries for Brown to bench the guard who had started every game in his two seasons with the Knicks.

Brown stayed the course, and there’s no sitting Bridges down now. After scoring 24 points in the Game 6 finisher against the Hawks, he averaged 17.5 points on nearly 64% shooting in the sweep of Philadelphia, all while leading the defensive effort against 76ers star guard Tyrese Maxey.

The other decision was to have Brunson, his All-Star point guard, initiate less of the offense. Instead, the Knicks have run more by positioning Towns up high and letting him find cutters. His passing has opened up more space on the floor for Brunson and others to find easier shots.

Again, there was discussion before the decision. But, perhaps showing the players’ belief in Brown, it was apparently a short one.

“The dialogue was: ‘OK, let’s do it,’” Brunson said.

Brown led the Knicks to a 53-29 record, their best since 2012-13. Yet there were stretches of mediocrity after a strong start, and a distant third-place finish in the East despite a lineup headlined by two All-Stars felt underwhelming.

Brown responded by saying teams need to go through rocky times.

“He doesn’t listen to the outside noise and he doesn’t let that affect him,” forward Josh Hart said.

Brown said that's easy to do. He worked on title-winning teams under Gregg Popovich in San Antonio and Steve Kerr with Golden State, and he remembers people complaining about them.

“So shoot, people can talk about Mike Brown for sure,” Brown said. “But it’s my job to ignore the noise and it’s easy for me to do that because the pressure that I put on myself, that the team puts on itself, to be great or to try to be the best team in the league doesn’t even match up with what everybody else says throughout the course of the year.”

Brown said his only focus all season has been winning a championship. The way his Knicks are playing now, there's definitely a chance.

“The mandate and all that other stuff, like, that’s what I expect,” Brown said. “That’s what I want to do and hopefully it can happen, but who knows.”

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

The existence of the secret Israeli military facility was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which described it as a base housing special forces and serving as a logistical hub for the Israeli air force.

The reports of a secret base stirred up a furor in Iraq. Officials there have said that Iraqi army forces investigated reports of an unauthorized military force in the Nukhaib desert — a barren area to the southwest of the cities of Karbala and Najaf — in early March and came under fire while en route to the location.

Iraqi officials have confirmed the presence of a small, short-term unauthorized force in the desert, but have not said that it was Israeli. However, two Iraqi security and intelligence officials and a senior U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said that it was.

The U.S. official said of the Israeli outpost that “base is a strong word to describe it” and described it rather as a “temporary staging area or camp to support operations in Iran.”

The Iraqi intelligence official said the Israeli force had set up tents in the area and "its objective was to monitor rocket launches and drone activity conducted by some Iraqi militias.” Iraqi authorities believe the force arrived via an airdrop operation but do not know when, he said. They also disputed the description of the military presence as a “base.”

A shepherd noticed the presence of the force and reported it to authorities, officials said.

Representatives of the Israeli military declined to comment. Acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez declined to comment.

The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, triggering a regional war in which Iraq found itself caught in the crossfire. Iraq hosts a network of Iran-linked militias, which launched attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and elsewhere in the region and on Israel. U.S. and Israeli forces also struck militia sites in Iraq.

The Iraqi government, meanwhile, called on both sides to leave the country out of the conflict. The idea that an Israeli force could have been conducting military operations under their noses put Iraqi authorities in an embarrassing position.

On Tuesday, the Iraqi military sent forces into the desert, to the site of the alleged Israeli outpost, to show journalists that there was no indication of a long-term military presence there.

“We believe it was a small force that came and stayed for no longer than 48 hours,” said Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarallah, chief of the general staff of the Iraqi army during the visit.

Maj. Gen. Tahseen al Khafaji, a spokesperson for the Iraqi defense ministry, told the AP that on March 3, the military received information about “a small enemy force in a specific area in the Najaf desert,” and Iraqi forces went to check the site the next day.

