The move injects new drama into the lingering tensions between Fauci and Republican lawmakers over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and accusations he lied about the origins of COVID-19, which he denies.

Fauci was set to answer lawmakers’ questions after being subpoenaed by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has long had a fraught relationship with the now-retired infectious-disease expert and led the charge seeking that he testify, again, under oath.

Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth, at least for now, sidesteps calls for his prosecution if he is accused of lying at Wednesday’s hearing, part of a yearslong campaign for his arrest spearheaded by some Republicans in Congress. Though he received a presidential pardon from Democrat Joe Biden, some of Fauci’s critics have suggested he could still face charges if he perjures himself under oath.

His refusal to answer questions may also further inflame partisan divides that have festered for years about the origins and handling of the pandemic, which was declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020.

Fauci, who helped lead the nation’s COVID-19 response, has long been a target of those frustrations. But to his supporters he is an emblem of sound scientific expertise.

In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul has an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.”

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said, adding that while it pains him to do so, he is following his attorney’s advice by taking the Fifth.

Paul releases some of Fauci’s diary

Paul in his opening statement sought to build the case that Fauci helped produce the COVID-19 pandemic by approving funding of research on virus mutations and then covered up his complicity.

Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s ranking member, said the hearing was a partisan exercise that looked backward instead of focusing on current national security challenges.

Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on the social media platform X that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”

Some of the diary entries – including Fauci’s uncertainty in the pandemic’s earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created – already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.

But they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for mask mandates, school closures and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

Ahead of the hearing, President Donald Trump wrote on social media that he stopped relying on Fauci over the course of the pandemic because he felt Fauci made bad decisions on masks, shutdowns and other issues.

In a statement, Fauci’s attorney David Schertler said Paul’s accusations are “false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist before he entered public office, said Monday that his department gave the diary entries, which were created on a government computer, to the committee. He told a Fox News Channel host that he thought Fauci might lie before the committee, opening him to perjury prosecution.

Paul told Fauci that he may still face repercussions for obstructing a congressional investigation by refusing to testify. That could include a contempt of Congress citation, which would be referred to the Justice Department for consideration.

Scientists scrambled to Fauci’s defense ahead of the unusual hearing — the second time the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist has been back before Congress to discuss pandemic origins since leaving the government in 2022. While the COVID-19 pandemic introduced him to millions of Americans, he talked the nation through numerous outbreaks over decades, including HIV, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks, while advising seven presidents.

Some disease experts criticize the accusations against Fauci

In a public letter, more than 150 infectious-disease experts and other scientists wrote that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges” and that they are “urging our elected representatives in Congress stop these witch-hunts.”

The expected crux of Wednesday’s hearing was whether NIH-funded research in China may have played a role in how the pandemic started.

Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There’s no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 did not find any evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins, the way other deadly viruses including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS jumped into people.

Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying about whether his agency funded what’s known as gain of function research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact — at a lab in Wuhan.

The NIH for years gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, which used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. But the definition of gain of function covers both general research and especially risky experiments to enhance the ability of potential pandemic viruses to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci has previously stressed he was using the risky experiment definition and that “it would be molecularly impossible” for those bat virus experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.

Trump, a Republican, last year paused some federally funded gain of function research, and on Tuesday his administration announced new rules to tighten oversight.

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Swenson reported from New York.

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

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.

According to an arrest report from the Hialeah Police Department, the incident happened May 23 at the Walmart located at 400 W. 49th St.

Police identified the suspect as Christian Jose Sagrado, of Miami Gardens.

Investigators say the incident began when Sagrado drove into the parking lot and parked directly behind the victim’s vehicle, blocking it from leaving.

The victim was inside the vehicle with his pregnant girlfriend of 8 months and a young child, authorities said.

According to investigators, Sagrado exited his vehicle to approach the victim and punched the man in the face, starting a fight.

Authorities said Sagrado then grabbed the victim from his waist, lifted him in the air, and slammed him against the ground.

According to the report, the victim suffered multiple injuries, including fractures to his skull, neck, lower back, ribs and sternum. The victim was rushed to the hospital and received emergency surgery, leading to a large scar on his scalp and stitches on his ear, authorities said.

Sagrado was arrested on a charge of aggravated battery. A motive for the alleged attack was not mentioned in the arrest report.

As of Wednesday morning, online jail records listed his bond as “to be set.”

Jail records show Kevin Monasterio, 24, was arrested Tuesday following the July 11 incident that occurred at his home near the 12000 block of Southwest 203rd Lane in the county’s Princeton neighborhood.

Monasterio and the victim, who had been dating for about a year and lived together, got into an argument around midnight over the victim’s dog, according to an arrest report from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.

The report states Monasterio punched the dog in the face before picking it up and throwing it against a wall. After the victim placed the dog in a crate, Monasterio turned his anger toward her, repeatedly punching her, investigators said.

“He placed both hands around the victim’s neck and squeezed intently, causing the victim’s breathing to be impeded,” a deputy wrote in the report.

Deputies said Monasterio then pushed the victim to the ground, straddled her and continued choking her while slamming her body against the floor.

According to the report, Monasterio later flipped the dog’s crate over with the dog still inside, threw the crate outside and grabbed a water hose to “waterboard” the dog by repeatedly spraying it in the face, a term investigators used to describe forcing water onto the dog’s face in a way intended to simulate drowning.

Investigators said a second altercation occurred around 7 a.m. after the victim woke up.

The report states Monasterio began yelling, hitting the dog and punching the victim before again grabbing her by the neck with both hands and impeding her breathing.

Before leaving to get coffee, Monasterio allegedly threatened to kill both the victim and the dog if she left the home without telling him, according to the report.

Once he left, the victim went to a family member’s home and called 911, deputies said.

They said the victim sustained bruising on both sides of the victim’s neck and on both of her upper arms following the attack.

Authorities said after Montastero was taken into custody Tuesday, he denied the allegations after being read his Miranda rights.

Records show he is facing one count each of domestic battery by strangulation, battery, cruelty to animals and assault.

As of Wednesday morning, he was being held on a $1,750 bond at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.

All seven BTS members — RM, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, Jung Kook and Jin — shared the same note Wednesday.

“We hope our music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language,” the coordinated message read. “We thank Army and everyone who has always stood by us.”

Wednesday’s announcement came just over a month after the Recording Academy announced five new Grammy categories, which includes the introduction of a best Asian pop music performance category, meant to celebrate releases across K-pop, J-pop, C-pop and beyond.

Some fans viewed the introduction of category as creating a racialized barrier for Asian performers.

A representative for BTS offered no additional comment.

BTS has never won a Grammy, though they've been nominated for five Grammy Awards across their career: three times in the best pop duo/group performance category as well as album of the year (for their contributions to Coldplay's “Music of the Spheres”) and best music video for “Yet to Come.”

In fact, no K-pop act had ever won a Grammy Award before this year, when “Golden” from the Netflix animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” took home the trophy for best song for visual media. It capped a highly visible night for K-pop at the Grammys — an institution where the genre has long been undercelebrated despite its massive international following.

In March, BTS returned after a nearly four-year musical hiatus. “ARIRANG,” the 14-track, critically acclaimed fifth studio album from the septet, served as both a reintroduction to the band after its members completed South Korea's mandatory military service and as a keen reminder of their place atop popular culture conversation.

Representatives for the Recording Academy did not immediately respond to The Associated Press' request for comment.

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The airline says the issue was due to an IT problem.

A technology issue briefly impacted connectivity for some of our systems on Tuesday evening. Systems are coming back online now and flights are departing again. We put a temporary ground stop in place while our teams worked to resolve the issue. We apologize to our customers for…

— americanair (@AmericanAir) July 28, 2026

Their teams rushed to get the problem resolved, and flights have since resumed.

The delay has still caused headaches for travelers across the country.

A spokesperson for Miami International Airport said it was too early to show how many flights were affected at MIA, but a flight board indicated that there were several delays, though no cancellations were seen.

Local 10’s Aaron Maybin headed to Miami International Airport to assess the situation, and his full report can be seen at the top of this page.

La aerolínea informó que el problema se debió a una falla en sus sistemas de tecnología de la información (IT).

A technology issue briefly impacted connectivity for some of our systems on Tuesday evening. Systems are coming back online now and flights are departing again. We put a temporary ground stop in place while our teams worked to resolve the issue. We apologize to our customers for…

— americanair (@AmericanAir) July 28, 2026

Sus equipos trabajaron rápidamente para resolver el problema y, desde entonces, los vuelos se reanudaron.

Sin embargo, el retraso ha provocado inconvenientes para los viajeros en todo el país.

Un portavoz del Aeropuerto Internacional de Miami (MIA) dijo que aún era demasiado pronto para determinar cuántos vuelos resultaron afectados en el aeropuerto, pero el tablero de vuelos mostraba varios retrasos, aunque no se observaban cancelaciones.

Aaron Maybin, de Local 10, se trasladó al Aeropuerto Internacional de Miami para evaluar la situación. Su reportaje completo puede verse al inicio de esta página.

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Five leading economists in Cuba just released a report entitled “A Proposal to Transform the Cuban Economy.” The document lays out a structural diagnosis of the current economic crisis facing the nation and proposes, as a strategic goal, the creation of a social market economy underpinned by a democratic state governed by the rule of law.

While the report is good, the problem that I see is the creation of a democratic state. We must remember that Cuba did not have a democracy before the start of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. To transition a totalitarian state that has had a centralized economy for almost 68 years could take time. Time that Cuba and its population do not have given the current economic crisis.

July 27 update: 73 years after start of Cuban Revolution

Yesterday marked the 73^rd anniversary since Fidel Castro, Raul Castro and their group of rebels attacked the Moncada Military Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. July 26, 1953 is considered the start of the Cuban Revolution.

Like Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”, the Cuban revolution took a path that destroyed the country and “never looked back.” Today, Cuba is at the end of what Fidel called its glory days.

July 24 update: Trump Administration announces series of new sanctions against Cuba

On Thursday, the Trump Administration announced a series of new sanctions against Cuba targeting the government’s military conglomerate Gaesa. However, this time it includes companies like Coral S. A. that took over operations from some sectors of GAESA to avoid U.S. sanctions and keep import operations in Cuba functioning.

The question many academics that follow Cuba like me are asking is whether the U.S. strategy moving forward is to force Cuba to eventually sell some of GAESA’s assets to the U.S.

July 23 update: US continues to send mixed signals as to what will be done with Cuba

This past Monday, the U.S. Department of State issued a 100-page report entitled “Cuba: The Capital of 21^st Century Communism” that outlined why Cuba is a national security threat not only to the U.S., but to the entire world. The Cuban government reacted at once and not only criticized the report but blamed Secretary of State Marco Rubio with threatening the island nation.

On Wednesday at a press conference in the Philippines, Rubio, when asked by a reporter what the U.S. plan was for Cuba, used a much more diplomatic tone and said the U.S. is still willing to negotiate with Cuba.

Washington continues to send mixed signals as to what will be done with Cuba. What we do know is that the strategy used in Venezuela did not bring about regime change.

July 21 update: First humanitarian aid from US will arrive in Cuba

Today, the first humanitarian aid will arrive in Cuba as part of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s offer to help the Cuban people as they experience the worst economic situation since the early 1990’s. Today’s cargo includes 700 hygiene kits and 700 food items to be distributed directly to the Cuban people by Catholic Relief Services Caritas Cuba and other faith-based organizations.

Secretary Rubio wants to let the Cuban people clearly know that the U.S. stands behind them and is willing to continue to help them as part of the U.S. commitment of $100 million in humanitarian aid.

July 20 update: Cuba releases artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara

This past Saturday, Cuba released artist and opposition leader Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara after serving five years in jail. Otero Alcantara was one of the leaders of the San Isidro movement that led to large protests across the island nation five years ago.

Upon arriving in Miami, Otero Alcantara thanked the Cuban American community for its support and asked Cuba to release all political prisoners in jail.

July 16 update: US Department of Defense pays $3 million to US personnel affected by Havana Syndrome

The U.S. Department of Defense has paid $3 million in compensation to U.S. personnel affected by the mysterious condition known as Havana Syndrome, making the first payment under the 2021 Havana Act.

Havana Syndrome first appeared in 2016 when U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers in Havana, Cuba reported unusual symptoms, including intense head pressure, dizziness, nausea, hearing disturbances and memory problems.

July 14 update: New U.S. sanctions increase pressure on Cuba’s military-run economy

The United States on Monday introduced new sanctions targeting companies controlled by GAESA, Cuba’s military economic conglomerate, as well as some of the military brigades responsible for suppressing protests like the ones we saw the other day.

How much longer can the Cuban government hold on? Information continues to reach U.S. officials indicating that there are sectors within the Cuban government that are increasingly concerned about how much longer they can survive without negotiating with the U.S. government before facing a complete collapse of their system.

July 10 update: Does Raul Castro’s grandson have the full authority to negotiate for the Cuban government?

As I expected, there seems to be a small crack within the inner circle of the Cuban government. Some have criticized Raulito (Raul Castro’s grandson) for offering to negotiate directly with President Trump. The criticism comes as to whether he has the full authority to negotiate for the Cuban government or is he just negotiating for the Castro family?

Yesterday, the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) backed Raulito’s efforts, but the military leadership has remained quiet.

July 8 update: United Nations has no legal right to lift U.S. embargo on Cuba

Every year, Cuba argues in front of the United Nations that the U.S. economic embargo is the cause for their economic problems. Each year, Cuba loses more support for their argument. The United Nations has no legitimate or legal right to lift the embargo. The U.S. Congress can only lift the embargo.

The Cuban government propaganda machine has failed. Most Cubans on the island, including economists on the island, blame the Cuban government for their current poor economic conditions.

July 6 update: Raul Castro’s grandson says Cuba is willing to negotiate with US

Reuters reported earlier this morning that Raul Castro’s grandson Raulito, known as “El Cangrejo,” announced that Cuba is willing to negotiate with the U.S. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether Raulito is negotiating on behalf of the Castro family or the Cuban government?

