According to the Miami Police Department, officers responded to the 400 block of Southwest Eighth Court at around 5:45 a.m. and found the wounded victim.

Medics took the 33-year-old man to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center. Authorities said he was “stable” as of Friday morning.

Authorities have not announced any arrests or a suspected motive.

Police said they are investigating the “circumstances surrounding this incident.”

Ahead of his confirmation vote last year, Kennedy told lawmakers that he would not collect fees related to litigation he pursued before becoming a government official against the drugmakers of a cervical cancer vaccine, saying he would transfer his financial interests to his adult son.

The lawmakers say they recently learned, however, that shortly after his confirmation hearings, Kennedy quietly changed his ethics disclosures and transferred his stake to his former employer, the personal injury law firm Wisner Baum, apparently contradicting his sworn commitments to members of Congress.

In a letter sent to Kennedy on Thursday, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland said the health secretary has provided no explanation for the change.

“Your decision to withhold this information from Congress and apparent failure to report this change to agency ethics officials is deeply alarming,” the senators wrote. “These troubling findings call into question the veracity of your public ethics commitments, your transparency with Congress and the public, and potentially, your compliance with federal ethics disclosure laws and regulations.”

Kennedy didn't immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press seeking comment on Friday.

His testimony to lawmakers during his confirmation hearing has come under scrutiny before.

During the arduous confirmation process in which he needed the support of some skeptical Republican lawmakers to advance, Kennedy pledged to maintain vaccine policies that, once in office, he moved to change. He also said a 2019 trip to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines,” an account refuted by documents recently obtained by The Associated Press. The Department of Health and Human Services has denied Kennedy lied over the Samoa trip.

Kennedy's initial ethics disclosure, filed in January 2025, allowed him to retain a 10% contingency fee in cases that he had referred to Wisner Baum. After warnings from lawmakers about the conflict of interest, Kennedy agreed to amend his ethics agreement to divest his interest to his son.

But in an Aug. 25 letter to Warren, HHS revealed Kennedy transferred those fees to Wisner Baum. Kennedy’s son Conor Kennedy is employed at the firm.

“At the time, Secretary Kennedy intended to assign those interests to a non-dependent adult family member,” said the letter. “After further consideration, Secretary Kennedy irrevocably assigned his outstanding contingency-fee interests in the Gardasil cases directly to Wisner Baum.”

The senators are now pushing Kennedy for answers on what his agreement with Wisner Baum entails, noting that if it involves any agreement about future payments, it could amount to a conflict of interest.

“If you made any kind of implicit or explicit agreement for future payment or other future rewards with Wisner Baum in exchange for assigning them this stake, it would mean that you have an ongoing conflict of interest that calls into question your integrity and the motivations for your decisions as HHS Secretary," the lawmakers' letter to Kennedy said.

Zelenskyy told reporters he has not yet received feedback from the White House about Trump’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping but expects to learn the outcome.

Zelenskyy, who is keen to muster more international support for Ukraine’s defense, was in the United States this week on a trip coinciding with the U.N. General Assembly. He met with Trump on Tuesday.

NATO countries have called China a “decisive enabler” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Zelenskyy shared more details of his U.S. trip in voice messages to a group of journalists.

Here are other issues that were also on Zelenskyy's agenda:

Zelenskyy says the US wants initial technical talks

Washington is pushing for a three-way meeting involving delegations from the U.S., Ukraine and Russia, with officials holding technical talks in that format without the countries' leaders, Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine is waiting for the U.S. to propose a date for those meetings, he said, adding that American officials suggested the United Arab Emirates as the location for these talks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that Putin and Trump during their call earlier this month discussed holding such a meeting in the near future. “As of now, I can’t give you any specifics,” Peskov said.

Representatives from the three countries held three rounds of trilateral negotiations early this year, twice in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, and once in Geneva, but the talks achieved no significant breakthroughs.

Hefty US sanctions on Russia are on hold

Zelenskyy met with U.S. senators and congressmen during his U.S. trip and said he thanked them for their bipartisan support in passing a powerful sanctions bill aimed at Moscow last month. Trump signed the bill into law last week but hasn't enacted the measures yet.

Sanctions are key in forcing Putin to the negotiating table, Zelenskyy said, adding that he hoped Trump would implement the measures.

“The sanctions are indeed strong ... all of this is now in the hands of the president of the United States. He can use this tool to pressure the Russian Federation,” Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy says he got Trump's OK for Patriot licenses

The Ukrainian leader said Trump confirmed he had made a final decision that Kyiv would get licenses to produce Patriot air defense systems.

Ukraine is desperate for more of the American-made air defense systems that are needed to stop Russia’s ballistic missiles, but they have been in short supply since the war in Iran started on Feb. 28.

Trump had said in July that he would allow Ukraine to make its own Patriots but later appeared to be reconsidering the move.

Countries urge free flow of food through Black Sea

Ukraine and Russia are both major global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other food that developing nations rely on. However, wartime attacks on cargo vessels in the Black Sea have choked that supply route, raising fears of shortages.

Zelenskyy said he held separate talks in the U.S. with the leaders of India, Turkey, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, that want unimpeded Black Sea shipping routes. He added that these leaders were also due to speak to Russian officials.

Kyiv wants Moscow to accept a Black Sea ceasefire that would allow full deliveries to resume, Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine needs more money

Zelenskyy said he also spoke in the U.S. with the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission about plugging Ukraine’s budget deficit as its finances are strained by wartime expenses and drops in production. Russia's economy is also hurting.

The European Union will extend its financial aid for Ukraine, and the IMF will continue its financial support programs, he said.

Most of the funding gap relates specifically to weapons purchases, Zelenskyy said, and future financing for Ukraine could come in the form of deals for sharing technology and joint drone production. Ukraine is a world leader in military drones.

A boy is killed in a Kyiv strike as Russia also reports civilian casualties

Russian aerial attacks on Ukraine overnight and into Friday killed four people and wounded 11, officials said, while Russian authorities reported one dead and 21 wounded in Ukrainian long-range strikes.

Zelenskyy said eight Ukrainian regions came under attack. Russia kept up its relentless round-the-clock attacks on the Ukrainian capital, where a 14-year-old boy was killed and at least seven residents were injured, according to officials.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces hit a missile engine depot near Kyiv, among other targets.

Ukraine hit two refineries as part of its sustained campaign to damage Russia’s economy, Zelenskyy said.

Unconfirmed Russian media reports said Ukrainian drones also struck a Russian military electronics plant and a synthetic rubber producer.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

___

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

At 7.36 mills, Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins celebrated it as the lowest in 60 years in her message about the proposed budget.

The operational budget includes $22 million more for the Miami Police Department and about $24 million more for Miami Fire Rescue.

During the process, Commissioner Christine King, who represents District 5, addressed the possibility that Amendment 3 could reduce property taxes after the Nov. 3 election.

The city’s budget director, said cuts would be inevitable.

“It doesn’t hit us until Fiscal Year 27-28, so we will be working as soon as whatever happens in November, if it passes, that’s when we start looking at everything,” she told commissioners.

Editor’s note: The previous version of this article misidentified the city’s budget director.

“Sharia law has no place in America,” said Cruz. “We need to stand together and stop it now.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott chimed in moments later, vowing to “fully ban Sharia law in Texas.”

Muslim American civic leaders and scholars — in Texas and other states — are responding forcefully to this latest surge in anti-Sharia rhetoric that dates back more than 15 years.

They passionately defend Sharia — the way it’s practiced in the United States — as positive guidance that has elements in common with the codes of other faiths, such as the Ten Commandments and the collective body of Jewish law derived from the Torah. They rebut the claims of GOP critics that Sharia is a coercive code that threatens the U.S. Constitution and judicial system.

Though there are multiple interpretations of Sharia, its essence is to serve as a code for how Muslims should live and worship — covering such matters as prayer, pilgrimages, fasting, charitable donations and personal virtue.

Among the most energetic of Sharia’s defenders is Illinois-based Sabeel Ahmed, director of an outreach project called GainPeace. He travels widely around the U.S., with a recent focus on Texas, speaking at mosque-sponsored workshops and open houses.

“Sharia is often misunderstood,” Ahmed posted on Instagram after a midsummer visit to Plano, Texas. “Many people think Sharia is only about punishments, but in Islam it is Allah’s guidance for living with faith, justice, mercy, and responsibility.”

Ahmed attributes the durability of anti-Sharia vitriol to politicians and social-media influencers who want to rile up their voting base or their followers.

“They gain popularity by saying it,” he told The Associated Press. “It’s the job of the Muslims to educate what is the proper meaning of the word Sharia. We cannot be angry or hateful.”

Sharia's role varies significantly among Muslim nations

Among those appalled by the anti-Sharia surge in the U.S. is Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, a Sudanese-born Islamic scholar who taught for many years at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta. He is a longtime critic of the relatively small number of governments in Muslim nations that coercively enforce Sharia, saying Muslims are better off in secular states where their religious observance is a matter of free choice.

An-Na’im says he and other Muslim Americans embrace Sharia willingly as a core part of their identity, even as they also embrace American values.

The demonization of their beliefs displays “a shocking ignorance of what Sharia means,” An-Na’im said. “It’s a total dehumanization of the other, the rejection of their right to be human.”

The rhetoric is similarly dramatic among Sharia’s opponents — epitomized by the two U.S. representatives from Texas, Republicans Keith Self and Chip Roy — who co-founded the Sharia-Free America Caucus in Congress.

“Sharia is a direct threat to our Constitution and Western values and seeks to replace our legal system and erode our basic freedoms,” Roy said earlier this year. “Our immigration system must be prepared to confront this challenge and defend our Judeo-Christian values.”

By last count, the caucus had more than 60 members. All of them are Republicans, and its members have introduced several anti-Sharia bills since the caucus was formed last December. None of those measures have been successful.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, has designated the caucus as an anti-Muslim hate group.

“The bigoted rhetoric used by this caucus resembles the hatred that anti-Catholic politicians once unleashed against Irish Americans,” said CAIR research and advocacy director Corey Saylor.

“Islam is an American faith, present for over 250 years,” he added. “No one who wrote the Constitution or enforced it since has empowered these legislators to pick which religions get to exist in America.”

Texas has been a battleground for Sharia disputes

There has been substantive anti-Sharia action in Texas. In August, Attorney General Ken Paxton demanded documents from the Dallas-based Islamic Tribunal, which provides religious guidance to Muslims.

Paxton said in a news release that the investigation by his office sought to determine if the tribunal was engaged in illegal activity, such as acting as a court, applying foreign laws that conflict with Texas or federal law, or issuing rulings that imply government authority.

“This is America, and we will not be governed by sharia law,” Paxton said.

The Islamic Tribunal subsequently updated its website with a “ Clarification of Mission and Activities,” stressing that its guidance “complements, and never replaces, the legal, social, and professional services available in American society.”

“The Tribunal does not function as a court of law and does not issue legally binding judgments,” it said. “Our role is limited to mediation and religious arbitration requested by members of the Muslim community in matters related to faith, family guidance, and internal religious affairs.”

Any matters requiring legal enforcement are referred directly to the Texas judicial system, said the tribunal, which likened its work to the services provided by Jewish Beth Din courts and Catholic ecclesiastical tribunals.

Sharia defenders seek to broaden understanding of its essence

Asma Uddin, a professor at Michigan State University’s College of Law, has argued in her writings that many American politicians are depicting ordinary Muslim religious practices — such as prayer, choice of apparel, family counseling and mosque attendance — as evidence of a political danger.

In an interview with the AP, Uddin depicted the current wave of anti-Sharia rhetoric as fearmongering by politicians who view the issue as advantageous for them.

“When politicians use this, it’s giving them exactly what they’re looking for,” she said. “They’re looking for a scapegoat … and this gets people riled up.”

Sabeel Ahmed, who has made three outreach trips to Texas so far this year, plans a trip to Houston in a few weeks for another mosque open-house. He’s also working on a book to be mailed to Christian clergy across the U.S., seeking to broaden their understanding of Sharia and other Islamic practices.

“Islam is not to be feared,” Ahmed said. “People should meet a Muslim, go to the mosque, reach out to us. Let’s emphasize the commonalities we have.”

___

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.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s inaction on the mFlusiva vaccine marks a break in longstanding practice. It’s also an example of how the agency’s vaccine review-and-recommendation process has been blown up in the past year, grinding decision-making to a halt.

Efforts by vaccine-wary officials in President Donald Trump's administration to scale back shot recommendations have been put on hold. Federal guidance on new vaccines has stopped. And public discussion of vaccine policy questions that might cross political divides — including whether there’s solid evidence to justify giving fewer shots to kids — has diminished.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade to upend vaccine policy and the legal action opposing it have disrupted longstanding systems that deliver crucial health guidance to Americans, affecting whether people are getting the best available protection against vaccine-preventable diseases.

“We find ourselves at a point where even if credible evidence (for a new vaccine policy) has reached a tipping point, we don’t have an obvious mechanism that can formalize that change,” said Jason Schwartz, a Yale University health policy researcher who studies government health agencies.

Many in the medical field praised a court ruling that halted Kennedy’s changes

For 60 years, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices guided the CDC’s vaccine recommendations. The committee met publicly, reviewed vaccine data and sought input from various health groups. The panel voted on recommendations that went to the CDC director, who almost always adopted them as the government’s guidance, leading public and private insurers to pay for the shots.

Trump, a Republican, appointed Kennedy to oversee federal health agencies, including the CDC. Kennedy last year dismissed the committee and replaced it with a group that included several anti-vaccine voices. Controversial decisions followed, leading to a lawsuit from the American Academy of Pediatrics and some other medical groups.

In March, a federal judge said Kennedy likely violated federal procedures, stopped Kennedy’s panel from holding further meetings and suspended Kennedy’s decision to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children.

Many in the medical and public health communities celebrated the decision and took the order as a respite from what they saw as the Trump administration’s assault on vaccines.

Dr. Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians, said he hoped “it will mean a return to a transparent and evidence-driven process that safeguards the health of all communities and the best interests of our patients.”

In reality, the process stalled and splintered

With Kennedy’s committee shut down by the court order, doctors’ groups that used to collaborate with the ACIP have gone their own way. Working with a University of Minnesota researcher, they have debated — not publicly — the kind of medical evidence formerly presented at ACIP meetings and issued their own recommendations.

The trade association for private health insurers decided to heed the medical societies’ choices, and the insurers have continued to pay for shots recommended by those organizations.

Many of the groups’ recommendations match prior ones made by ACIP and the CDC before Kennedy’s arrival. But they also made their own updates.

For example, ACIP previously recommended that a new shot be given to women late in pregnancy: a vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which can be dangerous to newborns. The government panel recommended that the vaccine be given between September and January in most of the U.S., to coincide with the time of year when RSV infections are most common.

But RSV season sometimes remains active longer. For that reason, the medical groups recently said the shot should be offered to those women through the beginning of March.

“We all recognized this needs to evolve,” Chris Regal, director of clinical innovation at America’s Health Insurance Plans, the health insurance trade association, said in a recent webinar.

The official CDC guidance remains unchanged.

Unanswered vaccine issues are piling up

The mFlusiva flu shot is another example of the unusual way vaccine policy updates have stalled.

The shot is the first flu vaccine made with the mRNA technology that was key to ending the COVID-19 pandemic. Kennedy has criticized mRNA vaccines and last year canceled contracts for the development of new ones. The shots also took a tortuous path through the FDA, which finally granted full approval in people ages 50 to 64.

But the CDC this month quietly posted that it has decided to maintain its flu vaccine endorsements from last year due to “legal uncertainties and inquiries.” That means mFlusiva is not among the listed flu vaccines recommended to the public this fall.

The medical societies are recommending it as an option, however.

Another ACIP function was to vote on whether certain vaccines should be covered by Vaccines for Children, a government program that pays for shots for children who have no health insurance.

The FDA approved updated COVID-19 vaccines, but as the summer dragged on — and fall vaccination campaigns got underway — the government would not say if the VFC program will pay for those shots. It was only this week that officials confirmed orders could be placed through that program.

HPV vaccine reassessment is derailed

Another question concerns the HPV vaccine, given to preteens to prevent certain cancers.

Two HPV shots are recommended, but some recent research has suggested that perhaps one shot could be enough — at least for girls. Indeed, in 2024 the ACIP formed a working group to begin a reassessment of the recommendations.

That work was derailed when Kennedy fired the entire committee. In January, he decided on his own to order that the number of recommended doses be reduced to one as part of a dramatic contraction of the childhood vaccination schedule. His decision was suspended by the judge’s order.

Experts are trying to better understand the timing and the duration of protection from just one dose, particularly in boys. The American Academy of Pediatrics is weighing a change to its HPV vaccination recommendations and could reach a conclusion later this year, said the AAP’s Dr. James Campbell.

It’s possible that the medical societies will end up agreeing with Kennedy on just how many HPV shots make sense. But that might not necessarily clear up the current mess, Schwartz said.

“The credibility of the Trump administration, when it comes to vaccine recommendations, is so compromised in the eyes of the mainstream medical and public health communities,” he said, “that even recommendations that might align with where the public health community was trending are likely to be viewed with skepticism or distrust.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is considering changing the federal government's categories for vaccine recommendations, although a specific proposal has not been released and a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson did not respond to questions about what is being contemplated. Public comments were due earlier this week.

An alliance of 15 Democratic state governors said the proposed changes are likely to increase confusion and administrative complexity.

“It’s Governors and their residents who bear the brunt of any increased disease outbreaks due to confusion related to hastily made federal changes,” Angela Botticella, managing director of the Governors Public Health Alliance, said in a statement.

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

Some told The Associated Press that internet service was disrupted across parts of northern Ethiopia, and roads connecting the northernmost region of Tigray with the neighboring region of Afar had been closed to civilian traffic.

“There is an atmosphere of fear,” said Selam Fantay, who sells garlic in the market in the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle. “People are deeply concerned that the suspension of transport services signals the outbreak of renewed conflict.”

The AP could not independently verify the reported closures.

Hailay Meles, a businessman in Mekelle, said he was worried that the disruption of transport links could increase the cost of essential goods. “As long as this conflict persists, it will continue to drive up the prices of basic commodities,” Meles said.

Valerie Browning, a co-founder of the Afar Pastoralist Development Association, a humanitarian group, said many people were fleeing Tigray into Afar. She said explosions were heard overnight.

She said that “too many people are being displaced. Our vehicles, including our ambulances are being taken from us by the government for use (in) the war.”

Federal troops and opposition fighters trade blame for violating peace deal

The renewed fighting has shattered a 2022 peace agreement that ended a devastating two-year war in Tigray, the epicenter of renewed hostilities between federal troops and fighters loyal to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

The TPLF is an armed political group based in Tigray, and for years it was the dominant party in a coalition that ruled Ethiopia between 1991 and 2018. It has been outlawed by Abiy's government.

After the November 2022 peace agreement between the TPLF and federal authorities, a caretaker administration reporting to Abiy took charge in Mekelle. But tensions remained, and in May caretaker leader Tadesse Werede was removed and replaced with a TPLF leader who led Tigrayans in the 2020-2022 war.

Both sides accuse each other of violating the peace agreement. In recent months, Ethiopian federal authorities accused the TPLF of seeking to build an alliance with neighboring Eritrea to destabilize Ethiopia. The TPLF accused Ethiopian authorities of conducting drone attacks in Tigray.

Neighboring Eritrea, whose soldiers fought alongside Ethiopian troops in the previous Tigray conflict, said it was alarmed by Abiy’s repeated assertions of his wish for sovereign access to the Red Sea via Eritrea.

Ethiopia’s military said Thursday that dozens of TPLF fighters had been killed in ongoing operations. It said other fighters were detained and that federal forces have seized weapons.

Opposition groups have joined hands to try to remove prime minister

Air travel into the region was suspended this week after fighters loyal to the TPLF seized Mekelle’s airport from federal police. Ethiopian Airlines canceled flights to and from the region.

Fighting erupted days after seven opposition groups said they were banding together in a coalition in a bid to remove the recently reelected Prosperity Party government of Abiy.

Magnus Taylor, an analyst with International Crisis Group, said the new alliance combines political opposition to Abiy with military coordination among armed groups operating in different parts of Ethiopia.

The alliance “is a combination of a political alliance based around mutual antipathy to Abiy Ahmed’s government and also a kind of opportunistic military alliance intended to threaten the Ethiopian military in the areas where the groups operate,” Taylor said.

In addition to the TPLF, the coalition’s other prominent members include the Amhara Fano National Movement and the Oromo Liberation Army.

Taylor pointed out that coordinated campaigns could open several fronts against the federal government.

“I think there is a real risk that the fighting could spread around the country,” he said, adding that the opposition alliance meant different armed groups can coordinate to “develop campaigns against the federal government in parallel to each other.”

___ Associated Press journalist Desmond Tiro contributed from Nairobi, Kenya.

Trump’s rare welcome of Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the airport, as well as the bilateral and cultural events the leaders attended were closely covered — and praised — by Chinese state media. Those who watched at home saw a China elevated in status.

“I read the news that the U.S. reception standards for President Xi are very high,” Xiang Ziyu, a postgraduate student in Beijing, told The Associated Press. “I’m quite impressed because it shows that our country has become really powerful.”

That takeaway was shared by several people interviewed by the AP as well as in comments on Chinese social media, which praised China's cooperation with the United States.

The official People’s Daily newspaper allocated the entire front page to the trip, featuring six photos of the Xi-Trump meetings.

Meanwhile, on the Chinese search engine Baidu, the three most popular search topics on Friday were the talks between Trump and Xi; the state dinner attended by Xi and Peng; and greetings extended by Xi to Chinese people on the occasion of the Mid-Autumn Festival being celebrated on Friday.

Shen Zuohang, a Beijing resident, felt reassured by the coverage and by Trump and Xi’s seeming agreeability on topics like trade, artificial intelligence and security.

“We have no trade war and no military conflict. Even on the issue of Taiwan we are moving in a good direction instead of having heated confrontation,” Shen said.

“The two sides are handling issues in a more acquiescent way.”

According to China’s Foreign Ministry, Xi called on Trump to oppose the independence of Taiwan, an island democracy China claims as its own territory, and to handle the issue with caution. Trump did not immediately make comments on Taiwan, but had previously described U.S. arms sales to the island as open to negotiations with China.

Xiang, the student, said the summit overall sent a positive signal and will help improve the Chinese public’s opinion of the relations between the two countries.

“It is better than not communicating,” he said.

___

Associated Press video producer Wayne Zhang in Beijing and writer Simina Mistreanu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.

In New York, the wars in Iran and Gaza have dominated the agenda at the U.N. General Assembly, where the leaders of Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt were scheduled to address the United Nations later Friday.

Here is a look at the latest news from the Middle East. More coverage of the U.N. General Assembly is available here.

Top religious figure urges Saudi troops to be ready to defend the kingdom

With Saudi oil facilities, cities and ships off its coast coming under escalating attacks, the kingdom's top religious authority has called on soldiers to be prepared to defend the country from Iran-backed Houthis.

The strongly worded statement from Grand Mufti Sheikh Saleh al-Fawzan, who traditionally avoids weighing in on politics in a country that holds enormous influence among Muslims worldwide, is a rare message on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East from the kingdom's top religious authority.

Al-Fawzan addressed his message to soldiers defending the kingdom's borders and members of the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen, peppering it with Quranic verses and religious edicts.

“Protecting this great nation, guarding its borders, defending against aggression and punishing those who want to harm any inch of it is one of the greatest duties ... where lives are sacrificed for the sake of God,” he said. The Saudi Press Agency carried the statement late Thursday.

Saudi Arabia has said it intercepted a number of missiles launched at the kingdom but has struggled, along with its allies, to contain the Houthis.

Two Israeli soldiers are killed in Gaza

Israel’s military said two of its soldiers were killed in northern Gaza on Thursday while inspecting an unexploded Israeli drone near a military post. They were the first Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza in months.

The drone exploded as the soldiers approached it, the military said Friday. They were evacuated to a hospital, where they were pronounced dead.

The military called the explosion “a serious safety incident” and identified the soldiers as Ofek Moalem and Nadav Kali. It said the incident was under investigation.

Previously, five Israeli soldiers have been killed since last October’s ceasefire that attempted to halt a more than two-year war between Israel and the militant Hamas group.

While the heaviest fighting has subsided, the ceasefire has seen almost daily Israeli fire. Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequently fire on Palestinians near military-held zones and have killed 1,408 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.

Hospitals in Yemen struggle as the country's civil war reignites

The human toll of renewed hostilities in Yemen has stretched beyond the battlefield, overwhelming a health system already battered by years of war.

More than 130,000 people have fled their homes as fighting escalates between the Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi-backed government forces. Fewer than 10% of health centers in affected areas are equipped to provide the trauma care wounded people need, according to the World Health Organization.

Years of war have left Yemen's hospitals with little capacity. Children are sharing emergency room beds, pregnant women are being turned away from health centers and medical supplies are running low.

The most recent round of fighting began in July after the Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi ships in the key Bab el-Mandeb strait, adding to pressure on global trade already disrupted by the war in Iran and the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.

Former UNRWA chief defends agency's role in Gaza

The U.N. agency for Palestinians has met behind the scenes with officials from the U.S.-created Board of Peace, though the board has declared that the agency — known as UNRWA — will have no role in a future Gaza.

Publicly, UNRWA has not been included in the board's planning for the territory's postwar future. But Philippe Lazzarini, the U.N. agency’s last chief, told The Associated Press that members of a Palestinian technocratic committee are clear they want to work with the agency.

“They know that if you get completely rid of the agency today, it might have a further additional devastating impact on the population,” Lazzarini said.

The dynamic underscores how central UNRWA remains to addressing Gaza’s humanitarian crisis during the fragile ceasefire, even as Israel has sought to marginalize it. Israel alleges the agency has been infiltrated by Hamas militants, claims the International Court of Justice has said have not been substantiated.

___

This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.

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You can watch a live feed of our news broadcast at Local10.com/Live.

United Russia, the main Kremlin party, will get more than three-fourths of the seats in the State Duma, a record high, according to returns released by the Central Election Commission.

Virtually any genuine opposition parties or candidates were excluded from running in the Sept. 18-20 election. A massive state media campaign and tight control over the voting process allowed the Kremlin to strengthen its political dominance despite Russia's economic troubles and long-range Ukrainian drone attacks.

Nearly 60% of the 111 million eligible voters turned out in the three-day balloting, the most for a parliamentary election in more than a decade. Authorities had spread the voting over three days and allowed online voting in some regions to boost participation.

The parliamentary election was the first since President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the first to include residents of four regions of that country that were seized and illegally annexed by Moscow later that year.

Voting also was held in Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Kyiv denounced the voting in those regions as illegal.

Russia didn’t invite election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Election commission chief Ella Pamfilova said United Russia got 349 out of 450 seats in the State Duma, the lower chamber. It polled 58% of the ballot for the 225 seats apportioned by parties and also won 209 single-seat races that fill the other half of the chamber.

On Wednesday, Putin declared that the election results were a show of public support for his policies.

Several smaller parties representing the “systemic opposition” that vote in line with the Kremlin on all key issues won 97 seats, and the remaining four seats were filled by regional officials who ran without a party affiliation.

Pamfilova said 46 Ukraine war veterans were elected, including 41 from United Russia.

“The experience of our heroes is in demand; the voting results have clearly confirmed this,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “They will make a maximum contribution to the shaping of various initiatives.”

The liberal Yabloko party, the only registered political entity that dared to publicly criticize the war, was removed from the ballot last month by Russia’s Supreme Court. It only had a few dozen candidates in the single-seat races and none of them won a seat.

The election took place against the backdrop of incessant Ukrainian drone attacks. Officials said air defenses downed over 1,100 Ukrainian drones, including 450 drones heading for Moscow on the final day of voting in what Mayor Sergei Sobyanin described as “the largest ever” attack on the capital. The attack, which damaged an oil refinery and a residential building, killed three people and injured 38 in the wider Moscow region, officials said.

Pamfilova said six poll workers were killed in Ukrainian attacks and 75 polling stations were damaged or destroyed by shelling.

Leo spoke to reporters Friday on his way to France for a four-day visit. Asked by a CNN reporter about the Trump administration’s attempt to bar CNN and other reporters, Leo said the media was welcome on his plane.

“I am very happy that here, you are all welcome,” he said. Good media coverage is important, he said, and equally important "that we have it all the way around, for everyone”

CNN, MS NOW and Politico were back at the White House on Thursday after a judge handed them a reprieve from President Donald Trump's ban, but the extraordinary showdown between him and outlets whose coverage he dislikes continued.

On a high-profile day when Chinese leader Xi Jinping was visiting Washington and attending a state dinner, no major American network was airing live coverage, and both CNN and MS NOW said their journalists were denied access to Xi’s state dinner arrival.

Leo has long affirmed the need for free and independent press, a point he made in one of his first audiences as pope. Speaking to journalists who covered the 2025 conclave that elected him, the American pope called for the release of imprisoned journalists and affirmed the “precious gift of free speech and the press.”

That said, since the COVID-19 pandemic, independent media have been prevented from covering photo opportunities inside the pope's private studio when visiting heads of state visit. Additionally, many of the pope's private audiences with other groups and individuals are closed to non-Vatican press.

Leo had opposed Trump on the war

Leo's airborne comments about Trump followed his April back-and-forth over the American president's criticism of his opposition to the Iran war. The American pope's position won him points with some Europeans opposed to Trump's policies.

“He dared, at his level, to oppose the American president,” said retiree Thierry Marien, who lined up hours early to grab a spot on the popemobile route to Notre-Dame cathedral, where Leo was to celebrate vespers later Friday. “Not because he is opposed to the American president but because he’s opposed to countries where we can see there’s a risk of their political systems becoming a bit more dictatorial and there are already enough of those in the world.”

“I appreciated that he did that. He could quite easily have said to himself, ‘In my situation, I won’t criticize any heads of state,'” he said.

Leo apologizes to reporters

Also on the flight Friday, Leo also apologized for missing an opportunity to speak with the press the last time he traveled internationally, when his Iberia charter broke down in Spain's Canary Islands and he returned home solo on the king's private jet, skipping his traditional airborne press conference.

More than 70 reporters and the Vatican delegation waited for several hours at the airport for a replacement plane to arrive. Leo addressed the media's disappointment when he came to the back of the plane to greet reporters.

“A special mention I would like to make for those of you who were traveling with me when we returned to Rome from Spain,” he said. “I want to apologize personally for an incident, that I had nothing to do with, but which I know left a number of you unhappy with the fact that we couldn’t have the flight back together back to Rome.”