“Within 25 kilometers, the force which went there faced an aerial attack, which led to the martyrdom of one of our fighters and injured two other fighters,” he said.

Al Khafaji said the Iraqi force pulled out after coming under attack but returned the next day and found no signs of a base and no forces present.

“It is believed that the force was there for a very short time and it was a very small force,” he said, adding that search operations “did not show anything that indicates that the force was stationed there for a long time in that area.”

Satellite images from Airbus DS taken March 8 and analyzed by the AP appear to show a human-made track dug out at the site, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of the capital, Baghdad. The track runs in a straight line in a dried-out lake bed from northwest to southeast and measures about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile). That’s long enough for takeoffs and landing for warplanes.

The nearest town, al-Nukhaib, sits about 45 kilometers (27 miles) to the northwest along a road running to the border with Saudi Arabia. That distance is far enough to likely have not drawn too much attention, though Iraq’s skies were filled with fighter jets from both the U.S. and Israel during the weeks of active war with Iran.

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Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed.

The limits on “ assault firearms,” as they are described by the legislation, are among two dozen new restrictions and regulations on guns enacted by the Democratic governor in her first few months in office. That marks a sharp policy reversal from her Republican predecessor, who had vetoed many similar measures.

“Firearms designed to inflict maximum casualties do not belong on our streets," Spanberger said in a statement Friday. "We are taking this step to protect families and support the law enforcement officers who work every day to keep our communities safe.”

The new gun restrictions move Virginia closer to the likes of California, Illinois and New York, which similarly have full Democratic control of their legislatures and governors' offices. They also highlight a continued national divide on gun policy, as various Republican-led states have taken steps to relax firearm restrictions that they describe as an infringement on Second Amendment rights.

A dozen states now target semi-automatic firearms

The new Virginia law, which takes effect July 1, will make it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine, for people to buy, sell, transfer, import or manufacture an “assault firearm.”

The measure defines that term to include semi-automatic rifles or pistols with a magazine capacity of more than 15 rounds. It also includes firearms with other characteristics, such as rifles capable of accepting a detachable magazine that have a second handgrip or a collapsible stock. The prohibition also applies to magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds. For most people, there’s no penalty for merely possessing such weapons.

Eleven other states and Washington, D.C., already have laws prohibiting the sale an manufacture of certain semi-automatic firearms, though the details vary. Hawaii, for example, prohibits certain semi-automatic pistols and high-capacity magazines, but not semi-automatic rifles.

Gun-rights groups challenge the Virginia law

Legal challenges came swiftly after Spanberger signed the legislation Thursday. The National Rifle Association, joined by other groups, sued in both federal and state court, asserting violations of the right to bear arms.

“The firearms and magazines banned in this law aren’t bizarre and unusual outliers, they’re among the most commonly owned guns and magazines in the country," said Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, which joined the NRA in the federal lawsuit. “They’re owned in the tens of millions by peaceable Americans who use them overwhelmingly lawfully.”

The U.S. Department of Justice also vowed to sue to block the Virginia law from being enforced.

The Virginia measure would “infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens to enjoy and use AR-15 rifles for lawful purposes by making it a crime to purchase and sell them,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division, wrote in an April letter to Spanberger.

Courts have upheld other bans on semi-automatic weapons

So far, laws restricting certain semi-automatic firearms generally have been upheld, including by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Virginia, Maryland and several additional states.

That appellate court twice upheld a Maryland law banning dozens of types of semi-automatic weapons, describing them a 2024 ruling as “military-style weapons" that are ill-suited for self-defense. It concluded that “the Maryland law fits comfortably within our nation’s tradition of firearms regulation.”

The U.S. Supreme Court last year declined to hear a challenge in that Maryland case. But gun-rights advocates remain hopeful of a different outcome in future cases, noting that three conservative justices on the nine-member court disagreed with the decision and a fourth expressed skepticism that such firearm bans are constitutional.