We know that Cuba has been selling some of their assets, including some belonging to the military economic conglomerate GAESA in the last couple of weeks. Cuba’s attempt to invite foreign investment has not attracted many takers for the fear of losing their money.

July 2 update: Cuba’s culture of fear complicates a Democratic transition

When we talk about Cuba, we usually concentrate on their centralized political and economic system. However, we fail to recognize that individuals that have lived under totalitarian regimes have had to survive under a culture of fear. Such system of government creates a psychological set of attitudes and values that help define the daily behavior in order to align the people’s wants and needs to the restrictions imposed by the government.

To break such behaviors could take years of psychological training and change. Therefore, transitioning a totalitarian state to support a transition to some form of a Democratic government could take time.

Dr. Andy S. Gomez’s June updates can be viewed by clicking here.

Dr. Andy S. Gomez is Local 10’s Cuba Analyst. Gomez is considered one of the leading scholars on Cuba. He worked in higher education for 32 years before retiring from the University of Miami in 2012.

Cinco destacados economistas de Cuba acaban de publicar un informe titulado “Una propuesta para transformar la economía cubana”. El documento presenta un diagnóstico estructural de la actual crisis económica que enfrenta el país y propone, como objetivo estratégico, la creación de una economía social de mercado sustentada por un Estado democrático regido por el Estado de derecho.

Aunque el informe es positivo, el problema que veo es la creación de un Estado democrático. Debemos recordar que Cuba no tenía una democracia antes del inicio de la Revolución Cubana en 1959. La transición de un Estado totalitario que ha tenido una economía centralizada durante casi 68 años podría tomar tiempo. Un tiempo que Cuba y su población no tienen, dada la actual crisis económica.

Actualización del 27 de julio: 73 años del inicio de la Revolución Cubana

Ayer se cumplieron 73 años desde que Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro y su grupo de rebeldes atacaron el Cuartel Moncada en Santiago de Cuba. El 26 de julio de 1953 es considerado el inicio de la Revolución Cubana.

Al igual que en el poema “El camino no elegido”, de Robert Frost, la Revolución Cubana tomó un rumbo que destruyó el país y “nunca miró atrás”. Hoy, Cuba se encuentra al final de lo que Fidel llamó sus años de gloria.

Actualización del 24 de julio: La Administración Trump anuncia una nueva serie de sanciones contra Cuba

El jueves, la Administración Trump anunció una nueva serie de sanciones contra Cuba dirigidas al conglomerado militar GAESA. Sin embargo, esta vez también incluyen empresas como Coral S.A., que asumieron operaciones de algunos sectores de GAESA para evitar las sanciones de Estados Unidos y mantener en funcionamiento las operaciones de importación en Cuba.

La pregunta que muchos académicos que seguimos a Cuba nos hacemos es si la estrategia de Estados Unidos de ahora en adelante será obligar a Cuba a vender eventualmente algunos de los activos de GAESA a Estados Unidos.

Actualización del 23 de julio: Estados Unidos continúa enviando señales contradictorias sobre Cuba

El pasado lunes, el Departamento de Estado de Estados Unidos publicó un informe de 100 páginas titulado “Cuba: la capital del comunismo del siglo XXI”, en el que expone por qué Cuba representa una amenaza para la seguridad nacional no solo de Estados Unidos, sino del mundo entero. El gobierno cubano reaccionó de inmediato, no solo criticando el informe, sino también acusando al secretario de Estado, Marco Rubio, de amenazar a la isla.

El miércoles, durante una conferencia de prensa en Filipinas, Rubio, al ser consultado por un periodista sobre el plan de Estados Unidos para Cuba, utilizó un tono mucho más diplomático y afirmó que el país sigue dispuesto a negociar con Cuba.

Washington continúa enviando señales contradictorias sobre lo que hará con Cuba. Lo que sí sabemos es que la estrategia utilizada en Venezuela no logró un cambio de régimen.

Actualización del 21 de julio: Llegará a Cuba la primera ayuda humanitaria de Estados Unidos

Hoy llegará a Cuba el primer envío de ayuda humanitaria como parte de la oferta del secretario de Estado Marco Rubio para ayudar al pueblo cubano mientras enfrenta la peor situación económica desde principios de la década de 1990. El cargamento de hoy incluye 700 kits de higiene y 700 paquetes de alimentos que serán distribuidos directamente al pueblo cubano por Catholic Relief Services Caritas Cuba y otras organizaciones religiosas.

El secretario Rubio quiere dejar claro al pueblo cubano que Estados Unidos lo respalda y está dispuesto a seguir ayudándolo como parte del compromiso de $100 millones USD en ayuda humanitaria.

Actualización del 20 de julio: Cuba libera al artista Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara

El pasado sábado, Cuba liberó al artista y líder opositor Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara tras cumplir cinco años de prisión. Otero Alcántara fue uno de los líderes del Movimiento San Isidro, que dio origen a las grandes protestas ocurridas en la isla hace cinco años.

Al llegar a Miami, Otero Alcántara agradeció el apoyo de la comunidad cubanoestadounidense y pidió a Cuba liberar a todos los presos políticos.

Actualización del 16 de julio: Departamento de Defensa de Estados Unidos paga $3 millones USD a personal afectado por el Síndrome de La Habana

El Departamento de Defensa de Estados Unidos ha pagado $3 millones USD en compensaciones al personal estadounidense afectado por la misteriosa condición conocida como Síndrome de La Habana, realizando el primer pago bajo la Ley de La Habana de 2021.

El Síndrome de La Habana apareció por primera vez en 2016, cuando diplomáticos y agentes de inteligencia estadounidenses en La Habana reportaron síntomas inusuales, entre ellos intensa presión en la cabeza, mareos, náuseas, alteraciones auditivas y problemas de memoria.

Actualización del 14 de julio: Nuevas sanciones de Estados Unidos aumentan la presión sobre la economía militar de Cuba

El lunes, Estados Unidos impuso nuevas sanciones dirigidas contra empresas controladas por GAESA, el conglomerado económico militar de Cuba, así como contra algunas de las brigadas militares responsables de reprimir protestas como las que vimos recientemente.

¿Cuánto tiempo más podrá resistir el gobierno cubano? Continúa llegando información a funcionarios estadounidenses que indica que existen sectores dentro del gobierno cubano cada vez más preocupados por cuánto tiempo podrán sobrevivir sin negociar con el gobierno de Estados Unidos antes de enfrentar un colapso total del sistema.

Actualización del 10 de julio: ¿Tiene el nieto de Raúl Castro plena autoridad para negociar por el gobierno cubano?

Como esperaba, parece existir una pequeña fractura dentro del círculo más cercano del gobierno cubano. Algunos han criticado a Raulito, nieto de Raúl Castro, por ofrecer negociar directamente con el presidente Trump. Las críticas se centran en si realmente tiene plena autoridad para negociar en nombre del gobierno cubano o si solo negocia en representación de la familia Castro.

Ayer, el Partido Comunista de Cuba respaldó los esfuerzos de Raulito, pero la cúpula militar ha permanecido en silencio.

Actualización del 8 de julio: Naciones Unidas no tiene autoridad legal para levantar el embargo de Estados Unidos contra Cuba

Cada año, Cuba argumenta ante las Naciones Unidas que el embargo económico de Estados Unidos es la causa de sus problemas económicos. Cada año, Cuba pierde más apoyo para ese argumento. Las Naciones Unidas no tienen autoridad legítima ni legal para levantar el embargo. Solo el Congreso de Estados Unidos puede hacerlo.

La maquinaria de propaganda del gobierno cubano ha fracasado. La mayoría de los cubanos en la isla, incluidos economistas cubanos, responsabilizan al gobierno por las actuales malas condiciones económicas.

Actualización del 6 de julio: Nieto de Raúl Castro dice que Cuba está dispuesta a negociar con Estados Unidos

Reuters informó esta mañana que Raulito, nieto de Raúl Castro, conocido como “El Cangrejo”, anunció que Cuba está dispuesta a negociar con Estados Unidos. La pregunta que debemos hacernos es si Raulito negocia en nombre de la familia Castro o del gobierno cubano.

Sabemos que Cuba ha estado vendiendo algunos de sus activos, incluidos algunos pertenecientes al conglomerado económico militar GAESA, durante las últimas semanas. El intento de Cuba de atraer inversión extranjera no ha despertado mucho interés debido al temor de perder el dinero invertido.

Actualización del 2 de julio: La cultura del miedo en Cuba complica una transición democrática

Cuando hablamos de Cuba, normalmente nos concentramos en su sistema político y económico centralizado. Sin embargo, no reconocemos que las personas que han vivido bajo regímenes totalitarios han tenido que sobrevivir dentro de una cultura del miedo. Ese sistema de gobierno crea un conjunto psicológico de actitudes y valores que ayuda a definir el comportamiento cotidiano para ajustar los deseos y necesidades de la población a las restricciones impuestas por el gobierno.

Romper esos patrones de conducta podría requerir años de cambios y preparación psicológica. Por lo tanto, la transición de un Estado totalitario hacia alguna forma de gobierno democrático podría tomar tiempo.

Las actualizaciones de junio del Dr. Andy S. Gomez pueden consultarse haciendo clic aquí.

El Dr. Andy S. Gomez es analista sobre Cuba de Local 10. Gomez es considerado uno de los principales especialistas en Cuba. Trabajó durante 32 años en el ámbito de la educación superior antes de retirarse de la Universidad de Miami en 2012.

Damián Valdez-Galloso acusado de matar al artista de “Cubatón” de 37 años, compareció ante la jueza Marisa Tinkler Mendez del Tribunal de Circuito de Miami-Dade.

“Salió hoy y ni siquiera nos miró. Sabía que estábamos presentes. La jueza lo sabía y había una sala llena de agentes, definitivamente saben que nuestra presencia está aquí y se siente”, dijo Teresa Padrón, ex gerente y amiga de la víctima.

Valdez-Galloso, de 51 años, rechazó un acuerdo de culpabilidad y su abogado defensor, Ricardo Hermida, dijo a los reporteros en español que se trató de un caso de legítima defensa.

Ante más retrasos, mientras la posibilidad de un juicio se trasladó al próximo año, Padrón y un grupo de simpatizantes usaron camisetas que pedían justicia.

“Aunque no podemos hablar y no podemos faltarle el respeto al tribunal, nuestras camisetas hablan por nosotros”, dijo Padrón.

Los detectives acusaron a Valdez-Galloso de dispararle en la cabeza a Carbajal Zaldívar poco después de las 5:25 a.m. del 3 de octubre de 2024 en Hialeah, según los registros.

Los agentes de policía encontraron a Carbajal Zaldívar herido alrededor de las 6:45 a.m. del 3 de octubre de 2024 en un vehículo deportivo utilitario Mercedes-Benz 2023 estacionado cerca de Northwest Ninth Avenue y 17th Street en Allapattah, según los registros.

Un médico declaró muerto a Carbajal Zaldívar el 10 de octubre de 2024 en el Jackson Memorial Hospital. Los detectives de la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade investigaron el homicidio.

Los alguaciles federales arrestaron a Valdez-Galloso, un delincuente convicto, el 29 de octubre de 2024 en Brooklyn, Nueva York. Fue extraditado y registrado el 6 de noviembre de 2024 en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight en Miami-Dade.

Los fiscales de Miami-Dade presentaron un caso contra Valdez Galloso, un delincuente sexual registrado, el 7 de noviembre de 2024, y una acusación formal del gran jurado fue presentada el 29 de enero de 2025, según los registros judiciales.

Valdez Galloso, quien permanece detenido antes del juicio, enfrentaba cargos de asesinato en primer grado con un arma mortal, manipulación de evidencia física y posesión de un arma por parte de un delincuente convicto. Su próxima audiencia de estado será a las 9:15 a.m. del 2 de septiembre.

Informe relacionado: Rapero cubano Chocolate MC es declarado culpable en caso de asesinato por encargo.

El gerente de un establecimiento en el vecindario Little Haiti de Miami dijo que el negocio estuvo más lento el martes, ya que, al parecer, muchos miembros de la comunidad están evitando la vida pública.

En el restaurante Chef Creole, el representante estatal Wallace Aristide, demócrata por Miami, dijo que ahora que los beneficiarios haitianos del TPS perdieron la protección contra la deportación y sus permisos de trabajo, “creo que se van a perder miles de millones de dólares en la base tributaria al sacarlos de la fuerza laboral, porque estas personas vinieron aquí a trabajar”.

Aristide, de origen haitiano-estadounidense, dijo que se prepara para el impacto que esto podría tener en la economía y en los adultos mayores del sur de Florida que reciben atención de trabajadores de la salud haitianos cuyo TPS fue cancelado.

“Voy a esos hogares de ancianos todo el tiempo y paso mucho tiempo con los adultos mayores porque significan mucho para mí. Asegurémonos de tener algo que permita que estas personas puedan quedarse aquí”, dijo Aristide. “Estamos haciendo llamadas a Washington, contactando al Congreso y al Senado”.

El director financiero de Florida, Blaise Ingoglia, republicano, tiene una opinión diferente.

“Han estado diciendo que la economía se iba a desplomar y que nadie podría ocupar estos empleos durante dos o tres años”, dijo. “¿Y saben qué? La economía está bien. Seguimos avanzando”.

También afirmó: “Lo he dicho antes y lo seguiré diciendo. La ‘T’ de TPS significa ‘temporal’”.

Defensores del TPS sostienen que las condiciones en Haití no permiten un regreso seguro de sus ciudadanos, uno de los criterios para otorgar esa protección.

“Si no tienes papeles, no puedes trabajar, no puedes hacer nada”, dijo el residente Jean Baptiste. “Haití no está bien en este momento”.

Un portavoz del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) dijo a Local 10 News en un comunicado: “Lo que diríamos ahora es que es hora de cerrar, lo que significa que no tienes que irte a casa, pero no puedes quedarte aquí”.