In other comments to reporters, Leo said he believed his alma mater Villanova would be the fan favorite when the Augustinian university plays Notre Dame's basketball team in Rome on Nov. 1.

“They tell me that the people coming to the match, 90% are Villanova and 10% Notre Dame, so the voice of the people of God will be very strong on the Villanova side,” Leo said.

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Associated Press writer John Leicester in Paris 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.

But the policy has remained in force for the past 18 months, and Poland is now urging the 27-nation bloc to allow temporary suspensions of asylum applications during episodes of “instrumentalized” mass migration elsewhere — a move that rights advocates warn could violate international law.

The border between Poland and Belarus, a non-EU country that is aligned with Russia, runs for about 400 kilometers (250 miles).

Since 2021, EU authorities have accused authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of weaponizing migration by luring people to his country to find an easier entry point into the bloc than the more dangerous routes across the Mediterranean Sea.

European Commission announces new emergency framework

The prospect of an EU-wide approach appeared to move closer on Sept. 16, when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU executive branch would soon propose a new “European emergency response framework” for cases of “engineered and weaponized” mass migration.

The new emergency framework would allow for “flexibility” in applying standard migration procedures under specific circumstances and for a limited period of time, she said.

Von der Leyen didn't specify what procedures would be made flexible. It's unclear what form this proposed framework would take, whether it would need approval from the EU Parliament and EU leaders, and how soon it might come into practice. The European Commission didn't respond to requests from The Associated Press to list those procedures.

But Poland’s deputy interior minister in charge of migration, Maciej Duszczyk, celebrated the announcement as a sign that Europe was becoming interested in what he calls “the Polish solution.”

“We are happy that what we’ve been saying for a year, or a year and a half, is now becoming mainstream in the EU,” Duszczyk told the AP in an interview.

He said that the July border crisis in Ceuta, when more than 70,000 people suddenly crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave in North Africa, “made the EU realize” that other countries can be affected by similar border crises as Poland.

Tineke Strik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, told the AP that she fears von der Leyen’s new emergency framework is indeed poised to take the Polish model EU-wide and legitimize the curtailing of asylum.

“If you normalize it, if you make it the default policy of all EU member states, you (the Poles) are not falling outside of the framework,” Strik said. “It simply has been legalized.”

“That would of course really undermine the core of the European and international asylum law — namely that people always must have the possibility to ask for asylum before they can be returned because otherwise you don’t know what will happen to them,” she said.

Michael O’Flaherty — the human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, which is unrelated to the EU — said that the fact that the suspension of the right to asylum now appears in discussions at the EU level “worries” him because “it can very easily cross the line into a violation of international law.”

Critics say legalizing the suspension of asylum would constitute a major blow to fundamental human rights, particularly the principle of non-refoulement, which bars countries from returning people to places where they may face persecution. The principle was enshrined in the postwar refugee protection system after Jews and others fleeing Nazi persecution were refused safe haven during World War II.

‘Polish solution’ contrary to international law, rights groups say

Duszczyk said that the suspension of the right to asylum in Poland is fully compatible with international law and that people in the most vulnerable categories — pregnant women, children or those facing persecution in Belarus — can still apply for asylum even under the current system.

“Each person who appears on the border has the right to speak to the Polish border guards and explain their situation,” Duszczyk said.

But the Polish ombudsman and nongovernmental organizations assisting migrants on the border contradict the minister.

“Visibly pregnant women might stand a chance, but in the case of sick people or teenagers who are minors, their arguments are typically undermined,” said Karolina Czerwinska from the Association for Legal Intervention, a Polish NGO offering legal aid to migrants.

Duszczyk said that the world today has changed since the 1950s, when countries recovering from the traumas of World War II created a system of international law, including refugee rights, meant to protect individuals from state violence.

Czerwinska said that “we Poles located on the front lines of the war in Ukraine should really make sure human rights are respected. We may need to make use of them ourselves.”

EU's new migration pact already outdated, Poland says

Human rights groups said that von der Leyen's announcement came as a surprise, because the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum, which took effect three months ago, already allowed countries faced with border crises to deviate from standard asylum procedures by extending deadlines for processing applications and holding migrants in detention for longer periods of time.

But Duszczyk said that von der Leyen's announcement meant that the European Commission recognized the new pact was “not enough” and that “we need a new instrument in EU law which guarantees that sometimes we can suspend normal procedures and have a sort of state of emergency.”

According to the Polish minister, the European Commission is expected to give more details about the framework during a summit of interior ministers on Oct. 1, and discussions would continue during a European Council summit later that month.

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Sam McNeil contributed to this report from Brussels.

La catástrofe de finales de agosto “no fue solo una tragedia local. Fue una advertencia para el mundo. Y hoy les pregunto: ¿De verdad han escuchado esa advertencia?”, manifestó Balendra Shah ante la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas el jueves por la noche. “Hace casi tres años, a la sombra de nuestro monte Everest, el secretario general de Naciones Unidas advirtió a la humanidad sobre la locura y el inminente desastre climático”.

“Ese grito desde la cima del mundo no se escuchó lo suficiente”, agregó Shah. “Nosotros en Nepal lo escuchamos. Nuestras comunidades lo escucharon. Científicos de todo el mundo lo escucharon. Lo reiteraron con pruebas. Pero nosotros, los líderes políticos, hemos sido negligentes al traducir esas advertencias en acciones con la rapidez y la escala que requieren las personas vulnerables”.

Científicos internacionales han vinculado el deshielo del permafrost debido al cambio climático —provocado por la quema de carbón, petróleo y gas— con la inestabilidad del glaciar, que colapsó parcialmente y desencadenó una inundación masiva que mató al menos a 1.400 personas y dejó cientos de desaparecidos.

Shah señaló que Nepal aportó menos de una décima parte del 1% de los gases de efecto invernadero que están detrás del cambio climático. Cerca del 99% de la electricidad de Nepal proviene de la energía hidroeléctrica, y muchos trabajadores quedaron atrapados en túneles por las inundaciones.

“Nosotros no creamos esta crisis y, sin embargo, estamos pagando un precio colosal por ella”, declaró Shah, un exrapero e ingeniero de 36 años que es el jefe de gobierno más joven en dirigirse a la Asamblea este año. “Nuestros glaciares retroceden, las laderas de nuestras montañas se vuelven inestables, nuestros ríos se vuelven menos previsibles y cada gran desastre amenaza con borrar años de desarrollo”.

El cambio climático “no conoce fronteras”

Con un topi negro —un sombrero tradicional nepalí sin ala—, Shah habló luciendo sus característicos lentes de sol oscuros, que usa por razones médicas. Afirmó que “las trágicas consecuencias de un calentamiento del clima" le dicen al mundo que “el cambio climático no conoce fronteras. Los glaciares y las inundaciones no viajan con sellos ni pasaportes”.

Subeksha Khadka, una activista humanitaria y ex Miss Nepal International, elogió el discurso del mandatario en una entrevista online y reiteró su advertencia: “Esta vez, Nepal ha estado en el punto de mira, pero podría ser cualquiera. Esta es nuestra historia ahora mismo, y mañana puede ser la de cualquiera. Así que es hora de actuar”.

Shah no pidió una cantidad específica de ayuda, pero calificó el sistema internacional de asistencia financiera como inadecuado y demasiado burocrático, incluyendo un fondo para pérdidas y daños acordado hace unos años para países pobres azotados por desastres climáticos que no causaron.

“La financiación climática no debe convertirse en otro laberinto burocrático en el que los países vulnerables pasen años” abriéndose paso cuando necesitan ayuda, manifestó. “Cuando una casa se está incendiando, no le pedimos a una familia que complete 50 formularios. Actuamos. Esto es lo que significa la justicia climática”.

Exhortó a la Asamblea General a actuar en materia de socorro, rehabilitación y reconstrucción —conceptos tradicionales de ayuda internacional—, pero también en “responsabilidad, reparación, resiliencia”. La reparación es una palabra y un asunto que irrita a naciones industriales occidentales como Estados Unidos, que, históricamente, es el mayor emisor de carbono del mundo.

"No es un desastre aislado”

En los últimos 75 años, Estados Unidos ha arrojado a la atmósfera alrededor de 1.500 veces más carbono que Nepal, según el Global Carbon Project, un grupo de científicos que rastrea las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero por países. Las emisiones históricas importan porque el dióxido de carbono permanece en la atmósfera durante más de un siglo atrapando calor.

Washington anunció esta semana 31 millones de dólares en ayudas a Nepal para la recuperación tras las inundaciones, lo que eleva la aportación total del país a 36 millones. Es menos del 1% de lo que se necesita.

“Las evaluaciones preliminares indican que, solo por el desastre reciente, Nepal ha sufrido pérdidas de más de 5.000 millones de dólares, casi el 15% de nuestro PIB y un tercio de nuestro presupuesto anual”, apuntó el miércoles Shisir Khanal, ministro de Exteriores nepalí, en la cumbre climática de la ONU. “Por lo tanto, para Nepal, esta catástrofe no es meramente una emergencia humanitaria. Es una emergencia de desarrollo que desmantela años de progreso. Es una crisis de justicia que deja al descubierto las desigualdades de la acción climática global y es una crisis existencial que golpea la propia supervivencia de nuestras comunidades y nuestro futuro”.

“Lo que ocurrió en Nepal no es un desastre aislado, sino un adelanto de lo que espera a muchas naciones vulnerables”, afirmó Khanal.

El exvicepresidente de Estados Unidos Al Gore dijo en una entrevista que el desastre de Nepal muestra que la crisis climática “estaba empeorando mucho más rápido” de lo que la gente puede soportar y anticipa problemas con el deshielo de los glaciares que alimentan todos los grandes ríos de Asia, amenazando el suministro de agua de 2.000 millones de personas.

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Delgado informó desde Nueva York. La periodista de The Associated Press Jennifer McDermott contribuyó a este despacho.

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La cobertura climática y ambiental de The Associated Press recibe apoyo financiero de múltiples fundaciones privadas. AP es la única responsable de todo el contenido. Consulte las normas de AP para trabajar con filantropías, una lista de patrocinadores y las áreas de cobertura financiadas en AP.org.

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Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.

Israel wants the agency known as UNRWA out of Gaza and has repeatedly accused it of being infiltrated by Hamas militants, allegations the International Court of Justice says have not been substantiated. And yet UNRWA remains the territory’s largest aid provider, playing a key role in health and education.

Philippe Lazzarini, who led UNRWA until earlier this year, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview — his first since stepping down — that members of the Palestinian technocratic committee want to work with the agency. Another U.N. official shared minutes from meetings where UNRWA and the committee discussed collaborating on plans for Gaza.

A Board of Peace official confirmed that board members had met multiple times with UNRWA officials.

And while the agency’s days are over, its programs “may persist if they are serving Gazans well,” the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Israel's Foreign Ministry did not comment.

UNRWA has more workers in Gaza than anyone else

There’s been no reconstruction in Gaza, almost a year since the ceasefire. Israel still prevents the entry of the Palestinian committee chosen by the Board of Peace to eventually govern the strip, saying Hamas must first disarm. The committee says it needs to be inside the strip to activate Gaza plans.

That's left UNRWA on the ground in Gaza, with far more workers than any other U.N. agency or nongovernmental organization. While Israel’s attacks on the agency neutered its role coordinating aid entry and distribution in Gaza, UNRWA’s core programs have remained.

“They want to get rid of the agency, but on the other hand they know that if you get completely rid of the agency today, it might have a further additional devastating impact on the population,” Lazzarini said.

UNRWA props up about half of Gaza’s public health system, said Lazzarini, whose last working day was March 31.

It still has around 11,000 Palestinian employees in Gaza. They conduct about 14,000 medical appointments daily, maintain water and waste management systems for over a million Palestinians, run digital literacy and math programs for over 280,000 children and staff temporary learning spaces for 60,000 more, UNRWA says.

UNRWA makes sure aid reaches people, Lazzarini said. “If you want the vaccine to end up in the mouths of the children, you still need the workforce, the presence of an agency like ours.”

UNRWA was told it's vital in planning Gaza's future

Publicly, the agency has not been included in the Board of Peace’s planning for Gaza. At the board's briefing to the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday, officials named various U.N. agencies as partners, but not UNRWA.

However, behind the scenes, the Palestinian committee that will eventually govern Gaza acknowledged that UNRWA is necessary for planning, Lazzarini said.

Two senior U.N. officials and the board official told the AP the board had met multiple times with UNRWA since the ceasefire was signed.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, confirmed at least three meetings between UNRWA officials and the Palestinian committee this year, most recently this month. Two took place during Lazzarini’s tenure.

Shortly before the end of his tenure, Lazzarini said, he spoke to Ali Shaath, who leads the Palestinian committee.

“Basically, he said, ‘I don’t know how I can succeed without you’,” Lazzarini said. Shaath and a spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

An internal U.N. description of a Jan. 26 meeting in Cairo, held without UNRWA, said Shaath praised the agency, showed a clear intention to see it back on track and said the Palestinian committee's system would largely build on its work.

The Tony Blair Institute, a Board of Peace partner, also asked for UNRWA’s help and spoke to UNRWA personnel, one senior U.N. official said. In response, the institute said it works with multiple U.N. agencies and NGOs in Gaza "to understand the situation on the ground, the needs of the population and the practical requirements for improving conditions.”

At a pledging conference for UNRWA on June 30, the agency's current acting chief, Christian Saunders, called it “vital” to efforts by the board to move forward with the ceasefire.

But the Board of Peace official painted a different picture, saying the meetings focused on determining how UNRWA’s operations work in order to develop programs that are “far more efficient and accountable.”

“UNRWA’s days are over,” the official said. Still, its employees ”will remain if they pass vetting and are delivering on their mandate and not advancing ideology or Hamas interests.”

Lazzarini said it's an “absurd contradiction" — the Board of Peace says UNRWA is not wanted while U.N. member countries “expect it to deliver.”

“We continue to emphasize that UNRWA is indispensable,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told journalists Thursday, after over 50 countries attended a ministerial meeting on the agency at U.N. headquarters.

Lazzarini says he has faced personal attacks

UNRWA was established to help Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.

In January 2024, Israel claimed, without providing evidence, that hundreds of Palestinian militants worked for the agency and over a dozen employees took part in the Oct. 7 attack.

Lazzarini said that he was never given written evidence to back up the allegations despite asking Israel and UN member states, but that he doesn't regret his decision to fire the employees accused of taking part in the attack.

“I did because it was in the best interest of the agency and the population we were helping," Lazzarini said, adding that he has faced “extraordinary vicious, heinous attacks on social media” as well as being accosted in the streets, "in Geneva and in New York” and shouted at by "pro-Israeli groups.”

In his two-hour interview with the AP, he shared recollections from the Gaza war.

He remembered how Palestinians released from Israeli detention told his staff they'd worn diapers in detention and had spent days sitting in their own excrement. He remembered how a displaced father — staying in a school courtyard with four kids — slept with shoes at his head, in case they needed to evacuate from bombardment.

His book, “A Witness to Gaza: What Cannot Be Erased,” will be published in French in October, with an English version to follow.

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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Down 10 with three minutes to go, the Valkryies went on a 14-0 run to beat the Los Angeles Sparks 76-75 Thursday night and move into to the No. 2 seed on the final day of the regular season.

Golden State's win and Indiana's loss to Minnesota sets up a best-of-three series between the reigning champion Las Vegas Aces and the Fever.

The series beginning Sunday in Las Vegas will be a showcase between Wilson, the four-time WNBA MVP, and Clark, the 2024 rookie of the year and three-time All-Star.

The Aces, who have won three of the past four WNBA championships, beat the Phoenix Mercury 100-82, but dropped to the No. 3 seed with Golden State's win. Indiana fell to the No. 6 seed with its 86-66 loss to Minnesota on Thursday.

Golden State plays the No. 7 seed Dallas Wings and star Paige Bueckers in the opening round. Minnesota clinched the top seed for the second straight season and will face eighth-seeded New York.

The Atlanta Dream are the four seed after beating New York on Wednesday night and will face No. 5 seed Washington. The Mystics beat the Chicago Sky 101-93 Thursday night and earned the fifth seed with Indiana's loss to Minnesota.

“Everybody in the playoffs are capable of winning on the road and stealing a series,” Atlanta coach Karl Smesko said. “I definitely think it’s an advantage to have to play in front of your home crowd.”

The Minnesota-New York series will be a rematch of the 2024 WNBA Finals, won by the Liberty in seven games. The Lynx played without star point guard Olivia Miles the final two games of the regular season due to a left calf injury.

“You have to have a healthy dislike for one another and I think that exists,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. “But also at the same time, a lot of respect. So it makes for great cinema and hopefully some great games for us, particularly at Target Center.”

The Liberty also have two key players dealing with injuries.

Star Breanna Stewart missed Wednesday’s game with knee soreness and Jonquel Jones went down with an ankle injury in the third quarter.

“The margin for error throughout this regular season is incredibly small and you’ll see that in the playoffs,” Stewart said. “Like one through eight you don’t know who will be playing at the end of October, which is exciting. I feel like for us we’re going to get a fresh start when it comes Sunday.”

With New York finishing at 26-18, this is only the second time in league history that all the playoff teams have won at least 59% of their games. The 1998 playoffs, which only had four teams, had all four teams at 60% or better.

In the four major sports it’s rare to find the last place team in the playoffs with such a high win rate.

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See AP’s full WNBA coverage here

Un hombre sin camisa sacó a una mujer de su auto en el estacionamiento del hospital, ubicado en 2001 West 68th St., y huyó, según un testigo.

“El sospechoso se acercó a una víctima que salía de su vehículo, entró por la fuerza en su auto y huyó del lugar”, dijo el teniente Eddie Rodriguez, portavoz del Departamento de Policía de Hialeah.

El hombre, quien escapó de la custodia policial en el hospital, chocó contra un auto mientras huía, según Rodriguez.

Los detectives pidieron a cualquier persona con información sobre este u otros casos llamar a Crime Stoppers del Condado Miami-Dade al 305-471-8477 para permanecer en el anonimato.

Tarek's father carried him on foot from the southwestern city of Mokha as Iran-backed rebels swept in this month, bringing a return to civil war. The boy reached a hospital two days later in the government-held city of Aden, 270 kilometers (170 miles) away but it said it had no beds. Like others, it was overwhelmed by the wounded. They finally found a therapeutic feeding center.

The boy arrived in “acute crisis” after the delay in care, according to the center's director, Dr. Arwa Atef, and he only began walking again on Wednesday, over a week later.

“I swear to God, when I look at him, my heart breaks,” said his father, Mohammed al-Salami. “He looks almost lifeless.”

This is how the already fragile health system in the Arab world’s poorest nation is collapsing, caught in a new front of the Iran war. The Associated Press spoke with patients, medical workers and aid groups in Yemen as medicines run short and some workers flee. A few facilities have been overtaken by the fighting.

Some health centers are turning pregnant women and others in need away to focus on trauma patients. Vulnerable children are filling incubators and sharing beds. Millions of people are affected by the fighting backed by two of the Middle East’s biggest powers as Iran-backed Houthis advance against government forces supported by Saudi Arabia. Over 130,000 have fled their homes.

The feeding center where Tarek and other children are recovering is struggling to cope with a rise in patients in a country where many already were hungry, Atef said.

“We can’t keep up with the situation,” she said.

Overwhelmed hospitals focus on the wounded

Most hospitals and primary health centers affected by the escalation in fighting closed for the first 48 hours before resuming services, the United Nations said. But the Houthis have seized the Red Sea coast, including key ports for aid.

“The areas with some of the highest health needs are increasingly difficult to reach,” the World Health Organization said Friday.

Less than 10% of the affected health centers are fully equipped with the trauma services that wounded people need, WHO has said. With resources thin, a painful triage is underway.

Fewer facilities are handling the pregnancy-related emergencies that were killing three Yemeni women every day even before the escalation, said Francesco Galtieri with the United Nations Population Fund. That's one of the highest rates in the Arab world.

"Around 2,000 pregnant women are on the move,” with over 200 expected to deliver in the next week or so, he said.

Maternity wards have been converted into emergency rooms in some hospitals close to the fighting, said Hashem Osseiran, an International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson, adding that many lack enough anesthesia drugs, oxygen supplies and sterile surgical gloves.

At a hospital treating mothers and children in the government-held city of Marib, Dr. Ahmed Modhesh said they are seeing more emergency maternity cases as other city hospitals focus on the wounded.

But his facility, Martyr Mohamed Hayel hospital, lacks intensive care specialists and doesn’t have enough generators to keep all departments running if the power goes out.

A midwife said the number of childbirths the hospital is handling has basically doubled to about 80. One woman with an ectopic pregnancy arrived bleeding heavily, yet the under-resourced staff were still able to perform an emergency procedure to save her life, the midwife said. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn’t authorized to speak with the media.

Yemen’s healthcare was in trouble before the fighting

Even before the escalation, hospitals in Yemen relied on limited government support and citizen donations. Some were not able to fully pay staff.

Now, “we are in a very dangerous situation,” said Fahd al-Nazari, manager of the health office in Taiz province, which has received most of the newly displaced. “Within a day or two, or a week at most, we might have to close down (some facilities). In fact, some hospitals are already closed.”

Three of the province’s 17 hospitals are no longer under government control. Hospitals across Taiz had received around 635 casualties, including 112 bodies, as of Thursday after the Houthis captured Mokha, al-Nazari said. They included civilians and combatants.

“We’re exhausted receiving wounded people under these circumstances,” al-Nazari said.

Medical supplies and fuel are running short after key supply routes between Mokha and Taiz were largely cut off, forcing convoys onto mountainous roads unsuitable for large trucks. Even before the escalation, public hospitals in the province had just one MRI machine available.

At the Yemeni-Swedish Maternity and Children's Hospital in Taiz, incubators were full and two or three children were sharing beds in the emergency room, general manager Sami al-Sharabi said.

“I’m scared that the conflict would reach the hospital,” he said. “Any explosive that could hit us would destroy the hospital, as some parts of the building are already weak.”

Even hospitals in Aden, where Yemen’s government is based, struggle to cope. Doctors Without Borders said more than 60 wounded people had been admitted to Al-Gamhouria hospital in a week. Many needed urgent surgery or blood transfusions.

Fighters are also seeking emergency treatment

At a private hospital treating rebels in the Houthi-held city of Sanaa, two medical officials last week said it was overwhelmed with hundreds of wounded. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

It was not clear how many Houthi fighters have been killed or wounded overall. Few aid agencies operate in rebel-controlled areas, as the group has detained and harassed dozens of humanitarian workers. Experts say the Houthis have struggled to pay salaries to civil servants, including public sector doctors and diverted most tax revenues to their military wing.

The ICRC, one of the few global agencies still able to operate in Sanaa, last week said it delivered 22 tons of badly needed medical supplies to support “overwhelmed” hospitals.

There is also little information about casualties among government forces, though one government-allied group has said over 1,500 of its fighters were wounded.

Some medical workers have fled the conflict, making it harder to find care.

In Mokha, Doctors Without Borders said its small team was still working “despite the severe shortage of health professionals.” The charity’s deputy coordinator of operations in Yemen, Emmanuel Massart, said three other hospitals there had closed for days before resuming services.

Resupplying remains a major challenge because of closed roads, Massart said.

“We should not forget about Yemen," he said. It “remains one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.”

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Khaled reported from Cairo and Anna from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Abdulnasser Alseddik in Aden and Toqa Ezzidin in Cairo contributed to this report.

Futures for the S&P 500 climbed 0.3%, while those for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.2%. Nasdaq futures climbed 0.5%.

The Dow is off 0.6% for the week to date, which is pointing it toward its fourth straight losing week.

A global sell-off in the bond market has again added pressure to the stock market, as the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury reached its highest level since 2007. The U.S. 10-year Treasury eased slightly to around 5.18% on Friday, after rising above 5.20% on Thursday from around 5.11% Wednesday. Still, the 10-year Treasury is up 40 basis points since September, putting a squeeze on anyone who borrows money.

Government bond yields have been elevated as bond investors are demanding higher compensation under increasing risks and uncertainties, including growing inflationary pressure from the Iran war-driven energy shock and rising U.S. government debt.

ING Bank analysts wrote in a commentary this week that factors including elevated energy prices and inflation pressures are likely to continue to pressure U.S. 10-year Treasury yields higher.

Oil prices declined Friday as investors look for signs of the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the key waterway for global oil transport. Brent crude, the international standard, dropped 1.4% to $98.83 per barrel, remaining below the $100 mark although it’s still well above the roughly $72 a barrel level in late February before the start of the war. Benchmark U.S. crude fell 1.7% to $92.97 per barrel.

While many investors are also monitoring the meeting in Washington between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, analysts said limited concrete progress has been made, although the two sides touched on topics including trade, artificial intelligence and the Middle East.

In Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 climbed 0.3% to 10,707.98. France's CAC 40 slipped 0.1% to 8,074.83, while Germany's DAX rose 0.6% to 25,417.28. Some Asian markets were mixed.

Markets in mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea were closed because of a holiday.

In other dealings, the U.S. dollar fell to 157.77 Japanese yen from 158.86 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1402, up from $1.1380.

Leo raised existential concerns about scientific progress, life and human rights during his opening speech to President Emmanuel Macron and diplomats at the Élysée Palace.

Given the wars plaguing Europe and the Middle East, he reaffirmed the Vatican’s opposition to nuclear weapons and said the nuclear deterrence doctrine was “mistaken” since it was just fueling a new arms race.

“Peace is not a balance of power; rather, it is built day by day through dialogue and justice,” he said.

Leo, whose paternal ancestors were French, arrived in Paris at the start of four intense days in France, where the Catholic Church has lost ground on influencing ethical issues given the strict approach to secularism that is enshrined in the French Constitution.

Church bells tolled across France when Leo’s charter flight landed at Paris’ Orly airport, and upward of a million people are expected to turn out to see him. The welcome has underscored the surprising level of interest in Leo’s visit, the first official state visit by a pope in 18 years.

Macron said Leo’s visit brings “a source of hope” to many French people.

“France stands on the side of peace, effective multilateralism, respect for international law and the United Nations Charter ... because every life has equal value, and all peoples must be defended,” he said.

Later Friday, Leo was to visit UNESCO headquarters, celebrate vespers at the newly reopened Notre-Dame cathedral and then preside over a massive youth vigil at the Paris stadium Friday night.

A capstone visit as Macron’s term ends

For Macron, who is barred from seeking a third term in May elections, hosting the American pope is something of a capstone, after Pope Francis refused repeatedly to make a proper state visit to France during his 12-year pontificate.

“For a president of the republic as Macron, who is at the end of his mandate, it can be important to be aside the pope and to capture a part of his popularity. It’s not new,” said Charles Mercier, director of history and sociology of Catholicism studies at Paris EPHE university.

With seven months left in his term, Macron’s approval ratings are near record lows, driven by anger over the rising cost of living and criticism of France’s growing debt and deficit and deteriorating public services.

Smiling broadly as Leo spoke French, Macron thanked the pope for visiting, saying: “You are here with us for an extended visit, giving us your time, and that is moving.”

The Rev. Aristide Ahidote, from Ivory Coast, was among those who planned to attend the pope's vespers service in Notre-Dame. “God has given us a pope with vigor and strength,” he said.

While acknowledging the French church has declined in popularity, “it still has small remnants and these small remnants have been edifying for me.”

Leo appeals to loftier questions about life

Leo has been keen to emphasize Europe’s Christian roots and try to push the church’s message about the value and dignity of human life in a country where the right to abortion was enshrined in the constitution in 2024, and where lawmakers recently gave final approval to a bill allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal medication.

The French Catholic hierarchy strongly opposed the measures, in keeping with Catholic teaching that human life must be protected and defended from conception until natural death.

In his speech to Macron and other government and diplomatic authorities, Leo called for France especially to remember that the right to life is the “indispensable foundation of every other human right.”

He recalled France’s “deep Christian roots” and the recognition of human rights in warning about scientific progress and artificial intelligence.

“If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a ‘paradise of machines’ invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment and the capacity to acknowledge the moral good,” he said.

From the very start of his pontificate, Leo has identified artificial intelligence as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. He dedicated his first encyclical to the topic, “Magnificent Humanity,” calling for robust regulation and for AI developers to work for the common good rather than profit.

Leo also appealed to AI developers and political leaders responsible for regulating them to slow down, an appeal that several top AI companies seem to have taken to heart in recently.

Speaking to reporters en route to Paris, Leo said he was pleased that his message was being heard and said he hoped the dialogue that the Vatican had initiated with tech companies would continue.

“And I think from their perspective, many of them, they’re very much open to looking for ways of making sure that AI does not displace or ultimately destroy humanity, but rather than be a tool for human beings,” he said. “Good things are beginning at least.”

Reporters welcome to cover him

On the flight, Leo was also asked by a CNN reporter about the Trump administration’s attempt to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico news organizations from the White House. Leo said he welcomed media coverage and affirmed the need for it.

“I am very happy that here, you are all welcome,” he said. Good media coverage is important, he said, and equally important “that we have it all the way around, for everyone.”

—-

Associated Press writer John Leicester 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.

Across the world, communities are dedicating Friday to honoring the beloved country singer. The day is falling on Sept. 25, a wink at Parton’s hit song “9 to 5.”

Parton, who died of cancer last month at age 80, built an impressive legacy over the decades as a singer-songwriter, actor, philanthropist and entrepreneur — leaving big and small ways to honor the icon.

So whether it’s dusting off your rhinestones, donating a book or throwing back a pink-themed cocktail, here’s how you can celebrate Dolly Parton Day.

Join a celebration

In the U.S., a growing number of state and local leaders are establishing Sept. 25 as an annual Dolly Parton Day from California to the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The proclamations highlight Parton’s successful career and stress her lifelong commitment to promoting literacy.

In Nashville — where Parton had lived since she was 18 — the city will honor the singer with pink lights and posters and give away stickers, buttons and bookmarks. Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines announced that it would hold a Parton-inspired karaoke Friday for travelers and employees. Tennessee state and local officials are currently in the process of renaming the airport after Parton.

“Dolly Parton’s impact on Nashville will be felt for generations, through the music she has given us, the people she has helped and the example she continues to set,” said Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell in a statement. “She has shown us that caring for a community means showing up for one another.”

Over in New Orleans, the marching group Krewe of Dolly will lead a parade through the city’s French Quarter to honor Parton.

And in San Francisco, organizers are planning a public event in the heart of the city, called “Dolly Day,” designed to be a celebration of life that will include “singing loud, dressing up, and being a little kinder than usual in her honor.”

Donate a book to Imagination Library

For those chained to their actual 9 to 5 job on Friday, sneaking away for an event may be challenging. Instead, you can channel Parton’s giving spirit.