A change in governor leads to a change in laws

Former Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed legislation each of the past two years that would have prohibited the sale of certain semi-automatic firearms.

But Youngkin's term ended in January, and he was succeeded by Spanberger. The transition presented a huge opportunity for advocates of gun restrictions, who already had support within the Democratic-led Legislature.

Spanberger, a former CIA officer and U.S. House member, had previously been a volunteer with Moms Demand Action, a group founded after a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut claimed the lives of 26 people in 2012. The group lists 20% of the Democrats in the Virginia House as its past volunteers.

"The fact that a former Moms Demand Action volunteer just signed an assault weapons ban in the home state of the NRA speaks volumes about how dramatically the political calculus around gun safety has shifted,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, the umbrella organization for Moms Demand Action..

Republican states act to expand gun rights

While Virginia tightens gun regulations, many Republican-led states have been expanding gun rights.

On the same day Spanberger signed the semi-automatic firearm restrictions, Missouri's Republican-led Legislature gave final approval to legislation creating a school ranger program that could let trained volunteers carry firearms in schools.

A law signed by Spanberger last month raised the age to purchase a handgun in Virginia from 18 to 21. By contrast, Republican West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed a law last month lowering the age from 21 to 18 for carrying concealed guns without a state permit.

Yet another law signed by Spanberger last month opens new grounds for lawsuits against the firearms industry. That came shortly after Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a law limiting liability lawsuits against the firearms industry.

Mahomes tore the ACL and LCL in his left knee on Dec. 14 and has said his goal is to be back in time for Week 1 of the season. The Chiefs host the Denver Broncos on “Monday Night Football" to open the season on Sept. 14 and then play Indianapolis at home on Sunday night in Week 2.

“We didn’t know anything more than anyone else,” NFL executive Hans Schroeder said Friday.

Coach Andy Reid said on NFL Network on Friday that the NFL didn't talk to him about Mahomes' status, but is encouraged by what he has seen so far early in the offseason program.

“He’s doing great right now and that’s kind of how you gotta go about this,” Reid said. “People go ‘well, he’s ahead of schedule.’ Who made the schedule? Everybody’s different, let’s just take it day by day. Nobody is spending more time than he is rehabbing, he spends seven hours here going through it. He hasn’t missed a day and he wants more, all the things that are Patrick Mahomes. Let’s see where we are at as we go forward as we get a little bit closer to the game.”

Schroeder said he was “excited” about Reid's comments and said that the Chiefs remained a popular team among the broadcasters as evidenced by their six primetime games, including a Thanksgiving night showdown against Buffalo that is typically one of the most-anticipated matchups of the season.

Kansas City, which went 6-11 and missed the playoffs last season after making three straight Super Bowl trips, also has five additional games slotted in the high-profile late afternoon Sunday doubleheader window.

“The Chiefs are an incredible story,” Schroeder said. “They’re one of the most popular teams in the league right now. They’ve been on an incredibly successful run for a number of years now, and have built a hugely popular fan base. We went into the year planning to play the Chiefs in the same number of windows. We didn’t know anything more than then you did, but we’re certainly hoping Patrick would be back Week 1. ... We felt really good about it and certainly feel better after seeing Andy’s comments this morning with how Patrick’s rehab’s going.”

More Wednesday openers

With Labor Day falling later this year and the NFL wanting to play a Week 1 game in Australia, the opener was moved to a Wednesday for the second time in league history.

That might not be a one-off.

The league announced a new deal with Netflix through 2029 that guarantees the streamer a Week 1 game in addition to the traditional opening game on NBC for the defending Super Bowl champion. Schroeder said that could lead to a Wednesday start to the season again.

The 2026 season opens on Wednesday Sept. 9 with Seattle hosting New England on NBC, followed by a game on Netflix the next night in the United States between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers. That game will kick off on Friday morning in Australia.