El arzobispo católico de Miami, Thomas Wenski, estuvo el martes en Washington D.C. para abogar por los beneficiarios del TPS y promover un proyecto de ley en el Senado que extendería el TPS para los haitianos por tres años.

“Están trabajando arduamente en muchos empleos que nadie más aceptaría o querría hacer, por lo que sacarlos de la fuerza laboral tendrá un impacto negativo en nuestras economías y en las economías de nuestras comunidades”, dijo. “La respuesta de los senadores fue que son comprensivos, pero no creen que el proyecto sea aprobado. Pero nosotros decimos que lo aprueben y luego veremos qué pasa”.

MÁS: Wenski en Washington D.C.

Los organizadores comunitarios también expresaron preocupación por la posible separación de familias, una de las principales inquietudes de los beneficiarios del TPS que tienen hijos nacidos en Estados Unidos.

Pompano Beach cuenta con su propio departamento de bomberos y rescate, pero los comisionados determinaron que crear una agencia de policía sería demasiado costoso.

“Fue el costo y la experiencia necesaria para hacerlo. Con la BSO contamos con unidades especializadas que pueden ayudarnos con cualquier situación: drogas, prostitución, delitos de cualquier tipo, helicópteros. Tenemos mucho apoyo a través de la BSO”, dijo la comisionada de Pompano Beach, Darlene Smith. “No tendríamos eso, al menos al principio, con un cuerpo de policía propio”.

Los líderes de la ciudad esperaban finalizar el acuerdo con una votación la noche del martes. El nuevo contrato con la BSO costará 71 millones de dólares durante el próximo año fiscal.

Smith dijo que tomaría alrededor de tres años poner en funcionamiento un nuevo cuerpo de policía. Los comisionados votaron por unanimidad para aceptar el nuevo contrato, que incluye un límite de aumento del 5% en la tarifa cada año y una cláusula que permite a cualquiera de las dos partes rescindir el acuerdo con un aviso de 90 días.

La Comisión de Conservación de Pesca y Vida Silvestre de Florida (FWC) informó que la temporada recreativa de 2026 se desarrolla desde el miércoles hasta el jueves, brindando a los pescadores recreativos la oportunidad de capturar langosta espinosa antes de que la temporada regular comience el 6 de agosto y se extienda hasta el 31 de marzo de 2027.

Antes de salir al agua, la FWC recordó a los participantes que deben contar con una licencia válida de pesca en aguas saladas de Florida, un permiso para capturar langosta espinosa y conocer las regulaciones estatales para la captura de langosta.

Local 10 News estuvo la madrugada del miércoles en Key Biscayne para conversar con algunos de los navegantes que salieron poco después de la medianoche para realizar sus capturas.

“Estuvo muy bien. Quiero decir, había muchas en las zonas poco profundas. Pudimos alcanzar el límite en menos de una hora, así que estuvo bastante bien. En general, fue una muy buena noche”, dijo Christian Gonzalez.

Las langostas suelen esconderse en los arrecifes y debajo de salientes rocosas.

Algunas personas dijeron a Local 10 News que este año parece haber menos langostas en el mar, aunque aun así lograron una captura considerable.

“Las olas no estaban fuertes, el clima está agradable, el mar está tranquilo, pero, como dije, ahora mismo no hay muchas langostas”, comentó un navegante identificado únicamente como Jayden.

El evento anual es una tradición muy arraigada y una actividad familiar para personas de todas las edades.

“En 15 minutos alcanzamos nuestro primer límite y luego, probablemente en los siguientes 30 minutos, conseguimos nuestros otros dos límites”, dijo un hombre llamado David.

Los límites de captura varían según la ubicación

Durante la temporada recreativa de dos días, los pescadores recreativos tienen permitido capturar:

• Seis langostas por persona por día en las aguas del condado Monroe y del Parque Nacional Biscayne.
• Doce langostas por persona por día en todas las demás aguas de Florida.

La FWC indicó que los límites de captura solo se aplican a las personas con la licencia correspondiente o a quienes estén exentos del requisito y participen activamente en la captura. Las personas que no estén capturando langostas no pueden ser contabilizadas para el límite diario de otra persona.

Reglas para la captura

Los funcionarios estatales de vida silvestre también recordaron a quienes participan en la captura de langostas que deben cumplir varias regulaciones durante la temporada.

Solo pueden conservarse langostas cuyo caparazón mida más de tres pulgadas, y esa medición debe realizarse mientras la langosta aún está en el agua. Además, es obligatorio llevar un medidor en todo momento.

No está permitido capturar hembras con huevos, y las langostas deben permanecer enteras. Está prohibido separar la cola del cuerpo mientras se está en el agua.

La FWC también recordó que es ilegal utilizar cualquier dispositivo que perfore, penetre o aplaste el caparazón de una langosta.

Langosta adicional para participantes del Lionfish Challenge

Los participantes del Lionfish Challenge 2026 pueden calificar para capturar una langosta adicional por día durante la temporada recreativa.

Para calificar, los participantes recreativos deben capturar y reportar al menos 25 peces león, mientras que los participantes comerciales deben capturar 50 libras o más de pez león. Los pescadores elegibles deben portar la moneda oficial del Lionfish Challenge 2026 emitida por la FWC mientras capturan langostas.

Seguridad para navegantes y buzos

La FWC exhorta a navegantes y buzos a poner la seguridad en primer lugar.

Los funcionarios recomiendan usar un chaleco salvavidas siempre que la embarcación esté en movimiento y recuerdan que navegar bajo los efectos del alcohol es ilegal.

Los buzos deben permanecer a no más de 300 pies de una bandera de buzo correctamente colocada en aguas abiertas y a no más de 100 pies cuando buceen cerca de una entrada o un canal de navegación. Las embarcaciones que se acerquen a una bandera de buzo deben reducir la velocidad al mínimo dentro de esas distancias.

Para quienes utilicen redes tipo bully net durante la temporada recreativa, la FWC también solicita actuar con cortesía, dirigiendo las luces hacia el agua, evitando iluminarlas hacia viviendas o personas y manteniendo el ruido al mínimo.

Para obtener más información sobre las regulaciones para la captura de langosta espinosa en Florida, haga clic aquí.

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Hill said the trouble began last November when her 2008 Ford Edge suddenly would not move. The SUV was towed to AAction Better Built Transmissions, located at 7685 Pines Blvd. in Pembroke Pines.

According to Hill, a service advisor told her she needed a transmission.

She said the diagnosis was presented as certain, and she agreed to the repair.

The bill came to $3,850.

Hill said she did not have the money and had to take out a loan.

“I was bawling,” she told Local 10 News. “I cried.”

When she picked up her SUV, Hill said she believed the transmission had been rebuilt or replaced and was told the repair carried a one-year warranty. She said no one ever mentioned replacing the vehicle’s front axles.

Months later, Hill said she received a phone call from the mechanic who had worked on her SUV.

According to Hill, the mechanic said he had recorded the repair as he performed it to document exactly what he did in case his work was ever questioned.

Local 10 News obtained those recordings.

In one recording, the mechanic is seen working on Hill’s SUV while narrating what he says he is doing.

“Okay Jade Hill, one new axle there. One new axle there. The car is running right now,” he says.

After taking the SUV for a test drive, the mechanic tells the camera, “Jade, there is nothing wrong with your transmission.”

He continues describing the test drive by saying, “Shift, shift, shift. The transmission is perfect. Transmission shifts beautifully. Does not have to be touched whatsoever.”

Before returning inside the shop, the mechanic tells the camera he wants to see how management responds after he reports what he found.

“And we will see what the response is. Will he say, ‘OK, it’s fine? Just leave it like that?’”

The recording then captures a conversation between the mechanic and a service advisor Hill identified as AJ.

“Both axles?” AJ asks.

“Yeah,” the mechanic replies.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

AJ then responds, “I basically sold them the unit. I sold the unit, but... the axles are bad?”

The mechanic again replies, “Yeah.”

A short time later, the recording captures another conversation as the two men walk through the repair shop near Hill’s vehicle.

“The lady, she called me crying on the phone. I felt bad for her, but $3,850, b****,” AJ says.

Laughter follows.

AJ then repeats, “$3,850,” followed by more laughter.

Hill said watching the recordings left her stunned.

“I’m livid,” she said.

The invoice provided by Hill lists charges for a general overhaul and reconditioning of the transmission assembly, including an overhaul kit, torque converter, valve assembly, piston kit, transmission fluid and labor. The invoice also includes replacement axle assemblies.

Industry repair estimates indicate replacing both front CV axles on a 2008 Ford Edge typically costs substantially less than $3,850, although actual repair costs vary depending on parts used, labor rates and any additional repairs.

Hill later hired Fort Lauderdale attorney Michael Salazar.

In a demand letter sent to AAction Better Built Transmissions, Salazar alleged Hill was charged thousands of dollars for transmission work that was never performed and demanded compensation. He described the recordings as compelling evidence supporting Hill’s claims.

“The videotape speaks for itself,” Salazar told Local 10 News.

Local 10 News visited the repair shop seeking answers.

Shop owner Luis Merchan declined an on-camera interview and referred questions to his attorney.

In a three-page letter to Local 10 News, attorney Alejandro Velez, representing Merchan and AAction Better Built Transmissions, strongly disputed Hill’s allegations and urged the station not to broadcast the recordings.

The attorney wrote that company records show Hill’s vehicle arrived at the shop inoperable, that a documented transmission repair was performed and billed, and that the company stands behind its work by providing customers with a one-year warranty.

The letter also challenges the credibility of the mechanic featured in the recordings.

According to the attorney, the mechanic was terminated for cause because of documented misconduct, including chronic tardiness and abusive language. The letter alleges the former employee threatened to “ruin” and “destroy” the business before his termination, later refused to leave the property, and was ultimately trespassed by law enforcement. The attorney argues the recordings were provided to Local 10 News as part of a retaliatory effort against the company.

The attorney further contends the recordings were made illegally using wearable Meta smart glasses inside an employees-only area where workers had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The letter argues the recordings were made without the consent of those involved and asks Local 10 News not to broadcast them.

The company said it immediately launched an internal investigation into Hill’s repair order. According to the attorney, the review includes digital diagnostic information, technician logs and parts records. The company also stated that if the investigation uncovered any improper conduct, it would work directly with Hill to make the situation right.

Local 10 News asked the company to provide the records it says document the transmission repair. As of publication, those records had not been provided.

As Local 10 News was preparing this report, Salazar said the parties had reached a resolution but declined to discuss the terms.

Hill said that regardless of the outcome, she wanted her experience made public.

“This needs to be brought out,” she said.

“You’re allowing this to happen. You know about it. There’s no way that you don’t know about it. You know what parts come into your facility. You know what’s ordered through your company.”

Hill dijo que los problemas comenzaron en noviembre pasado, cuando su Ford Edge 2008 dejó de moverse de repente. El SUV fue remolcado a AAction Better Built Transmissions, ubicado en el 7685 de Pines Blvd., en Pembroke Pines.

Según Hill, un asesor de servicio le dijo que necesitaba una transmisión nueva.

Afirmó que el diagnóstico fue presentado como definitivo y aceptó la reparación.

La factura ascendió a $3,850 USD.

Hill dijo que no tenía el dinero y tuvo que solicitar un préstamo.

“Estaba llorando desconsoladamente”, dijo a Local 10 News. “Lloré”.

Cuando recogió su SUV, Hill dijo que creyó que la transmisión había sido reconstruida o reemplazada y que le informaron que la reparación tenía una garantía de un año. Aseguró que nadie le mencionó que se reemplazarían los ejes delanteros del vehículo.

Meses después, Hill dijo que recibió una llamada del mecánico que había trabajado en su SUV.

Según Hill, el mecánico le explicó que había grabado la reparación mientras la realizaba para documentar exactamente lo que hizo, en caso de que alguna vez cuestionaran su trabajo.

Local 10 News obtuvo esas grabaciones.

En una de ellas, se observa al mecánico trabajando en el SUV de Hill mientras narra lo que, según él, está haciendo.

“Bien, Jade Hill, un eje nuevo aquí. Un eje nuevo aquí. El vehículo está funcionando en este momento”, dice.

Después de conducir el SUV para probarlo, el mecánico le dice a la cámara: “Jade, no hay nada malo con tu transmisión”.

Luego continúa describiendo la prueba de manejo: “Cambia, cambia, cambia. La transmisión está perfecta. La transmisión hace los cambios perfectamente. No necesita ningún tipo de reparación”.

Antes de regresar al interior del taller, el mecánico le dice a la cámara que quiere ver cómo responde la gerencia cuando informe lo que encontró.

“Y veremos cuál es la respuesta. ¿Dirá: “Está bien, déjalo así”?”

La grabación luego captura una conversación entre el mecánico y un asesor de servicio identificado por Hill como AJ.

“¿Los dos ejes?”, pregunta AJ.

“Sí”, responde el mecánico.

“¿Eso es todo?”

“Sí”.

Entonces AJ responde: “Básicamente le vendí la transmisión. Le vendí la transmisión, pero… ¿los ejes están malos?”

El mecánico vuelve a responder: “Sí”.

Poco después, la grabación registra otra conversación mientras ambos caminan por el taller cerca del vehículo de Hill.

“La señora me llamó llorando por teléfono. Me dio pena, pero $3,850 USD, p***”, dice AJ.

Luego se escuchan risas.

AJ repite: “$3,850 USD”, seguido de más risas.

Hill dijo que ver las grabaciones la dejó impactada.

“Estoy furiosa”, afirmó.

La factura proporcionada por Hill incluye cargos por una reconstrucción general y reacondicionamiento del conjunto de la transmisión, incluido un kit de reconstrucción, convertidor de torque, conjunto de válvulas, kit de pistones, fluido de transmisión y mano de obra. La factura también incluye el reemplazo de los conjuntos de ejes.