Parton made it her mission to improve literacy through her Imagination Library book giveaway program. The program has quickly expanded, resulting in more than a million books sent out each month to children in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.

The Imagination Library is encouraging the public to give directly to their local Imagination Library Partner on Dolly Parton Day, or help establish a new program in their community.

Don’t know where to start? The Dollywood Foundation is directing people to ImaginationLibrary.com, where a ZIP code search can find nearby programs.

“For Dolly, giving was always personal and from her heart,” said Jeff Conyers, president of The Dollywood Foundation, in a statement. “She believed deeply in helping people, especially children, and she always felt if you are in a position to help, you should help.”

Get inspired by Parton's style and songs

The Queen of Country was known for her over-the-top style, proudly wearing sequins with big hair and plenty of fringe in her signature color pink.

Parton especially adored butterflies, singing that “love is like a butterfly, as soft and gentle as a sigh.”

Dig into your closet and throw on something extra flashy, shiny or sparkly. Feeling adventurous? Some tattoo artists are offering Dolly-inspired tattoos on Friday, but a butterfly clip will also work.

Of course, there's no easier way to celebrate Parton than by playing one of her many, many albums throughout the day.

Known for her hits “9 to 5,” “Jolene,” and “I Will Always Love You,” Parton's catalog runs deep, and there's room to discover new favorites.

It was Parton’s wish that her songs would have a lasting impact, and that in turn, she would be remembered for trying to make the world a better place.

“I hope that a lot of my songs may last that long. And I hope I’ll be remembered as somebody that tried to do some good in the world and left, you know, a few good things,” she told The Associated Press in 2024.

Even if a school policy was written without overt racial bias, it might unfairly hurt one group of students over another, the understanding went. The concept is known as systemic racism, and Republican and Democratic administrations agreed: Schools and universities that received federal funding had an obligation to address it.

Under President Donald Trump's administration, that's no longer the case. One by one, the administration has limited the remedies schools can use to address systemic racial injustice.

This summer, the Education Department rescinded a regulation that allowed schools to gauge potential discrimination by comparing outcomes across races, such as the racial breakdown of students in advanced classes. Then, it issued a letter to American schools, emphasizing it's illegal to consider race when crafting discipline policies — even if one particular racial group ends up suspended or expelled more often.

At the same time, Trump's Justice Department has stepped away from many school desegregation cases. In a news release Thursday, the department boasted of successfully working through the courts to close more than 50 desegregation cases since Trump took office, with motions to dismiss in the works in many other cases. Previous administrations had used these federal court cases to hold schools accountable when students of color had worse outcomes than white students — high rates of discipline, worse school facilities or reduced access to extracurriculars and advanced coursework.

While Trump's first administration deprioritized enforcing racial justice, his current administration has gone further — threatening to punish schools for any consideration of race in their policies and practices.

To the administration, the practice of examining different outcomes for particular groups of students, sometimes known as “disparate impact,” was itself a form of racial discrimination.

“The Obama and Biden Administrations weaponized disparate impact by effectively coercing schools to discipline students differently based on race in order to engineer equitable disciplinary outcomes across racial groups,” Education Department spokesperson Sabin Sidney said. "These practices unfortunately led to unsafe classrooms and undermined student learning."

Critics worry the administration's actions will make it easier to get away with racial discrimination.

“When they talk about returning it to the states and making America great again, they’re talking about returning to how it was before 1954,” when school segregation was legal, said U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va.

School discipline data had offered insights on discrimination

Since Trump's return to office, the administration has set its sights on school discipline.

In May 2025, the president signed an executive order directing federal agencies to stop looking for “ disparate impact," or policies that appear neutral but result in outsized impact to one group over another. Those policies had been examined for possible discrimination, regardless of their intent.

In education, that analysis had most often been applied to school discipline — especially to removing students from the classroom, such as through suspensions, expulsions and referrals to law enforcement.

Federal and state data have long shown students of color, particularly Black students, are more likely than their peers to be pulled from the classroom for similar infractions. Research shows that students who are suspended are more likely to become disengaged from school and to have worse academic outcomes.

In 2021, the Education Department began investigating a complaint alleging Black male students with disabilities in Denver Public Schools were being disproportionately pushed out of the classroom. Progress on the case halted after Trump took office in 2025.

Advocates had also filed the complaint with state authorities, who found violations of civil rights laws and ordered the district to mandate new training. Meanwhile, families have heard nothing from the federal Education Department.

The silence gives school districts permission to continue with business as usual, said Pam Bisceglia, executive director of Advocacy Denver, which filed the complaints.

“I’d like to say that we have overcome and that marginalized communities are enjoying equal protections. We see that, in fact, that isn’t true,” she said.

Trump's administration has changed which cases are investigated

Under Trump's first administration, the Education Department continued to investigate and resolve cases of racial discrimination against minority students.

In 2018, the Education Department reached a settlement agreement with Durham Public Schools in North Carolina, after examining whether the district's discipline policies, or their effects, were racially discriminatory. The investigation found Black students were disproportionately given out-of-school suspension — especially in instances involving subjective decisions on matters like disobedience.

For a time, Jovonia Lewis, a parent and former Durham school board member, constantly received calls about her son being kicked out of the classroom. She was told he couldn’t sit still. But the federal settlement agreement helped Black parents see their children's experiences were not occurring in isolation, Lewis said.

“We knew our kids were being treated differently, but this data gave us leverage,” she said.

The investigation had a significant impact in Durham, Lewis recalled. The district adopted a new student code of conduct and created an equity affairs office.

Under the Trump administration's new guidance, federal authorities are unlikely to take up similar cases.

“The federal government has chosen to close its eyes to that way of understanding discrimination,” said Catherine Lhamon, who oversaw education civil rights under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, both Democrats.

The impact of the administration's changes will outlast Trump's presidency, said Johnathan Smith, a former attorney in the civil rights division at the Justice Department and a managing director at the National Center for Youth Law. Once the administration changes rules and regulations, future efforts to investigate civil rights could be held up in court.

“They're building an infrastructure that says, ‘Not only are we taking down these structures, but we are building in roadblocks to make it very difficult for any future administration to change course,’” Smith said.

Decades-old school desegregation cases are being closed

Across the South, the Justice Department has taken an interest in closing cases of court-mandated school desegregation, arguing the decades-old orders are outdated. But civil rights attorneys say the impact of segregation continues to be felt today.

Courts have long maintained the passage of time is not enough to rule that discrimination has passed, said Kelly Gardner, deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. To be released from a desegregation order, schools have had to show that they have removed the lingering effects of segregation to the extent possible. That can involve assessing extracurricular offerings, funding levels and the state of school facilities.

Now, the Justice Department is intervening to close cases, often without taking account of those considerations, Gardner said.

In January, a federal court granted a request from the Justice Department and the DeSoto Parish School Board in Louisiana to release the small district from its desegregation order. In the order, the district had allowed students to transfer out of racially isolated schools, with transportation provided. As recently as 2024, the order was used to ensure those students had equal access to extracurriculars in their new schools.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, praised the court decision for freeing the district from federal oversight.

“After 60 years of litigation and federal control, the elected members of the DeSoto Parish School Board now have the full powers of their office, as our Constitution has always intended,” Murrill wrote in a social media post at the time.

A few months after the order was lifted, the school district amended its policies. The district would no longer accept new applications for transfers, and students in the transfer program would have to return to their zoned schools once they finished the highest grade at their current school.

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The Associated Press’ education 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.

Xi is expected to depart Washington after touring the nation's vault of records, where the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are held. The two leaders have made a show of working to preserve harmony between the world's two largest economies, though there were no major breakthroughs on issues such as trade or the safety of artificial intelligence.

The visit comes as the U.S. celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, and Trump said Thursday that he wanted to show Xi “some of the greatest treasures of that proud history.”

The Archives has a special exhibit marking the sesquicentennial, titled “The American Story,” which highlights the country’s accomplishments and advances, along with images depicting its darker moments.

Trump showed Xi one copy of the Declaration of Independence on Thursday — a wall-mounted copy he keeps in the Oval Office.

The U.S. president also said he wanted to show Xi artifacts about the relationship between the two countries. “Just as our ancestors reached across the ocean centuries ago to trade, to learn, and to build a better world, our two countries do really the same thing, and we’re very proud of it,” he said.

Xi's day will begin at the White House, where Trump and first lady Melania Trump will host the Chinese leader and his wife, Peng Liyuan, for tea.

The Trumps feted their guests Thursday night with a black-tie state dinner attended by technology industry titans. Earlier in the day, Trump gave Xi a personal tour of his White House flourishes, including a gallery wall of presidents and a new 100-foot-long (30-meter) granite helicopter landing pad — and pointed out his ballroom, still under construction. Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan toured the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art.

The two leaders also met behind closed doors for 90 minutes on Thursday, during which they discussed issues such as the Middle East, Ukraine and the Korean Peninsula, according to the official Chinese government readout of the meeting. The White House has not yet provided any information about the private talks.

Bijan Robinson rushed for 194 yards and two touchdowns as the Falcons capitalized on the return of quarterback Michael Penix Jr. and trounced the punchless Green Bay Packers 35-14 on Thursday night.

Atlanta (1-2) erased an early 7-0 deficit by scoring 27 straight points to take control amid a chorus of boos at Lambeau Field. The Falcons outrushed the Packers 242 yards to 17.

It was a stunning turn of events for an Atlanta offense that hadn't run a single play inside an opponent's 20-yard line during the first two weeks of the season.

“That was the weight off the shoulders — just getting back to the red zone,” Robinson said. “And we knew we had to punch it in every opportunity we get when we get down there. That was the main focus — to get the ball down there and let's put the ball in the end zone. When we scored, it was definitely something we enjoyed, and we kept on doing it.”

Penix went 18 of 25 for 256 yards with one touchdown and an interception in his first action since tearing the ACL in his left knee during a loss to Carolina on Nov. 16.

“I'm proud of him,” Falcons coach Kevin Stefanski said. “It's not easy to rehab from injuries. That's a tough thing to do, that he's put himself through — the extra workouts in the weight room, the extra treatments in the training room, all those times that he's out in the field and he's running when no one's watching.”

Atlanta had struggled to produce any offense whatsoever in two games with Cooper Rush at quarterback. The Falcons became the first team since the 2008 Rams not to run any plays in the red zone through the first two weeks of a season.

That wasn’t a problem Thursday.

Robinson and Drake London became the first teammates to each compile at least 190 yards from scrimmage in a road game since Lawrence McCutcheon and Ron Jessie did it for the Rams at Miami on Oct. 3, 1976. London caught nine passes for a career-high 194 yards.

“Me and Drake, that's my real-life brother," Robinson said. "I call him my blood brother. We do everything together.”

Green Bay (1-2) lost a home opener for the first time since falling 30-22 to the San Francisco 49ers in 2012. The Packers had won 13 straight home openers from 2013-25 to share the NFL record with the Miami Dolphins, who also won 13 in a row from 1976-88.

“We’ve got a couple extra days here, and everybody’s got to take a long, hard look at themselves,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said. “We’ve got to find solutions and just come back ready to work.”

Green Bay's Jordan Love went 28 of 53 for 312 yards with two touchdowns — one to Christian Watson and another to Matthew Golden — and an interception. MarShawn Lloyd and Kaleb Johnson combined for 17 yards on eight carries.

Love was working behind an offensive line missing left guard Aaron Banks and right tackle Zach Bako-Bewele, who tore his patellar tendon Sunday and will miss the rest of the season. Banks was dealing with a toe injury.

Jager Burton, a rookie fifth-round pick from Kentucky, made his first career start at left guard, and 2025 second-round selection Anthony Belton started at right tackle.

The lack of discipline that hindered Green Bay in its first two games cropped up again Thursday.

Green Bay led 7-0 and had forced an apparent third-and-11 incompletion late in the first quarter when Brenton Cox Jr. was called for roughing the passer. Robinson delivered a 55-yard carry on the next play to set up his own 3-yard touchdown run.

The Packers had committed an NFL-high 26 penalties through the first two weeks of the season.

Atlanta dominated the rest of the first half and led 17-7 at the break.

Nick Folk put Atlanta ahead by hitting a 44-yard field goal with 4:48 left in the second quarter. After Atlanta’s Zach Harrison blocked Trey Smack’s 47-yard field-goal attempt, Penix threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to Austin Hooper on third-and-goal with 59 seconds left in the half.

Green Bay wasted a red-zone opportunity on its first drive of the second half when Love couldn’t connect with Watson in the end zone on fourth-and-1 from the 7. Atlanta poured it on from there.

“It felt great to get a win. It felt great to come out of there healthy. Just blessed, just blessed,” Penix said.

Injuries

Falcons: CB A.J. Terrell (groin) didn't play after getting placed on injured reserve this week.

Packers: LB Edgerrin Cooper was evaluated for a concussion in the second half. G Jacob Monk hurt his quadriceps late in the fourth quarter.

Up next

Falcons: At New Orleans on Monday, Oct. 5.

Packers: At Tampa Bay on Oct. 4.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

“She said, ‘When I come back home, we will drink the tea made from Chinese flowers,’” said Oles Visich, Kalynychenko’s partner. He has now been waiting for news about her for a month, after she and thousands of others disappeared in catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-China border.

Her last known location was exiting China at a border post at 10:22 a.m. local time, 15 minutes before the flood.

Kalynychenko, 36, was part of a group of 56 people, mostly Ukrainians, who had traveled to Mount Kailash in Tibet for a spiritual retreat.

Their families' situation is a sign of how complex and time-consuming the process is of rescuing, recovering and identifying victims lost to the disaster. Given the number of missing, the process will likely take months.

They disappeared while heading from China to Nepal on their way home. Some relatives say they have received no information from authorities. The Chinese government has told at least two families that their relatives left Chinese territory before the flood struck, but they haven't been able to confirm whether they entered Nepal as Nepal's immigration complex and its records were destroyed in the floods.

Little information is reaching families

The floods killed more than 1,400 people and left more than 6,000 missing, most of them on the Nepali side of the border. Nepal has said that 636 foreign nationals remain missing, including 54 Ukrainians. China has reported 261 foreign nationals among the missing on its side, including one Ukrainian.

Families in Ukraine say most of them have not received any answers since realizing their relatives were among the missing.

“We only have the statistics that are being posted online — how many people have been found, how many are alive, how many are dead, and how many are still missing,” said Stanislav Solohub, whose brother and sister-in-law went missing on Aug. 25.

Nepal says it has recovered 1,451 bodies, but only 112 have been handed over to families so far.

The government said it has collected DNA samples from 2,035 relatives so far, but it has not disclosed how many victims have been identified.

Last messages were sent minutes before the floods began

The group, led by Irina Blonskaya, a spiritual teacher who often organized retreats, was returning from its journey home in China when the flood struck Aug. 26. Their plan was to travel by bus from the Tibet region to Kathmandu, where its members would board flights to their respective countries. The group’s last message was sent at 8:27 a.m. Nepal time, about 10 minutes before the mountain slope collapsed.

Many had not checked in with their loved ones that morning, owing to the time difference.

Authorities have said the were triggered when a section of ice and rock broke away from a Himalayan mountain slope, creating a fast-moving torrent of water, ice, mud and debris. It destroyed communities and Gyirong Port, a border crossing used by some pilgrims traveling to or returning from Mount Kailash.

‘Who is looking for them?’

Vladsylava Horlova’s mother, Elena, was traveling in the group as well. She initially found her mother’s name of the list of the missing from the Nepali government, but hasn't received any further information from the Nepali side. Later, the Chinese embassy confirmed her mother had left the country, and was not counted in China's list of missing people.

Horlova, a college student who is a refugee in Norway, worries that her mother was not recorded as being in either country, and that neither side is looking for her. There’s a stretch of road between the Nepali immigration building and the Chinese one along the border, videos from travelers show.

“You think about what if someone appeared to be in a no man’s land or that they left China, but not physically, who’s looking for them?” she asked.

Horlova has attempted to contact organizations ranging from the Ukrainian embassy in China, to Norwegian police, and even the Red Cross. She, like the others, have submitted their DNA samples to police to help the search.

On the other side of the border, China has said that when the remains of foreigners are identified, it will notify their respective embassies, but the authorities have not given any details about how many identities have been confirmed so far.

People still have hope

Though it has been a month since the original disaster, some families are still holding on to hope.

Just days before Kalynychenko left for her travels, she organized a retreat for women in Ukraine whose partners were fighting on the front lines of the war, some of whom had not heard from their partners for two years.

Visich, her partner, sees the irony of his situation, but like others in the group, has chosen to stay positive. Visich, also a psychologist, wrote a support guide for others like himself, offering tips on mental health.

“Because for my Olenka, for example, the most important thing in our connection, that each other … needs to be happy,” Visich said.

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AP writer Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Nepal and senior video producer Volodymr Yurchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine contributed to this report.

The August disaster “was not just a local tragedy. It was a warning to the world. And I ask you today: Have you really heard that warning?” Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah said at the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday night. “Nearly three years ago, standing in the shadow of our Mount Everest, the secretary-general of the United Nations warned about humanity about the madness and impending climate disaster.”

“That cry from the rooftop of the world was not heard enough,” Shah said. “We in Nepal heard it. Our communities heard it. Scientists around the world heard it. They repeated it with evidence. But we, the political leaders, have been negligent to translate those warnings in action at the speed and scale that the vulnerable people require.”

International scientists have connected melting permafrost from climate — caused by burning coal, oil and gas — to the instability of the glacier, which partly collapsed and triggered a massive flood that has killed at least 1,400 people with even more still missing.

Shah said that Nepal contributed less than one-tenth of 1% of the heat-trapping gases behind climate change. About 99% of Nepal's electricity comes from hydropower, and many workers were trapped in tunnels by the flooding.

“We did not create this crisis, yet we are paying a colossal price for it,” said Shah, 36, a former rapper and engineer who is the youngest head of government to address the General Assembly this year. “Our glaciers are retreating, our mountain slopes are becoming unstable, our rivers are becoming less predictable, and every major disaster threatens to erase years of development.”

He said climate change ‘does not recognize borders’

In a black Dhaka topi, a traditional brimless Nepali hat, Shah spoke while wearing his signature dark sunglasses, which he uses for medical reasons. He said “the tragic consequences of a warming climate” tells the world that “climate change does not recognize borders. Glaciers and floods do not travel with stamps and passports.”

Subeksha Khadka, a humanitarian and former Miss Nepal International, in an online interview, praised Shah's speech and echoed the warning: "This time Nepal has been on the target, but it could be anyone. This is our story right now, and it can be anybody else’s tomorrow. So it’s time to act.”

Shah didn't ask for a specific amount in aid, but he called the international financial aid system inadequate and too bureaucratic. This included a loss and damage fund agreed upon a few years ago for poor nations hit by climate disasters not of their own making.

“Climate finance must not become another bureaucratic maze through which vulnerable countries spend years” maneuvering through when they need help. “When the house is burning, we do not ask a family to complete 50 forms. We act. This is what climate justice means.”

He exhorted the General Assembly to act on relief, rehabilitation, reconstruction — which are traditional international help concepts — but also “responsibility, reparation, resilience.” Reparation is a word and an issue that rankles industrial western nations like the United States, which is historically the world's biggest carbon emitter.

He says it's ‘not an isolated disaster’

Over the past 75 years, the United States has spewed about 1,500 times more carbon into the air than Nepal has, according to the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists that track greenhouse gas emissions by countries. Historical emissions matter because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for more than a century trapping heat.

The U.S. this week announced $31 million in aid to Nepal for flood recovery, which bring America's total financial help up to $36 million. It's less than 1% of what they need.

“Preliminary assessments indicate that from recent disaster alone, Nepal has suffered loss of over $5 billion, nearly 15% of our GDP and a third of our annual budget," Shisir Khanal, Nepal's foreign minister, said Wednesday at the UN climate summit. "Thus for Nepal, this catastrophe is not merely a humanitarian emergency. It is a development emergency dismantling years of progress. It is a justice crisis exposing the inequities of global climate action and it is an existential crisis striking at the very survival of our communities and our future.”

“What happened in Nepal is not an isolated disaster but a preview of what awaits many vulnerable nations,” Khanal said.

Former United States Vice President Al Gore said in an interview that Nepal's disaster shows that the climate crisis “was getting worse much faster” than people can handle and foreshadows problems with melting glaciers that feed all of the great rivers of Asia, putting the water supply of 2 billion people at risk.

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Delgado reported from New York. Associated Press writer Jennifer McDermott contributed to this report.

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

Here in South Florida, that level of trust isn’t a movie plot, it’s a reality on the front lines for the men, women and canine officers of the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office every day.

Studio 10 went on location to the MDSO K9 training campus, where we received a firsthand look at how these incredible animals do extraordinary things all to protect and serve.

You can check out the full report by Local 10’s Jason Carter at the top of this page.

It happened on Thursday at approximately 6 p.m. along the 800 block of Northwest 19th Avenue.

According to police, officers responded to the scene in reference to reports of a person who had been shot.

The arriving officers said they found a man who had been shot in the upper torso.

He was rushed as a trauma alert to Broward Health Medical Center for treatment.

Investigators determined a fight occurred inside a residence, and it was during the altercation that the man was shot.

Officers said they did not have anyone in custody, but added that they believed the shooting was an isolated incident and that there was no known threat to the public.

An investigation into the circumstances that led up to the shooting remains active and ongoing.

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The pursuit was after a shirtless man with green pants pulled a woman out of her car at about 10 a.m. in the parking lot at the Palmetto General Hospital at 2001 West 68th St., in Hialeah, according to a witness.

That man has since been identified as 35-year-old Eugene Brown.

“The suspect approached a female victim exiting her vehicle and forced himself inside her car and fled the scene,” Lt. Eddie Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Hialeah Police Department, said.

Shortly after 1 p.m., Brown drove on the wrong side of road several times, and passed a school bus. Law enforcement performed several maneuvers to try to stop him.

Shortly after 1:10 p.m., law enforcement hit the car twice until it spun out, and law enforcement approached, guns drawn.

About five minutes later, deputies pulled Brown out and handcuffed him at Northwest 17th Avenue and 79th Street. He was barefoot, shirtless, and wearing green pants.

Brown is facing charges of burglary, assault and battery, robbery, carjacking, battery on a person 65 or older, fleeing and eluding a police officer, leaving the scene of an accident with property damage and reckless driving.

He’s being held at Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center with bond listed as “to be set.”

Detectives asked anyone with information about this or other cases to call Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477 to remain anonymous.

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The tropical storm is expected to become the eastern Pacific’s ninth hurricane of the season on Thursday as it heads northward and hooks left near or to the south of the Big Island of Hawaiʻi as a major Category 3 hurricane (peak winds of at least 111 mph) this weekend.

As of Thursday morning, the official National Hurricane Center forecast tracked the center of Nolo to within 50 to 75 miles of the Big Island by early Saturday local time. It’s worth noting the average track error at this forecast time is around 50 to 75 miles so interests in the state – particularly from Maui, Molokai, and Lanai southward to the Big Island – should be prepared for the possibility of damaging hurricane conditions (winds of 74 mph or stronger) beginning late Friday local time.

The most serious hazard with Nolo will be the possibility of catastrophic flooding and life-threatening mudslides as it passes this weekend.

The National Weather Service is forecasting an incredible amount of rain – even for a place that’s considered one of the rainiest on the planet – with as much as 35 inches or more locally on windward facing slopes and along the southeast side of the Big Island.

An unprecedented third hurricane threat

Back in August, Hurricane Lala passed to within about 30 miles of the Big Island – the closest approach of a hurricane to the Big Island on record – delivering over 40 inches of torrential rain in spots as one of the most prolific Hawaiian rainstorms on record, causing catastrophic flooding across multiple islands, damaging roads and infrastructure, and knocking out power to most customers across the state.

Lala was followed by Category 2 Hurricane Lowell only 3 weeks later, whose center passed about 70 miles west of Kauaʻi and only 40 miles west of Ni’ihau, two of the westernmost main Hawaiian Islands. Lowell was the strongest hurricane to affect this part of the state since Category 4 Iniki hit Kauaʻi head on in 1992.

Now Nolo threatens to be the third hurricane hit on Hawaii this year. Although hurricanes can affect Hawaii from time to time, prior to this year only 6 hurricanes on record – Dot (1959), Iwa (1982), Iniki (1992), Iselle (2014), Douglas (2020), and Hone (2024) – have passed within 50 miles of the state.

With the possibility of Nolo being the 3^rd hurricane in 2026 to pass within 50 miles of Hawaii, this amounts to three decades worth of hurricane threats to Hawaii in one year.

Hawaii is under their 3^rd hurricane watch this year – the most hurricane watches ever issued in a single year for the state – and has triple the number of hurricane watches than the entire U.S. mainland so far in 2026.

Needless to say, it’s been an exhausting and unprecedented year of hurricane threats for our 50^th state.

Polo briefly back to Category 5, forecast to hit Baja California Peninsula

Hurricane Polo regained some vigor Wednesday evening and early Thursday, returning to its earlier Category 5 status while centered only about 115 miles south of the Pacific side of southwest Mexico.

As of late Thursday morning, Polo was back to a Category 4, experiencing the short-term intensity fluctuations common with high-end hurricanes, but remained an extremely powerful and durable hurricane. Although its dangerous core of destructive winds will stay offshore, winds gusting to 40-plus mph and periods of heavy rain will affect parts of southwestern Mexico into Friday.

Polo will gradually pull away from Mexico into Saturday, but forecasts have come into agreement with it bending back toward Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula by late weekend into early next week where it’s forecast to come ashore as a weakening but still dangerous hurricane late Monday into Tuesday.

Interests in the region should monitor the forecasts closely over the weekend.

Residual moisture from Polo could also sneak into the desert southwest, enhancing a heavy monsoonal rains for parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and into the Four Corners by early next week.

Fay the comeback kid while continuing to defy forecasts

Fay just isn’t wanting to hang it up over the open north Atlantic. The system, which had a short stint as a tropical storm earlier this week before unraveling Tuesday evening, made an unexpected comeback Wednesday and has restrengthened into a tropical storm while safely over the open waters of the central Atlantic.

Fay has been a thorn in the side of forecast models, which whiffed on its initial development and missed again on its comeback tour. Thankfully this one isn’t close to land so the blown forecasts haven’t been a problem, but it’ll be interesting to see whether Fay overachieves and makes another run as the Atlantic’s first hurricane today before it weakens again this weekend.

For now at least, Fay is expected to stay underneath the hurricane threshold.

Atlantic mostly quiet otherwise

A strong disturbance southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands – now designated Invest 90L – has a high chance of short-term development.

90L will hook a hard right and has a short shelf life it does develop. Other than some blustery weather and periods of heavy rain for the Cabo Verde Islands today through Saturday, this one won’t pose any issues to land.

Though there’s still a small chance of an organizing nor’easter off the Eastern Seaboard to gain some tropical characteristics this weekend, it won’t appreciably change the impacts regardless.

NHC has chosen to keep the non-tropical low off its outlook map, likely to avoid confusion in messaging and out of sensitivity to those affected by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 (this is NOT at a Sandy scenario).

The demonstrators represented a range of causes, from calls for religious autonomy and greater freedoms in Tibet, Hong Kong and the ethnic region of Xinjiang to demands to keep China out of self-governed Taiwan.

Protests against visiting Chinese leaders are nothing new — in 2006, a woman heckled Xi's predecessor Hu Jintao at a White House welcome ceremony — but Xi has become the focus of attacks for his tough approach to tightening control over Xinjiang, Hong Kong and other regions and the Chinese military's growing threats to Taiwan, which he says must come under Chinese rule.

Crowds gathered behind a fence along Lafayette Park, waving flags and holding signs. Loudspeakers carried their voices across the park to the White House’s North Portico, where an honor guard and a red carpet awaited guests attending the state dinner.

The crowd chanted, “Xi Jinping has got to go” and “Shame! Shame on Xi Jinping!” The chants grew louder throughout the ceremony.

Pro-China demonstrators also turned out in Washington. Around 200 supporters of Xi gathered outside the hotel where he was staying, waving Chinese and American flags and chanting, “Welcome, welcome, a warm welcome.” They had banners reading, “A warm welcome to Chairman Xi on his visit to the U.S.” and “Hello, Uncle Xi.”

Meanwhile, protesters of the Xi's government gathered outside the Chinese Embassy in the morning before marching through the city. By late afternoon, a few hundred people gathered at a park near the White House to “unwelcome” Xi.

Many waved Tibetan flags and called for a “Free Tibet.” Others carried flags bearing the Chinese words for “freedom” and “democracy,” along with signs reading, “Keep Taiwan Free” and “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” a slogan associated with Hong Kong’s mass protests in 2019.

Anjali Tenzin Sonn, 17, joined a mostly Tibetan group calling for a free Tibet outside the U.S. Capitol. She said she felt compelled to participate after growing up hearing stories about her mother fleeing Tibet on foot and her grandfather suffering as a political prisoner. She described the protest as “inspirational.”

“I hope Emperor Xi won’t remain in power. I hope he can give Chinese people real freedom — freedom of speech and religion,” said Zhang Na, a 31-year-old warehouse worker in Los Angeles who traveled to the same protest.

Zhang said she became weary of China’s prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns and flew to Ecuador three years ago before walking to the United States through the southern border.

Yang Fan, a 39-year-old Christian, attended with his wife and daughter and held a handwritten sign calling for “freedom of religion” and an “end to dictatorship.” He said he wanted to stand up for Christians in China and hoped Xi would release those imprisoned for their religious beliefs.

“I would like to see the liberation of Hong Kong and the complete restoration of its freedoms,” said Melody Calkins, 30, who spent much of her childhood in Hong Kong.

Video shows deputies arresting Francisco Mendiola, 31, who officials said is homeless.

Investigators said Mendiola was drunk when he fired four shots inside an MIA garage. One of the bullets hit a car windshield.

Mendiola went before a Miami-Dade County judge on Thursday.

Mendiola was previously arrested in California in December for criminal charges at Los Angeles International Airport.

According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, he was sitting on a bench firing the gun when he was arrested.

It was a mad dash for cover as passengers were confused and worried there was an active shooter.

SKY10 flew over the chaos, which shut down parts of the airport for several hours.

Dozens of deputies with tactical gear could be seen swarming the departure area before it was opened back up.

Mendiola has been in Miami for a little less than a year.

He remains behind bars on a $26,000 bond.

Authorities said they are trying to figure out how obtained the gun.

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It happened in the 700 block of Southeast Eighth Street in the city’s Rio Vista neighborhood.

According to Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue, nobody was hurt. The boom truck belonged to Cooper Crane, a company based in West Park.