“I think you’ll see us certainly playing on a couple nights, weekday nights to start the year going forward,” Schroeder said.

The NFL played an international game in Week 1 on a Friday night the previous two seasons but can't play again on Friday night in Week 1 until 2029 because of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 that prohibits the league from televising games on Friday night starting with the second Friday of September. The Friday of Week 1 will be on the second Friday of September again in both 2027 and 2028.

The only other time before this season that the first game of the NFL season was played on a Wednesday came in 2012 when the Dallas Cowboys visited the New York Giants. The game was moved from its usual Thursday spot that year because President Barack Obama was set to speak that night at the Democratic National Convention.

Travel mitigation

The opening game in Australia gave a heavy load in terms of travel to both the 49ers and Rams.

San Francisco will set a record this season with about 38,000 miles traveled thanks to the far-flung opener and a “home” game in Mexico City in Week 11 against Minnesota. Los Angeles is close behind with about 35,000 miles traveled this upcoming season.

The two teams will return home on Friday Sept. 11, giving them a little extra time before playing Week 2. The Rams get an extra day because they will host a Monday night game against the New York Giants before back-to-back road games at Denver and Philadelphia.

Niners coach Kyle Shanahan publicly complained about the heavy travel at the league meetings earlier this offseason and general manager John Lynch said the NFL would make some considerations for them.

San Francisco will play three straight home games following the Week 1 trip and won’t leave the Pacific Time Zone again until a trip to Atlanta in Week 7. The Niners also avoided having games on either Thanksgiving or Christmas after playing on both holidays in 2023.

“I’m sure wave a magic wand, they would move a game or two on their schedule,” NFL VP of NFL broadcast planning Mike North said. “But I assume the same is true for the other 31 teams as well. We were sensitive, we were cognizant, and think we landed in a fair place, not just for the Niners and the Rams, but hopefully for everybody.”

Not ready for primetime

The days of every NFL team being guaranteed a primetime game are in the past with five teams failing to get a game in one of those high-profile windows this season.

Tennessee, Miami, Arizona, the Las Vegas Raiders and the New York Jets were all given no primetime games in the initial schedule. Those teams are five of the bottom six in terms of odds to win the Super Bowl this season after the Dolphins won seven games last season and the other four teams went 3-14.

Barring one of the teams getting flexed into a primetime window late in the season, this would be the first time since 2011 that five teams didn't get a single primetime game.

None of those five teams has an island game in another window either.

Even the addition of Heisman Trophy winning quarterback and No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza wasn't enough to get the Raiders into primetime.

This marks the second straight season that the team that picked a quarterback No. 1 overall didn't make primetime with the Titans getting no games last season after taking Cam Ward first overall.

“Not to be flippant, but we don’t draft our way into primetime. We play our way into primetime,” North said.

Rest disparity

The issue of rest disparity has gotten a lot of attention in recent years even though the NFL says its data shows the focus is overblown.

This season has a few major outliers with both the Los Angeles Chargers and Philadelphia playing four games against teams coming off bye weeks, while 14 teams don't do it even once. The Raiders and Los Angeles Rams each have three games against teams coming off a bye.

The Chargers will have 22 fewer days of rest than their opponents this season, the biggest discrepancy since the 2012 Eagles were at minus-23, according to ESPN.

“Rest disparity is not a thing,” North said. “You do not have a competitive advantage when you’re coming off your bye. You certainly don’t have a competitive advantage when you’re one day or two day or three days more well rested. If that data suggests that there’s a there, we will adjust.”

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In a Friday morning social media post, Trump said the National Garden of American Heroes would be built in West Potomac Park, a space near the National Mall that includes the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. The area is also home to several fields and volleyball courts regularly used by local sports groups.

Trump described the area in his post as a “totally BARREN field of Prime Waterfront Real Estate along our Mighty Potomac River.”