Estimaciones de la industria indican que reemplazar ambos ejes CV delanteros de un Ford Edge 2008 normalmente cuesta mucho menos de $3,850 USD, aunque el costo real puede variar según las piezas utilizadas, la mano de obra y cualquier reparación adicional.

Posteriormente, Hill contrató al abogado de Fort Lauderdale Michael Salazar.

En una carta de reclamación enviada a AAction Better Built Transmissions, Salazar alegó que Hill pagó miles de dólares por un trabajo de transmisión que nunca se realizó y exigió una compensación. Describió las grabaciones como una prueba contundente que respalda las denuncias de Hill.

“El video habla por sí solo”, dijo Salazar a Local 10 News.

Local 10 News visitó el taller en busca de respuestas.

El propietario del negocio, Luis Merchan, rechazó una entrevista ante las cámaras y remitió las preguntas a su abogado.

En una carta de tres páginas enviada a Local 10 News, el abogado Alejandro Velez, quien representa a Merchan y a AAction Better Built Transmissions, rechazó enérgicamente las acusaciones de Hill y pidió a la estación que no transmitiera las grabaciones.

El abogado escribió que los registros de la empresa muestran que el vehículo de Hill llegó al taller sin funcionar, que se realizó y facturó una reparación documentada de la transmisión y que la empresa respalda su trabajo ofreciendo a los clientes una garantía de un año.

La carta también cuestiona la credibilidad del mecánico que aparece en las grabaciones.

Según el abogado, el mecánico fue despedido por causa justificada debido a una conducta indebida documentada, que incluía retrasos constantes y lenguaje ofensivo. La carta sostiene que el ex empleado amenazó con “arruinar” y “destruir” el negocio antes de ser despedido, posteriormente se negó a abandonar la propiedad y finalmente fue expulsado por las autoridades. El abogado argumenta que las grabaciones fueron entregadas a Local 10 News como parte de un acto de represalia contra la empresa.

El abogado también sostiene que las grabaciones fueron realizadas de manera ilegal utilizando unas gafas inteligentes Meta dentro de un área exclusiva para empleados, donde estos tenían una expectativa razonable de privacidad. La carta afirma que las grabaciones se hicieron sin el consentimiento de los involucrados y solicita a Local 10 News que no las transmita.

La empresa indicó que inició de inmediato una investigación interna sobre la orden de reparación de Hill. Según el abogado, la revisión incluye información digital de diagnóstico, registros del técnico y registros de las piezas utilizadas. La empresa también afirmó que, si la investigación detecta alguna conducta indebida, trabajará directamente con Hill para corregir la situación.

Local 10 News pidió a la empresa que proporcionara los registros que, según afirma, documentan la reparación de la transmisión. Hasta el momento de la publicación, esos registros no habían sido entregados.

Mientras Local 10 News preparaba este reportaje, Salazar informó que las partes habían llegado a un acuerdo, pero se negó a revelar los términos.

Hill dijo que, independientemente del resultado, quería que su experiencia se hiciera pública.

“Esto tiene que salir a la luz”, afirmó.

“Ustedes están permitiendo que esto ocurra. Lo saben. No hay manera de que no lo sepan. Saben qué piezas llegan a sus instalaciones. Saben qué se pide a través de su empresa”.

Las normas publicadas en la Gaceta Oficial forman parte de un paquete de medidas aprobado por el Parlamento y el poderoso Partido Comunista de Cuba en junio.

La apertura económica se produce en medio de un cerco energético impuesto por Estados Unidos en enero que dejó casi paralizada a la isla, provocando la agudización de una crisis económica y afectando seriamente a la población.

“Esto complementa todas estas medidas que se han venido tomando y realmente permite, facilita la participación de los actores económicos no estatales en la economía del país”, dijo la presidenta del Instituto Nacional de Actores Económicos No Estatales, Lázara Mercedes López Acea, quien presentó las nuevas normas.

La legislación vigente hasta ahora contenía una lista de 125 actividades prohibidas y que el Estado cubano mantenía como su potestad exclusiva. De ellas 46 se eliminaron totalmente y otras 35 se flexibilizaron para dar cabida a la iniciativa privada, indicó López Acea.

Desde los años 60 Cuba mantuvo un modelo de férreo control estatal y centralización de la actividad económica, pero a comienzos de la pasada década el gobierno comenzó a permitir el trabajo por cuenta propia y en 2021 autorizó la constitución de pequeñas y medianas empresas (pymes). López Acea informó que actualmente operaban en la isla unas 15.600 pymes.

Las nuevas normas permiten la “gestión de servicios farmacéuticos” por parte de pymes y cooperativas. Las nuevas farmacias particulares serán un “complemento de la red estatal ante el desabastecimiento de medicinas que existe en la isla ”, explicó el portal oficial Cubadebate. Además, se autorizó la creación de residencias de cuidados para adultos mayores, cuya situación se ha vuelto muy compleja por el envejecimiento de la población y la migración de miles de jóvenes.

Paralelamente, el Ministerio de Comercio Interior informó que flexibilizará la venta mayorista y minorista por parte de particulares, al tiempo que el de Transporte hará lo propio con la importación de vehículos eléctricos y partes.

También se permitirá la explotación petrolera condicionada, tanto de empresas mixtas como particulares e inversores extranjeros, indicó la nueva legislación.

A su vez se limitó la extracción de minerales metalíferos a las personas naturales, pero se autorizó que pymes puedan realizarla dejando la “gran minería” –como el níquel del oriente cubano que fue recientemente abandonado por la canadiense Sherritt— para asociaciones económicas o inversores extranjeros.

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The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said the 2026 recreational sport season runs Wednesday through Thursday, giving recreational harvesters an opportunity to catch spiny lobster ahead of the regular season, which begins Aug. 6 and continues through March 31, 2027.

Before heading onto the water, the FWC reminded participants that they must have a valid Florida saltwater fishing license, a spiny lobster permit, and be familiar with the state’s lobster harvesting regulations.

Local 10 News was in Key Biscayne early Wednesday to speak with some of the boaters who headed out just after midnight to catch their hauls.

“It was good, man,” Christian Gonzalez said. “I mean, they were running through the flats pretty good. We were able to limit it out in less than an hour, so it was pretty decent. I mean, pretty good night overall.”

Lobsters often hide in reefs, under rock ledges.

Some folks told Local 10 News that it seems there are less lobsters under the sea this year, but they still pulled a decent haul.

“The waves weren’t bad at all, the weather’s nice, it’s kind of smooth, but like I said, there’s not a lot of lobsters right now,” one boater identified only as Jayden said.

The annual event is a time-honored tradition and family event for many people, young and old.

“(In) 15 minutes, we got our first limit, and then probably within the next 30 minutes, we got our other two limits,” a man named David said.

Bag limits vary by location

During the two-day sport season, recreational harvesters are limited to:

• 6 lobsters per person, per day in Monroe County and Biscayne National Park waters.
• 12 lobsters per person, per day in all other Florida waters.

The FWC said bag limits apply only to properly licensed individuals, or those exempt from licensing, who are actively harvesting. People who are not harvesting cannot be counted toward another person’s daily limit.

Harvest rules

State wildlife officials also reminded lobster hunters to follow several key regulations during the season.

Harvesters may only keep lobsters with a carapace measuring more than 3 inches, and the measurement must be taken while the lobster is still in the water. A measuring device must be carried at all times.

Egg-bearing female lobsters may not be harvested, and lobsters must remain whole. Removing the tail from the body while on the water is prohibited.

The FWC also said it is illegal to use any device that punctures, penetrates or crushes a lobster’s shell.

Bonus lobster available for Lionfish Challenge participants

Participants in the 2026 Lionfish Challenge may qualify to harvest one additional lobster per day during the sport season.

To qualify, recreational participants must harvest and report at least 25 lionfish, while commercial participants must harvest 50 pounds or more of lionfish. Eligible harvesters must carry their 2026 FWC-issued Lionfish Challenge coin while lobstering.

Boating and diving safety

The FWC is urging boaters and divers to put safety first.

Officials recommend wearing a life jacket whenever a boat is underway and remind operators that boating under the influence of alcohol is illegal.

Divers must remain within 300 feet of a properly displayed divers-down flag in open water and within 100 feet when diving near an inlet or navigation channel. Boaters approaching a divers-down flag are required to slow to idle speed within those distances.

For those using bully nets during the sport season, the FWC is also asking harvesters to be courteous by directing lights toward the water, avoiding shining lights at homes or people, and keeping noise to a minimum.

For more information about Florida’s spiny lobster regulations, click here.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky subpoenaed Fauci to appear before a Senate committee. It’s part of Paul’s yearslong accusations that the now-retired infectious disease expert had lied about the pandemic, something Fauci has called “preposterous.”

Meanwhile, roughly six weeks before the first midterm ballots are mailed out, the U.S. Postal Service is emerging as a pivotal player in an election season that will determine control of Congress. President Donald Trump is seeking greater control over mail balloting through an executive order while a change to how the agency processes mail is leading to criticism that it’s failing to deliver ballots on time.

Here’s the latest:

Fauci has a presidential pardon. Why plead the Fifth?

Before President Joe Biden left office, he gave Fauci a preemptive “full and unconditional” pardon, dating back to 2014. So, why would Fauci need to invoke the Fifth now?

The decision may center on several Republicans’ comments that Fauci could still be criminally prosecuted for perjury if he lies under oath.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist before entering office, was among the Trump allies suggesting that possibility this week.

Fauci said in his opening statement that he believed Paul wanted him to testify so he could say something that might justify his arrest.

Paul gets to dominate the hearing with Fauci pleading the 5th

The Kentucky senator is an ophthalmologist who’s conversant, if not fluent, in the language of scientific and medical research.

And with Fauci pleading the Fifth, Paul is free to go through his account of the record, asking detailed questions he knows the witness will not answer.

He’s asked about NIH funding of Chinese research.

Fauci responded: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment.”

The senator delved into details about virus mutations and the dangers of such research.

Fauci stuck to his script: “On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment.”

And throughout their exchange, Paul weaved in his analysis of Fauci’s actions to frame the one-sided conversation his way.

Invoking the 5th offers protection for witnesses

The Fifth Amendment is a constitutional protection against self-incrimination during questioning by law enforcement authorities and Congress.

By invoking it, witnesses are not acknowledging any criminal liability at all, and many people who profess their absolute innocence choose to exercise their right to remain silent. Witnesses who do so are able to avoid testimony they think could be damning or that they fear could be used against them by zealous interrogators or prosecutors determined to use their own words against them.

In the case of Fauci, for instance, some Republicans have talked openly about their desire to see the doctor prosecuted, and in opting to invoke his rights, Fauci cited his concern that Republican Sen. Rand Paul would try to elicit testimony that “could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote.”

Crux of Fauci hearing is over pandemic origins and NIH-funded research in China

Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

There’s no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 did not find any evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins, the way other deadly viruses, including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS, jumped into people.

Trump tells Fox News he’ll retaliate hard against Iran for overnight attacks

Fox News reporter Trey Yingst, who’s based in the Middle East, said in an on-air segment that he spoke with Trump on Wednesday and the president told him the United States will hit back hard in response to the attacks in Jordan from Iran.

Iran launched a barrage of missiles at American forces in the region early Wednesday.

Senate committee’s top Democrat says Fauci hearing is a GOP stunt

Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the panel, says Paul’s hearing is a partisan exercise and that the chairman has denied the minority access to some of the evidentiary record he’s cited.

Paul called that “categorically false.”

Peters tried to pivot to the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal work force and the departure of career scientists from the government’s public health programs.

The senator said Trump’s policies have slowed the response to the ongoing cyclospora outbreak and added that “cuts to global health programs and international partnerships have greatly reduced our ability to contain dangerous diseases.”

That’s more important than “relitigating the past,” Peters said.

“We should be asking how to strengthen our bio defense efforts to deter our adversaries and prevent biological attacks against our country,” while assessing “how our government can better coordinate and communicate during public health emergencies,” Peters said.

Fauci isn’t answering questions after invoking the 5th

In his remarks at the top of the hearing, Fauci accused Sen. Paul of having an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.”

“The only conclusion that I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote.”

He said he would refrain from answering questions upon advice from his attorneys.

Fauci pleading the Fifth, according to prepared remarks

A draft of the 85-year-old’s opening statement shows he won’t be getting into the details Sen. Paul wants to discuss.

Anyone under oath has the right to cite the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment that ensures no person can be compelled to give self-incriminating testimony.

Fauci’s decision diminishes the potential for fireworks between Fauci and the chairman. But it also could give Paul a relatively uninterrupted platform to frame his arguments on the pandemic, its origins and the federal response.

Sen. Paul opens hearing accusing Fauci of covering up COVID-19 origin

The senator is trying to build the case that Fauci and other officials helped produce the COVID-19 pandemic by approving funding of research on virus mutations and then covered up their complicity.

Fauci’s lawyers and his supporters vehemently deny those accusations.

Paul said Fauci should admit that “funding this research in China” was “a mistake” and that he made false statements during the pandemic — including to Congress — that the virus was not conceived in a laboratory.

“Your primary concern was hiding the fact that you had approved funding for this dangerous research,” Paul said.

The senator called Fauci’s “categorical public denials indefensible” and said he has “destroyed trust.”

COVID-19 Senate hearing starts with Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has opened its hearing with Fauci.

The physician and immunologist who helped lead the U.S government response to the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to face aggressive questioning from Republican members, especially Chairman Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Paul has for years questioned the origins of the COVID virus and federal health officials’ accounts.

The senator already has released reams of Fauci’s diary entries during the pandemic and said that what scientist “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”

Investigators in Comey seashells case omitted key facts and distorted others, defense lawyers allege

Federal officials involved in the prosecution of James Comey misled judges, submitted false statements and withheld key facts during the course of the investigation, according to new defense filings that seek the dismissal of a case charging the former FBI director with threatening President Trump on social media.

Lawyers for Comey made the allegations of misconduct in motions filed late Tuesday that also call the case a vindictive and selective prosecution, request access to transcripts of grand jury proceedings to expose what they say are “irregularities” in how the indictment was secured, and describe “unlawful” surveillance of Comey by the Secret Service.