“Luckily, there was nobody home at the time,” Frank Guzman, an FLFR spokesperson, said.

Officials said crews were working to install a fumigation tent when the weight of the load pulled the crane down.

Video from Sky 10 shows that the crane took out a small section of the outer portion of the home’s roof; it did not appear to have significantly penetrated it.

Guzman said that city inspectors “determined that it is an unsafe structure.”

Cooper Crane had to bring out another crane to lift the equipment off of the home.

Neighbors said the mishap represents a setback for a family that was about to move into the home.

The firm's report published Wednesday found that Dale Caldwell violated the state’s policy prohibiting discrimination in the workplace. It said he made an advance toward a staffer’s friend and when he was rebuffed, he told the staffer, “you young women are looking for young sperm.”

“The investigation found that the Lieutenant Governor engaged in serious, repeated violations of state policy and failed to uphold the responsibilities of his office,” Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement Thursday.

Caldwell’s lawyer, Thomas Calcagni, disputed the allegations, calling the investigation a one-sided operation that did not include necessary due process.

“The Lieutenant Governor was not provided a meaningful opportunity to address each of these anonymous allegations,” he said in a statement.

Caldwell “categorically denies” making the alleged statement about women wanting sperm, the lawyer said, adding that a state police trooper who was present at the time didn’t hear it said.

The report also accused Caldwell of breaking the state’s ethics rules by trying to get a promotion for a state employee he was dating.

In May, Caldwell emailed an unnamed official recommending his romantic partner, who he called a friend, for a promotion to a leadership position, the report said. He included her resume and a letter she sent expressing interest in a senior leadership position, according to the report.

Calcagni acknowledged that Caldwell had recommended a promotion for a woman with whom he had a personal relationship, but said he believed she was qualified for the job and hadn’t ordered anyone to promote her.

“There is a difference between failing to disclose a personal relationship when forwarding the resume of a qualified job applicant and actually using the power of public office to secure a job or financial benefit for someone,” Calcagni said.

The report also found seven ticketed events between Feb. 19 and May 23 where Caldwell reportedly brought one or more guests without paying for them. The events included one at the State Opera of New Jersey and a Rowan University Rosa Parks Scholarship Luncheon, with tickets ranging from $65 to $300, according to the report.

“Where a sponsor waives admission to an event for an official’s family member, friend, or date, the value of that admission is an impermissible benefit to the official,” the report said.

In May, Caldwell sent a message responding to accusations of ethical violations against him. He denied several claims, including that he gives out his businesses cards to women for inappropriate reasons, calling that “categorically untrue.”

“Unfortunately, in this current political environment, false accusations, especially against people of color, seem to be commonplace,” Caldwell, who is Black, wrote.

Sherrill, a Democrat, said Caldwell’s “ethical lapses” continued even with multiple warnings and trainings. She called his resignation “in the best interest of New Jersey residents.”

“These violations substantiated in the investigation reflect a pattern of behavior that does not meet the standards of this Administration,” she said.

A Methodist pastor, Caldwell was president of Centenary University for two years before being elected lieutenant governor, a post that has existed in New Jersey for around 20 years.

While candidates for governor get to pick the people who will appear on the ticket as their running mate, and serve as lieutenant governor, it is an independently elected position.

New Jersey’s governor cannot fire Caldwell. She has the power to assign, or remove, him from certain responsibilities, and could effectively sideline him from playing an active role in state government. But lieutenant governors can be impeached and removed from office by the Legislature.

As lieutenant governor, Caldwell is first in line to become the governor if Sherrill were to die, be removed from office or become incapacitated. The lieutenant governor’s office, while more than ceremonial, is largely subservient to the governor.

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Golden reported from Seattle.

En las últimas semanas han surgido tormentas tropicales en lo que parecería una cadena de montaje, ya que las condiciones de El Niño que aparecieron en junio han hecho que las aguas se calienten más de lo normal, lo que ha desencadenado una serie de fenómenos meteorológicos inusuales en muchas partes del mundo.

“Se encamina a ser quizá el El Niño más intenso que se haya registrado”, expresó Brian McNoldy, experto en huracanes de la Universidad de Miami.

La cantidad de huracanes en el Pacífico oriental ya ha superado lo que ocurre en una temporada típica. Tan sólo esta semana, el huracán Polo empapó la costa del Pacífico mexicano mientras oscila entre las categorías 4 y 5. Y en Hawai, cuya población está cansada de las tormentas, existe la posibilidad de que el huracán Nolo genere inundaciones catastróficas.

Durante El Niño, los vientos superficiales de baja altitud que soplan de este a oeste a través del Pacífico se debilitan o a veces se invierten. Eso provoca una alteración en la corriente en chorro e impulsa calor global récord, sequías severas, incendios forestales y la reducción de los suministros de agua.

Los episodios de El Niño no siguen un calendario regular y ocurren, en promedio, cada dos a siete años. Algunos pueden ser leves. Otros pueden golpear con fuerza. McNoldy pronosticó que el actual El Niño alcanzará su punto máximo durante el próximo invierno, pero se prolongará hasta 2027.

“No se desactiva de inmediato”, comentó.

Mientras que la atención se centra en el aumento del número de tormentas en el Pacífico, los fenómenos de El Niño, por el contrario, reducen la actividad de huracanes en el océano Atlántico: la actividad meteorológica tropical en ese océano ha sido prácticamente nula este año.

Un año turbocargado de huracanes en el Pacífico

Gracias a El Niño, el Pacífico oriental y el Pacífico central han registrado hasta la fecha cuatro tormentas tropicales más de lo normal, en un momento en que a la temporada de huracanes aún le faltan más de dos meses, señaló Matthew Rosencrans, principal pronosticador de la temporada de huracanes del Servicio Meteorológico Nacional, perteneciente a la Oficina Nacional de Administración Oceánica y Atmosférica de Estados Unidos (NOAA, por sus siglas en inglés).

De 1991 a 2020, hubo un promedio de 15 tormentas con nombre por temporada en el Pacífico oriental. La temporada en ese océano se extiende del 15 de mayo al 30 de noviembre.

Pero, ¿superar el promedio anual en septiembre? “Esa es otra historia”, apuntó Rosencrans.

Lo que también distingue a las tormentas de este año impulsadas por El Niño es que tres huracanes del Pacífico han alcanzado fuerza de categoría 5, igualando un récord establecido en 2002, también durante un episodio de El Niño, explicó.

La temporada más activa registrada en el Pacífico oriental fue la de 1992, cuando hubo 25 tormentas con nombre, explicó Rosencrans. En el Pacífico central fueron 14 en 2015.

En ese año hubo nueve huracanes de categoría 3 o superior en el Pacífico oriental, pero no se reportaron muertes. Debido a El Niño, los pronosticadores señalaron que las tormentas del Pacífico oriental se formaron más al oeste y siguieron trayectorias más en esa dirección, permaneciendo sobre el océano abierto durante todo su ciclo.

Durante otro fuerte episodio de El Niño en 1997, cientos de personas murieron cuando el huracán Paulina arrasó la costa del Pacífico de México. Ese mismo año, la tormenta tropical Nora empapó de manera inusual el suroeste de Arizona, una zona sin litoral. Y una tormenta de diciembre en el sur de California provocó inundaciones que arrastraron autos hacia un canal de tormentas y motivaron evacuaciones en algunos parques de casas móviles.

En 1998, se culpó a El Niño de inundaciones en China en las que murieron 4.150 personas, la mayoría a lo largo del río Yangtsé.

Hawai vuelve a quedar en la mira

El estado ha sentido la furia de dos huracanes durante el último mes. Lala en agosto y Lowell en los primeros días de septiembre se combinaron para destruir o dañar más de 510 viviendas y causar 168 millones de dólares en daños a la infraestructura pública. Lala también provocó 21,5 millones de dólares en daños en 38 escuelas.

Se prevé que Nolo, que se intensificó hasta convertirse en huracán la noche del jueves, sea el tercero. Los meteorólogos dicen que el meteoro podría arrojar en Hawai cantidades de lluvia medidas en pies, no en pulgadas.

Además, las fuertes lluvias de marzo causaron las peores inundaciones en Hawai en dos décadas. A eso le siguió en mayo un terremoto de magnitud 6,0, lo que llevó al gobernador Josh Green a señalar que este año ha sido “diferente a todo lo que recuerdo”.

Dos huracanes pasaron a menos de 320 kilómetros (200 millas) de Hawai en 1957, pero eso no volvió a ocurrir durante más de medio siglo. Luego sucedió en 2014, 2016 y 2018, antes de la tríada prevista para este año.

Los meteorólogos suelen preocuparse por la “fatiga de preparación”, cuando las comunidades se alistan para tormentas que nunca llegan o que están por debajo de su fuerza potencial. Pero John Bravender, meteorólogo de coordinación de alertas del servicio meteorológico, dijo que 2026 ha generado un tipo distinto de desgaste en la población de Hawai.

“El hecho de que hayamos tenido estos impactos dañinos que siguen ocurriendo y, mientras nos recuperamos de ellos, tenemos que prepararnos para el siguiente evento... eso es algo nuevo que realmente agota los recursos y conduce a esta sensación general de que esta es una temporada de huracanes muy ajetreada para nosotros”, expresó.

Los residentes entienden los riesgos y se están acostumbrando más a prepararse.

“Creo que los miembros de la comunidad se dan cuenta de lo peligroso que puede ser el clima, de lo importante que es que sean autosuficientes, tengan comida, agua y también cuiden de sus vecinos”, manifestó Bravender.

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La periodista de The Associated Press Gabriela Aoun Angueira contribuyó a este despacho.

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Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.

Even as a sizable Cuban delegation was approved to come to the U.N. General Assembly this week, the State Department is now weighing “strict controls” on the officials who plan to return next month for an annual U.N. vote on the decadeslong U.S. economic embargo on Cuba.

That is according to U.S. officials and an internal document obtained by The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because a decision on the details of what the restrictions will entail has not yet been finalized.

Potential plans to further restrict officials in New York for diplomatic work come as Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez bemoaned the “lack of progress” in negotiations between Havana and Washington. He also blasted the oil blockade that the Trump administration imposed on the Caribbean island nation in January.

“What defines the present status of the Cuba-U.S. relations is the brutal tightening of the economic and financial blockade and the total oil siege imposed on our country, which is equivalent to a naval blockade,” Rodríguez said in Spanish during an AP interview on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders.

His comments, made through a translator, follow President Donald Trump's wide-ranging U.N. address Tuesday, when he again called Cuba a “failed state" and said he was “seeking a fundamental ⁠change in the situation in Cuba.”

His administration has been trying to force changes to Cuba’s political system by cutting off fuel to the island, leading to massive power outages that affect basic activities such as cooking, water supply, and internet and telephone service.

“Communism will never be coming to America, but freedom ​will be coming to Cuba," Trump said at the U.N.

US-Cuba negotiations once again reach an impasse

Rodríguez, who has served as foreign minister since 2009, said that while no meetings now are scheduled with U.S. officials, “Cuba remains willing to keep these channel of contacts open.”

He refused to say when the last talks took place, noting that while past conversations have been “respectful,” the public statements and policy decisions made by U.S. officials afterward have been “extremely aggressive."

Millions of people have lost access to electricity as Cuba’s power grid has collapsed at least six times since the U.S. energy blockade began at the start of the year. The restrictions prevent Cuba from importing fuel needed to operate its thermoelectric power plants or replacement parts to maintain infrastructure that in many cases has become obsolete.

Other U.S. measures have included imposing more economic penalties on industries in the already heavily sanctioned country and broadening enforcement of laws that bar Americans who visit the island from dealings with government-owned or -affiliated businesses.

"These measures hamper some processes that could lead to discussion of things in the common interests of both nations," Rodríguez said.

Havana has recently integrated historic economic reforms, opening up the island to the private sector. Officials, including Rodríguez, have said these are not concessions to the U.S., but they are moving in the direction the Trump administration wants.

Cuban delegation could face new obstacles to visit United Nations

Rodríguez and other members of his government are planning to return to New York next month for the annual U.N. General Assembly vote on the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba — a vote that has historically condemned American policy toward the island by overwhelming margins.

Cuban officials already face heavy restrictions in New York and Washington due to their U.S. designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, with travel and commuting limited to a 25-mile radius of the U.N. headquarters in Manhattan.

But any new U.S. travel restrictions could make it more difficult or impossible for Cuban officials to attend the vote, which has been taking place for more than three decades.

Last year, Washington’s isolation on the issue was softened as countries like Argentina, Ukraine and Hungary — all closely allied with the Trump administration — rejected the Cuban-backed effort even as friction has grown in the region around American military actions there.

While General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, they reflect world opinion.

Rodríguez told the AP last year that the U.S. had mounted a pressure campaign to influence the vote. He said then that Havana had heard from other countries, mainly in Europe, that the State Department was encouraging them to vote against the resolution.

In response, a State Department spokesperson said last year that “the Cuban regime does not deserve the backing of America’s democratic allies.”

Democracy in action: Domestic vote-by-mail ballots were in the first batch, which makes up more than 300,000 voters.

“It is excitement because this is a huge job, getting them all processed, getting them organized on these containers and ready to go on the trucks, getting the postal service to bring out these 18 wheelers, having FHP here to escort the trucks, there is a lot of coordination and organization that goes into this,” said Joe Scott, the Broward Supervisor of Elections.

Scott said this is one of several major projects that have to happen during an election for a big county like Broward.

“We want to stop and celebrate those victories along the way because that is what keeps the team moving and pushing on to the next goal,” Scott said about his leadership style.

Scott had some tips for voters.

“There is no need to wait. You can get that ballot completed and mail it back to us, or you can bring it to one of our office locations,” Scott said.

Early voting begins on Oct. 19.

“We will actually have a ballot return station at all of our early voting sites, 30 locations across Broward County,” Scott said. “To vote early drop their vote by mail ballot there.”

Alina Garcia, Miami-Dade County’s supervisor of elections, also gave voters’ tips.

“It is important that you check your mailboxes,” Garcia said. She also added, “First, take your time and review your entire ballot carefully, read the instructions, review the contests.”

Scott said voters can rest assured that the system is going to work the way it has worked the past couple of cycles.

“You get your ballot, you make sure you sign that envelope, and you send it back to us, we are going to make sure that signature matches,” Scott said. “If that signature matches, your vote will be counted. If it doesn’t, we are going to reach out to you and make sure you are aware of the problem and have an opportunity to fix that problem.”

Garcia said there aren’t any problems with mailing it back.

“Either you put it in the mailbox, or you can bring it to one of our early voting locations,” Garcia said. “We are going to have 28 voting locations.”

Scott said there have been some pretty favorable court decisions that are going to make sure that the status quo is maintained.

“We continue to operate in a way that is proven and true over multiple election cycles now,” Scott said.

Related links

BY EXECUTIVE ORDER - https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/ensuring-citizenship-verification-and-integrity-in-federal-elections/

A MOVE REJECTED BY THE SUPREME COURT https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a305_4g15.pdf

ACCORDING TO REUTERS: “The White House defended U.S. President Donald Trump’s ability ‌to vote by mail, after reports the president cast his ballot by mail in Florida’s Republican primary despite previously blasting mail-in ballots as ‘cheating’.” https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/white-house-defends-trumps-ability-vote-by-mail-2026-08-18/

THE MIT ELECTION DATA AND SCIENCE LAB SAYS DOCUMENTED INSTANCES OF VOTE-BY-MAIL FRAUD ARE RARE “Documented instances of fraud related to VBM are rare and research finds no reason to believe that fraud is more common in VBM states.” https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/voting-mail-and-absentee-voting

THE BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER SAYS MAIL VOTING IS SAFE - SECURE - AND RELIABLE - ADDING “Mail ballots suspected of fraudulent activity are set aside for further investigation and, when appropriate, are referred to law enforcement for prosecution.” https://bipartisanpolicy.org/report/mail-voting-is-safe-secure/

BY THE NUMBERS:

Miami-Dade: 202,547 VBM ballots to be mailed today

Broward: 136,000 VBM ballots to be mailed today

RESEARCH THE ISSUES AND CANDIDATES:

Registered Voters: Head to the Vote 2026 section of Local10.com to research the issues and candidates you have the opportunity to weigh in on.

STILL NEED TO REGISTER TO VOTE?

• Deadline to register to vote: October 5, 2026
• Deadline to request that ballot be mailed: October 22, 2026 Source: https://dos.fl.gov/elections/for-voters/election-dates/

Broward: https://browardvotes.gov

Miami-Dade: https://www.votemiamidade.gov/elections/detail.page?mduid_election=ele1787926699492371

Monroe Co FL: https://www.votemonroeflkeys.gov

Palm Beach: https://www.votepalmbeach.gov

Tropical storms have spawned in what seems like assembly-line fashion in recent weeks, as El Nino conditions that emerged in June have caused waters to grow warmer than normal, setting off a chain of unusual weather around much of the world.

“It’s ramping up to be perhaps the strongest El Nino on record,” University of Miami hurricane expert Brian McNoldy said.

The number of hurricanes in the eastern Pacific has already surpassed what occurs in a typical season. This week alone, Hurricane Polo drenched Mexico’s Pacific coast as it seesaws between Category 4 and 5. And in storm-weary Hawaii, there’s the potential for catastrophic flooding from a growing Hurricane Nolo.

During El Nino, low-level surface winds blowing from east to west across the Pacific are weakened or sometimes reversed. It causes a shift in the jet stream and drives record global heat, severe droughts, wildfires and shrinking water supplies.

El Ninos don’t follow a regular schedule, occurring every two to seven years on average. Some can be mild. Others can pack a punch. McNoldy predicted that the current El Nino will peak during the coming winter but linger into 2027.

“It doesn’t turn off right away,” he said.

While the focus is on the increased number of Pacific storms, El Ninos conversely curtail hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean: Tropical weather activity in the Atlantic has been virtually silent this year.

A turbocharged hurricane year in the Pacific

Thanks to El Nino, both the eastern Pacific and the central Pacific have seen four more tropical storms than is normal to date with more than two months left in the hurricane season, said Matthew Rosencrans, lead hurricane season forecaster with NOAA’s National Weather Service.

From 1991 to 2020, there was an average of 15 named storms in the eastern Pacific per season, which runs from May 15 to Nov. 30.

But surpassing the yearly average in September? “That's a different story,” Rosencrans said.

What also sets this year’s El Nino-fueled storms apart is that three Pacific hurricanes have reached Category 5 strength, tying a record set in 2002, also during an El Nino, he said.

The most active season on record in the eastern Pacific was 1992, when there were 25 named storms, Rosencrans said. For the central Pacific, it was 14 in 2015.

In 2015 there were nine major hurricanes, of Category 3 or higher, in the eastern Pacific, but no reported deaths. Due to El Nino, forecasters said the eastern Pacific storms formed farther west and tracked more westward, remaining over the open ocean throughout their cycle.

During another strong El Nino in 1997, hundreds of people died when Hurricane Pauline tore across Mexico’s Pacific coast. That same year Tropical Storm Nora gave landlocked southwestern Arizona an unusual soaking. And a December storm in Southern California caused flooding that swept cars into a storm channel and prompted evacuations of some mobile home parks.

In 1998, El Nino was blamed for flooding in China that killed 4,150 people, most along the Yangtze River.

Hawaii finds itself in the crosshairs again

Hawaii has felt the wrath of two hurricanes over the past month. Lala in August and Lowell in early September combined to destroy or damage more than 510 homes and cause $168 million in damage to public infrastructure. Lala also caused $21.5 million in damage to 38 schools.

Nolo, which strengthened to a hurricane Thursday night, is expected to make it three. Forecasters say the storm could drop rainfall amounts on Hawaii that are measured in feet, not inches.

On top of that, heavy rains in March caused the worst flooding to hit Hawaii in two decades. That was followed in May by a magnitude-6.0 earthquake, prompting Gov. Josh Green to remark that this year has been “unlike anything I can recall.”

Two hurricanes came within 200 miles (320 kilometers) of Hawaii in 1957, but that did not happen again for more than a half century. Then it occurred in 2014, 2016 and 2018 before this year's predicted trifecta.

Meteorologists often worry about “preparedness fatigue,” when communities gear up for storms that never arrive or fall short of their potential strength. But John Bravender, a weather service warning coordination meteorologist, said 2026 has yielded a different type of weariness in Hawaii.

“The fact that we’ve had these damaging impacts that keep happening, and as we’re recovering from them, we have to get ready for the next event — that’s a new one that really drains the resources and leads to this overall sense that this is a very busy hurricane season for us,” he said.

Residents understand the risks and are getting more accustomed to preparing.

“I think community members realize how dangerous the weather can be, how important it is for them to be self-sufficient, have food, water and also look out for their neighbors,” Bravender said.

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Associated Press writer Gabriela Aoun Angueira contributed to this report.

Min Woo Lee and Sungjae Im had the advantage on four straight holes along the back nine and finally converted for a 1-up lead. And then the Americans took over at just the right time. Burns hit an 8-iron to 2 feet on the 14th. Scheffler closed out the International side with a superb bunker shot on the 18th to secure par for a 1-up victory.

The lead fourballs match was the swing match as the Americans took a 3-2 lead.

“We certainly haven’t had the results that we’ve hoped for,” Burns said. “I feel like at times in the past we’ve played pretty well and just gotten beat. So it probably just was a little bit of a sigh of relief to finally get a point and just kind of let that out.”

It was the ninth time in the last 10 Presidents Cup the Americans won the opening session in a competition they have turned into an exhibition with 10 straight victories and only one loss since these matches began in 1994.

The Internationals showed plenty of fighting spirit, right down to the last hole in the lead match. Both captains came away pleased.

“A session win is a session win. We’re going to take it any way we can get it,” Snedeker said.

“We would have loved to have won the session,” International captain Geoff Ogilvy said. “But 2-3, we had a chat when we got back to the room, and I’m proud of the boys and I’m proud of how they played today. They’re all pretty excited to get out there tomorrow.”

Five matches of foursomes are scheduled for Friday at Medinah Country Club. Burns and Scheffler are out first against Canadians Corey Conners and Nick Taylor.

Jackson Koivun also wasted little time getting a point on the board. The 21-year-old Koivun, who turned pro just over three months ago, teamed with Justin Thomas in a 4-and-3 victory over Conners and Nico Echavarria, who managed only three birdies in the easier better-ball format.

Burns already delivered one big moment by making an 18-foot birdie putt on the par-3 ninth with Lee in tight for a sure birdie. But his 8-iron from 172 yards on the 14th swung momentum so much that Scheffler called it the “shot of the match.”

“I was basically out of the hole after my second shot. Sam was essentially was playing two-on-one there,” Scheffler said. “So for him to step up there and hit a really nice shot, I think you can definitely feel the momentum. He was put in a tough spot there, and he responded the way he knows how.”

The Internationals picked up two wins behind Hideki Matsuyama and Ryo Hisatsune — the first time for two Japanese players in the Presidents Cup since 1998 — and Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim in the anchor match.

“It’s been a long time. I’ve been waiting for another guy from Japan to come play with me, and I was really happy today,” Matsuyama said.

The Americans got their other win behind Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa, who never trailed against Adam Scott and Ryan Fox in a 3-and-2 win.

For so much of a cloudy afternoon at Medinah, two wins apiece looked certain for the Americans and the Internationals. Up for grabs was the opening match, which was tight the entire way.

Scheffler and Burns, 0-3-1 as partners in the Presidents Cup and Ryder Cup, birdied the opening four holes. The Internationals ran off four straight birdies of their own to square the match through five holes. It was clear for so much of the day this would decide who had the lead.

Im and Lee, whose putting hurt them along the back nine, each missed par putts on the 17th to fall behind. Lee went long of the green, and Im gassed his 40-foot birdie putt some 15 feet by the hole. They couldn't catch up on the closing hole.

Koivun is the first player to win a Walker Cup point and a Presidents Cup point just over a year apart. He was part of Auburn's NCAA title team in June. He won his first PGA Tour title in the 3M Open in his third start. And now he's part of a dominant American team.

He said he told Thomas that “once I get my first tee shot out of the way, I’m going to be good.” His second tee shot went out-of-bounds, though Thomas saved it with a beautiful bunker shot to halve the hole. Koivun's wedge to 7 feet for birdie on the par-5 sixth gave them a 3-up lead, and the Internationals never seriously threatened the rest of the way.

Thomas improved to 7-0 in fourballs at the Presidents Cup.

“First two holes, definitely a little shaky,” Koivun said. “But after that kind of found a groove. Me and J.T., we played really well out there. He picked me up when I didn’t play too hot, so thankful for that, but we had a fun time.”

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See AP’s full golf coverage here

Rolando Alemán, 55, was born in the town of Cruces, in Cuba’s Cienfuegos province. Father and son were working for Professional Ocean Service Corp, a company that cleans planes at MIA.

“We arrived in this country 10 years ago,” Duviel Alemán, 32, said in Spanish.

On Sept. 6, the Boeing 767-300 cargo plane struck the white 2012 Ford E-150 Econoline work van that Rolando Alemán was traveling in.

Attorney Judd Rosen said Duviel Alemán is suing the plane’s owners, Amazon, the related Amazon companies, and anyone associated with the leasing.

“Their hearts have been broken,” Rosen said about the Alemán family.

Duviel Alemán was supposed to be in the van, but he was having a medical emergency.

“Duviel has experienced and will always experience what’s known as survivors’ guilt,” Rosen said."

The jet also struck Julio Pineda, Yoel Rodriguez, Carlos Acosta, Javierkys Reyes, Roosevelt Perdomo, and Ridoel Averhoff.

Pineda, 75; Rodriguez, 53; Acosta, 53; and Reyes, 47, died while working for Professional Ocean Service Corp.,

Perdomo, 36, and Averhoff, 32, were injured. The jet also struck Eugenio Corredor, who was driving a Toyota Corolla Cross SUV on Northwest 67th Avenue outside of MIA. Corredor, 79, was also injured.

Joseph Carroll and Jaime Silva, the pilot and the co-pilot of the Boeing 767-300 operated by 21 Air for Amazon, suffered minor injuries.

Carroll, 55, and Silva, 37, were released from the hospital to face federal and local scrutiny over the crash. Perdomo, Averhoff, and Corredor were at Jackson Memorial Hospital. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

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James' departure was still on general manager Rob Pelinka's mind when he held his start-of-the-season news conference with coach JJ Redick on Thursday. The general manager also exuded optimism about his first discussions with the Lakers' latest new owners, praised the continued additions to his front office and got excited about the major changes to their roster, headlined by the addition of center Walker Kessler.

Pelinka began the afternoon by thanking James profusely for their eight years together, but he declined to go into any detail about the dissolution of the Lakers' partnership with the top scorer in NBA history and the focal point of their franchise. James informed the Lakers on June 30 that he wouldn’t return, and he chose the Philadelphia 76ers on July 24.

“We’re grateful for the LeBron era, and I think the communications with him this offseason were held diplomatically and professionally and honestly,” Pelinka said. “It was done amicably, professionally, gracefully, and we look at the whole thing with gratitude. It was a great era, and we're grateful for it.”

James' eight seasons with the Lakers were the longest continuous stretch with a single team of his NBA career, and he won the franchise's 17th championship in 2020 while returning it to consistent playoff success, if not annual title contention. He even became the first father to play alongside his son in league history, teaming up with Lakers guard Bronny James for the past two seasons.

When James left his son behind to move to Philadelphia, he pointedly did it on a two-year, $8 million deal — a steep discount that the Lakers never got. But if Pelinka and the Lakers feel any disappointment about the circumstances of James' departure, the GM has no intention of revealing it publicly.

Instead, the Lakers are moving on with a firm focus on maximizing the talents of NBA scoring champion Luka Doncic and fellow high-scoring guard Austin Reaves.

“Luka is the world’s greatest offensive player, and for us to have an opportunity to have that player in our building every night as a 26-year-old is special, and it requires us to do special things to build a team around it,” Pelinka said. “That’s what we started this summer, and we’re really, really happy with the way it’s looking so far.”

The biggest move was the acquisition of Kessler, the 7-foot-2 center acquired from Utah for a host of first-round draft capital and then signed to a four-year, $130 million contract. Kessler fills Doncic's longstanding desire for a center who can impact the game on both ends, both as a rim protector and a rim-rocking lob finisher.

“I think Walker is a perfect fit for Luka and AR, just in terms of his rim protection and really being an anchor for our defense,” Redick said. “That’s an area we’ve struggled with.”

Redick is already working on the changes he'll make with James' departure and Kessler's arrival. The Lakers have done copious defensive switching in recent years, but Redick understandably wants Kessler to spend his time protecting the rim. Redick also intends to go deeper into his bench on a consistent basis, because that bench has improved: “We're going to play more guys this year. We're just naturally deeper.”

Those additions include Collin Sexton, Quentin Grimes, Kevon Looney, Sandro Mamukelashvili, Ziaire Williams, Matisse Thybulle and rookie Cameron Carr, who is already drawing rave reviews from the Lakers' staff.

When asked to speculate on the Lakers' starting lineup, Redick was typically blunt and sarcastic: “I'm pretty confident in three of the spots. The other two spots will not be white guys.”

Doncic, Reaves and Kessler are white, as is 15-year NBA veteran Redick.

Even after being sold for the second time in two years, the Lakers are continuing to bolster their infrastructure with changes begun during Dodgers owner Mark Walter's brief stewardship. Pelinka said he has added more than 15 people to his front office, investing heavily in scouting and development with the goal of becoming the NBA's best in those categories.

Pelinka also expressed a desire for continuity in the Lakers' roster after years of wholesale upheaval in their desperate attempts to assemble a championship-caliber team around James as he entered his third NBA decade.

“One of the things we really wanted to lean into was a team that lined up in age with Luca and AR,” Pelinka said. “We want this team to grow together, and I think we were very intentional to get younger and deeper. I think if you look at our roster, that thesis was consistent throughout.”

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See AP’s full NBA coverage here

Juszczyk was fined $14,926 after he imitated drinking a beverage following a catch in the third quarter of San Francisco's win over the Miami Dolphins on Sunday.

“Your imitation of chugging a beer constituted an offensive demonstration and could reasonably be construed as being in poor taste,” the league wrote in the fine letter to Juszczyk, which was obtained by The Associated Press. “Players are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that reflects positively on the game and is consistent with NFL standards of sportsmanship.”

Juszczyk, whose nickname is “Juice,” has been doing a version of that celebration throughout his career in San Francisco in response to 49ers fans chanting his nickname after catches or other big plays.