The president has said the garden would commemorate America's 250th anniversary with sculptures recognizing 250 prominent Americans who have made significant cultural, political and other historical contributions to the country. He first raised the idea during Fourth of July celebrations in 2020 and has framed it as a response to protests that resulted in the removal of controversial monuments, including those that commemorated slave owners and Confederate leaders.

In the final days of his first term, Trump, a Republican, signed an executive order naming 244 people including Ronald Reagan and Jackie Robinson who should be honored with statues in the garden. The idea languished under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, but Congress provided $40 million under Trump's big tax and spending cuts law last year to procure the statues included in his executive orders.

That may not be enough, however, to constitute the type of approval typically needed for major projects on or near the National Mall. Federal law requires projects and memorials to get a sign-off from multiple design and planning groups.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said the garden will “ be built to reflect the awesome splendor of our country’s timeless exceptionalism.”

“President Trump continues to beautify and honor our Nation’s Capital during America’s historic semiquincentennial celebration,” he said.

He didn't comment on whether the administration was seeking the relevant approvals or had already awarded contracts for the statues.

Washington's monumental core is one of the nation's most closely regulated spaces, with the goal of protecting sightlines and preventing new construction that would undermine the area’s historic character. Between the approvals process, design disputes and funding challenges, changes in the area can take years — or even decades — to reach completion. One of the newest additions near the National Mall, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, took 21 years to finish after Congress initially approved it in 1999.

Trump and his supporters have shown little interest in following such procedures. He moved quickly this month to drain and repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He suddenly demolished the East Wing of the White House last year to build a ballroom. Trump's name has been added to the facade of the Kennedy Center, which he plans to close later this summer for a two-year renovation.

Just this week, workers began preliminary surveys and testing of the proposed site of a triumphal arch that Trump is seeking between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Part of the site was fenced off, and pink flags typically used as survey markings were planted in the grass.

And the Trump administration is moving forward with plans to transform East Potomac Park from an accessible public golf course into what Trump has described as a “U.S. Open-caliber course.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Thursday released a design plan for the new course that he said would provide “championship-quality golf at affordable, highly discounted rates.”

The plan provided few details on how the park, which is frequently used by local runners and bikers, would remain open to the general public.

Virtually all of the projects have become subject to litigation.

These care packages that held goodies from the U.S. were seen as an expression of support during hard economic times — as well as one of pure love.

“Balik" and “bayan,” Tagalog for “return” and “homeland," respectively, was what President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. called the tourism initiatives he established in 1973. After declaring martial law a year earlier, he wanted to compel Filipino immigrants to come back and visit and further “legitimize his new dictatorial regime,” says Adrian De Leon, an assistant professor of history at New York University and author of “Balikbayan: A Revenant History of the Filipino Homeland.”

The balikbayan program proved “incredibly profitable” for the government as middle-class Filipino Americans came and spent capital.

“The dollar stretches way more,” De Leon says. “Bulk buying becomes a way through which overseas Filipinos are incentivized to maintain an economic connection to their homeland so that the government can take cuts from it and use it for like everything.”

The practice of shipping balikbayan boxes grew from there. Initially, canned meat like Spam was a staple of these boxes. Over time, small luxuries like skin-care products, clothes and candy became sought after, too. Then American entertainment like music cassettes and movies on Betamax were tossed in.

“What might have been letters being sent back home, now with the balikbayan box, you’re sending back American pop culture," De Leon says. “Filipinos are doing the work of American soft power for Filipinos at home.”

Sending balikbayan boxes has thrived as its own industry. There are a handful of shipping companies in the U.S. that market door-to-door delivery to the Philippines. Filipino immigrants visiting the country get quicker entry at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport through a designated “balikbayan lane.”

Jamming as many gifts as possible into a balikbayan box remains culturally ingrained in the Filipino diaspora. Filipino American comedian Rex Navarrete has typically made it a stand-up bit, advising: “One thing you should never pack in a balikbayan box is air.”

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Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.