Taken together, the new motions, along with an earlier one this week that called Comey’s social media post protected speech and not a threat, represent a multiprong defense effort to dismantle a case defense lawyers say exemplifies a Trump administration retribution campaign targeting one of the president’s most vocal critics.

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Trump’s attacks on mail balloting and concerns over delays turn midterms spotlight on Postal Service

Roughly six weeks before the first midterm ballots are mailed out, the U.S. Postal Service is emerging as a pivotal player in an election season that will determine control of Congress.

President Donald Trump is seeking greater control over mail balloting through an executive order while a change to how the agency processes mail is leading to criticism that it’s failing to deliver ballots on time.

Democratic officials have raised concerns over the past week about how quickly the Postal Service will process ballots after tens of thousands of them in California and hundreds in Wisconsin arrived at local election offices too late to be counted in elections earlier this year. The top election offices in Kansas and Michigan are urging voters who want to cast their ballots early to avoid the mail and instead drop them off in person.

The Postal Service replied to those concerns Tuesday by saying it remains “committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process.”

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Anthony Fauci again faces questions from Senate Republicans about pandemic origins

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. scientist who helped lead the nation’s COVID-19 pandemic response, is set to face off — again — with a Republican senator probing the origins of the coronavirus.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky subpoenaed Fauci to appear before a Senate committee Wednesday. It’s part of Paul’s yearslong accusations that the now-retired infectious disease expert had lied about the pandemic, something Fauci has called “preposterous.”

Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than a thousand pages of Fauci’s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on the social media platform X that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”

But they’re likely to further inflame a partisan divide that, years after the pandemic, still makes Fauci a target of vitriol from people who blame him for mask mandates and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

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“You never want to let go of a player, especially somebody that you’ve been around for a while here and you drafted," Campbell said. “It’s unfortunate, but we made the move we thought was best for us.”

The Lions cut ties with Arnold last month, shortly after a Florida judge set Arnold's bail at $1 million on eight felony charges stemming from allegations he orchestrated the abduction and beating of three men.

A month after the 2025 season ended for the Lions, prosecutors in Florida say Arnold arranged for the men to be pistol-whipped after he wrongly suspected them of stealing $100,000 in cash and luxury goods from him.

In March, Campbell said the team believed Arnold was not involved in the alleged crime based on the information they had at that time.

“I feel like we’re going to be good here,” Campbell told reporters at the NFL's annual league meeting. “I’m going to trust what the kid said.”

Harvey Steinberg, an attorney for the 23-year-old Arnold, argued in court that prosecutors were “not even close” to showing that Arnold knew or directed what his associates would do.

Detroit drafted Arnold with the No. 24 pick in 2024, when the NFL draft was held in the Motor City and the former Alabama star sported a big smile and a light salmon silk suit. He had two years left on his four-year rookie contract with the Lions.

Arnold had an uneven rookie season, making 15 starts without an interception. He picked off one pass last season while he was limited to eight games because of a concussion and shoulder injury.

Before the Lions released Arnold, the judge did not require him to wear an ankle monitor because it would have prevented him from taking the field for games and training.

The Lions, coming off a season that fell short of expectations, appeared to be preparing to potentially play without Arnold during offseason workouts because he was not on the field with the No. 1 defense.

Campbell insisted he is confident in the caliber of players the team has at cornerback.

D.J. Reed and Rock Ya-Sin are projected as starters while Roger McCreary will compete for playing time. The team is also hopeful Ennis Rakestraw can contribute after missing last season because of shoulder surgery and being limited to eight games as a rookie with hamstring and ankle injuries.

“We feel pretty good in that room with the competition between veterans and young guys,” Campbell said.

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

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The winning ticket that was sold in Florida matched all six numbers Tuesday night.

The winner and retailer that sold the ticket have not yet been announced.

According to the Mega Millions website, the jackpot winner will receive $344.2 million if they choose to receive a one-time, cash lump sum payment.

The winning numbers from Tuesday night’s drawing were 34, 48, 49, 59 and 70, with a Mega Ball of 12.

The next drawing is at 11 p.m. Friday with an estimated jackpot of $50 million.

El boleto ganador vendido en Florida acertó los seis números del sorteo del martes por la noche.

Aún no se han dado a conocer la identidad del ganador ni el establecimiento que vendió el boleto.

Según el sitio web de Mega Millions, el ganador del premio mayor recibirá $344.2 millones USD si elige recibir un pago único en efectivo.

Los números ganadores del sorteo del martes por la noche fueron 34, 48, 49, 59 y 70, con la Mega Ball 12.

El próximo sorteo será a las 11 p.m. del viernes, con un premio mayor estimado de $50 millones USD.

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Last year, August brought us Category 5 Hurricane Erin. The year prior, Hurricane Debby struck Florida on August 5^th, the first of five U.S. hurricane landfalls that season. In 2023, Idalia rapidly intensified to a Category 4 hurricane in the 24 hours leading up to its end-of-August landfall in Florida’s Big Bend.

August can give us a pass – like in 2022 when August ended without a single tropical depression, storm, or hurricane, only the second August in 60 years to do so – but that’s a rare treat when it happens.

That said, if ever you were betting on a sluggish open to the August portion of the hurricane season, it’s this August. As we’ve covered extensively in the newsletter this season, the Atlantic basin – including the Gulf and Caribbean – is squarely on the struggle bus. Waters in the tropical Atlantic are as tepid as they’ve been in four years, wind shear is as high as we’ve ever seen it to start August, and sinking air is weighing heavy on disturbances that might otherwise try to grow.

That knockout one-two combo of high wind shear and sinking air is firmly in place and doesn’t look to be retreating anytime soon. Perhaps the most telling chart is the one below which shows the positioning of rising and sinking air across the globe and what’s forecast into the first few weeks of September.

The long band of oranges and reds squared over the Indian Ocean next to the long band of greens and blues stuck over the Pacific is a so-called standing wave configuration that promotes high wind shear and stable air across the Atlantic, both significant deterrents to tropical activity. It’s rare to see such a strong signal in global velocity potential anomalies, but this striking pattern reflects just how much of a toll the historic El Niño is taking on the atmosphere.

I’m not bold enough – even in a year like this one – to suggest we’ll see the Atlantic completely shutdown this August (especially deeper into August), but we should certainly expect it’ll be much quieter than usual. With a configuration like the one shown, we should probably look north of the traditional tropical belt into the subtropics, something we’ve covered in previous newsletters, which could open periodic windows which might favor development.

For now, however, we’re not seeing any such development windows in the near future and forecast models show little to nothing through at least the first week or two of August.

El año pasado, agosto nos trajo al huracán Erin de categoría cinco. El año anterior, el huracán Debby impactó Florida el 5 de agosto, el primero de cinco impactos de huracanes en Estados Unidos durante esa temporada. En 2023, Idalia se intensificó rápidamente hasta convertirse en un huracán de categoría cuatro en las 24 horas previas a su impacto de finales de agosto en la región de Big Bend, en Florida.

Agosto puede darnos una tregua, como ocurrió en 2022, cuando terminó sin una sola depresión tropical, tormenta o huracán, apenas el segundo agosto en 60 años en el que ocurrió algo así, pero eso sucede en raras ocasiones.

Dicho esto, si hubiera que apostar por un comienzo lento para la parte de agosto de la temporada de huracanes, sería este agosto. Como hemos explicado ampliamente en el boletín durante esta temporada, la cuenca del Atlántico, incluido el Golfo y el Caribe, está atravesando dificultades. Las aguas del Atlántico tropical están tan templadas como no lo habían estado en cuatro años, la cizalladura del viento es tan alta como la que hemos visto al inicio de agosto y el aire descendente está ejerciendo una fuerte influencia sobre las perturbaciones que, de otro modo, podrían intentar desarrollarse.

Esa combinación de fuerte cizalladura del viento y aire descendente permanece firmemente establecida y no parece que vaya a retirarse pronto. Quizás el gráfico más revelador sea el que aparece a continuación, que muestra la ubicación del aire ascendente y descendente en todo el mundo y el pronóstico para las primeras semanas de septiembre.

La extensa franja de colores naranja y rojo sobre el océano Índico, junto a la larga franja de colores verde y azul sobre el Pacífico, corresponde a una configuración conocida como onda estacionaria que favorece una fuerte cizalladura del viento y aire estable sobre el Atlántico, dos factores que representan importantes obstáculos para la actividad tropical. Es poco común observar una señal tan marcada en las anomalías del potencial de velocidad global, pero este llamativo patrón refleja el gran impacto que el histórico fenómeno de El Niño está teniendo sobre la atmósfera.

No me atrevo, ni siquiera en un año como este, a sugerir que el Atlántico permanecerá completamente inactivo durante agosto, especialmente hacia la segunda mitad del mes, pero sí deberíamos esperar un período mucho más tranquilo de lo habitual. Con una configuración como la que se muestra, probablemente debamos prestar atención al norte del cinturón tropical tradicional, en las regiones subtropicales, algo que hemos abordado en boletines anteriores, donde podrían abrirse ventanas periódicas favorables para el desarrollo.

Por ahora, sin embargo, no observamos ninguna de esas ventanas de desarrollo en el futuro cercano y los modelos de pronóstico muestran poca o ninguna actividad durante, al menos, la primera o segunda semana de agosto.

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According to Lauderhill police, the crash was reported at about 1:30 a.m. in the 1100 block of Northwest 43^rd Terrace.

The impact was so great, the truck went in one side, and came out the other.

The truck appeared to have struck a carport that was converted into an extra room.

Police said the home was vacant at the time of the crash and no injuries were reported.

According to police, the driver, who remained at the scene after the crash, was impaired and was taken into custody for driving under the influence.

“It is sad that a lot of our people are drinking, and they’re not able to control themselves,” neighbor Nadia Gordon said.

Gordon lives next door to the home the truck crashed into. She said she feels fortunate that the driver appears to have swerved at the last second, narrowly missing her home.

“This is a miracle for me,” she said. “Cause for him to have passed through there and go there, it’s really a blessing.”

The driver’s identity was not immediately released.

Police said the incident remains under investigation.

Según la Policía de Lauderhill, el choque fue reportado alrededor de la 1:30 a.m. en la cuadra 1100 de Northwest 43rd Terrace.

El impacto fue tan fuerte que la camioneta atravesó la casa, entrando por un lado y saliendo por el otro.

Al parecer, la camioneta impactó un garaje techado que había sido convertido en una habitación adicional.

La Policía informó que la casa estaba desocupada al momento del choque y que no se reportaron personas heridas.

Según la Policía, el conductor, que permaneció en el lugar después del choque, estaba bajo los efectos del alcohol y fue puesto bajo custodia por conducir bajo la influencia.

“Es triste que muchas personas estén bebiendo y no sean capaces de controlarse”, dijo la vecina Nadia Gordon.

Gordon vive al lado de la casa contra la que chocó la camioneta. Dijo que se siente afortunada de que el conductor aparentemente girara el volante en el último segundo, evitando por poco impactar su vivienda.

“Esto es un milagro para mí”, dijo. “Que haya pasado por allí y terminara allá, realmente es una bendición”.

La identidad del conductor no fue divulgada de inmediato.

La Policía informó que el incidente continúa bajo investigación.

Temperatures take over as the big weather story. Highs will be in the middle 90s, which is record territory. Factor in the high humidity and it will feel more like 105°-110°. That level of heat index has triggered a Heat Advisory today and we will likely have one for the rest of the work week. More typical rainy season thunderstorms will return over the weekend, which will bring our temperatures down a few degrees.

The Falcons are left with one active quarterback for 11-on-11s on the team's first day of training camp as Michael Penix Jr. continues to recover from an ACL tear and veteran Trevor Siemian was released Wednesday morning in a series of roster moves.

Penix will be available for 7-on-7s. Jack Strand, Atlanta's sole healthy signal-caller, will see most — if not all — snaps during 11-on-11s.

Stefanski described Tagovailoa's injury as a “flare-up" and said he doesn't anticipate a long absence from the former Dolphins quarterback. He said Tagovailoa will be present but not participating.

The first-year Falcons coach kept the details of Tagovailoa's injury secret, saying that one of the perks of training camp is not having to divulge every detail.

ESPN, citing unnamed sources, reported Wednesday that Tagovailoa is dealing with a tight back.

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

The seat held by retiring two-term Sen. Joni Ernst is among the tough targeted races for Democrats navigating a narrow path to winning the Senate majority. Turek faces Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who has been endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Trump won Iowa by double digits in the last presidential election, and it’s been more than a decade since a Democrat represented Iowa in the Senate. Still, Democrats think they have a fighting chance this cycle.

Turek, a state representative, played wheelchair basketball for the United States in four Paralympic Games. In the video, Turek and Obama play a game of I-O-W-A instead of horse.

“I know a little something about winning Iowa,” Obama says, a reference to his 2008 caucus victory that launched the little-known U.S. senator from Illinois to the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama also carried Iowa in both the 2008 and 2012 general elections.

“Of all the things I’ve done in politics, Iowa was my favorite thing,” Obama goes on. “There was just a magic about regular folks showing up.”

With months to go before the midterm elections, Obama is already throwing his weight behind candidates this cycle. He joined U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico at a taco shop in Texas in May.

Known for his love of basketball, Obama had the White House tennis court modified so he could play basketball and had a professional grade basketball court installed at his Presidential Center. He met WNBA players, including Iowa native Caitlin Clark, at that court last week.

Against Turek, Obama says he got “whooped.”

“Now the ball’s in your court, Iowa,” Obama says. “Let’s make sure that we send Josh Turek to the United States Senate.”

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.

ATC Management told broadcaster RTE Hansard's family was “deeply shocked and heartbroken” by his death.

Irish police said a man in his 50s died in single vehicle motorcycle crash in Lucan on the western outskirts of the Irish capital before 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday. The man, who they did not name, was treated at the scene but was pronounced dead a short time later.