“I don't know how else to say it. I wasn’t drinking beer in my celebration,” Juszczyk said Thursday. “I think you guys all know my nickname is Juice. I have Juice on my pads. The stadium yells ‘Juice’ when I catch the ball. When I celebrate, I celebrate by drinking juice, and it’s been that way for years. So I was surprised as anybody when I got a fine this week.”

The fine was first reported by ESPN.

Juszczyk said he initially thought coach Kyle Shanahan was joking when he told him about the fine and hopes it gets removed after his appeal next week.

The NFL has vowed to crack down on celebrations this season and Juszczyk wasn't the only player to get fined this week. Juszczyk said he was told about six other players got fined. That includes Cincinnati receivers Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins with Chase saying the two were docked for their new “people’s elbow” celebration.

Chase insisted the “people’s elbow” celebration, which involves grabbing his right elbow with his left hand and flopping the right arm forward, isn’t the sort of off-color humor others have made it out to be on social media, and they are simply creating a new way to signal a first down.

Juszczyk said he doesn't remember what the players were told about the crackdown during preseason but he never would have thought it would have applied to his longtime celebration.

Juszczyk's teammates are amused by the situation, with tight end George Kittle saying that his new nickname will be “Beer” instead of “Juice.”

Juszczyk himself had fun with it. Before talking to the media, he put a container on his locker shelf wrapped in white paper and “NOT BEER” written on it. He also had a picture of a juice box with his uniform number 44 displayed.

“That’s the other side of it, is I don’t even drink beer,” Juszczyk said. “I maybe drink like five times a year in the offseason. It’s usually with George because he peer pressures me.”

Juszczyk has been the 49ers' nominee for the Art Rooney Award for sportsmanship for the past six seasons. The only fines he has had previously are for illegal use of the helmet and low blocks. Juszczyk was fined $20,033 for illegal use of helmet in Week 1 and will be appealing that as well next week.

Juszczyk is in his 14th season in the NFL and 10th with San Francisco. He has made the Pro Bowl 10 times and was an All-Pro in 2023 and '25.

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AP Pro Football Writer Rob Maaddi and AP freelancer Jay Morrison contributed to this report.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

Friday will offer sunshine, scattered clouds and a gentle, north breeze. Few showers could pop during the afternoon. Temperatures will make a run for 90°F. Conditions will be slightly less humid than the previous day.

Lauderhill Mayor Denise Grant told Local 10 the city is safer under her leadership.

“Crime has gone down in the city as data shows,” she said. “We have ensured that a geobond has been passed, which will help to fortify all of our capital improvements and making sure as well that there’s more police officers on the ground.”

Running against Grant is public administrator Pauline Ricketts.

“The reason that I’m running for mayor is I wanted to see the next generation of leadership take a stand for the things that we desire in our community,” she said.

A hot topic for Lauderhill residents is affordability in a state with a rising cost of living.

“I believe that one of the things that we can do is look at how we can revitalize some of the properties that are no longer being used and revitalize that to make affordable housing,” said Ricketts.

She also highlighted existing programs that can alleviate the housing struggles.

“The Lauderhill Housing Authority, they have a program where they’ve done it before, where they’ve taken old condos and revitalized them and rented them out at affordable housing rates at the different AMIs, 20%, 60%, and 120% AMI,” said Ricketts.

Grant emphasized assistance for families on a pathway to homeownership.

“We’re working with the county, making sure as well that we have programs in our city that will be able to help families that are first-time buyers,” she said. “We also are helping those individuals that are already in their homes and say for instance they have some challenges to pay their mortgage and their rent.”

The forward's goal made the score 1-1 early in the second half. He then jogged to the corner, pulled out the corner flag, dropped his right knee to the grass and rested the pole on the back of his left hand before making a firing gesture. It wasn’t immediately clear if Farchi was simulating a pool cue shot or a weapon.

The referee promptly showed the Colorado Rapids forward a second yellow card, just four minutes after his first, leading to a red card.

Romano Schmid’s penalty had opened the scoring. Phillipp Mwene and Saša Kalajdžić scored in the final minutes for Austria to win the game 3-1.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Instead, they matter-of-factly formed a handshake line, as if their 9-1 win over the Royals was any 'ol mid-summer matinee.

They were saving the party for the clubhouse.

The White Sox clinched no worse than one of three AL wild-card spots with the rout in Kansas City, and in the plastic-draped visiting locker room, the bottles of Moët were stacking up quickly. Miguel Vargas was drenched, Munetaka Murakami was beaming and a team expected to finish last in the AL Central was relishing in a most improbable postseason appearance.

“This means a lot for us,” Vargas said. “We've been chasing this moment for a long time. It's special for us. It's special for the whole organization. This is a special group of guys, and this is the most fun we can have.”

That might be a bit of hyperbole. The White Sox could be replicating — or, one-upping — the celebration this weekend.

That's because they still have their sights set on a division title. The White Sox began the day just a game back of Cleveland, which was finishing a three-game set in Boston later Thursday. Chicago was headed home for three games against last-place Colorado, while the Guardians were getting ready to fly to Kansas City, where they wrap up their regular season this weekend.

Maybe that's why the White Sox showed some restraint in celebrating their postseason berth right in front of the Royals.

They could still use a little help from them.

“They know what this is about,” White Sox manager Will Venable said. “This comes with the expectation that this was going to happen, which is really cool. They're definitely letting loose right now, we'll have a fun plane ride, but then back to business tomorrow.”

It was a charmed all-around day for the city of Chicago. Just as the White Sox were securing a postseason pass, the Cubs were tying up a 2-1 win over the Marlins, clinching a wild-card spot of their own in the NL playoffs. Both Chicago teams reached the postseason for the fourth time after 1906, 2008 and 2020.

The Cubs made it last year, too, when the White Sox were busy losing 102 games and seemed to have little reason to hope.

It wasn't just that the White Sox were two years removed from losing 121 games, setting a post-1900 record, or that no team had made the playoffs after consecutive 100-loss seasons — let alone three in a row. But even midway through April, they were making good — err, bad? — on most folks' expectations, starting 6-13 and looking every bit the part of a perennial loser.

But then their youngsters starting slugging, and the White Sox started piling up wins.

Murakami, who signed a two-year, $34 million deal in December — after the White Sox paid a $6,575,000 posting fee to the Yakult Swallows — has 33 homers and drove in his 74th run Thursday. Vargas has been receiving some MVP hype after hitting 33 homers of his own and driving in 92. And Colson Montgomery, who on Thursday tied Mark Reynolds' season record of 223 strikeouts, has masked all those whiffs by hitting 31 homers and driving in 87 runs.

“W’s are all that matters,” Montgomery said, Champagne and beer dripping from his goggles in the middle of the pandemonium. “You see this? This is all that matters. Whatever I can do to help the team, that’s all I care about.”

Chicago's trade of left-handed ace Garrett Crochet to the Red Sox in December 2024 also has paid long-term dividends.

Three players that the White Sox landed in the deal — Kyle Teel, Chase Meidroth and Braden Montgomery — were in the lineup Thursday, and all played a big role in helping the White Sox clinch the 12th postseason appearance.

Teel homered, reached base five times and scored three runs. Meidroth had a couple of hits, extending his on-base streak to 15 games. And batting last in the order, Montgomery had a hit and scored during a three-run second inning that broke open the game.

It was 6-0 after two innings and 8-0 after four. And pretty soon, plastic tarps were going up in the visitors clubhouse, an almost unfathomable party just 90 minutes away.

“This is what the White Sox is. We come together,” Murakami said, “and this is not the end. We’re going to start from here.”

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

Looking glamorous in an animal-print coat, dark sunglasses and a blowout, the rapper took her seat next to stylist Kollin Carter and the show could go on.

Fausto Puglisi turned up the volume as he evolved the Cavalli vocabulary. His Spring-Summer 2027 womenswear collection piled animal prints, florals and feathers onto the house’s familiar foundation of exposed skin and embellished denim.

Flowing robes topped low-rise jeans worn with thongs and bra tops. Cropped jeans glittered with crystals and sprouted feathers, while a mesh minidress erupted into crinkled golden ruffles. Chiffon skirts fell into long shredded hemlines, and animal prints were pieced together in a mishmash suggesting a rumble in the jungle. Prints clashed joyfully in an exuberant collection that played on all the Cavalli codes of sex, glamour and animal instinct.

“What I like about Cavalli is that you have the possibility to create jeans as an object,’’ Puglisi said backstage. “You feel them, you have them and you put them in your wardrobe, and you feel better. It’s about joy.”

Copenhaver was in the bleachers during the event in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop, grazing Trump’s right ear with one bullet. Copenhaver was struck in the arm and in the abdomen, wounds that left him with lingering injuries and walking with a cane.

Two other attendees were also shot — David Dutch, who survived, and Corey Comperatore, who shielded his family from gunfire and was killed.

Copenhaver died Wednesday at Allegheny Health Network’s West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, according to a statement from the Allegheny County medical examiner cited in local media accounts.

Copenhaver’s lawyer, Joseph Feldman, said in a statement issued on behalf of the family that he died surrounded by loved ones. The statement did not specify if his death was directly related to the injuries he suffered at the rally.

Copenhaver and his wife, Marianne Copenhaver, sued the federal government in June, alleging that the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security had “utterly failed” to provide appropriate security at the rally. Copenhaver’s injuries required multiple surgeries, including a transection of his colon, and he had lingering kidney and other damage, including a loss of feeling in his leg. The lawsuit described the wounds as “debilitating, grievous, permanent and life altering.”

The family's statement Thursday called Copenhaver above all else a devoted husband, father and grandfather who instilled the values of hard work, integrity and the service to others in his children.

“James’s dedication to this great country was a defining part of his life,” it said. “As a veteran, he proudly served our nation in the armed forces, and his love of country never wavered. James was a true American patriot who believed deeply in the freedoms and ideals upon which this nation was founded, and he embodied the very best traits of our great nation.”

In a statement posted to social media, Trump on Thursday called Copenhaver “a true American Patriot.”

“Jim showed tremendous bravery, courageously continuing to FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT, and maintaining a positive spirit despite unimaginable hardships,” Trump wrote.

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Johnson reported from Seattle and Smyth from Columbus, Ohio.

Gregory Diaz and Carlos Rodriguez said they have gotten used to the pollution, and they hope the U.S.-Venezuela deal raises money for cleanup.

“When there is a lot of oil, we don’t do anything, because if we cast our nets, they get filled with oil,” Garcia said in Spanish.

Once an icon of this country’s oil wealth, the lake has become a symbol of the deterioration of its oil sector. It is dotted with wells that have fallen into disuse. One exploded recently. It is leaking.

“The fish puffs up,” Rodriguez said in Spanish about the impacts of the pollution.

Up to half of the 17 oil fields that the U.S. will obtain a stake in as part of that massive new oil deal are in the lake.

Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s interim president, has promised to clean up the spilled oil as repairs get underway to stimulate more oil production.

Decades ago, Rodriguez said the lake was safe. Now, the contact with the crude can result in skin rashes and respiratory issues. Area residents estimate there have been about a dozen spills annually.

“It was very different; the water wasn’t that dark,” Rodriguez said.

Los escombros fueron expuestos el jueves en la Feria Internacional de Arte de Bogotá, ARTBO, para convertirlos en una pieza de colección y recaudar fondos para la reconstrucción del museo.

“Fueron diez años construyéndolo y minuto y medio en que se nos rompió. Así que tenemos que volver a construirlo”, dijo a The Associated Press Rosa Ángel, artista y miembro de la Junta Directiva del museo.

Pereira, en el centro oeste del país, fue una de las ciudades más afectadas por el terremoto de magnitud 7,4 registrado el 10 de agosto, que destruyó en todo el país más de 19.000 viviendas por completo, hirió a más de 4.500 personas y mató a otras 335, según las cifras gubernamentales.

El día del terremoto solo una persona estaba dentro del museo en la planta baja que sufrió la menor afectación, por lo que no resultó herida. Sin embargo, Ángel asegura que perdieron las salas de exhibición, el techo del teatro con capacidad de 300 plazas colapsó y las paredes quedaron muy dañadas.

La reconstrucción, que calculan en 917.000 dólares, está fuera del alcance del museo, que funciona como una fundación sin ánimo de lucro. Así que decidieron buscar fondos vendiendo sus escombros.

“Lo que nosotros hicimos fue recoger los pedazos del museo, de la destrucción, y con cuidado, con amor, volverlos como unos dispositivos casi que de memoria”, explicó Ángel.

Al stand de exposición “Pedazo de Museo” se acercan con curiosidad los asistentes a la feria de arte para preguntar qué representan los escombros exhibidos en estanterías y guardados en un carro de mercado. Son 1.000 pedazos y cada uno es vendido a 61 dólares.

Aldo Arias, miembro de una compañía de artesanías de Barcelona, decidió comprar un escombro que contenía la palabra “proyectos”, era parte de una de las salas de exposición que estaban activas cuando sucedió el terremoto.

“Qué mejor momento de aportar y apoyar con todo lo mal que está pasando en Colombia y en el arte en general, y dejar un granito de arena”, aseguró Arias a la AP mientras sostenía una bolsa con el trozo de pared. “Esto al fin y al cabo es una roca, es un muro, pero lleno de sentimientos, lleno de historias y de sueños”.

Para Ángel la exposición es una de las muchas estrategias con las que intentan recaudar fondos para construir el museo en un tiempo estimado de dos años, con la urgencia de abrir de nuevo sus puertas.

“Sé que en principio le pueden decir a uno que no es prioridad (un museo). Sí, es prioridad... estamos pasando por un trauma colectivo y necesitamos esos lugares que reconfortan el alma”, enfatizó Ángel.

The sharply divided decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals leaves Melissa Lucio on Texas’ death row, where she narrowly escaped execution in 2022 when the same court ordered a review of her case two days before her scheduled lethal injection. Lucio's attorneys said Thursday they will now appeal her case to federal courts.

Lucio, 58, was convicted of capital murder in the death of her daughter, Mariah, after the child sustained severe head trauma that prosecutors said came from abuse.

Efforts to get Lucio's conviction overturned focused on claims that the child wasn't beaten but was injured in an accidental fall down a steep staircase two days before she died. They were bolstered when the appeals court ordered the trial court to review some of her claims. Her original trial judge then issued a 62-page ruling in 2024 that concluded Lucio was “actually innocent” of capital murder.

Prosecutors had long maintained Mariah was the victim of abuse and noted her body was covered in bruises. But the trial judge's ruling on Lucio's innocence also determined that prosecutors presented false testimony, suppressed evidence and that new scientific evidence that was not available during Lucio’s 2008 trial undermines and contradicts evidence presented by the state. Prosecutors had conceded during Lucio's appeal that they had withheld material evidence in her trial.

But the majority opinion issued by the all-Republican appeals court on Thursday said the judge’s ruling relied too heavily on Lucio’s interpretation of events of the case and not the prosecution. The five-judge majority opinion was unsigned, and four judges dissented.

Many lawmakers and celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, an advocate for criminal justice reform, and Amanda Knox — an American whose murder conviction in the death of a British student in Italy was overturned — had rallied to Lucio’s cause.

Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation at the Innocence Project and one of Lucio's attorneys, said her legal team will appeal beyond state courts.

“We will proceed to federal court and do everything in our power to make sure Melissa ..., an innocent mother who has suffered unbelievably, is not executed for a crime that never occurred,” Potkin said.

If exonerated, Lucio would be the first woman declared innocent from Texas death row, joining 18 exonerated men since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

If ultimately put to death, Lucio would be the first Latina executed by Texas since 1863, and the first woman the state has put to death since 2014.

Pettit's alma mater, LSU, announced Thursday that he died a day earlier. The university did not provide a cause of death.

Pettit was an All-American at LSU before going on to the NBA, where he was an All-Star for each of his 11 seasons, all with the Hawks. He led them to the 1958 championship over the mighty Boston Celtics, the Hawks’ lone title.

He was also the NBA MVP in 1959 and was the MVP of the All-Star game four times, an achievement matched only by Los Angeles Lakers great Kobe Bryant.

Pettit was a force at a time when the NBA featured the likes of Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson and Elgin Baylor. But it was also before a time when the NBA was widely seen on television, and Pettit — playing in a smaller market — was denied a larger audience.

At 6-foot-9 and 205 pounds and with a deeply receding hairline, Pettit was a physical presence at power forward, before such a position became part of basketball’s vocabulary. He rarely missed a game. He also played center and was one of the first big men who did not play solely with his back to the basket.

Pettit was the Rookie of the Year in 1955, the last year the Hawks played in Milwaukee before moving to St. Louis.

He captured the MVP the next season, leading the league in scoring at 25.7 points a game. He also was the NBA’s scoring leader in 1959 at 29.2 points.

He retired after the 1964-65 season with career averages of 26.4 points and 16.2 rebounds. At that time, he was the NBA’s career leader in points (20,880) and second in rebounds (12,849).

He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1970.

“Lean, graceful, and always well-conditioned, Bob Pettit's physical build made him one of the first big men to play facing the basket,” reads Pettit’s biographical profile at the Hall of Fame. “But Pettit's resolve set him apart from his peers; he simply would not be outworked.”

Robert Lee Pettit Jr. was born on Dec. 12, 1932, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His father worked in law enforcement and served as East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff. Pettit was a late bloomer in basketball, not making the Baton Rouge High School varsity until his junior season.

As a senior, he led Baton Rouge to a state championship and wound up with more than a dozen college offers. He chose to stay home and starred at LSU as a sophomore, an era when players could not join the varsity until then.

He led the Southeastern Conference in scoring all three of his seasons, with averages of 25.5 points as a sophomore, 24.9 as a junior and 31.4 as a senior.

Pettit is one of only three LSU players — Pete Maravich and Shaquille O’Neal the others — to earn a place in the Hall of Fame. Bronze statues of Pettit and O’Neal stand outside LSU’s home arena, the Pete Maravich Assembly Center. His No. 50 is retired by LSU, his No. 9 by the Atlanta Hawks.

“We are grateful for his contributions to our franchise and to basketball history,” the Hawks said in a statement. “His retired No. 9 jersey continues to hang proudly at State Farm Arena as a lasting reminder of the impact he made on our organization. We extend our deepest condolences to Bob’s family, friends and loved ones during this difficult time. We also join those across the basketball world in celebrating a remarkable life and legacy that will never be forgotten.”

Pettit’s misfortune was that most of his career coincided with a run of Celtics championships that remains one of the most dominant runs in American pro sports history.

Pettit was two victories short of being a three-time NBA champion. Pettit’s Hawks advanced to the finals four times, all against Boston, twice losing in seven games.

The first meeting, won by Boston in 1957, came down to double overtime of Game 7. The second ended with a championship for the Hawks, interrupting Boston’s run of nine titles in 10 seasons. The Hawks also dropped NBA Finals matchups with the Celtics in 1960 (in seven games) and 1961 (in five).

Pettit retired to his native Baton Rouge after leaving basketball and worked in banking and financial consulting. He was a regular at LSU and New Orleans Pelicans games in recent years.

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El accidente ocurrió alrededor de las 4:45 a.m. en la cuadra 6500 de Nova Drive, cerca de College Avenue.

Según las autoridades, dos vehículos estuvieron involucrados. Un Chevrolet Corvette terminó estrellándose contra un poste de electricidad y se incendió.

Las autoridades informaron que las dos personas que iban en el Corvette fueron declaradas muertas en el lugar. Los ocupantes del otro vehículo no sufrieron heridas graves.

“Vi fuego y después muchísima policía. Aquí no hay luces y la gente hace carreras por esta calle todo el tiempo”, dijo el testigo Carlos Cusco. “Luego vi que había un carro, no sabía de qué tipo, y un cuerpo en el suelo. Decían que parecía un Corvette”.

El choque dejó sin electricidad los semáforos de la intersección cercana.

Hasta alrededor de las 7 a.m. del jueves, las autoridades no habían dado más detalles sobre el accidente, incluida la identidad de las víctimas.

Un portavoz del Departamento de Policía de Davie indicó que los detectives de homicidios de tránsito de la agencia están investigando.

Leila Cavett, quien nació en Alabama, viajó con su hijo Kamdyn, de 2 años, desde Georgia hasta el sur de Florida el 25 de julio de 2020.

Cavett, quien nació en Alabama, fue vista por última vez el 26 de julio de 2020 en una gasolinera RaceTrac en Hollywood, según el FBI.

Agentes de policía encontraron a Kamdyn caminando solo el 26 de julio de 2020, cerca de la cuadra 1860 de Southwest 68th Avenue, en Miramar. Estaba descalzo y llevaba un pañal sucio.

Detectives recuperaron el automóvil abandonado de Cavett el 28 de julio de 2020 en Hollywood, pero no han encontrado sus restos.

Agentes de la Oficina del Sheriff de Broward arrestaron a Ryan el 11 de mayo de 2021. Fiscales presentaron cargos de asesinato en segundo grado, manipulación de pruebas y negligencia infantil en su contra el 13 de mayo de 2021.

La sentencia de Ryan por asesinato en segundo grado será en octubre.

The national statistics agency, known as INDEC, reported that the share of Argentines living below the poverty line jumped four percentage points from 28.2% in the second half of 2025. Extreme poverty, or indigence, rose from 6.3% to 7.5%.

The reversal comes after Milei repeatedly touted declining poverty as evidence that his free-market economic overhaul was bearing fruit. Poverty surged to nearly 53% in the first half of 2024 after his government’s devaluation of the peso and sweeping spending cuts left most Argentines unable to afford a basket of basic goods. But the rate then fell rapidly as Milei’s austerity drive helped tame inflation, hitting an eight-year low of 28% in the second half of 2025.

Thursday’s report suggests that progress has lost momentum as unemployment edges higher and rising prices squeeze Argentines’ purchasing power, with average salaries still below where they stood in real terms when Milei took office in December 2023. Average per-capita household income rose 11.5% from the previous six months, while the basic basket of goods used to set the poverty line increased nearly 20%, INDEC said.

Roughly 9.7 million people across the 31 urban areas surveyed by INDEC were living below the poverty line, including 2.25 million in extreme poverty. Nearly 45% of children under 15 were poor. The survey covers 30.1 million people living in major urban areas across Argentina, rather than the country’s entire population of 46 million.

Milei inherited triple-digit inflation and chronic fiscal deficits from his populist predecessors and responded with one of the most aggressive austerity programs in Argentina’s recent history, slashing public spending and subsidies while tightening monetary policy. His government argues that fiscal balance is key to stabilizing Argentina's crisis-stricken economy and laying the groundwork for improved living standards.

But the macroeconomic stability Milei has achieved has yet to translate into stronger jobs and growth. Formal private-sector employment has fallen for 13 straight months, while economic activity dropped 2.9% in July from the previous month, INDEC reported Thursday.

“Milei persuaded people that achieving a fiscal surplus required sacrifice, and that by now those sacrifices would be paying off,” said Lucas Romero, a political analyst who heads the polling firm Synopsis Consultores. “Without tangible results — in economic activity, jobs and incomes — it will be difficult to persuade people to keep making sacrifices, especially if the government asks for further austerity.”

Milei’s critics say the poor have paid a high price for Argentina’s economic stability, with cuts to pensions and social assistance accounting for nearly a quarter of his government’s inflation-adjusted spending cuts, according to a September analysis by the Argentine Institute of Fiscal Analysis, a research organization.

Economy Minister Luis Caputo acknowledged Thursday’s increase on social media but emphasized that poverty remained far below the levels recorded during Milei’s first months in office.

“While poverty and extreme poverty increased compared with the previous semester, both rates remain sharply lower than in the first half of 2024,” he wrote.

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Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre contributed to this report.

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Seiya Suzuki homered for the Cubs (88-71), who assured themselves of one of the NL's three wild card berths.

Chicago also was a wild card last year, when the Cubs beat San Diego in the first round and lost to Milwaukee in a Division Series. The Cubs will be making consecutive postseason appearances for the first time since four straight from 2015-18, which in 2016 included their first championship since 1908.

The Cubs clinched their berth shortly after the White Sox earned their postseason trip with a 9-1 win at Kansas City.

Miami (78-81) was assured its third straight non-winning season.

A favorite to win the NL MVP award, Crow-Armstrong became the seventh 40-40 player, joining a group that includes Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani and Atlanta Braves outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. Jose Canseco was the first with the 1988 Oakland Athletics.

Crow-Armstrong hit his 45th homer during Sunday’s 9-1 win at Cincinnati, extending his career high. The 24-year-old drew a leadoff walk from Tyler Phillips in the first inning and swiped second base on the next pitch to Suzuki for his 40th steal in 47 attempts. Fans chanted “MVP” as the Wrigley Field videoboard proclaimed the feat.

Ohtani was the previous player with a 40-40 season, hitting 54 homers and stealing 59 bases for the 2024 Dodgers. Acuña hit 41 homers and swiped 73 bases for Atlanta in 2023. Alfonso Soriano (2006 with Washington), Alex Rodriguez (1998 with Seattle) and Barry Bonds (1996 with San Francisco) are the other 40-40 players.

Matthew Boyd (10-5) allowed one run, five hits and two walks over seven innings, and Ryan Zeferjahn pitched a perfect ninth for his seventh save to finish a five-hitter.

Ian Happ tripled off Jack Ralston (0-2) to start the sixth and came home three pitches later on Nico Hoerner’s single, breaking a 1-1 tie.

Miami’s Jakob Marsee had an RBI single in the third and Suzuki hit his 26th homer in the fifth, a drive off Jack Ralston.

Up next

The Marlins return to Miami on Friday to begin a season-ending, three-game series against Atlanta.

The Cubs play a day-night doubleheader Friday at Boston. The opener was shifted to Sunday by Major League Baseball because of a forecast for a storm.

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

Miami will host the Kansas City Chiefs while still searching for their first victory of the 2026 NFL season.

The game is set for 1 p.m. at Hard Rock Stadium.

Attending fans will have plenty of food options to choose from.

Local 10’s Clay Ferraro was at the stadium on Thursday for a tasty preview, and his report can be seen at the top of this page.

The subpoenas require the former FBI employees to testify in Fort Pierce, Florida, as the Justice Department pursues an ill-defined theory of a “deep state” conspiracy to deprive Trump of his civil rights and keep him from power.

The investigation so far has been focused largely on former government officials who examined ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, but the subpoenas disclosed Thursday hint at the far-reaching nature of an investigation that is also scrutinizing the FBI's 2022 search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for classified documents. That search formed the basis of one of four criminal cases Trump faced between his first and second terms.

Justice Department officials are pressing ahead with what's commonly known as the “grand conspiracy” investigation after the resignation this month of Joseph diGenova, a Trump ally who had been brought in to help lead the probe that has animated right-wing commentators who have long alleged former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against the Republican president.

The filing on behalf of the subpoenaed employees tees up a fresh legal question for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge who not only dismissed the classified documents prosecution of Trump but also sits in the Fort Pierce courthouse where the Justice Department has centered its yearlong conspiracy probe of Trump's perceived foes.

Cannon last February issued an order blocking the release of a report on the classified documents investigation prepared by special counsel Jack Smith, whose team in 2023 brought dozens of felony charges against the then-Republican candidate, and barring the release of non-public information about the case to people outside the Justice Department.

Lawyers say their clients are willing to testify

Now, lawyers for the subpoenaed former employees are asking Cannon to clarify whether that order precludes their clients from being able to testify before the grand jury since they'll be asked detailed questions about the investigation.

Without that clarification, they say, they may be forced to decide between being in contempt of the order if they testify, “not providing full, unconstrained testimony" in order to comply with the order or invoking their constitutional rights against self-incrimination — an option they say “creates unnecessary negative options for innocent former civil servants.”

“Specifically, clients seek to confirm that they can freely discuss non-public information related to their work on the investigation with individuals outside the DOJ, including but not limited to the grand jury and client's own counsel, without running afoul of the terms of the order,” the lawyers wrote.

The attorneys observed that the Justice Department has already taken the position that testimony about the Mar-a-Lago investigation would violate Cannon's order, noting that government lawyers emailed attorneys for Smith before he testified before Congress that he was not permitted to reveal non-public information. But they say officials in the current conspiracy investigation in Florida have declined to articulate a position or seek clarity from the court about its order.

The lawyers say their clients are happy to testify about the investigation if legally cleared to do so.

“If allowed by the court to testify unconstrained by the order, clients will readily provide to the grand jury a detailed account of the investigation, reasoning, decision-making, and other ‘non-public’ information spanning from the time the classified documents investigation was first referred to the FBI up through and including the execution of the warrant," the filing says. “Clients will each detail their firsthand memories of investigating a properly predicated allegation that then-citizen Trump had unlawfully retained hundreds of highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.”

The filing reveals new details about the scope of the investigations and negotiations with the government.

Submitted on behalf of a group of current and former agents and analysts who participated in the Mar-a-Lago investigation, the filing says that the FBI in July and August reached out to request voluntary interviews and told the attorneys that grand jury testimony would follow those interviews.

The lawyers say two clients received subpoenas on Monday. One individual was subpoenaed to testify next week and two others, including one represented by separate lawyers, have been subpoenaed to appear the following week, according to the filing.

They say the Justice Department has broached the possibility of giving immunity to the witnesses but has not formally offered that yet. But they say immunity wouldn't resolve the issues, in part because their clients don't believe they or anyone else involved in the Mar-a-Lago investigation broke any laws.

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It happened at around 4:45 a.m. in the 6500 block of Nova Drive, near College Avenue.

Officials said two cars were involved. A Chevrolet Corvette was sent into a utility pole and his or her car caught fire.

“The fire was about as high as the wires. It was pretty high,” witness Joe Digineiro said. “There was no way to save anybody, because once that happened, it was over.”

Authorities said that two people in the car were pronounced dead at the scene. The people in the other vehicle weren’t seriously hurt.

“I saw a fire and then a lot of police, no lights and people race down the street all the time,” witness Carlos Cusco said. “And then I saw there was a car. I didn’t know what kind of car it was and a body on the on the floor. So it looked like a Corvette they were saying.”

The driver of the other car told Local 10 News that the Corvette driver scuffed his car while speeding and by the time he turned around to take a picture of the tag, he or she crashed into the pole.

The crash knocked out power to traffic signals at the nearby intersection.

Officials have not provided additional details about the crash as of around 7 a.m. Thursday, including the victims’ identities.

A spokesperson for the Davie Police Department said that the agency’s traffic homicide detectives were investigating.

They could still win the AL Central, too. The White Sox began the day one game behind the Cleveland Guardians.

Chicago has three games left at home against the last-place Colorado Rockies, while the Guardians wrap up their series in Boston on Thursday night before flying to Kansas City, where they coincidentally have three left against the Royals. The White Sox win mathematically eliminated Baltimore from postseason contention.

Kyle Teel homered and reached base five times, and five different White Sox drove in runs. David Sandlin (3-2) allowed one run on five hits over six innings against the club that drafted him out of Oklahoma four years ago.

Randy Dobnak (3-5) allowed six runs — four earned — for Kansas City. He also made two errors while retiring just four batters.

Salvador Perez homered for the Royals, reaching 20 in a season for a club-record 10th time.

The first couple of innings summed up what the White Sox have done so masterfully this season: They capitalized on mistakes.

Sam Antonacci opened the game with a single, Teel reached on a bunt when Dobnak's throw was wide of first base, and Miguel Vargas followed with an RBI single. Andrew Benintendi added a sacrifice fly and, after Vargas stole second to get into scoring position, Tristan Peters brought him home with another single to make it 3-0.

More hijinks ensued in the second: Braden Montgomery singled leading off, Dobnak walked Antonacci, then the right-hander threw to nobody covering first base for his second error. That allowed Montgomery to easily score from second.

By the time Dobnak plunked Teel and Vargas added another RBI single, the champagne was probably on ice in the clubhouse.

The White Sox improved to 82-77, a record number of wins for a club coming off three straight 100-loss years. They head home having won four of their last five with their first playoff appearance since 2021 in their pocket and a division title still in their sights.

Up next

The White Sox finish the regular season against the Rockies with RHP Sean Burke (10-7, 3.40 ERA) starting Friday night.

The Royals welcome the Guardians on Friday night with LHP Noah Cameron (9-8, 3.92) on the mound.

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

WPLG 2024 2025 EEO Annual Report

The event featured a cavalcade of billionaires, Washington powerbrokers, business leaders and the type of festivities that most excite Trump, who has a reputation for reveling in hosting parties.

“President Xi and I both understand we represent different systems, but the ties between our people endure, and we’ve never gotten along better,” Trump said during his toast, adding that “together, we can continue to build a relationship that promotes prosperity and security for future generations.”

Trump has done his best to impress Xi during China's leader's during Xi's three-day visit to Washington, and praised their close personal relationship — even as he has decried top Democratic candidates as “communists” ahead of the November midterm elections.

Xi and Trump discussed tensions over Taiwan, trade and artificial intelligence during business hours — even as an ongoing First Amendment fight over press access at the White House has unfolded. But Trump publicly chose to focus on showing Xi his White House updates on Thursday afternoon, including letting him tour his Marine One presidential helicopter and a new helipad he built for it — before attention quickly turned to the flashy details of the swanky meal.

Xi noted in his own toast that “President Trump has pledged to make America great again” and that “China is committed to achieving great national rejuvenation.”

“These two goals are both ambitious and can surely be mutually reinforcing,” Xi said.

Trump wore a tuxedo, and her office said first lady Melania Trump opted for a tuxedo-style outfit: a white Saint Laurent cotton poplin blouse, a black silk cummerbund and black brocade pants — both from Dolce & Gabbana — with a peony motif.

Xi chose a black suit and his wife, Peng Liyuan, wore a red gown. The East Room, where the dinner was held, featured low lighting and place settings with elegant red and gold decor.

Those in attendance included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who signed autographs upon arriving at the White House. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang opted for a tuxedo over his trademark black leather jacket. Bernard Arnault, the CEO of French luxury goods company LVMH, walked through black security fencing to enter the event.

Trump says he can't help but talk up the ballroom being built

The president toasted his strong relationship with Xi and the bond between the U.S. and China, but then added, “If I could go off script just for a second, I just want to say I had to do it,” as those assembled laughed.

“I’d like to invite everyone in the room to visit through that beautiful curtain in the back,” Trump said, referring to the construction site of his White House ballroom on the South Lawn, which he said, “you've heard so much about.”

Trump said the project was a year from completion, and said he thought attendees “will see something that I think you will really love.”

The president said that after the dinner attendees could go see the worksite and be “the first people to step foot” on it.

“We’ll do that. Maybe after we’ve finished with the entertainment tonight,” Trump said, asking, “Anybody wants to walk into a construction site that’s nice and sparkling, it’s our honor to have you do so.”

Trump has called the ballroom he’s building the “Great Hall of the United States,” and suggested it could rival the Great Hall of the People, where he dined during a state visit to Beijing in May.

The president also presented Xi with an eagle statue that he said was designed “in personal collaboration with Melania and myself.” Xi did not present Trump a public gift in return during the dinner.

Guests dined on squash and sea bass

The first lady helped craft the evening's menu, which was served on the red china from Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It featured a first course of yellow squash velouté with wild mushrooms, fresh herbs, crispy pancetta and drizzled scallion oil.

After that, guests got sesame-crusted sea bass with braised baby bok choy, roasted garden eggplant and a sauce verte. Dessert was vanilla crémeux with sour cherry confit and walnut frangipane, as well as ice cream with honey from the White House.

Trump has sought to one-up Xi after Beijing

The dinner came after the president took the unusual step of personally greeting Xi and his wife on Wednesday as they arrived at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington. Normally, presidents wait for their state visit guests to arrive at the White House itself before offering a formal welcome.

Thursday's dinner was packed with technology industry titans like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman, and Dell Technologies chairman and CEO Michael Dell.

During his own visit to Beijing in May, Xi hosted Trump for a state dinner that unfolded beneath grand chandeliers in the Great Hall of the People. That event also included many tech luminaries, such as Tim Cook, formerly Apple's CEO, and Musk.

It was all a stark departure from 2015, when then-President Barack Obama was preparing to host Xi for a state visit and Trump — in the midst of his first presidential run — criticized all the hubbub.

“Just take them to McDonald’s and go back to the negotiating table,” Trump said then, during a rally in South Carolina. He later conceded on Fox News Channel that Xi might at least be worthy of getting “probably a double-size Big Mac.”

This statement is meant to shift the international response to the rise in sea level driven by humans from fragmented initiatives to sustained, coordinated and adequately-funded action. It comes as country after country has lamented the toll of climate change in speeches this week and called for collective action.

Contrarily, U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly calls climate change a hoax, a con job or a scam.

Here are the world leaders in their own words:

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THE QUOTE: “Until recently, the response to climate change was firmly established at the center of the international agenda. This year, however, the topic disappeared from the debates of the G7 and G20, forums that bring together the largest carbon emitters. It is time to resume the offensive and inflict a defeat on denialism. Nature reminds us every day that we live on one planet. The glaciers in the Himalayas are melting. The super El Nino may cause torrential rains, droughts and forest fires in different parts of the globe.”

— Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil

THE SITUATION: Climate change and deforestation threaten the Amazon. A strong El Nino, a cyclic warming of the equatorial Pacific, causes higher temperatures and drier weather in the rainforest, conditions that worsen wildfires.

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THE QUOTE: “What we experienced in Nepal was Himalayan tsunami. But the larger looming threat is even more consequential. It is not only the devastation we mourn today; it is for greater danger that lies ahead if the world continues to look away... I call upon you to treat climate action not as a charity, but as a matter of justice.”

— Shisir Khanal, minister of foreign affairs for Nepal

THE SITUATION: Human-caused global warming thinned glaciers and thawed mountain permafrost, likely helping to destabilize the Himalayan slope that collapsed last month and unleashed catastrophic flooding across Nepal, according to a World Weather Attribution report. More than 1,300 people were killed and over 5,000 remain missing.

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THE QUOTE: “To protect the lives of present and future generations, all states must take serious action to tackle global warming. I believe that climate action and economic growth can go hand-in-hand.”

— Sanae Takaichi, prime minister of Japan

THE SITUATION: Japan is working to protect communities from warming and has pledged to slash emissions, but extreme heat remains a threat in the short term.

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THE QUOTE: “I think this summer was a summer of truth. The recent summer months have been, as we heard from the scientists, the hottest on record, but may be the coolest for the years to come.”

— Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission

THE SITUATION: Europe is heating up twice as fast as the global rate, making it the fastest-warming continent.

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THE QUOTE: “By the end of this century, 12 to 18% of our coastal areas could be submerged by sea level rise, affecting the livelihoods of tens of millions. Climate change has caused loss and damage equivalent to 1% of our GDP. And our food security is at serious risk”

— Tarique Rahman, prime minister of Bangladesh

THE SITUATION: The low-lying geography of Bangladesh makes it one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change.

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THE QUOTE: “Cabo Verde speaks with the same voice as other countries that are also living the climate crisis every day. For us, climate change is not a distant risk. It is an existential reality affecting our economies, our food and water security, our coastlines and ultimately our people’s future.”

— Francisco Carvalho, prime minister of Cape Verde

THE SITUATION: Cape Verde, like other small island developing states, is grappling with rising sea levels and increasingly powerful storms that erode shorelines, submerge land and threaten homes and livelihoods.

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THE QUOTE: “Nearly a third of the world’s tuna is caught in Pacific waters. And it’s moving east into the high seas. More than a quarter of our people live within a kilometer of the shore. Six of our communities have already moved. Two more are moving now. And half a degree is not a rounding error. For us, it is the difference between adaptation and relocation.”

— Naiqama Lalabalavu, president of Fiji

THE SITUATION: Lalabalavu cited projections that by 2050, the fish available to each Fijian is projected to fall by nearly a quarter, from 41 kilograms (90 pounds) a year to about 31. And more than half of that loss comes from climate change, he said.

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THE QUOTE: “The climate crisis is often referred to as a ‘global group project shared by all 8 billion people on Earth.’ A single country cannot tackle this challenge alone. At the same time, abandoning growth cannot bring everyone on board.”

— Lee Jae Myung, president of Korea

THE SITUATION: The impact of extreme weather worsened by climate change is far-reaching in South Korea. Farmers face higher costs and must use more labor to produce the same or lower yields.

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THE QUOTE: “We live in a fragmented world. Nations are turning inward. Promises are made loudly and kept quietly, if at all. Each country is tempted to say: It is not my storm, not my coastline, not my problem. The ocean does not recognize that thinking. It is one body of water. What warms in one hemisphere breaks upon another. The sea has never been fragmented. Only we are.”

— Philip Davis, prime minister of the Bahamas

THE SITUATION: Like many other countries in the Global South, Bahamas has a lot of debt from warming-connected weather disasters. Hurricane Dorian, the strongest storm to hit the country on record, caused $3.4 billion in damage in 2019.

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THE QUOTE: “For those who have declared climate change a hoax perpetrated by geopolitical opponents, the warnings of recent times cannot have been clearer. Melting glaciers, flash flooding, droughts, record-breaking heatwaves, brush fires, hurricanes and other extreme weather phenomena are unmistakable signals of an overburdened planet. Climate change is the ultimate test of global equity.”

— John Dramani Mahama, president of Ghana

THE SITUATION: Ghana faces erratic rainfall, erosion of its coastal towns and accelerating desertification. In June, Mahama said Ghana and coastal West Africa were hit with unprecedented torrential rain that killed 39 people.

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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.

La última medición correspondiente al segundo semestre de 2025 había arrojado 28,2%, el nivel más bajo de los últimos ocho años.

Dentro del universo de pobres, 7,5% son indigentes --sus ingresos no alcanzan para adquirir una canasta básica de alimentos—, desde el 6,3% del año pasado.

“Los ingresos en el período estudiado aumentaron menos que lo que aumentó la CBT (canasta básica total) y la CBA (canasta básica alimentaria), por ende, tanto la tasa de pobreza como la de indigencia también aumentaron con respecto al semestre anterior”, dijo el Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos (INDEC), encargado de la medición.

En promedio, el ingreso per cápita familiar aumentó 11,5% en el primer semestre, mientras que el costo de vida acumuló una suba de casi 20% en el mismo período.

Si se toma en cuenta que la población asciende a 46 millones de habitantes, los pobres suman casi 15 millones.

El impacto del ajuste

Milei suele resaltar que bajo su mandato que comenzó en 2023 la “pobreza bajó a la mitad” en gran medida por el éxito de su plan de austeridad para desacelerar la inflación de casi 300% en 2024 a poco más de 30% este año.

Pero muchos argentinos todavía no ven reflejados en sus bolsillos la reactivación económica que prometió, lo cual ha obligado a miles de familias a endeudarse para sobrevivir.

“Milei convenció a la gente de que el superávit era un esfuerzo necesario y que a esta altura ya daría frutos. Sin esos frutos (actividad, empleo, ingresos, etc.), será difícil convencer a la gente de seguir sosteniendo el sacrificio, más aún si para ello hay que seguir ajustando”, opinó el politólogo Lucas Romero, director de la consultora Synopsis Consultores.

Mientras los salarios caen, los servicios básicos cuestan más y la desocupación aumenta por el impacto de la apertura de importaciones en la industria local.

Este mismo jueves, INDEC reportó que la actividad económica se contrajo en julio 2,9% respecto al mes anterior.

En este contexto, la mejora de las principales variables económicas empieza a tornarse indispensable para que Milei pueda reelegirse en las elecciones generales del próximo año.

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Leila Cavett traveled with her 2-year-old son, Kamdyn, from Georgia to South Florida on July 25, 2020, and she was last seen on July 26, 2020, at a RaceTrac gas station in Hollywood, according to the FBI.

Police officers found Kamdyn walking alone on July 26, 2020, near the 1860 block of Southwest 68th Avenue, in Miramar. He was barefoot and wearing a soiled diaper.

Detectives also recovered Cavett’s abandoned car on July 28, 2020, in Hollywood, but they haven’t found her remains.

Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested Ryan on May 11, 2021.

Prosecutors filed charges of second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and child neglect against him on May 13, 2021. Ryan’s sentencing is in October.

The administration said the ruling by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came Wednesday just minutes before midnight, forcing the cancellation of a flight with 70 people that was headed to three countries. It said justices needed to step in to “halt that chaos” and said the flight cancellation “required a new round of diplomatic engagement with each of the three countries,” which it did not name.

Plaintiffs for immigrants sought emergency relief from the appeals court Wednesday night, saying they heard from “multiple sources” that a deportation flight was scheduled the next day from Alexandria, Louisiana, to Burundi, Rwanda and the Central African Republic.

Within hours of that request, the appeals court said it was clarifying a ruling against the policy last week and said a previous order allowing flights to continue while legal challenges play out was no longer in effect.

Administration officials reacted furiously. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the order “in the dark of night” robbed authorities of “an entirely legal and valuable tool to stem the tide of illegal immigration.”

The justices previously allowed the deportation flights to temporarily continue when the case came before them last year.

The vast majority of people deported to countries other than their own have been sent to Mexico, but under a series of often-secret agreements, the administration has deported thousands of others to more than two dozen countries, from Liberia to Guyana.

Some have found themselves in countries they’d never heard of before their arrivals and held there against their will. Some also face serious safety risks, and are left with little choice except to return to the home countries they were fleeing.

This month, lawyers for two men deported to Equatorial Guinea said they were beaten and held at gunpoint in a hotel-turned-detention center by police who covered their heads with bags.

Trump's Republican administration has said that it sends people with final deportation orders to third countries when their homelands won’t accept them or they can’t be returned there. Those governments provide assurances that people won’t be persecuted or tortured, attorneys said.

James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel, said Wednesday on X that 25,000 people in the U.S. illegally have been deported to third countries, calling those deportations “an essential public safety tool.”

The lower court order doesn't completely prohibit third-country deportations, but it requires the government give people a meaningful chance to object.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to halt that decision, arguing it would force unreasonable delays and the reworking of agreements with foreign countries.

“The order below would again obstruct DHS from efficiently removing aliens ... by inordinately delaying third-country removal for any alien who voices a fear of persecution or torture in that country, no matter how frivolous or belated the claim,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote.

The appeal comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.

___

Tim Sullivan contributed to this report from Minneapolis. Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

Xi was making his first state visit to the U.S. in 11 years, and the geopolitical rivals had a long list of thorny subjects before them, including the risks of unchecked artificial intelligence, Taiwan, trade tensions over tariffs and the war in Iran, a country with which Beijing has close economic ties.

But Trump made time for a tour of his White House projects. After 90 minutes in the Oval Office, he walked his Chinese counterpart out to the South Lawn, where his chopper had been parked in advance on the new granite landing area.

As the leaders approached, a Marine opened the door and saluted as Trump and Xi climbed aboard with a small group of aides and translators. They looked around and chatted with the pilots for several minutes, though the aircraft never took off.

Trump also spent time gesturing toward the ballroom he is building where the East Wing once stood. Xi peered at two hulking concrete towers under construction as Trump intently watched Xi’s face while he spoke about the project, out of earshot of a group reporters summoned for the occasion.

Trump says Xi ‘loves good granite’

The president's attempts to impress Xi come as he's built his party's midterm election messaging strategy around slamming Democrats as “communists.”

Trump has devoted an increasingly large portion of his second term to building projects around the White House and greater Washington. He has spent weeks saying crews were scrambling to finish the helipad in time for the Chinese leader’s visit and lamenting that the ballroom wouldn't be done.

“We had a great meeting and he has great interest in granite,” Trump said after giving Xi a first-hand look.

"He’s an expert on stone, aside from many other things -- and he loves good granite,” he said.

Trump gestured with relish and pointed to the large letters spelling out the “Seal of the President of the United States” on its surface. He enthusiastically touched Xi’s arm repeatedly, and China’s leader even returned the gesture a single time, reaching to tap Trump back once.

During Xi's visit, the president didn't miss the chance to brag about the photos he's hung inside the West Wing, images of Trump around the world, framed in gold.

Trump showed Xi a picture of the two of them taken when the U.S. president visited Beijing in May, according to a social media video posted by a White House aide.

“Who is that? I don’t recognize him!” Trump joked. “That’s great,” Trump said in the video. “We have a lot of respect for you. We have this up. We’ve had that up for a year. A lot of respect,” Trump said.

Trump also showed Xi the wall-mounted copy of the Declaration of Independence he had installed in the Oval Office, according to a handout image released by the Chinese Embassy.

Trump also gives Xi a glimpse of his autopen gag

Trump's tour started even before their Oval Office session, when Trump walked Xi past a row of presidential portraits Trump has installed along the colonnade between the White House residence and the West Wing — pausing to gesture grandly at his own picture.

There are two portraits of Trump, one for each of his terms. Between them, instead of a picture of President Joe Biden, Trump has hung a depiction of an autopen signing his Democratic predecessor's name — a reference to Trump’s frequent allegation that Biden was not up to the job by the end of his term in office.

An aide's video showed Trump pointing to the three images, saying, “Trump, and then Trump, and this is the autopen,” as Xi laughed.

“It’s Biden,” Trump said, slapping Xi on the arm.

Mientras Fernández visitaba al mandatario colombiano Abelardo de la Espriella en Bogotá esa fecha, Tovar tomó parte de la reunión en Nueva York junto a representantes de los 15 países que integran la coalición multinacional de cooperación en seguridad e intercambio impulsada por Trump.

“Tovar asistió a la sesión sin dar aviso previo ni informar de su participación a la señora Presidente de la República. Esta negligencia no le permitió a la señora mandataria participar en la sesión, lo cual causó un gran daño de carácter estratégico”, indicó la Casa Presidencial en un comunicado de prensa.

Indicó que la participación del país centroamericano fue gestionada “de manera inadecuada” por parte de Tovar, pues para la presidenta la participación en la iniciativa es “fundamental” en la lucha contra el narcotráfico y el crimen organizado.

El ahora exministro reaccionó a su salida con un comunicado en el que evitó entrar en controversia con la presidenta, a quién agradeció la oportunidad de ocupar el cargo, aunque recalcó la importancia de las actividades que se han desarrollado durante la última semana en Nueva York en el marco de la Asamblea General de Naciones Unidas.

“La situación de estos días refleja la importancia de la Semana de Alto Nivel de la ONU en medio de los desafíos actuales del mundo y particularmente ante la posibilidad real de asegurar la histórica elección de la compatriota Rebeca Grynspan como Secretaria General de Naciones Unidas”, señaló Tovar.

Fernández había anunciado desde la semana anterior que no asistiría a las actividades en Nueva York por “motivos de agenda”, entre ellos la visita que realizó a Colombia.

Tovar fue ministro de Comercio Exterior durante la administración de Rodrigo Chaves (2022-2026) y era considerado una de las figuras fuertes de la continuidad, principalmente por su impulso al Tratado de Libre Comercio con Israel, que aún está en trámite en la Asamblea Legislativa de Costa Rica.

Fernández, quien asumió en mayo, anunció que el cargo de canciller recaerá temporalmente sobre la actual ministra de Comercio Exterior, Indiana Trejos, quien también se encuentra participando de las actividades de la ONU en Nueva York.

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Authorities said the crime happened early Sunday morning after the victim brought Alexia Jocelyn Flores, 24, of downtown Miami, back to his unit in the Panorama Tower skyscraper, located at 1100 Brickell Bay Drive, after their dinner date.

Miami police said the two “spent several hours drinking together” and the man eventually asked Flores to leave at around 2:30 a.m.

Authorities said as the woman got dressed in the bedroom and bathroom, the victim remained on the couch.

An arrest report states that surveillance video shows the victim “escorting (Flores) to the elevator, where they kissed goodbye.”

“Upon returning to his apartment, he discovered that two watches were missing from the nightstand beside his bed,” the report states.

Authorities said he tried to contact the Uber driver he had arranged for her “and discovered that she had blocked him.”

Police said they spotted Flores on Wednesday in the area of North Miami Avenue and 21st Street in the Wynwood neighborhood and taken to the downtown police station for an interview.

“(Flores) recalled meeting the victim through Tinder, going to dinner, and returning to his apartment,” the report states. “She stated that she believed she had been drugged and could not recall what happened afterward. She denied taking the watches. No police report concerning her allegation was identified.”

Detectives arrested her on a grand theft charge.

As of Thursday morning, Flores was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $7,500 bond.

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Thomas Simpson was last seen on Sept. 15, walking in the 100 block of Hidden Court Road.

Police said Simpson, who may need assistance, “was last seen wearing gray leather pants and a dark long-sleeve shirt.”

Anyone with information is asked to call 954-967-4411.

Thomas Simpson fue visto por última vez el 15 de septiembre, caminando en la cuadra 100 de Hidden Court Road.

La policía informó que Simpson, quien podría necesitar asistencia, “fue visto por última vez vistiendo pantalones de cuero grises y una camisa oscura de manga larga”.

Se pide a cualquier persona que tenga información que llame al 954-967-4411.

Se espera que la tormenta tropical se convierta el jueves en el noveno huracán de la temporada en el Pacífico oriental, mientras se dirige hacia el norte y gira a la izquierda cerca o al sur de la Isla Grande de Hawái como un huracán importante de categoría 3 (vientos máximos de al menos 178 km/h) este fin de semana.

Hasta el jueves por la mañana, el pronóstico oficial del Centro Nacional de Huracanes indicaba que el centro de Nolo se ubicaría a entre 50 y 75 millas de la Isla Grande para la madrugada del sábado, hora local. Cabe destacar que el margen de error promedio en la trayectoria a esta hora es de entre 50 y 75 millas, por lo que los residentes del estado, especialmente desde Maui, Molokai y Lanai hacia el sur hasta la Isla Grande, deben estar preparados para la posibilidad de condiciones de huracán dañinas (vientos de 74 mph o más) a partir del viernes por la noche, hora local.

El peligro más grave que supone Nolo será la posibilidad de inundaciones catastróficas y deslizamientos de tierra que pongan en peligro la vida a su paso este fin de semana.

El Servicio Meteorológico Nacional pronostica una cantidad increíble de lluvia, incluso para un lugar considerado uno de los más lluviosos del planeta, con hasta 35 pulgadas o más localmente en las laderas orientadas al viento y a lo largo del lado sureste de la Isla Grande.

Una amenaza de tercer huracán sin precedentes

En agosto, el huracán Lala pasó a unos 48 kilómetros de la Isla Grande , el mayor acercamiento de un huracán a la Isla Grande del que se tiene registro, dejando caer más de 100 centímetros de lluvia torrencial en algunos puntos, convirtiéndose en una de las tormentas más intensas registradas en Hawái, causando inundaciones catastróficas en varias islas, dañando carreteras e infraestructuras y dejando sin electricidad a la mayoría de los clientes en todo el estado.

A Lala le siguió el huracán Lowell, de categoría 2, tan solo tres semanas después. Su centro pasó a unos 110 kilómetros al oeste de Kauaʻi y a solo 65 kilómetros al oeste de Ni’ihau, dos de las islas principales más occidentales de Hawái. Lowell fue el huracán más fuerte que afectó a esta parte del estado desde que Iniki, de categoría 4, impactara directamente en Kauaʻi en 1992.

Ahora, Nolo amenaza con convertirse en el tercer huracán que azota Hawái este año. Si bien los huracanes pueden afectar a Hawái de vez en cuando, antes de este año solo se habían registrado 6 huracanes: Dot (1959), Iwa (1982), Iniki (1992), Iselle (2014), Douglas (2020) y Hone (2024), que habían pasado a menos de 80 kilómetros del estado.

Con la posibilidad de que Nolo sea el tercer ^huracán en 2026 que pase a menos de 80 kilómetros de Hawái, esto equivale a tres décadas de amenazas de huracanes para Hawái en un solo año.

Hawái se encuentra bajo su tercera ^alerta de huracán este año, la mayor cantidad de alertas de huracán jamás emitidas en un solo año para el estado, y acumula el triple de alertas de huracán que todo el territorio continental de Estados Unidos en lo que va de 2026.

Como es lógico, ha sido un año agotador y sin precedentes en cuanto a amenazas de huracanes para nuestro estado ^{número 50.}

Polo vuelve brevemente a la categoría 5, con pronóstico de que azotará la península de Baja California.

El huracán Polo recuperó algo de fuerza el miércoles por la noche y a primera hora del jueves, volviendo a su categoría 5 anterior, mientras se encontraba a tan solo unas 115 millas al sur de la costa del Pacífico del suroeste de México.

A última hora de la mañana del jueves, Polo había recuperado la categoría 4, experimentando las fluctuaciones de intensidad a corto plazo típicas de los huracanes de gran intensidad, pero seguía siendo un huracán extremadamente poderoso y persistente. Si bien su peligroso núcleo de vientos destructivos permanecerá mar adentro, se registrarán ráfagas de viento de más de 64 km/h y periodos de fuertes lluvias en algunas zonas del suroeste de México hasta el viernes.

Polo se alejará gradualmente de México el sábado, pero los pronósticos coinciden en que volverá a girar hacia la península de Baja California a finales del fin de semana o principios de la próxima semana, donde se prevé que toque tierra como un huracán debilitado pero aún peligroso entre finales del lunes y el martes.

Quienes tengan interés en la región deberán seguir de cerca las previsiones meteorológicas durante el fin de semana.

La humedad residual del huracán Polo también podría infiltrarse en el suroeste del desierto, intensificando las fuertes lluvias monzónicas en partes de Arizona, Nuevo México y la región de las Cuatro Esquinas a principios de la próxima semana.

Fay, la chica del regreso triunfal, continúa desafiando los pronósticos.

Fay simplemente no quiere quedarse en el Atlántico Norte. El sistema, que tuvo un breve período como tormenta tropical a principios de esta semana antes de disiparse el martes por la noche, regresó inesperadamente el miércoles y se ha fortalecido nuevamente hasta convertirse en tormenta tropical mientras se encuentra a salvo sobre las aguas abiertas del Atlántico central.

Fay ha sido una espina clavada para los modelos de pronóstico, que fallaron en su desarrollo inicial y volvieron a equivocarse en su recuperación. Por suerte, este huracán no está cerca de tierra, así que los pronósticos erróneos no han supuesto un problema, pero será interesante ver si Fay supera las expectativas y vuelve a ser el primer huracán del Atlántico hoy antes de debilitarse de nuevo este fin de semana.

Por ahora, al menos, se espera que Fay se mantenga por debajo del umbral de huracán.

El Atlántico, por lo demás, está mayormente tranquilo.

Una fuerte perturbación al sureste de las islas de Cabo Verde, ahora denominada Invest 90L, tiene una alta probabilidad de desarrollarse a corto plazo.

El 90L gira bruscamente a la derecha y, una vez desarrollado, tiene una vida útil corta. Salvo por el viento y las fuertes lluvias que se esperan en las Islas de Cabo Verde desde hoy hasta el sábado, no debería presentar problemas para desembarcar.

Aunque todavía existe una pequeña posibilidad de que una tormenta del noreste que se esté organizando frente a la costa este adquiera algunas características tropicales este fin de semana, esto no cambiará de forma apreciable las consecuencias.

El NHC ha optado por no incluir la baja presión no tropical en su mapa de pronóstico, probablemente para evitar confusiones en los mensajes y por sensibilidad hacia los afectados por la supertormenta Sandy en 2012 (esto NO es un escenario como el de Sandy).

“Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York. They talk to me, they tell me ‘this isn’t the city we remember, it changed so quickly,'” Netanyahu told world leaders during the United Nations General Assembly.

Mamdani has long been a vocal critic of Israel’s military actions in Gaza and has called Netanyahu a “war criminal” who is “the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people.”

Mamdani met with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday in New York.

Wearing his “Catman” T-shirt, DeBacker pulled off the intricate rescue of a frightened and exhausted cat named Lola who had spent about five days trapped, likely upside down for most of that time, behind a wall in her family's old home in the New York City suburbs.

Lola's ordeal began about two weeks before the rescue, when she ducked under a floorboard while the family was moving out of their second-floor apartment in Franklin Square.

That’s when DeBacker and his team were called in.

DeBacker, who has been rescuing cats for at least 15 years, set a trap with food and cameras in the hopes of luring Lola out, but she'd avoid the trap when she emerged at night.

Things took a turn for the worse when she stopped showing up at all — she had fallen and was now stuck behind a first-floor wall.

When they found her, Lola was trapped upside-down, eating insulation and becoming increasingly weak. DeBacker was losing hope that they’d get her out alive.

But their luck changed last Friday. With a contractor's help, they used an electric saw to start cutting a hole in the wall and managed to see Lola through an endoscopic camera. She seemed nervous, so to prevent her from trying to flee further into the wall, they switched to a quieter drill.

“After two weeks we did not want to lose the cat again,” he said.

In video of the rescue, DeBacker can be seen reaching through the narrow hole, where he made contact with Lola’s hind legs. He then moves into a standing position, shifts his weight back and carefully pulls her out backward.

“Safe!” a woman can be heard saying as the dusty and exhausted cat is placed into a towel-lined crate.

When Lola was finally freed, DeBacker described it as the greatest feeling in the world.

“We were all so happy,” he said.

“It’s pretty miraculous that the cat survived there five days with no food or water,” DeBacker said. “And when you’re upside-down, all the blood is rushing to your head.”

Lola was taken to an emergency vet, where they found insulation in her body, he said. She is now back with her family and struggling with a poor appetite. Her family has been taking her to the vet to try to figure out what's going on, he said.