Hansard combined acting and a musical career. He played a member of a Dublin soul band in the hit 1991 movie “The Commitments” and won an Oscar in 2008 for the song “Falling Slowly” from the indie musical “Once,” in which he starred alongside Markéta Irglová.

He was long-serving front man for rock band The Frames, half of rock duo The Swell Season and released solo albums including “Didn’t He Ramble,” which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Folk Album in 2016.

Hansard started out as a busker on the streets of Dublin, and he became famous for leading the Christmas Eve charity busk outside Dublin's Gaiety Theatre, where members of the public gathered to see famous Irish musicians perform.

Former Irish president Michael D. Higgins said Hansard was a “wonderful musician and performer” who had a gift for storytelling who “also placed great emphasis throughout his life to the importance of tackling the problems of society, including regular work in drawing attention to the problem of homelessness.”

At the funeral of The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan in 2023, Hansard performed a rousing version of The Pogues' song “Fairytale Of New York” with Irish singer Lisa O’Neill that had the congregation dancing in the aisles of the church.

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said he was “deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Glen Hansard.”

“A talented musician and actor who made a significant contribution to Ireland’s cultural landscape over many years,” Martin posted on X.

Hansard is survived by his wife, Maire Saaritsa, and their 3-year-old son, Christy.

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A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Hansard was awarded an Oscar in 2007. He received the award in 2008.

Lawyers for Comey made the allegations of misconduct in motions filed late Tuesday that also call the case a vindictive and selective prosecution, request access to transcripts of grand jury proceedings to expose what they say are “irregularities” in how the indictment was secured, and describe “unlawful” surveillance of Comey by the Secret Service.

Taken together, the new motions, along with an earlier one this week that called Comey's social media post protected speech and not a threat, represent a multiprong defense effort to dismantle a case that defense lawyers say exemplifies a Trump administration retribution campaign targeting one of the president's most vocal critics.

“Ample objective evidence — much of which comes directly from government officials’ own public statements and admissions — establishes that the President’s animus toward Mr. Comey led to this vindictive and selective prosecution,” Comey’s lawyers wrote in one of the filings.

The case centers on a picture of seashells on the beach

Comey was charged in April with threatening Trump through a photo he posted on Instagram a year earlier depicting seashells he said he found on the beach in North Carolina in the numerical arrangement of “86 47.”

The Justice Department has said the photo constituted a threat against Trump, the 47th president. Comey deleted the post shortly after he put it up, saying he did not know that anyone interpreted the numbers as a call to violence. His lawyers have said that the slogan has long meant to “get rid of” or “eject” and has been featured on thousands of items sold online and regularly displayed at protests.

Defense lawyers say investigators who tried to prove that Comey intended a physical threat, or knew that the number “86” suggested violence, repeatedly came up empty but withheld that from federal magistrates as they applied for warrants to search the digital accounts of Comey and his wife.

For instance, the FBI searched an internal database of information about open and closed investigations for any indication of an association between Comey and the term “86” but found inconclusive results. An FBI agent also requested a review of the FBI file for the case against reputed mobster John Gambino, which Comey worked on as a young prosecutor, but found no references to the term “86.”

Investigators also interviewed a key government cooperator in the case, Salvatore Gravano, who said he did not recall ever discussing the term “86” with Comey or hearing it in connection with the trial.

“Evidence obtained during discovery supports at least a substantial preliminary showing that the affidavits submitted in support of two of the search warrants contained intentionally false statements and material omissions, and that those defects vitiate any conceivable showing of probable cause,” Comey's lawyers wrote.

Defense lawyers say the case is rooted in Trump's personal animus

In addition, defense lawyers say the warrant applications distort statements made to investigators by a person who knew Comey but has been now estranged from him for years.

The person, whose name is not revealed in the court filings, is described in the affidavit as saying that they immediately perceived Comey's post to have a violent meaning. But investigators omitted from the affidavit that the person had said their initial impression was that “86” referred to being “out of something on the menu” and only later concluded that it could be understood as a call to violence.

The person said that view was influenced by having listened to an episode of Rudy Giuliani's online show in which the Trump loyalist claimed that Comey had worked on mob cases as a prosecutor in which mafia members used “86” to mean “kill.” But the FBI's own investigation determined Giuliani's claims to be untrue, defense lawyers said.

The seashells case against Comey was the second in months targeting the ex-FBI director, a long-running Trump foe whom the president over the years has called a “corrupt piece of garbage” and other epithets.

An earlier case in Virginia accusing Comey of lying to Congress was dismissed in November after a judge concluded that the prosecutor who charged him and another Trump adversary, New York Attorney General Letitia James, was illegally appointed to the job.

Comey's lawyers describe the prosecutions as rooted in Trump's own personal animus, with the Secret Service closely coordinating with the Justice Department and with Trump, who received frequent updates on Air Force One.

As Comey returned to Washington with his wife to be interviewed by law enforcement about his post, Secret Service agents were directed to conduct “unlawful” electronic surveillance, “including as they stopped to visit the grave of their deceased son," his lawyers said. The surveillance had been requested by a senior Justice Department official.

Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then-President Barack Obama and serving before that as a senior Justice Department official in President George W. Bush’s administration. Trump fired Comey in May 2017 during an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign. The men have been openly at odds ever since.

The Justice Department will have an opportunity to respond to the defense filings. The department has not elaborated on any evidence of intent the government has. But acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said earlier this year that prosecutors in every case prove intent with “witnesses, with documents, with the defendant himself to the extent it’s appropriate.”

“And that’s how we’ll prove intent in this case,” Blanche said in April, shortly after he was elevated to lead the department after Pam Bondi’s ouster.

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It happened at an apartment complex located along the 2100 block of Northeast 167th Street.

According to police, De’Undre Turner shot 10 rounds into an apartment unit and then fled the scene.

A warrant had been issued for his arrest, and he was picked up by police on Monday.

Police said Turner was the passenger in a car when he saw the victim walking down the street. Turner then accused the victim of breaking into his wife’s car, which led to the victim running to a friend’s apartment for shelter, authorities said.

Six people were inside the apartment at the time of the shooting, but no one was injured, according to officials.

Authorities said they were able to identify Turner thanks to a tattoo of lips located on the left side of his neck that was captured in the video footage and enhanced by police.

He is being held behind bars without bond on seven counts of second-degree attempted murder with a deadly weapon.

Hyundai Palisade

The Hyundai Palisade tops Edmunds’ midsize three-row rankings. Its quiet, roomy interior gives everyone — even third-row passengers — ample room to spread out. An exceptionally smooth ride makes it ideal both for long highway travel and short local hops on typical city roads. The Palisade’s user-friendly tech, such as wireless smartphone connections and USB ports in all three rows, ensures the driver and passengers stay connected and entertained.

Maximum cargo capacity falls short of some rivals, but clever small-item storage throughout the cabin takes up the slack. Although one of the pricier picks in the class, the Palisade comes with generous features, high-end materials, and an industry-leading warranty. Edmunds also recommends getting the hybrid version if your budget allows. It gets up to an EPA-estimated 34 mpg in combined city/highway driving, and is quicker than the regular Palisade to boot.

2026 Palisade starting price: $41,035; hybrid version: $45,760

Kia Telluride

If the Palisade sounds appealing but you prefer a sportier look, the Kia Telluride makes an excellent alternative. It’s mechanically related to the Palisade and costs nearly the same, but the Kia offers its own compelling flavor. The tall, flat grille, vertical headlights and 20-inch wheels give the Telluride bold trucklike style, and its standard turbocharged engine generates more low-end punch than its base Palisade counterpart.

The Telluride also gets a bit more rear cargo space, excellent second-row legroom, and extra tech such as dual wireless phone chargers. Oddly, the available Telluride hybrid costs more than the hybrid Palisade, but the higher price gets you a few extra standard features, such as ventilated front seats and a more advanced cruise control system.

2027 Telluride starting price: $40,735; hybrid version: $48,035

Toyota Grand Highlander

The Toyota Grand Highlander is a subdued counterpoint to the glitzy Palisade or chunky Telluride. Its styling is more generic-looking, but otherwise the Grand Highlander will win you over with its smooth ride, excellent driver aids and roomy third-row seating. Folding down the second- and third-row seats opens up a massive amount of cargo space, so don’t be surprised when friends ask you to help them move.

Technology is also a strong suit, with features including wireless smartphone integration, abundant USB ports, and a capable web-connected voice assistant. There’s also the even more efficient Grand Highlander Hybrid that gets up to 36 mpg combined. The Grand Highlander is one of the pricier midsize three-row picks, but the premium interior materials and generous space still make it a good deal.

2026 Grand Highlander starting price: $43,855; hybrid version: $47,205

Ford Explorer

The Ford Explorer proves that three-row SUVs can also be sporty. The athlete of the class, the Explorer offers agile handling and acceleration. This is especially true of the Explorer ST, which packs a 400-horsepower V6 and can accelerate from zero to 60 mph in just 5.6 seconds. Tech highlights include a Google-integrated infotainment system with a big 13.2-inch touch screen, wireless smartphone connectivity and Ford’s optional BlueCruise hands-free driving system.

Small cargo space and tight third-row legroom diminish some of the Ford’s utility, and the rear seats aren’t as comfortable as those up front. Also, Ford doesn’t offer a hybrid version of the Explorer. But if you don’t mind trading some practicality for performance, the Explorer is an engaging pick.

2027 Explorer starting price: $40,260

Volkswagen Atlas

A spacious cabin and adult-size seating in all three rows help keep Volkswagen’s biggest SUV high in Edmunds’ rankings. The Atlas’ interior is quiet, and it’s easy to get in and out. Maximum cargo space is also massive, and both back rows fold flat for vanlike utility. The Atlas also rides smoothly over bumps but without the floaty feeling you notice in some rivals.

Impressively, VW has also stuffed a lot of standard features into the Atlas. Even the base trim comes with synthetic leather upholstery, heated and ventilated front seats, and a heated steering wheel. There are a few minor drawbacks to the Atlas, such as some distracting-to-use controls and no available hybrid powertrain option, but overall the Atlas gets plenty right.

2026 Atlas starting price: $40,785

Edmunds says

Whether you need a three-row SUV with cavernous cargo space, maximum fuel economy, or simply speed and performance, today’s top midsize picks deliver something for every buyer.

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This story was provided to The Associated Press by the automotive website Edmunds.

Dan Frio is a contributor at Edmunds.

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It happened along Northwest 23rd Street near 44th Avenue in Lauderhill just after 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Video footage shows the crooks, covering their faces with masks and hoodies, breaking into more than a dozen vehicles.

The criminals did not appear to be fazed by lights, cameras or residents still inside their homes.

One of the victims was registered nurse Marry Gooding, who had her work bag, cash and personal information taken, and will also have to foot the bill to have her car repaired following the break-in.

“I am getting quotes this morning from $450 to $500,” she said. “In my wallet I had an $800 gift card from Costco. My debit card, my two credit cards.”

Gooding was just one of several neighbors who woke up to find their surveillance cameras also captured the thieves rummaging through their property.

“It’s like your life is stripped from you because everything is in your wallet,” she said.

The Lauderhill Police Department said it is investigating several car break-ins in the area and are reviewing surveillance video.

Anyone with information that may help police is urged to contact Lauderhill police or Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.

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The seat is currently held by Lori Alhadeff, who is not seeking reelection.

Running in the election are Sharry Adler Kimmel, who received Alhadeff’s endorsement, and Nicole Morst, who is endorsed by School Board Member Debbi Hixon.

District 4 includes Coral Springs, Margate, North Lauderdale, Parkland and Tamarac.

“I am a champion of teachers,” said Kimmel. “I teach teachers how to be teachers, and I am a subject matter expert with a doctorate degree in education on all things K-12. I have budget experience, I have teaching experience, classroom experience, and I also have a lot of leadership experience.”

Said Morst: “I have been advocating for teachers and families in this district for the last nine years. I served as the North Area Advisory Chair this year, which represents nearly 70 schools in the north region of Broward County. I worked with the principals, the teachers, the parents to make sure that their concerns were heard and their needs are met.”

Both candidates discussed their approaches to tackling the district’s declining student enrollment and severe budget challenges.

“If we expect families to keep sending their kids to Broward schools, we have to invest in their facilities,” said Morst. “We have schools that have mold and broken ACs. And these conditions are not acceptable for our parents.”

Added Kimmel: “The first priority is to get the fiscal house in order. We have to monetize our assets. We have assets and we have to monetize those as if it was an emergency, because it is.”

Both candidates also addressed school safety and improvements.

“So part of my platform, once we monetize our assets, is to have bulletproof glass in every one of those panels at every single school,” said Kimmel. “So if the worst thing happens, worst case scenario and an active shooter makes their way somehow through all the other safety nets onto the campus, they can never do that again. They can never shoot through that glass.”

Said Morst: “I am the only one with a child that is currently enrolled and so I am in it every day. I know the challenges, I know what’s working and what needs to be fixed. And I understand the communities because I have been serving all over Broward. So I understand outside of just what’s in my school in my community, what’s happening at large.”

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Pompano Beach has its own fire rescue department, but commissioners found that starting a law enforcement agency was too expensive.

“It was the cost and the skillset to do it. With BSO, we have specialty crews that can help us with anything -- drugs, prostitution, crime of any kind, helicopters. We have a lot of support through BSO,” Pompano Beach Commissioner Darlene Smith said. “We wouldn’t have that, at least at the beginning, with our own police force.”

With their 4-2 vote on Tuesday evening, city leaders moved to finalize a new three-year contract.

The new contract with BSO will cost $71 million next fiscal year.

Smith said it would take about three years to get a new police force going. Commissioners voted unanimously to accept the new contract with a 5% rate increase cap each year, and a 90-day get-out clause for both sides.

Watch the meeting

At this hospital though, it's not your vitals that will be examined, but your feelings.

The “Hospital of Emotions” is an immersive art experience that explores different facets of being human inside the long-shuttered St. Vincent Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles.