DeBacker, who has four cats of his own, offered a word of caution to any fellow cat owners who are preparing to move: "Secure the cats first and not after all the moving. The moving will scare the cat into hiding.”

A favorite to win the NL MVP award, Crow-Armstrong became the seventh player with at least 40 homers and 40 steals in a season, joining a group that includes Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani and Atlanta Braves outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. Jose Canseco was the first with the 1988 Oakland Athletics.

Crow-Armstrong hit his 45th homer during Sunday's 9-1 win at Cincinnati, extending his career high. The 24-year-old drew a leadoff walk from Tyler Phillips in the first inning and swiped second base on the next pitch to Seiya Suzuki for his 40th steal in 47 attempts. Fans chanted “MVP” as the Wrigley Field videoboard proclaimed the feat.

Ohtani was the previous player with a 40-40 season, hitting 54 homers and stealing 59 bases for the 2024 Dodgers. Acuña hit 41 homers and swiped 73 bases for Atlanta in 2023.

Alfonso Soriano (2006 with Washington), Alex Rodriguez (1998 with Seattle) and Barry Bonds (1996 with San Francisco) are the other 40-40 players.

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

The record to beat for most people grilling simultaneously was 2,220, set in Japan's Ishigaki City in 2023.

The South African hopefuls, who were denied in a failed attempt last year, poured into a sports stadium in the capital, Pretoria, to take up their positions around 500 grilling stations. Organizers said they expected around 3,000 participants.

The strict rules, according to a Guinness World Records adjudicator who watched over the attempt, were: Everyone needs to be barbecuing simultaneously for a minimum of five minutes to be counted.

“And if anyone leaves, they do get disqualified,” said the adjudicator, Paulina Sapinska, who wore a blue blazer and tie and held an official-looking clipboard as she monitored the mass sausage and burger grilling.

Cooking meat outside on a wood, charcoal or gas fire is a beloved South African pastime, just as it is in the United States, Australia and elsewhere.

It's called a “braai” in South Africa, and one of the favorite meats is a fat, curled up sausage known as boerewors — which translates as farmer's sausage. But there were also burgers, steaks and chops to grill for the record attempt.

The mass cookout came on Heritage Day, a national holiday where people in multiracial and multicultural South Africa are encouraged to show off and celebrate their own specific heritage. The holiday has become known informally as “Braai Day” because the love of the cookout is shared by people across the country and it's how many South Africans celebrate it.

Participant Alex Coetzee said he also took part in the 2025 record attempt, when South Africa fell short because too many people left their grilling stations.

"It’s gonna be better (this time)," said Coetzee, who wore a shirt emblazoned with the colors of the South African flag. "We’re actually gonna break the world record now. South Africans have the record and that’s the most important part.”

But was this year's attempt well done, or did it go up in smoke?

Sapinska, the Guinness World Records adjudicator, kept the country on a knife edge by saying she and other officials were reviewing the evidence and that the final word on if there was a new world cookout champion might only come on Friday.

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

Los documentos fueron firmados en el marco de la visita oficial de tres días que realiza a la capital mexicana el presidente de Corea de Sur, Lee Jae Myung, luego de participar de la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas en Nueva York.

“Espero que ambos países podamos abrir un nuevo capítulo en nuestra relación de socios estratégicos”, afirmó Lee en un mensaje que ofreció a los medios de comunicación, a través de una intérprete, al término de un encuentro que sostuvo con su par mexicana Claudia Sheinbaum en el palacio de gobierno.

Para fortalecer y acelerar la cooperación las autoridades de ambos países acordaron un plan de acción a cuatro años, que según explicó el mandatario coreano contempla el desarrollo de una base institucional y vínculos en materia financiera y de cadenas de suministro.

En México operan unas 2.000 empresas coreanas que han realizado desde hace dos décadas inversiones por más de 11.000 millones de dólares, que han convertido al país en el principal destino de las inversiones de Corea del Sur en Latinoamérica. Para 2025 el comercio bilateral alcanzó los 27.000 millones de dólares.

Ambos gobiernos se comprometieron también a avanzar en las negociaciones para la revisión del acuerdo de promoción y protección recíproca de las inversiones, evitar el ingreso de mercancías ilícitas y peligrosas, y la creación de un esquema crediticio de 100 millones de dólares entre los bancos de exportación e importación que se otorgaría a empresas mexicanas y coreanas, detalló Lee.

El gobernante asiático agradeció el apoyo de México para convertirse en un proveedor estable de crudo de Corea del Sur, e indicó que se espera acelerar la cooperación en inteligencia artificial y las tecnologías digitales y de defensa. “Vamos a contribuir para la mejora de la capacidad de la industria de defensa de México y para que podamos entrar juntos a terceros mercados”, añadió.

Sheinbaum también mostró su disposición a impulsar la cooperación bilateral, y dijo en un mensaje a los medios que el liderazgo tecnológico de Corea del Sur, junto con las capacidades industriales, el talento y la posición geográfica de México ofrecen la oportunidad de "construir nuevas alianzas que fortalezcan nuestra competitividad”.

Para impulsar la alianza las autoridades de ambos países firmaron 17 memorandos de entendimiento en materia económica, financiera, educativa, de seguridad, ciencia y tecnología, turismo y cultura, anunció la mandataria mexicana.

Más temprano, Sheinbaum adelantó que conversaría con Lee sobre el K-pop, que es muy popular en México, y la visita al país de algunas populares bandas coreanas como Stray Kids y BTS, que retornará a la capital mexicana el próximo año, según informó la mandataria.

En mayo la presidenta se reunió en el Palacio Nacional con los integrantes de BTS antes de unos conciertos que tenía programada la popular banda surcoreana en la capital mexicana.

Sheinbaum intercedió a inicios de año por los fans de BTS enviando una carta al presidente de Corea del Sur cuando los boletos se agotaron y muchos denunciaron reventa. La presidenta también dijo que se había puesto en contacto con los organizadores para ver si podían abrir más fechas de su gira mundial.

Douglas Stewart Carter was sentenced to death in 1985 after a jury found him guilty of murdering Eva Olesen, the aunt of a former Provo police chief. The state Supreme Court last year ordered a new trial, citing misconduct by investigators. Carter remains in custody and maintains his innocence.

No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene, but the jury convicted Carter, a Black man, based on a signed confession and two witnesses who said he had bragged about killing Olesen, who was white.

Judge Derek Pullan set a bond hearing for Monday, when defense attorney Neal Hamilton said he expects his client to be released pending an eight-week trial set to begin next July.

“It's not time to try to save face and continue with a tainted prosecution,” Hamilton said. “They know they don't have a case. The moral obligation is to dismiss.”

Utah County Attorney Jeffrey Gray said in a Wednesday court filing that the state was withdrawing an earlier notice that it intended to seek the death penalty. He said results of a DNA analysis received Tuesday excluded Carter as a possible match to blood found on a doorknob and material found on the handle of a knife used to stab Olesen, who was also shot.

Gray said the state planned to reexamine its decision to move forward with the case. But the prosecutor added that the new evidence “does not necessarily exonerate Carter of the murder.” Gray noted the handgun used to shoot Olesen was never found and Carter confessed.

Members of Olesen's family had testified during a hearing last month that Carter could pose a safety risk to them if he were released.

In a Thursday statement, the family said they “will not comment on the guilt or innocence of any individual” while prosecutors decide how to proceed.

“The latest developments have raised difficult questions and once again left our family without the sense of resolution we had hoped for after so many years,” the family said in the statement released by the Utah County Attorney's Office.

Carter has said his signed confession was coerced. The two witnesses he allegedly bragged to — a couple living in the U.S. without legal status — said years later that police and prosecutors offered to pay their rent, coached them to lie in court and threatened them and their son with deportation if they did not implicate Carter.

His defense attorneys also say witnesses saw a white man fleeing the crime scene and that an investigator suppressed evidence pointing to other suspects, including the victim’s husband, Orla Olesen. They allege prosecutors were close to filing charges against the husband, but a Provo police lieutenant asked them not to, so he could continue investigating. Carter was identified as a suspect soon after, the document alleges.

Orla Olesen, who died in 2009, had told police he found his wife dead in their home, partially undressed and with her hands tied behind her back.

Un hombre sin camisa sacó a una mujer de su auto en el estacionamiento del hospital, ubicado en 2001 West 68th St., y huyó, según un testigo.

“El sospechoso se acercó a una víctima que salía de su vehículo, entró por la fuerza en su auto y huyó del lugar”, dijo el teniente Eddie Rodriguez, portavoz del Departamento de Policía de Hialeah.

El hombre, quien escapó de la custodia policial en el hospital, chocó contra un auto mientras huía, según Rodriguez.

Los detectives pidieron a cualquier persona con información sobre este u otros casos llamar a Crime Stoppers del Condado Miami-Dade al 305-471-8477 para permanecer en el anonimato.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco in February seized approximately 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election on statewide congressional redistricting favorable to Democrats and pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The measure easily passed statewide, and won in Bianco's county by roughly 80,000 votes.

The court called the ballots’ seizure “unlawful,” saying California law requires ballots to remain in the custody and control of election officials, even during a criminal investigation.

Bianco said in an email message to his supporters that he will comply with the court’s order.

“We are very disappointed and wholeheartedly disagree with the court’s ruling,” Bianco said in a statement shared later Thursday with The Associated Press.

Election officials watched the case with an eye to the November midterms

Bianco’s ballot investigation came as President Donald Trump repeatedly disputed the results of the 2020 election, citing unsubstantiated instances of fraud. Trump’s administration in January seized ballots and other documents from an election office in Georgia. Some Republicans have mirrored Trump’s rhetoric on voting in their states.

Election officials and civil rights groups have been following the Bianco case carefully as they brace for the possibility that Trump or his allies may try to seize ballots in November.

Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta immediately launched a legal challenge after the seizure, arguing the sheriff had no authority over election materials and warning his action was designed to sow distrust in elections. He ordered Bianco to return the ballots, but Bianco did not.

“The Court has now made clear that this kind of defiance cannot stand, that the Attorney General has the authority to intervene when sheriffs take improper action, and that voted ballots belong in the custody of elections officials,” Bonta said Thursday.

Sheriff seized the ballots after receiving a complaint about the vote count

Bianco said he confiscated the election materials after receiving a complaint from a local citizens group that the count was off. The group said it found a gap between the number of ballots cast and the number of ballots received in the election for the measure, sparked by a nationwide redistricting fight.

The group said it found a roughly 45,000-vote gap between the number of ballots cast and the number of ballots received by Riverside County in the special election for Proposition 50, the measure that redrew California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats.

Riverside County Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco said the group misread ballot data and that the actual gap was 103, well within the margin of error set by California’s secretary of state.

At the time, Bianco was one of two prominent Republicans running for governor in a crowded June primary. He did not advance to the general election and later announced plans to seek reelection as sheriff in 2028.

The University of California, Los Angeles Voting Rights Project also sued the sheriff and the Riverside County Registrar of Voters on behalf of several voters. Xavier Becerra, a former state attorney general and Democrat running for governor, was part of the UCLA lawsuit.

The state Supreme Court heard arguments in both cases last month.

Bianco began his own recount

Bianco began recounting the vote shortly after seizing the ballots, using sheriff’s officials under the supervision of a special master appointed by a court. But he suspended it days later, citing mounting legal challenges. He stopped the count after the California Supreme Court ordered him to do so.

Attorney Bradley Hertz, representing Bianco, argued before the court that the sheriff had a legal duty to open the investigation after receiving the complaint and followed the penal code to carry out that investigation, first issuing search warrants in February, but the court disagreed.

“If election misconduct is suspected, the Elections Code provides several mechanisms for law enforcement to review and examine ballots without compromising their integrity,” the court wrote.

The court ruled Thursday that a search warrant does not override the state’s electoral law.

“These are the voters’ ballots. They must be protected through the processes the Legislature has established. This ruling provides important clarity for election officials, law enforcement, and voters across California,” said Chad Dunn, legal director and co-founder of the UCLA Voting Rights Project.

On Saturday, Newsom signed a bill that would prevent anyone from seizing ballots.

Court finds state attorney general orders are binding

The court also settled whether the state's attorney general has authority over county sheriffs, saying the attorney general's orders are binding. Bianco had argued that an attorney general's role is that of an adviser.

Bianco said in an email message to his supporters that while he will comply with the court's rulings, he “will not obey the message behind them — that local law enforcement works for Sacramento, not for the people who elected us.”

Interscope Records announced that Nov. 13 will be the sale date for U2's 16th studio album and released a new track, “Silencio.” “Street of Dreams,” the first song to be taken from the new album, was released in July.

“It’s a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs," The Edge, the band's guitarist, said in a statement. Added singer Bono: “There will be loud guitars, deep bass, some ecstatic rhythms.”

“Carnaval De Luz” — which translates from Spanish and Portuguese to “Carnival of Light” — is produced by Jacknife Lee, who has been working with U2 since 2004’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.”

The last track on the album is “Torn,” a duet with Parton that a statement describes as “what has sadly turned out to be her last recorded vocal performance.” A representative for Parton confirmed it is her final vocal performance. It was co-written by U2, Parton and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid and is described as “a tender country song detailing broken family ties that holds wider resonances.”

The band, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, has not been dormant, having dropped two EPs, “Days of Ash” and “Easter Lily,” each with six songs, released for Ash Wednesday and Easter, respectively.

The new album cover has The Edge and Bono joined by drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton walking in a line along a beach, with Bono leading the way in a top hat and black coat, in a clear echo of the Beatles' “Abbey Road” cover.

___

AP Music Writer Maria Sherman contributed to this report.

Two decades later, the Mohegans have sold the Sun to the Houston Rockets and the Sun is relocating.

“I remember the energy in the arena,” Meehan said. “I knew it was Mohegan’s team we were cheering for.”

Now 29, Meehan is among a loyal group of Mohegan fans preparing to say goodbye to a team that became a point of community pride.

The Mohegan Tribe purchased its WNBA franchise for $10 million in 2003, becoming the first Native American tribe to own a professional sports team. Over 24 seasons, the Connecticut Sun connected generations of tribal members and gave Mohegan people a platform to share their language, culture and values with the league and its fast growing fan base.

But in May, the tribe’s business arm closed a $300 million deal with Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta to sell the Sun and relocate the team, with proceeds going to help strengthen the tribe's balance sheet as it digs out from substantial debt.

Beth Regan, chairwoman of the Mohegan Tribe’s Council of Elders and a self-proclaimed “Day 1” Connecticut Sun fan, said the team’s last game on Mohegan land on Thursday night will be emotional.

“Family and community mean everything to us,” Regan said. “The Connecticut Sun are part of our cháhshayooô, our family.”

Tribal members embraced the team

Basketball is not a particular passion for Meehan. Their loyalty and enthusiasm for the Sun is an exception.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s not a good year and they’re not winning or whatever,” Meehan said. “The team is special and the fan base is special.”

Meehan remembers wearing their hair in space buns like their favorite Sun player, Nykesha Sales, and flocking to the tunnel with other tribal members to ask for players’ autographs.

Players visited tribal youth camps and the annual Mohegan Wigwam Festival. The Sun’s fiery, free-spirited mascot, Blaze, made appearances at social dances.

Generations of Heather Landry's Mohegan family connect over their love of the Sun. Landry bought season tickets this year, giving her 10-year-old daughter Emersyn an opportunity to meet favorite players and even score a selfie with Brittany Griner and Saniya Rivers.

But Landry said her favorite memory of the team came when her family stopped by the Mohegan government center, happened upon a Sun practice session in the community gym and got invited to watch from the bleachers.

“I’m sure my daughter will cry when we walk out of the arena on Thursday,” Landry said of the team's last game in Connecticut.

The Sun “Moheganized” the WNBA

In April, when WNBA guard Charlisse Leger-Walker learned she had been drafted by an Indigenous-owned team, she felt it was “meant to be.”

Leger-Walker, who is Māori and Samoan, said Mohegan elders often visited Sun practices to welcome new players and offer blessings and prayers for the team’s success.

“It was cool for me to come to that realization, that a lot of my values that I carry with me from home are the exact same here,” Leger-Walker said.

From halftime performances featuring tribal singers and dancers to a team logo styled after a traditional Mohegan symbol, the Connecticut Sun brought Mohegan culture to the WNBA and to a national stage.

Regan has smudged the team with sage during losing streaks, a cleansing practice meant to help the players let go of poor performances. She has also gifted injured players sweetgrass braids and laughed when she remembered athletes including 6’6” center Jonquel Jones hugging their knees to squeeze into the community’s sweat lodge.

In 2021, when the WNBA and Nike gave team uniforms an upgrade, Regan said it was the perfect opportunity to “Moheganize” their uniforms with imagery like the “trail of life” motif, which is traditionally painted on woven baskets, and alternating purple and white trim styled after a wampum collar. One of the team’s alternate jerseys displays the word “Keesusk,” the Mohegan word for “Sun.”

“Our languages were taken from us in colonization,” Regan said. “So to see ‘Keesusk’ on those uniforms is so joyous, so validating for our tribe.”

The tribe took an early bet on the WNBA

The Mohegan Tribe purchased the WNBA’s Orlando Miracle in 2003 amid a financial crisis for the league with no clear path forward. That's when the team relocated to Uncasville, Connecticut and became the Sun.

By 2010, the Sun had made deep playoff runs, ranked near the top of the league in game attendance and became the first WNBA team to turn a profit despite playing in the league's smallest market.

Following the Mohegans' lead, other tribes have since invested in professional sports to diversify their economies. Wilton Rancheria is now majority owner of Major League Soccer's Sacramento Republic FC. The Seneca Nation recently purchased the National Lacrosse League’s Rochester Knighthawks. And the Pechanga Band of Indians' business arm is a founding partner of the LA Clippers' Intuit Dome arena.

Regan said the “writing's been on the wall” since the WNBA exploded in popularity and players negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement that requires teams to provide state-of-the-art practice facilities among other expensive upgrades that the tribe would have struggled to afford.

The Mohegan Tribal Council declined an emailed interview request Wednesday. In selling the team, Meehan trusts that the council made the right business decision. But they called the WNBA's move to effectively block a deal that would have sent the Sun to Boston, a much closer venue, a “betrayal" of the tribe that they say rescued the franchise.

Ahead of Thursday's final game, Meehan is gathering 24 years of Connecticut Sun mementos — ticket stubs, their original 2003 team jersey — to keep in a framed shadow box signed by the 2026 team's players.

Regan fought tears while explaining what Mohegan people will lose when the team relocates. She said her people should be proud of the role they played in shaping the WNBA's success story.

“Before all the attention, when the WNBA needed investment, who stepped up?” Regan said. “Mohegan did.” ___ This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network at The Associated Press.

Las autoridades dijeron que el delito ocurrió la madrugada del domingo después de que la víctima llevara a Alexia Jocelyn Flores, de 24 años y residente del centro de Miami, a su apartamento en el rascacielos Panorama Tower, ubicado en 1100 Brickell Bay Drive, después de su cita para cenar.

La policía de Miami dijo que ambos “pasaron varias horas bebiendo juntos” y el hombre finalmente le pidió a Flores que se fuera alrededor de las 2:30 a.m.

Las autoridades dijeron que mientras la mujer se vestía en el dormitorio y el baño, la víctima permaneció en el sofá.

Un reporte de arresto indica que un video de vigilancia muestra a la víctima “acompañando a (Flores) hasta el ascensor, donde se despidieron con un beso”.

“Al regresar a su apartamento, descubrió que faltaban dos relojes de la mesa de noche junto a su cama”, indica el reporte.

Las autoridades dijeron que intentó comunicarse con el conductor de Uber que había coordinado para ella “y descubrió que ella lo había bloqueado”.

La policía dijo que localizó a Flores el miércoles en el área de North Miami Avenue y 21st Street, en el vecindario Wynwood, y la llevó a la estación de policía del centro para una entrevista.

“(Flores) recordó haber conocido a la víctima a través de Tinder, haber ido a cenar y haber regresado a su apartamento”, indica el reporte. “Dijo que creía que había sido drogada y que no podía recordar lo que ocurrió después. Negó haberse llevado los relojes. No se encontró ningún reporte policial relacionado con su acusación”.

Los detectives la arrestaron bajo un cargo de robo mayor.

Hasta la mañana del jueves, Flores permanecía detenida en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight con una fianza de $7,500 USD.

Star Meat Delivery Inc., based in Lucama, North Carolina, is recalling more than 167,000 pounds (75,750 kilograms) of raw pork, beef, and goat nationwide. The USDA said that number could grow as it continues its investigation.

Food produced without inspection may contain undeclared allergens, harmful bacteria, or other contaminants, the agency said Tuesday in announcing the recall. So far, there have been no confirmed reports of illnesses or injuries from the meats, according to the USDA.

The meat in question was produced “on various dates” before Sept. 22 and has USDA inspection stickers falsely bearing an establishment number — EST. 1363 — that the agency said “does not have a federal grant of inspection.” However, some packages people purchased may not bear that labeling because retail stores may have applied their own stickers with pricing and safe handling instructions, the agency warned.

The products were shipped to Georgia distributor A&D Foods to send to retail and restaurant locations nationwide.

The USDA said the products should be considered misbranded and unsafe to eat and be discarded or returned to the place of purchase.

The agency said the problem was discovered during the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service’s routine checks. It’s not clear whether anyone has been arrested or criminally charged.

Star Meat Delivery, in a statement posted on its Facebook page Thursday, pushed back at the notion that the inspection stamps on its products were somehow falsified. It said the establishment number in question was “legitimately reserved” as part of the USDA application process while it seeks approval to process and package meat for the Georgia distributor.

That approval process is still underway, Star Meat said, although the meat involved was sourced from a USDA-inspected supplier.

“No other products sold by Star Meat Delivery were mislabeled, and no other products sold by Star Meat Delivery are part of the recall that has been issued,” the company said. “We are cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities to finalize the application and are following the recall procedures that have been put into place.”

The USDA didn’t immediately respond to Star Meat's statement.

Recalls triggered by forged inspection stamps are relatively rare, according to Keith Schneider, a food safety professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

“This is someone taking a shortcut,” he said. “Systems are in place to catch these sorts of things and it appears the system worked as intended. You can’t skip inspections.”

Last year, some 32,000 pounds (14,500 kilograms) of meat, including chorizo, pork chops and ribs, produced by Sabrositos Hondurenos, of New Jersey, were recalled after the USDA determined they had fake inspection stickers.

Premier Giorgia Meloni’s conservative government said the package is aimed at strengthening integration through language learning and has drawn support from right-wing allies.

Opponents including some educators, unions and opposition parties warn that new rules could force students to attend schools far from their neighborhoods, while critics accuse the government of turning immigration into a political issue.

With elections possible as early as next spring, analysts say the measures allow the premier to reassert her credentials on issues central to her conservative base, even though their impact is likely to be limited and significant questions remain about how they would be enforced.

Under the plan, a limit of 30% of foreign students lacking sufficient Italian proficiency would be allowed in any individual classroom.

The government decree goes into effect immediately but needs to be endorsed within 60 days in parliament, where Meloni's coalition commands a majority.

Meloni wrote on social media that they are “common-sense measures that do not divide but help foster genuine integration, avoiding ‘ghetto’ classrooms and giving all students equal opportunities.”

The decree comes as Meloni faces mounting pressure on her right flank from a new hard-line challenger, retired army Gen. Roberto Vannacci, who has been seeking to capitalize on voter concerns over immigration and national identity.

A limited number of classrooms are affected

Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said local school authorities will coordinate student placements to avoid concentrations of non-Italian-speaking pupils, while schools unable to comply would be eligible for exemptions and additional language-support funding.

The minister says it would affect around 1,000 classrooms, about 0.3% of the total nationwide, and primarily those with high concentrations of recently arrived students with little or no Italian-language proficiency.

School principals questioned how the measure could work in areas with large migrant populations.

“From an educational perspective, the issue is well-founded and valid, but it’s difficult to turn it into a practical solution,” said Antonello Giannelli, president of the National Association of Principals.

"We have situations in which there is a district, a neighborhood that is mainly inhabited by immigrants and maybe there is only one school. So, since these are children, presumably young children in primary school, it is evident that they will hardly be able to go kilometers from their home,” Giannelli added.

Teachers’ unions criticized what they called a lack of both consultation and resources for the measure. They argued that the government’s 14-million-euro ($16 million) funding package would not be enough to hire specialized language teachers and cultural mediators needed to support students.

“Differences mean opportunities, and as with every opportunity one must be able to catch it. In most cases they (foreign students) allow the class to enrich their view of the world,” said Giovanni Castagno, a 52-year-old primary school teacher in central Rome.

According to Education Ministry data, students without Italian citizenship accounted for 11.2% of Italy’s school population in the 2022-23 academic year, while classes with more than 30% foreign students represented 7.6% of the total.

Foreign students who were born in the country would be exempt from the cap, along with those who attended Italian preschool or have already progressed through the school system.

Burqas and niqabs banned from schools

The decree also bans burqas and niqabs in schools while continuing to allow hijabs.

The measure is narrower than restrictions adopted in some other European countries.

France banned full-face veils in public spaces in 2011, citing public security concerns, despite the small number of women affected. France also prohibits students from wearing conspicuous religious symbols, including Islamic headscarves, in public schools under its strict secularism doctrine.

Critics in Italy said the provision addresses a phenomenon rarely seen in Italian classrooms. Educators noted that while headscarves are common among some Muslim students, full-face veils are seldom seen in schools, and they argued that the provision risks becoming a symbolic political issue rather than an educational one.

Opposition parties also said the 30% threshold largely mirrors guidance already introduced by the Education Ministry in 2010, noting the government was repackaging an existing policy rather than investing in struggling schools. Center-left leader Elly Schlein accused the government of using schools to advance a political message on migration.

Valditara, the education minister, rejected those criticisms, saying the goal is integration through language acquisition and stronger educational support.

Parents asked to attend Italian-language courses

The decree provides additional teaching resources for schools where newly arrived foreign students exceed 20% of enrollment and additional language-learning funds for schools exceeding the 30% threshold.

It also would require some parents of foreign students to attend Italian-language courses when language barriers within families contribute to educational or behavioral difficulties.

Schools would refer eligible families to social services, which could enroll them in a tailored support program through adult education centers. Parents who fail to attend the courses could face fines ranging from 200 to 1,000 euros, although exemptions are included for those with certified age-related, medical or disability-related barriers to language learning.

___

AP video journalist Paolo Santalucia in Rome contributed to this report.

Ocurrió en la cuadra 700 de Southeast Eighth Street, en el vecindario Rio Vista de la ciudad.

Según el Departamento de Bomberos y Rescate de Fort Lauderdale, nadie resultó herido. Un video compartido por la agencia mostró que el camión con pluma pertenecía a Cooper Crane, una empresa con sede en West Park.

Un video de Sky 10 muestra que la grúa dañó una pequeña sección de la parte exterior del techo de la casa; no parecía haberlo atravesado.

As the war with Iran has dragged on, Trump and Netanyahu have split over how to prosecute it, straining a relationship between the two allies. Netanyahu has also faced global criticism both for Israel’s war in Gaza and settler violence in the occupied West Bank. Instead of a packed itinerary, Netanyahu, who arrived in New York on Thursday, was to meet only a handful of leaders before giving his speech.

The apparent snub underscored how badly the relationship between Trump and the prime minister has fractured. Many in Washington associate Netanyahu with the increasingly unpopular fight with Iran and Trump has labored to avoid the appearance that the Israeli leader forced him into a war that Trump said would be a “little excursion” lasting only weeks.

Netanyahu's brief visit also demonstrated how isolated he is globally, three years after launching a punishing war in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. He faces reelection next month in polls widely seen as a referendum on his responsibility for the security failures surrounding the attacks and his ability to defend Israel's reputation on the world stage.

Still, Netanyahu was unfazed when scores of diplomats marched out when he took the stage on Thursday.

“If there are any other moral cowards who have not yet left this hall, please do so now,” Netanyahu said and delivered a defiant speech lashing out at critics who accuse Israel of genocide and war crimes in Gaza.

He also accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who had called for Netanyahu's arrest, of spreading lies about Israel and endangering Jewish New Yorkers.

Netanyahu is a master showman

Still, the prime minister is a master showman, often turning to props and visual aids during speeches in flawless English to drive home his message. His speech, ahead of next month's elections, appeared aimed at Israeli voters, and was repeatedly interrupted by cheers from supporters he had brought into the hall.

“He times his speech so that it is broadcast here in primetime,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. who served under Netanyahu and lives in Israel.

But experts say without the usual high-profile meetings, the trip could hurt Netanyahu’s image at home.

“I think the trip is a mistake, because it exposes his weaknesses,” said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israel relations and professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan and Reichman universities.

While many Israelis view the U.N. as hostile toward Israel, he added, the fact that he could not secure a meeting with Trump only highlights how poorly Netanyahu has managed the relationship with his nation's strongest ally.

In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden was reluctant to host Netanyahu at the White House but still made time to sit down with him on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

“Israel cannot survive without the United States,” Gilboa said.

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel and a longtime supporter of Israeli settlements, has sharply criticized settlers attacking Palestinian communities in the West Bank. In unusual remarks for an ambassador, he referred to the attackers as “terrorists."

“It’s significant of a deeper rift,” Oren said of Netanyahu's slim itinerary.

When Trump was in New York on Tuesday, he met with an array of leaders from Arab nations, as well as from Denmark, Japan, Greenland, Ukraine and Venezuela, among others. He then quickly returned to Washington to roll out the red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Netanyahu has met with Trump seven times since the U.S. president's return to office in January 2025, though only once since the war with Iran began.

Not meeting the president was a “big, big miss for him at a time where he can’t afford misses,” said Natan Sachs, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

On other past trips, Netanyahu met with a slate of high-profile leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

This year, though, the prime minister's office said “many world leaders” asked to meet with Netanyahu during his brief visit, but that he was on a “tight schedule” and needed to return to Israel before the start of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which begins at sundown on Friday.

On his schedule, the statement said, were leaders from Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Panama, Ethiopia, Greece, Slovenia, and Papua New Guinea.

De acuerdo con las autoridades, el robo ocurrió en la madrugada del domingo, después de que la víctima llevara a Alexia Jocelyn Flores, de 24 años y residente del downtown de Miami, a su apartamento en la torre Panorama Tower, ubicada en el 1100 Brickell Bay Drive, tras salir a cenar.

La policía de Miami indicó que ambos “pasaron varias horas bebiendo juntos” y que, alrededor de las 2:30 a.m., el hombre le pidió a Flores que se fuera.

Según las autoridades, mientras la mujer se vestía en la habitación y el baño, la víctima se quedó en el sofá.

Un informe de arresto señala que el video de vigilancia muestra a la víctima “acompañando a Flores hasta el ascensor, donde se despidieron con un beso”.

“Al regresar a su apartamento, descubrió que faltaban dos relojes de la mesa de noche junto a su cama”, indica el informe.

Las autoridades dijeron que el hombre intentó comunicarse con el conductor de Uber que le había pedido a ella “y descubrió que lo había bloqueado”.

La policía localizó a Flores el miércoles en la zona de North Miami Avenue y la 21st Street, en Wynwood, y la llevó a la estación de policía del downtown para interrogarla.

“Flores recordó haber conocido a la víctima por Tinder, haber ido a cenar y haber regresado a su apartamento”, señala el informe. “Declaró que creía haber sido drogada y que no recordaba lo que pasó después. Negó haberse llevado los relojes. No se encontró ningún reporte policial relacionado con su denuncia”.

Los detectives la arrestaron por un cargo de hurto mayor.

Hasta el jueves por la mañana, Flores permanecía detenida en el centro correccional Turner Guilford Knight, con una fianza de $7,500.

El mandatario conservador arribó a Cali en la madrugada portando un arma en el cinto y un radio de comunicación usualmente usados por la policía, según un video divulgado por él en X.

“Acaba de empezar el operativo más importante en la historia de esta ciudad”, aseguró De la Espriella. “Estamos recuperando el centro cuadra por cuadra, interviniendo edificaciones, casas y terrenos que deben estar al servicio de los caleños y jamás bajo el control de estructuras criminales”, agregó.

La operación desplegó más de 1.200 agentes policiales y del ejército por barrios del centro y el oriente de Cali, con decenas de órdenes de captura y un centenar de órdenes de allanamientos, buscando presuntos implicados en delitos asociados con el narcotráfico y la extorsión.

De la Espriella indicó que se realizaron capturas y se decomisaron mercancía ilegal, drogas y armas, sin detallar cuántas.

“Desde hace mucho tiempo esta ciudad ha sufrido una ola terrible de violencia y el gobierno anterior le ató las manos a nuestros policías y ha llegado el momento de hacer lo correcto”, aseguró De la Espriella al cuestionar a su predecesor, el progresista Gustavo Petro (2022-2026).

De la Espriella ha enfocado sus esfuerzos en la política de seguridad, viajando a las diferentes regiones para dar anuncios sobre los resultados de los operativos, incluidos los que dejan muertos que suelen ser exhibidos en bolsas blancas, lo que ha generado críticas de sus opositores.

El operativo en Cali sucede luego de que el mandatario ordenara militarizar la ciudad de Santa Marta, uno de los destinos turísticos más importantes del país, en un intento por contrarrestar la violencia de un grupo armado ilegal que mantenía un “paro armado” que busca restringir la movilidad de la población bajo amenaza. Tras la presión militar, las Autodefensas Conquistadoras de la Sierra Nevada anunciaron el levantamiento de las restricciones a partir del viernes.

El alcalde de Cali, Alejandro Éder, le dijo a De la Espriella durante el operativo que uno de los sectores impactados es una “olla”, como se conoce a un lugar de expendio de drogas, que quedaba aledaño al centro político de la ciudad.

“No es aceptable que haya este nido de ilegalidad en todo el corazón de Cali. Llevamos más de 50 años esperando este momento”, aseguró Éder.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office documented costly problems in several initiatives ICE has pursued since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025 and ordered the mass arrest and deportation of people who are in the country illegally.

Among the misspending was nearly $3 million to erect tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million to maintain purchased warehouses that are now being sold without having housed a single detainee, and excessive rates paid to hold detainees at a deficient and now-shuttered Florida lockup.

ICE has no strategic plan for spending its windfall

Congress gave ICE an unprecedented $45 billion to expand detention capacity last year as part of the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill, but the agency still lacks a comprehensive strategic plan for how to spend it wisely, the report warned. The detainee population has increased from 39,000 in January 2025 to 67,000 as of July 30.

“Without taking action to manage detention investments in accordance with program and project management practices, ICE will likely continue to make uninformed decisions and risk further inefficiency and wasted resources,” warned the GAO, a nonpartisan agency that investigated at the request of congressional Democrats.

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, told GAO it would develop a plan to guide its detention expansion by Aug. 31, 2027, but that may be too late to prevent more waste, the report said.

ICE and DHS offered no immediate additional comment on the report.

The government scrapped a plan for mass detention at Guantánamo Bay

Shortly after Trump returned to the White House, the government began blowing money by hastily pursuing plans to detain more people who were in the U.S. illegally, the report found.

After the White House directed officials to use the military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for immigration detention in January 2025, the Department of Defense assembled enough tents to hold 5,000 people there at a cost of $2.85 million, the report said. But DHS found that the tents didn't meet detention standards, and they were removed before they housed a single detainee.

The plan for mass detention at Guantánamo Bay was later found to be “infeasible” and scrapped because of the costs of building facilities that could meet federal standards. Instead, the agency housed an average of 16 detainees daily there this year, at a cost of millions of dollars, the report found.

ICE is wasting millions of dollars on empty warehouses

Earlier this year, ICE purchased 11 large warehouses across the country for $1.07 billion as part of a plan backed by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to increase detention capacity. But that idea was scrapped amid public opposition before any detainees were housed in them because the department didn't conduct “appropriate due diligence and planning," according to the GAO report. DHS is now planning to sell seven of the facilities.

ICE has spent $20 million on costs and services related to those seven warehouses that it will not recover, including zoning assessments, title insurance, utilities and security, and will need to sell them for the total purchase price of $707 million to avoid more waste, the report said.

ICE has also “incurred significant costs” for the four warehouses that it plans to keep, including a $426 million outlay to renovate facilities in Arizona and Maryland that is on hold due to legal challenges.

Report finds waste on ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and other plans

After the warehouse initiative faltered, ICE launched a plan to purchase facilities owned by private contractors that were already housing detainees, saying it would give more control over infrastructure and limit local governments' ability to restrict their use.

The agency spent $1.5 billion to buy two of them in July and could buy more even though ICE has “not assessed the long-term affordability of owning these facilities," the report said.

The report found fault with other initiatives. ICE never reached a contract with the state of Florida to operate the facility nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” which housed detainees for a year until it was closed in June following reports of substandard and abusive conditions.

Instead, DHS agreed to reimburse the state through a special $608 million Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that authorizes a charge of $249 per detainee per day — 171% higher than ICE's normal rate of $92, the report found. DHS is also paying the state the higher rate for a second facility that's still open in Sanderson, Florida.

ICE is also facing high costs under an agreement in which the Bureau of Prisons is housing detainees at eight facilities. The agreement requires ICE to reimburse the full cost, which has ballooned because of overtime and other staffing assignments, and pay a rate of $182 per detainee per day, the report said.

Maria Grazia Chiuri freed the body at Fendi, Simone Bellotti relaxed the uniform at Jil Sander and Meryll Rogge embraced generations at Marni.

If first seasons are when new designers demonstrate their brand knowledge, then second and third are when designers start to blaze their own paths while evolving the fashion house.

“I don’t think we have to be nostalgic. The brand has fantastic recognizable codes. We want to cherish that," Rogge said backstage after the Marni Spring Summer 2027 co-ed runway preview on Thursday. "I have to find my own way to honor the brand, to honor the values and to hopefully make young people dream, and other generations dream.”

Meryll Rogge seeks intergenerational acceptance at Marni

Rogge said Marni's sweet spot is intergenerational appeal and that the brand hit that target with their new bag: Its first customer was a 17-year-old girl and its second an 80-year-old woman.

The runway collection in general hewed more toward the younger crowd with pedal pushers and mini-shifts that many 80-year-olds would have worn in their youths. Older Marni dressers may feel more at home today in the collection's short-haired goat fur coats, which could appeal to any age, if not every pocketbook.

Rogge is in full command of Marni's heritage quirkiness. Men's knit vests were styled like halters and worn over button-down shirts and thin long johns peeked out of baggy boxers. For women, a plaid dress featured a keyhole detail set off by a shoe buckle — shoes being an unlikely inspiration for the collection.

The looks were modern and easy to wear, with an element of gorpcore, or mountain looks made for the city, in a series of anorak dresses and tops.

Fendi frees the body

Chiuri enveloped the runway for her highly anticipated second show at Fendi inside glass walls, allowing the audience to see their images reflected on the models while perhaps obscuring some of the detail. With a soundtrack of Italian dance classics, Chiuri said she was trying to recreate the freedom and frenzy of the dance floor.

“This was meant to be a hall of mirrors, where we actually reflect ourselves in other people’s bodies,’’ Chiuri, 62, said backstage after Wednesday's show. “I believe that for a generation like mine, which believed in the nightclub as a place of freedom, meeting people and dancing and watching other bodies was a way of connecting with others.”

Chiuri returned to Fendi, where she started as an accessories designer, after turns as co-creative director at Valentino and creative director at Dior.

Her co-ed sophomore collection started with undergarments, making bare skin integral to the look and leaning into brand heritage traits of fluidity and layered textures. Think silken slips and deeply scooped tanks that contrasted with tailored military jackets, cape-like trenches and patchwork fur coats.

Arrivals at the show were hindered by a combination of fans waiting to catch a glimpse of front-row guests like Monica Bellucci and Italian singer Jovanotti, and an anti-fur protest. Fendi was born as a furrier, and the brand is sticking with the legacy but putting the emphasis on upcycled pieces.

Jil Sander softens the minimalist uniform

Simone Bellotti’s third collection for Jil Sander brimmed with confidence, as he softened the minimalist uniform with inventive tailoring.

The silhouette was heavily elongated, with three-quarter-length jackets and argyle knitwear that covered the bum. But it also bubbled and billowed, with pleats and built-in capes that allowed air to flow through the garments and around the body.

Bellotti hit his stride with tailoring that gave structure and lightness to the jackets, dresses and skirts in all the right places. Coats featured a single, off-skew pressed fold, which played off the tiny notched collars. Shirts were punctuated by knife pleats that ballooned in the back, while cascading pleats fluttered down the side of skirts.

The color palette was mostly neutrals of black, gray and blue, to keep the focus on the architecture of the looks.

“There is always something that I really like about this idea to distort the precision a little bit. I think it is more honest,” he said after the show on Wednesday.

A particularly striking pair of coats featured an exaggerated cutaway saddle flap of a royal riding jacket, a shape achieved through hand sewing and not a mere styling trick.

“It is very beautiful to see the result of this manipulation, made by hands,” Bellotti said.

Leaving their husbands behind at the White House, the first ladies visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art in a display of soft power that united two figures known for fusing style and diplomacy. It was the first public meeting in nearly a decade between the spouses, one a former fashion model and the other a famed soprano.

The first ladies arrived to crowds gathered on sidewalks across from the museum, many waving Chinese and American flags.

Inside the museum, the first ladies toured the Peacock Room, a gilded green, blue and gold dining room that was once housed in a London mansion before opening to the public in Washington in 1923. The room was created by American artist James McNeill Whistler.

They also paused to look at a stone disk from ancient China, along with “Princess from the Land of Porcelain,” an oil painting by Whistler hanging in the Peacock Room and featuring a kimono-clad woman standing and holding a fan. Later, youngsters from Hope Chinese School serenaded the women with renditions of famous Chinese folk songs, “Song and Smile” and “Jasmine Flower.”

First ladies last met in 2017 in Beijing

The meeting drew global attention, featuring two powerful and glamorous women from the world's two biggest economies.

“They definitely add to the grandiosity and the symbolic significance of this trip,” said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.

Every interaction between the first ladies was scrutinized for clues about the standing between their countries, Sun said. Also closely watched were their style choices, which are followed in fashion circles. Melania Trump wore a black tweed jacket and skirt from Alexander McQueen, while Peng wore a qipao-style dress with a traditional collar adorned with a silver flower.

Their last public meeting was in 2017, when President Donald Trump stopped in Beijing during a tour of Asia in his first term. During that trip, the first ladies shared tea at the Palace Museum and visited a school where students performed songs and dances. Melania Trump did not attend her husband’s visit to Beijing earlier this year.

Trump and Peng approach their roles differently

Peng, 63, has embraced a more public role than her predecessors, who rarely attended state visits and usually stayed in the background. Melania Trump, who is 56, keeps a lower profile, often preferring to work behind the scenes.

They split off from the White House on Thursday while Donald Trump and Xi Jinping held private talks, touring the museum after a White House welcome ceremony and before a lavish state dinner.

Peng’s last trip to the White House was in 2015, when President Barack Obama hosted Xi. A noted star before her husband's rise, Peng ascended to national fame in the 1980s as a military singer, performing patriotic songs in full dress uniform.

As the children's choir sang on Thursday, Peng quietly mouthed some of the lyrics and later clapped along with the boys and girls. At one point, she turned and shared a laugh with Melania Trump.

Peng is also a public welfare advocate, taking on roles that have little precedent for her position in China. She has been an official antismoking ambassador in China, and in 2011 she was appointed as the World Health Organization goodwill ambassador for tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

She has been appearing more in public recently following a period in which she was less visible on the global stage because of the COVID-19 pandemic and a cutback in diplomatic trips by her husband.

Asian art museum houses thousands of objects

During the visit, Peng expressed appreciation for the return of Chinese cultural relics from the U.S. in recent years, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Last week, U.S. authorities handed over 64 cultural relics and fossils that had been seized by law enforcement agencies, according to an earlier report from the agency.

The Smithsonian has been part of an effort to return stolen or unethically obtained objects to their home countries. Last year, the Asian art museum returned fragments of a silk manuscript from China that dated to more than 2,000 years ago and had been looted from a tomb.

Located along the National Mall, the museum has also been a target of the Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate what it sees as liberal ideology from the institution's museums.

The White House last year ordered a review of Smithsonian museums to make sure exhibits “celebrate American exceptionalism” and “remove divisive or partisan narratives.”

In a Fox News Channel interview on Wednesday, Melania Trump said she was taking Peng to the museum to show the “connection with the culture, with us and China.”

When Peng visited the White House in 2015, she joined first lady Michelle Obama at a naming ceremony for a giant panda at the National Zoo. The ceremony also featured songs sung by preschoolers at a local Chinese immersion school. The panda, Bei Bei, was later returned to China in 2019 to enter a breeding program.

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Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim, Didi Tang and Fu Ting in Washington and Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.

The warning Tuesday came despite no “confirmed information” that kratom contributed to either death, Lafayette County Metro Narcotics said in a news release. The students were found Monday afternoon in different locations, one on campus and the other off campus, a university spokesperson said.

The university on Thursday identified the students as Aidan Hamilton, a freshman from Englewood, Colorado, and Robert Strang, a junior from Atlanta. The school said in a statement that their families "have asked for privacy as they grieve.”

U.S. health officials and states have increasingly scrutinized kratom, an herbal extract that acts as a stimulant at low doses and a sedative at high doses, over the past decade. Kratom is legal at the federal level, but some state and local governments have banned the substance and federal authorities have issued warnings about its risks.

Toxicology reports aren't yet available

Two state agencies were working to expedite toxicology reports for the students, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said in a statement Wednesday.

“Mississippi is praying for the families and friends of the two Ole Miss students during this incredibly difficult time,“ Reeves said.

Authorities said they had no evidence the deaths were connected but noted the kratom found at the scenes was sold at a retail store. Officials did not name the store or say whether any criminal charges would be filed.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we encourage everyone to avoid kratom and any other medication or substance that was not prescribed to you or obtained from a trusted, regulated source,” the task force's news release said.

Kratom is extracted from a tree native to Southeast Asia

It is used in capsules, powders and liquids that are often sold in gas stations or smoke shops. Proponents say that in its pure form, kratom is a safe, natural herbal supplement that can help manage pain, anxiety and depression and ease the effects of opioid withdrawal.

Doctors who treat addiction, however, say people can quickly become dependent on it, leading to withdrawal symptoms. A U.S. Food and Drug Administration webpage is blunt: Don’t use it.

The agency says it carries the risk of serious adverse effects, including liver toxicity, seizures and substance use disorder.

In rare cases, it's been associated with deaths, though kratom was usually used in combination with other drugs in those cases, and the contribution of kratom in the deaths is unclear, the agency says on its website.

A trade organization has pushed back

Mac Haddow, with the American Kratom Association, said the FDA and states that have banned kratom are conflating the natural product with synthetic and chemically manipulated ones, which are associated with adverse effects and even deaths.

Haddow, a senior fellow on public policy with the association, said he's heard numerous people tell lawmakers over the years how kratom has improved their lives.

"Some believe it saved their lives because it allowed them to get off of opioids,” he said.

Podcast host Joe Rogan and Cindy Crawford's late son, Presley Gerber, have talked about their experiences using kratom.

Last year, the FDA recommended a ban on products with concentrated levels of 7-hydroxymitragynine, a chemical found in only trace amounts in natural kratom.

Mallory Pullman, managing director at Mississippi Poison Control, said she's seen an increase in such concentrated products in recent years, and consumers may not be able to distinguish them from natural kratom.

“Until you know what product you’re working with, whether it’s kratom or some of these highly concentrated derivatives, you really have to be careful about buying a product and just taking it arbitrarily,” she said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

Eleven states have banned kratom

Others, including Mississippi, have regulated it, in part by requiring people to be 21 or older to buy it. Both the city of Oxford and Lafayette County, where the University of Mississippi is located, have bans in place.

North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong signed a bill this month restricting the sale of kratom products after declaring kratom a public health crisis this summer and calling a special legislative session to address it. The state has had 50 deaths associated with kratom since 2019, according to the governor's office.

Despite the bans and restrictions, use of kratom in the U.S. has increased, according to researchers at the University of Michigan and Texas State University.

In a paper published this year, they found kratom use in the U.S. was at an all-time high, with more than 5 million people saying they had used it in their lifetime. The group includes more than 100,000 children ages 12-17.

"Policy changes regarding kratom and 7-OH products are needed in all states if we are serious about protecting our children,” the study's main researcher, Sean McCabe, said in a statement in the University of Michigan News.

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Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed.

Election officials said the plan is both inadequate and belated after the administration gutted the agency’s election security work last year, prompting the officials to pay for private services to ensure they were prepared for the upcoming elections.

“For them to come in five weeks before the election, yeah, nice effort,” said Nevada's Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, who added that he would have liked to see the federal government provide more funding for cybersecurity, rather than Nevada taxpayers having to pay for it.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had originally promised to release the plan by mid-August as part of the Trump administration's move to kickstart election security assistance after a hiatus. He announced the plan at the same time he threatened election officials for not cooperating with the administration's preferred methods to hunt down noncitizen voting, a phenomenon that research shows is extremely rare.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is housed under the Department of Homeland Security, has since its founding in 2018 helped warn state and local election officials about potential threats from foreign governments.

But CISA, as it’s known, was largely absent from that role in last year’s elections after the Trump administration dismantled much of its role in election security. The administration cut some 1,000 employees from CISA and slashed $10 million from two cybersecurity initiatives, including one dedicated to helping state and local election officials.

CISA has also gone the entirety of Trump’s second term without a Senate-confirmed director, instead cycling through a series of acting leaders.

Plan refers to ‘consistent’ support that many election officials say has been lacking

The 13-page document released Thursday warns of various threats to election security, including software vulnerabilities, hacks of voter registration databases, insider threats and physical security incidents, such as bomb threats that targeted several polling locations in the 2024 elections.

But it affirms that many longstanding election practices can address such threats and says the agency’s goal is “to ensure the American people can trust voting systems and know that physical safety measures will be in place when they go to their assigned polling locations to cast their votes.”

It states that DHS has “consistently supported CISA’s delivery of cybersecurity and physical security services to election officials,” something numerous election officials around the country have said isn't true.

Multiple secretaries of state told The Associated Press that services previously provided by CISA, such as live tabletop exercises and penetration tests to evaluate security of their systems, were not available in the lead-up to this year's midterms.

Minnesota Secretary of State Scott Simon, a Democrat, said in August that his office expects to spend roughly $250,000 on private vendors to conduct penetration testing, which can expose security vulnerabilities and recommend actionable fixes.

Shenna Bellows, the Democratic secretary of state in Maine, told the AP the same month that communications with CISA had been “sporadic and irregular, to say the least.” She said it would be helpful if the Trump administration could restore intelligence briefings that used to be granted to election officials about threats from foreign adversaries, but noted that trust with federal officials had been broken with the cuts to the agency.

Thursday's plan doesn't mention any specific 2026 threats from adversaries like Russia, Iran or China, all of whom have sought to meddle in U.S. elections — either directly through hacking or indirectly through influence campaigns.

Kris Warner, the Republican secretary of state in West Virginia, said Thursday that some of CISA’s assistance to his state had been continual throughout the Trump administration, including no-cost reviews of its public-facing websites for cybersecurity issues.

Warner acknowledged CISA had cut back under the Trump administration but said he views the agency “as a resource and not as a service provider” and said his office had last year hired a departing CISA election security adviser who has helped fill any gaps that may exist.

Report follows August call between CISA and election officials

In early August, two CISA officials — acting director Nick Anderson and assistant director for integrated operations Jim Harrell — joined a National Association of Secretaries of State call attended by a bipartisan group of secretaries of state, according to several election administrators.

The call grew tense when Arizona's Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes voiced his concerns about the withdrawal of federal resources.

Fontes told the AP at the time that he told the CISA officials he didn’t trust them. He said it seemed to him the officials were there “to cover their butts.”

“They even acknowledged on the call that it was too late for them to do anything for 2026,” he said.

Simon said the officials appeared interested in rebuilding relationships and previewing their future plans, which he appreciated. But he said the effort at goodwill came later than election officials needed.

“Secretaries of state have already moved on and sought other partners and other resources for the services that CISA has retreated from over the last year and a half,” Simon said.

In Michigan, a voting rights group has tried to fill the gap

In Michigan, where mail ballots have already been sent out for the Nov. 3 elections, Deputy Secretary of State Aghogho Edevbie said the state’s relationship with CISA has been “nonexistent” this year despite working together closely in previous election cycles.

“If the federal government wants to be helpful, they can’t do so at the 11th hour,” the Democrat said.

Ashiya Brown, the Michigan state director of the voting rights group All Voting Is Local, agreed. She noted the new plan says CISA has 10 regional directors to support election administrators but still doesn't answer her biggest question.

“Does CISA still have the people and capacity to provide that support when clerks need it?” she asked. “I’m glad CISA has put forward a plan, but what matters now is whether the support described in it reaches local election officials before November.”

CISA has been hiring on its website for new positions, Brown said, but it's unclear whether they are all staffed yet.

Meanwhile, Brown, a former security official with the Michigan Department of State, said her group has hired former CISA employees to help provide training and other support to election clerks and fill the gap.

Edevbie said even without collaboration with CISA, he is confident the state’s elections are secure.

“We are always prepared to defend our elections and to ensure that every voter who is eligible to cast a ballot can do so here in Michigan,” he said.

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Associated Press writers Jessica Hill in Las Vegas and Jacqueline GaNun in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.

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Deputies identified the man as Colin Peter De Verna and arrested him on Wednesday on U.S. 1 in Tavernier, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.

Verna, 62, faced two felony charges: Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated stalking, according to inmate records.

Los agentes identificaron al hombre como Colin Peter De Verna y lo arrestaron el miércoles en la U.S. 1 en Tavernier, según la Oficina del Sheriff del Condado Monroe.

Verna, de 62 años, enfrentaba dos cargos graves: agresión agravada con un arma mortal y acoso agravado, según los registros de reclusos.

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Authorities said the investigation into Manouchka Jean-Noel, 27, of Homestead, came after a victim reported to authorities that she ripped her off.

An MDSO arrest report states that Jean-Noel “advertises that she is a nurse and a certified massage therapist” on Instagram for her business, Luxury Cosmetic Curves, touting services like lymphatic drainage massages, drain removal and incision care.

“In one video, (Jean-Noel) is seen giving a patient a lymphatic massage while blood and other fluids are squirting out of an open wound,” the report states.

Authorities said the victim who reported Jean-Noel had paid her a $550 deposit to care for her after surgery, believing that she had the proper credentials.

“The victim never received services from (Jean-Noel) because her surgery was rescheduled,” the report states. “(She) refused to refund the victim and told her to pursue formal options to recover (the) payment.”

Authorities said the victim’s bank refunded her $450 but she was unable to get the $150 back.

Deputies said an undercover investigator began setting up a meeting with Jean-Noel, who agreed to take $3,110 for three days of post-operative care.

Authorities said the two agreed to meet on Wednesday afternoon at the Homewood Suites by Hilton at 5500 Waterford District Drive, near the Miami airport.

She said she told that investigator, accompanied by another undercover investigator “that she was a licensed nurse and that she was a licensed massage therapist,” providing care to post-op clients since 2018.

Authorities said she took a $1,500 deposit and was subsequently arrested in the parking lot.

Deputies said Jean-Noel claimed she didn’t actually provide the care and claimed that a nurse named “T” was the one doing the work. They said she couldn’t give them “T”'s full name or phone number.

Jean-Noel faces two felony and two misdemeanor unlicensed practitioner charges, as well as a felony charge of organized scheme to defraud.

As of Thursday, records show she was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $7,000 bond.

China and the zoo had said in April that Ping Ping, a male, and Fu Shuang, a female, would go to the United States. But Xi’s announcement at the White House, in opening remarks before talks with President Donald Trump, marked the first public confirmation of the timing. Beijing had reclaimed four pandas from Atlanta in 2024, the last of the animals on loan from China to the U.S. at the time.

Xi said Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, “will come to their new home in Zoo Atlanta and meet with the American people” in “a few days.” He called it “a piece of good news” and hailed the panda loan program as an example of “friendship between the Chinese and Americans.”

The pandas are part of a conservation agreement between the zoo and the China Wildlife Conservation Association. Both pandas were born at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China.

In 2024, Lun Lun, Yang Yang, Ya Lun, and Xi Lun returned from Zoo Atlanta to China, ending a 25-year partnership and leaving the U.S. without any of the animals for several months. The National Zoo in Washington returned three pandas to China in 2023 before accepting new arrivals Bao Li and Qing Bao, in October 2024 after Atlanta lost its pandas. Other American zoos sent pandas back to China before that as loan agreements lapsed.

When the pandas' Atlanta return was officially promised in the spring, Zoo Atlanta CEO Raymond B. King celebrated “the wonder and joy of giant pandas" and said his facility was “delighted and honored to yet again be trusted as stewards of this treasured species.”

Las autoridades dijeron que la investigación sobre Manouchka Jean-Noel, de 27 años y residente de Homestead, comenzó después de que una víctima denunciara ante las autoridades que ella la había estafado.

Un reporte de arresto de la MDSO indica que Jean-Noel “anuncia que es enfermera y terapeuta de masajes certificada” en Instagram para su negocio, Luxury Cosmetic Curves, promocionando servicios como masajes de drenaje linfático, retiro de drenajes y cuidado de incisiones.

“En un video, se ve a (Jean-Noel) dando un masaje linfático a una paciente mientras sangre y otros fluidos salen a chorros de una herida abierta”, indica el reporte.

Las autoridades dijeron que la víctima que denunció a Jean-Noel le había pagado un depósito de $550 USD para que la cuidara después de una cirugía, creyendo que tenía las credenciales adecuadas.

“La víctima nunca recibió servicios de (Jean-Noel) porque su cirugía fue reprogramada”, indica el reporte. “(Ella) se negó a reembolsar a la víctima y le dijo que recurriera a opciones formales para recuperar (el) pago”.

Las autoridades dijeron que el banco de la víctima le reembolsó $450 USD, pero ella no pudo recuperar los $150 USD restantes.

Los agentes dijeron que un investigador encubierto comenzó a coordinar una reunión con Jean-Noel, quien aceptó recibir $3,110 USD por tres días de cuidados posoperatorios.

Las autoridades dijeron que ambos acordaron reunirse la tarde del miércoles en el Homewood Suites by Hilton, ubicado en 5500 Waterford District Drive, cerca del aeropuerto de Miami.

Las autoridades dijeron que Jean-Noel le dijo a ese investigador, quien estaba acompañado por otro investigador encubierto, “que era enfermera con licencia y que era terapeuta de masajes con licencia”, y que brindaba atención a clientes posoperatorios desde 2018.

Las autoridades dijeron que recibió un depósito de $1,500 USD y posteriormente fue arrestada en el estacionamiento.

Los agentes dijeron que Jean-Noel afirmó que en realidad ella no brindaba la atención y aseguró que una enfermera llamada “T” era quien hacía el trabajo. Dijeron que no pudo proporcionarles el nombre completo ni el número de teléfono de “T”.

Jean-Noel enfrenta dos cargos graves y dos cargos menores por ejercer sin licencia, así como un cargo grave por un esquema organizado para defraudar.

Hasta el jueves, los registros muestran que permanecía detenida en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight con una fianza de $7,000 USD.

The run will begin with three dates next month in Europe. It kicks off at Dublin's 3Arena on Oct. 26, followed by Paris' Accor Arena on Oct. 29 and London's OVO Arena Wembley on Oct. 30.

Additional artist announcements, as well as U.S. dates, are forthcoming.

An artist presale begins at 10 a.m. local time Monday at Macklemore.com.

According to a press release from Live Nation, the shows will benefit several Palestinian aid organizations, including Anera, Glia, Gaza Soup Kitchen, Taawon, HEAL Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, Middle East Children’s Alliance, Jewish Voice for Peace, Medical Aid for Palestinians. Institute for Middle East Understanding, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and an U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA USA.

“If these last couple of weeks have shown us anything, it’s that something has shifted over the last three years. There has been a collective awakening around Palestinian liberation, the power of billionaires that try to censor that call, and what we expect from artists right now,” Macklemore wrote on Instagram in the caption of his “Free Palestine” announcement. “When the billionaire class can decide which voices are allowed on stage and which ones are too dangerous to hear, everyone should be paying attention.”

What to know about Macklemore's pro-Palestinian comments — and Ed Sheeran

Last week, Macklemore made headlines when it was revealed that he was dropped as an opener for Ed Sheeran’s tour of North and South America because of the rapper’s onstage pro-Palestinian comments. Since then, all of Sheeran’s other supporting acts dropped out, including a group that plays with Sheeran during part of the show.

At the time, Sheeran said the decision to cut Macklemore from the Loop Tour was the promoter’s, not his own.

Macklemore said his removal was the result of an effort led by Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots. His Kraft Group also owns Gillette Stadium, where the NFL team plays and where Sheeran is scheduled to perform later this month.

Macklemore also announced he would donate $1 million from his net earnings from the tour to six organizations helping Palestinians.