The former hospital was founded in 1856 by the Daughters of Charity religious order to treat poor people before it went bankrupt in 2020 and was bought by private investors. The site will be redeveloped into a homeless shelter and mental health and drug treatment facility, with the first phase opening later this year.

But until the end of September, the hospital rooms are filled with 80 installations by 70 artists. Each artist received around $14,000 to transform four floors of clinical space into explorations of feelings around everything from medical and family trauma to grief over climate change and immigration detention centers.

Sterile hospital spaces are turned into colorful art installations

The project was created in the spirit of Meow Wolf and other for-profit amusement centers that approach art as entertainment.

As in Pixar's “Inside Out,” color-coded creatures sprinkled throughout the show personify a range of emotions from joy and hope to anger and sadness. A fuzzy orange monster winks from behind a nurse’s station, while dueling green giants symbolizing jealousy face off in an otherwise normal exam room, their faces decorated with absurd, clownlike expressions.

IV bags are full of rainbow-colored liquids, overhead exam lights are festooned with a canopy of artificial flowers, and crutches are draped with campy, cartoonish wigs.

Enter the “Resilience Department” and you’ll find a prismatic, glass butterfly that refracts light, accompanied by an unsettling interactive audio piece about an artist’s experience having an epileptic seizure. The sound of grunts and labored breathing in headphones contrasts with screams, recorded and replayed in the room to create a surreal, out-of-body effect.

In the neighboring room, a thousand sunny-side up eggs are splayed all over the bed, walls and floor, which the artist, Melan Allen, said represent the eggs she was forced to eat during her childhood despite hating them. The room especially resonated with Sharon Maxwell, who drove from San Diego to see the show.

“I have lots of egg stories,” she said. “I’m in recovery from an eating disorder, so I’ve been in treatment, I’ve been in hospitals. It’s all very sterile.”

While going to the hospital can be an isolating experience, Maxwell said visiting an art show in one made her feel a renewed sense of connection. There aren't nurses, surgeons or patients here, and everyone is on equal footing as viewers.

“Being the person in the bed, being treated for mental health stuff, you’re kind of like a spectacle,” she said.

A sensitive look at anxiety, fear and trauma

In the “Fear Department,” a virtual character based off a real person gives a vulnerable speech about post-traumatic stress from serving in a combat zone and then reads a suicide note that combines multiple veterans' experiences using AI. The installation is titled “The Ward That Never Closed.”

Down the hall, another room is covered floor to ceiling in black-and-white portraits drawn with frenetic lines by an artist who spent 15 months at a U.S. immigration detention center.

“I left Russia in 2022 because of my political views and because I am gay. What I thought would be a search for safety became a prolonged encounter with fear,” Grisha Stepanian said.

His installation examines “how fear settles into the body, how it stays, even when there is no immediate danger. How safety, when it appears, feels temporary, almost unreal.”

The most successful rooms play with the visual language of a medical space without prescribing what to feel.

In another room in the “Fear Department,” artist Dongpu Ling created an eerie installation of transparent figurines — molded from packing tape — to bring a vision of her grandfather's to life. He died years ago in Shanghai, where he described seeing ghosts around his hospital bed just before dying.

Torqued into myriad positions, the blank-faced figures occupy gurneys and disappear into institutional-gray ceiling vents. The work was also informed by Ling's experience as a child spending 10 days in the hospital with a fever.

“I almost died. I couldn't eat,” she said. “I threw up blood three times a night.”

The process of creating the installation was intense, Ling said. When she tried to go to her studio room and accidentally went to the basement, where bodies are typically stored before going to funeral homes, she said she found something chilling: “It was freezing cold and dead silent.”

Recognizing a paradox of emotions

Ondrea Boggs, an ultrasound tech, said the installations reminded her of people’s tenacity and resilience even in the face of death — something she witnessed working in an intensive care unit and emergency room.

“I’m confronted with people struggling every day and getting through and being strong,” she said.

Boggs is moved when she sees a patient or their family able to stay hopeful during a difficult time.

“It’s encouraging for me to remember that that’s possible,” she said. “Even amongst moments of sadness you can still experience joy, it’s not like an isolated experience where you have to get through the sadness to experience joy, right? Both can be shared at the same time and both can be honored.”

For other visitors, the installations also reflected that paradox of emotions.

“There’s solace in someone else seeing our emotion — whether it’s joy and celebration or sorrow and pain. There’s something about the human experience where we need to be seen,” Maxwell said. “This art exhibit really shows that in a profound way. I think it put humanity on display in a really powerful way.”

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Tickets cost $58, open through Sept. 30, 2026.

The $20 billion FIFA subsidiary, bankrolled by the brother of Jared Kushner, was blasted by international soccer organizations. European soccer body UEFA aims to call its 55 member federations to an emergency online meeting, likely on Thursday.

“But having held discussions with many stakeholders across the game, UEFA knows there is significant and growing opposition to FIFA’s scheme,” the organization said in a statement.

The effort also marks Infantino's latest effort to align with those in the orbit of U.S. President Donald Trump: by creating the FIFA peace prize, letting Trump intervene in a process that led to United States forward Folarin Balogun playing at the World Cup, and now trying to lock in Joshua Kushner's investment firm to a 12-year ownership deal with the Switzerland-based not-for-profit soccer body.

Infantino set out the “singular and unique funding opportunity” in a letter detailing why he wants to create the $20 billion FIFA subsidiary — 20% owned by private investors — that would run the soccer body’s competitions and events like World Cups and Club World Cups.

“It is my duty and responsibility as FIFA president to present such game-changing opportunities to you, our members,” Infantino wrote in the letter seen by The Associated Press.

The proposal revealed Tuesday and backed by Joshua Kushner's investment firm Thrive Capital was met with immediate fury from Infantino’s former colleagues at UEFA, which said the World Cup “is not FIFA’s to sell.”

One option open to European soccer is threaten a boycott of FIFA competitions — a tactic used in 2021 when UEFA-led opposition helped stop Infantino's plan to play the World Cup every two years instead of four.

FIFA’s private equity plan is the latest ambitious project proposed during Infantino’s 11-year presidency in which he has increasingly seemed to be an executive leader acting without consulting with soccer’s major stakeholders.

Previous plans include creating a FIFA Peace Prize — awarded to Trump in December at the World Cup draw — and trying to push through a secretive $25 billion private equity plan in 2018 to create new and bigger men's competitions. That was resisted by UEFA.

Concerns about the latest and previously secret plan were aired Wednesday by the continental soccer bodies for Asia and the North American region known as CONCACAF.

“We are deeply concerned by the lack of due process,” CONCACAF said in a statement.

The Kuala Lumpur-based Asian Football Confederation said it was “disappointed that a matter of such significance entered the public domain before the AFC family had been afforded the opportunity to examine and discuss it.”

Continental bodies that organize their own international club and national-team competitions — such as the Champions League, European Championship and Copa America — likely will see threats to those events from FIFA wanting to increase revenue and value for investors by playing World Cups and Club World Cups for men and women more often, along with adding more teams.

The influential, 850-member European Football Clubs group — which has a joint venture with UEFA to manage the Champions League — said it “learned about this proposal in the same way as most global football stakeholders — without warning and through the media.”

Inviting in private investors could also, sports governance academic Antoine Duval suggested Wednesday “incentivize FIFA to further commodify the World Cup (think more hydration breaks and dynamic pricing ) in a drive to increase its revenue.”

What's on offer to FIFA member federations

If the FIFA Forward Enterprise subsidiary is approved by a majority of the 211 members, they also each are promised $20 million in funding from the four-year commercial cycle tied to the men’s 2030 World Cup.

That would lead, Infantinto wrote, to “a pool of diverse international investors” joining Joshua Kushner's Thrive as the anchor investor: “This process will be led by J.P. Morgan.”

If Infantino’s plan is rejected, those members will get their previously promised $10 million over the next four years, his letter stated.

The cash difference on offer Wednesday to FIFA members appears to be $86 million over 12 years compared to about $36 million in existing promised funding for rejecting the private equity deal.

The rushed deadline to claim an initial $20 million “says everything you need to know about this plan,” UEFA said. “FIFA cannot continue to use our sport to enrich themselves and their friends.”

Dozens of member federations typically rely on FIFA for funding, have national teams with little realistic chance of qualifying for World Cups, and whose best players rarely, if ever, join clubs playing at the highest level of international competitions.

FIFA's one-member, one-vote democratic system means the most powerful soccer nations on the field easily can be outvoted by those who rarely play top-level games.

Resistance in Britain

FIFA’s plan met quick opposition from British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, whose government is preparing to support hosting the 2035 Women’s World Cup in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. FIFA is set to confirm that lone bid for 2035 at an online meeting in November.

“Football does not belong to investors,” Burnham, a longtime soccer fan, said in a video message on Instagram. “Once you have sold a piece of (the World Cup), you have sold out. Football belongs to the fans. It always has, and it always will.”

Resistance by British lawmakers — including threats of legislation by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021 — previously helped stop the divisive European Super League project that was an existential threat to UEFA's Champions League, and which Infantino had discreetly supported. J.P. Morgan

Infantino's future

Infantino has seemed to be cruising toward being reelected unopposed as FIFA president for a fourth and final term through 2031.

Promising more FIFA funds to member federations was a decisive part of his initial election-day speech in February 2016, and at his unopposed reelections in 2019 and 2023.

Some observers have long suspected Infantino wants a longer-term role running the sport. A CEO or commissioner role at a FIFA subsidiary FFE would fit that bill.

This week, Infantino has ignited frustration with his leadership beyond the usual circles in Europe, which have almost four months to commit to an election challenge.

The candidate entry deadline is Nov. 18 for an election scheduled next March 18 at Rabat in Morocco, which has been a key Infantino ally in recent years and will co-host the 2030 World Cup.

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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and AP World Cup coverage

President Donald Trump is seeking greater control over mail balloting through an executive order while a change to how the agency processes mail is leading to criticism that it's failing to deliver ballots on time.

Democratic officials have raised concerns over the past week about how quickly the Postal Service will process ballots after tens of thousands of them in California and hundreds in Wisconsin arrived at local election offices too late to be counted in elections earlier this year. The top election offices in Kansas and Michigan are urging voters who want to cast their ballots early to avoid the mail and instead drop them off in person.

The Postal Service replied to those concerns Tuesday by saying it remains “committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process.”

“We provide a secure, efficient, and effective way for citizens to participate when policymakers decide to use mail as part of their elections,” it said in a statement.

Trump's order puts more focus on mail ballots

The Postal Service faced similar questions about mail delivery in 2024, but the scrutiny this year is heightened because of an executive order Trump issued in March that seeks to create a national voter list to guide the Postal Service in deciding who gets a mail ballot.

The order has sparked multiple lawsuits and federal court orders, leading to a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court in which the administration is asking the justices to allow it to impose its restrictions on mail balloting.

Trump has lied for years about voter fraud to try to explain away his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, and mail balloting is a favorite target, even though he has used the method himself. During a recent stop in Michigan, he falsely characterized mail balloting as “inherently corrupt” and added, “Hopefully there will be no mail-in ballots."

A 2025 report from the research group Brookings identified about four cases of fraud for every 10 million mail ballots cast.

Despite Trump's attacks, the method remains popular with voters of both major parties. In 2024, nearly 30% of U.S. voters cast their ballots by mail, according to federal data. In Michigan, where competitive U.S. House and Senate races could help determine the balance of power in Congress, the state said it has sent out more than 2 million absentee ballots for the state's Aug. 4 primary.

“We want to keep vote by mail. We want to protect it. We want to expand it,” said Jonathan Smith, president of the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union, which launched a campaign in April promoting it and is opposed to turning the Postal Service into an election administrator. “Why? Because it works.”

Legal battles intensify over Trump's order

The Postal Service proposed a rule in June in line with Trump's executive order that would create a national list of eligible voters, based on databases kept by other federal agencies. Only those on the list would be eligible to receive mail ballots.

Democratic officials in nearly two dozen states filed a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts. A federal judge there blocked Trump's order last month, and an appeals court upheld that ruling, prompting Trump's appeal to the Supreme Court. But the appeals court for the District of Columbia refused Tuesday to block the order in a separate case, calling a legal challenge premature.

Democratic senators and governors have written to the Postal Service urging it to abandon efforts to implement Trump's order.

“Donald Trump has shown he’ll stop at nothing to meddle in our upcoming elections," Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin said in a statement to The Associated Press. "At best, this new push will exacerbate already severe delays for mail-in voters and at worst, it will stop eligible Americans from casting their ballots.”

Sophia Lin Lakin, ACLU Voting Rights Project director, said she doesn’t believe the Postal Service has begun implementing anything related to Trump’s executive order while the legal challenges are playing out. But Smith, of the postal workers union, told the AP on Tuesday that USPS information technology staffers who are union members are working on a planned portal for the list of eligible voters “behind the scenes.”

The Postal Service declined to respond to Smith's statements and said it could not comment about whether it's moving forward with work related to Trump's order because of the litigation.

The postal workers' union opposes the plan for a portal, a national list of eligible voters and using that list to determine who can receive a mail ballot. Smith said it shouldn't be postal workers' responsibility “to decide who can vote and who can’t vote.”

A plan to consolidate mail processing centers upsets officials

The Postal Service has been under financial stress for years and has been consolidating mail processing into fewer regional centers. Mail travels an average of 139 miles (224 kilometers) to reach one and sometimes 500 miles (805 kilometers), according to a recent Brookings report.

In January, a group of mostly Democratic senators said it was concerned about a decision to end twice-daily mail dispatches from local post offices to regional processing centers. The result is that mail arriving after the only daily dispatch would go out the next day.

California officials said the change was a factor in the state rejecting more than 148,000 ballots from its June primary, with 63% of them arriving too late despite a seven-day grace period. Officials worried that some ballots were postmarked at processing facilities the day after they were dropped off at a post office, possibly invalidating them. Wisconsin officials also said hundreds of ballots from an election in April arrived late.

The Postal Service said postmarks generally are being applied with automated equipment at processing centers, “in the same manner and to the same extent as before.” It said someone who wants to make sure their ballot envelope gets a timely postmark can get a free one applied by a postal worker.

A report on the 2024 election by the USPS Office of Inspector General said the Postal Service handled more than 59 million pieces of ballot mail from Sept. 1 to Nov. 15 that year and that 97.3% arrived on time.

Some state election officials advise voters to avoid the mail

The Michigan secretary of state’s office is advising voters to hand-deliver ballots to their local clerk’s office or a drop box.

“We’ve seen these issues over a number of election cycles now — they’re always concerning, and that’s why we’ve put out that guidance,” said Deputy Secretary of State Aghogho Edevbie.

The Postal Service said its Michigan centers are not seeing processing delays.

In Kansas, concerns about late ballot deliveries in the state's 2024 primary election prompted a quip on the social platform X from Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican: “The Pony Express is more efficient at this point.” Asked his view now, spokesperson Whitney Tempel said Schwab still believes “keeping your ballot out of the hands of the federal government is best.”

Jamie Shew, a Democrat elected to oversee elections in Douglas County, home to the main University of Kansas campus, said his office is trying to change voters' perceptions.

“I think voters are used to, you can drop it off on Friday and we’re going to receive it by Election Day," Shew said Tuesday. “That’s just not the reality.”

California's state budget includes $10 million for social media campaigns and other efforts to discourage last-minute ballot mailings.

And the Postal Service said it hasn't changed its own longstanding advice for voters: They should get their ballots in the mail at least a week before their state's deadline for receiving them.

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Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wis., Michael R. Blood in Los Angeles, Michael Casey in Boston, and Jacqueline GaNun in Lansing, Mich., contributed to this report.

The comedy troupe Broken Lizard, a group of college buddies who began performing together at Colgate University, broke through with 2001's “Super Troopers.” Made for less than $3 million, the movie cast Jay Chandrasekhar (who directed), Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske as a group of juvenile Vermont state troopers. A then-Emmy-less Brian Cox played their cantankerous chief.

The movie became an unlikely cult hit, making many times over what it made in theaters ($23 million) on VHS and DVD. Roger Ebert begrudgingly called it “the kind of movie that makes you want to like it.”

Not all movies look like they were fun to make, but “Super Troopers” did. For Broken Lizard, the difference between the movie and the blooper reel is almost nonexistent. It's like they're living out the dream of every group of funny college pals.

“We talk about that being almost like the special sauce in the movies. You can’t fake 30 years of friendship. Even the best actors can’t do it,” Soter says before his fellow members make him question that declaration.

“OK, maybe Al Pacino could fake it.”

Broken Lizard has kept at it, making half a dozen other movies. In the intervening years, big-screen comedy has grown all but dead, so it hasn't always been easy. They resorted to crowdfunding to help finance 2018's “Super Troopers 2.”

But with “Super Troopers 3,” which Searchlight Pictures will release Aug. 7, they're back again in aviator sunglasses, broad-brimmed hats and, of course, mustaches. Alongside big-budget blockbusters like “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “The Odyssey,” “Super Troopers 3” will try to hold onto its narrow stretch of highway.

“It’s kind of a show-business miracle to be able to make eight or nine movies with your friends from college,” says Chandrasekhar. “We certainly never thought it could get this far.”

A comedy franchise built on speeding tickets

“Super Troopers” wasn't the first movie Broken Lizard made. In 1996, they released “Puddle Cruiser,” a comedy shot entirely on Colgate's campus. It didn't get distribution, so their only real hope for “Super Troopers” was that it play somewhere, anywhere. Around then, the quintet was performing in New York and touring college campuses. Road trips inspired the movie.

“We were getting pulled over a lot. You talk a lot of smack when you see the cops,” Lemme says. “But the second they pull up to the car, you’re immediately in butt-kissing mode. We always wondered what the cops were thinking, if they knew how much power they had over us and how much they could screw with us.”

One of the movie's most famous scenes featured two patrolmen (Lemme and Soter) pulling over a then-little-known Jim Gaffigan. During the course of giving him a ticket, they play a game where one has to say “meow” 10 times in place of “now.” Over the years, they've heard countless stories of everyone from police officers to pilots doing the same.

“My friend is a pilot for United Airlines and he said the aviation radio communication system is just drowning in meows,” Chandrasekhar says.

“Super Troopers,” the group has come to realize, has filtered into culture as much through traffic stops as streaming services. Sometimes, it's been to their benefit.

“I once got pulled over doing 120 miles per hour. The cop looked in the window. He said, ‘Mister, do you have any idea how fast you … Super Troopers?!’” recalls Lemme, laughing. “At the end, he brought over his ticket book and asked me for a photo and an autograph. His hands were trembling. I signed the ticket book, and made sure I didn’t sign on the dotted line. We took selfies by the side of the road.”

Maple syrup and mustaches

The guys of Broken Lizard are all now in their late 50s, but little of their dynamic has changed. In character, they playfully rag on each other — especially Heffernan's loud-mouthed Rodney Farva — but with an affection immediately recognizable to a certain kind of acerbic friend group.

That was true, too, over a recent interview by Zoom. Broken Lizard was in the middle of a cross-country promotional tour. (One stop included interrupting a Limp Bizkit concert, to register a noise complaint.)

“We have families and our own lives and stuff, and when we come together it’s like summer camp,” Heffernan says.

Twenty-five years of “Super Troopers” has meant a lot of months in mustaches. They usually shave them right away but have to grow them back for marketing the release. “The studio,” says Heffernan, “thinks the mustaches are the stars of the movie.”

Living with “Super Troopers” has other, stranger legacies. The first film memorably included a maple syrup chugging race. That, they all agree, they're too old for now.

“We’ve only done it once since,” says Chandrasekhar, shaking his head. “It’s not a good idea. It’s not a healthy choice.”

“We’ll go and do things like interviews or talk shows,” Lemme adds. “You walk in the room and every now and then you see a few bottles of maple syrup and your heart starts to sink.”

Turning a cult hit into a trilogy

In “Super Troopers 3,” times have also changed. The station gets their first electric police car, a development that figures surprisingly centrally to the plot. Capt. John O’Hagen (Cox) is struggling with retirement. Cox is returning to “Super Troopers” — one of his most randomly delightful screen credits — after his acclaimed run on HBO's “Succession.”

“He brings gravitas, and what’s great about that is it makes us more absurd and silly because we’ve got a real actor in the room,” says Soter. “We feel like idiots because we can barely hit our marks, and he’s super professional. It makes us end up being like goofy kids.”

But the main storyline is, for Chandrasekhar's Arcot “Thorny” Ramathorn, a diabolical development: His sister, Sarita (Hannah Simone), falls in love with Farva. As the two begin to plan a wedding, Thorny does whatever he can to sabotage the relationship.

“There’s love all over this movie,” says Lemme. “This is the most loving movie we’ve ever made.”

But it remains endlessly surprising to the Broken Lizard gang that “Super Troopers” has had the kind of life it has.

“George Lucas didn’t conceive of making a trilogy when he made ‘Star Wars,’ but it did very well, as did ‘Super Troopers,’” Lemme says. “So here we are making a trilogy.”

“We’re trying to bring back good old-fashioned R-rated American theatrical comedy. That’s sort of the mission here,” Chandrasekhar says.

Broken Lizard has sometimes mocked Hollywood's sequel baiting. At the end of 2006's “Beerfest,” they teased a fake follow-up, “Potfest,” that fans have continually asked about. Similarly, “Super Troopers 3" ends with a tag for a fourth movie.

“We're kind of kidding, but maybe we're not?” Lemme says.

“‘NYPD Blue’ made 250 episodes of their show, so we can do at least four or five of these little cop shows,” says Chandrasekhar, smiling.

“Yeah, and the ‘One Piece’ manga, they’ve done a thousand episodes,” Lemme says. “We’re going to do a thousand ‘Super Troopers’ movies.”

Ukraine’s almost daily long-range drone and missile strikes using domestically developed weapons have battered Russian oil facilities for months. The operation has brought a fuel crisis that is embarrassing the Kremlin more than four years after Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor.

The overnight attacks started fires at a Lukoil refinery in Russia’s Perm region, more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) from Ukraine, and a refinery in Ryazan, about 400 kilometers (180 miles) from the border, Ukraine’s Security Service and General Staff said in separate statements.

The refineries have a combined annual production capacity of around 220 million barrels of oil, according to Ukraine, and make a vital contribution to Russia's military effort and its government revenue.

It was not immediately possible to independently verify the claims. Ryazan Gov. Pavel Malkov said only that six people were taken to hospital after a drone attack. He said drone debris caused fires at unidentified “industrial sites.”

Russian online retailer Wildberries, a major supplier likened to Amazon that Ukraine has targeted in recent days, said it evacuated employees from a facility in Ryazan but provided no further details.

Russia has sophisticated air defenses but its vast territory is hard to comprehensively cover.

The attacks came hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Washington on Tuesday for talks with U.S. President Donald Trump to push for more vital American help for Ukraine’s fight against its much bigger enemy.

“Russia must feel that every day of this war will only come at a higher cost for it. We need to weaken the aggressor and keep up the pressure to bring an end to this war closer,” Zelenskyy said on social media.

Ukraine’s recent high-profile successes against Russia have impressed Washington and helped restore U.S. goodwill after Trump’s reluctance at the start of his second term to keep supporting Kyiv. That stance had raised the specter of Ukraine and Europe having to stand up to Russian aggression alone.

Zelenskyy says he had a good meeting with Trump

Zelenskyy said he had a “good meeting” with the American president, and Trump described the meeting as a “Great Honor.” The talks took place behind closed doors.

“Many things were discussed. The meeting went very well!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Zelenskyy said he also had a meeting in Washington with representatives of both parties in the U.S. Senate, with more than 60 senators in attendance, as Ukraine pushes for more sanctions on Russia. He also met with representatives of Lockheed Martin, days after he welcomed a delegation from Raytheon to Kyiv.

The U.S. weapons manufacturers are a crucial source of sophisticated weaponry, such as Patriot air defense systems, that Ukraine hopes to make itself. Trump said earlier this month he would grant Ukraine licenses to manufacture the Patriots it needs to counter Russia’s ballistic missiles.

Zelenskyy says Ukraine is discussing joint production and technology exchange with both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

Ukraine is ready to share its cutting-edge — and battle-tested — drone technology. Its swift technical innovation has paid dividends as it helps pin down Russia’s bigger army on the front line and denies it supplies by hitting rear areas.

That has impressed countries around the world. Matthew Whitaker, the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, said during a visit to Ukraine earlier this week: “From reconnaissance and logistics to precision strikes, Ukraine has shown the world how unmanned systems can give smaller forces a decisive edge.”

US envoys to visit Kyiv but no date set

Prospects for a settlement to stop the fighting appear dim, despite a yearlong diplomatic push by the Trump administration.

But U.S. officials also agreed that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s main envoys, would make a trip to Kyiv sometime in the future, according to a person familiar with the talks who was granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.

Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, the new commander-in-chief of Ukraine's military, said in a social media post on Wednesday that he had held his first phone conversation with Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Commander of U.S. European Command.

“I outlined my vision of Ukraine’s victory and the capabilities required to achieve it,” said Drapatyi, who was appointed last week as part of a government reshuffle.

“At this stage of the war, we must strengthen operations across multiple domains, prevent enemy infiltration into our defensive lines, and expand both long-range and medium-range precision strikes against the enemy,” he added.

Ukraine says it hits over 200 Russian vessels in 3 weeks

Ukrainian units also have struck 201 Russian vessels over the past three weeks in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, which border both countries, a senior military official said.

The tally doesn’t include vessels hit by Ukraine’s Security Service and other military groups, a Ukrainian military commander who could be identified only by his call sign Magyar, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military, said late Tuesday.

Ukrainian forces also struck a naval base used Russia’s Black Sea, according to the General Staff.

It reported other strikes on a radar station in Russia’s Bryansk region on the border and on a drone launch site and a road bridge in the occupied part of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported Wednesday that its air defenses shot down 295 Ukrainian drones overnight above a number of Russian regions and occupied Crimea.

Russian glide bombs struck the northeastern city of Kharkiv and 17 other places in the region of the same name over the previous 24 hours, wounding 11 people, the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov, said.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

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

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Las autoridades de la región de Gironda informaron que el fuego no se había propagado durante la noche, pero el aumento del calor y los vientos de la tarde podrían reavivar focos humeantes, hacer que las brasas superen los cortafuegos y abrir nuevos frentes fuera del alcance de los equipos de extinción.

En el centro de mando en Lège, los bomberos se inclinaban sobre mapas extendidos sobre el capó de un coche mientras realizaban un seguimiento de tres zonas de peligro: el norte de Cap-Ferret, el corredor boscoso alrededor de Marcheprime; Cestas y Saint-Jean-d’Illac, y un sitio militar cerca de Martignas, donde un importante foco obligó a un gran despliegue.

Más de 2.200 bomberos y más de 20 aeronaves seguían trabajando sobre el terreno, con el apoyo de equipos llegados de toda Francia y de socios europeos.

“Actuamos rápido y actuamos con contundencia ante cualquier nuevo foco de humo”, dijo el comandante de bomberos de Gironda, Matthieu Jomain.

El avance de los grandes incendios en las regiones de las Landas y Var se ha detenido. Eso deja a Gironda como la mayor batalla contra los incendios forestales que queda en Francia, apuntó el ministro del Interior, Laurent Nuñez.

El incendio de Gironda obligó al desalojo de 220.000 personas en el punto álgido de la crisis. Desde entonces, decenas de miles han podido regresar a sus casas, pero las autoridades advirtieron que el peligro aún no ha pasado.

El calor extremo elimina la humedad de la vegetación y reduce la humedad ambiental, convirtiendo pastos, matorrales y hojarasca forestal en combustible que arde más rápido. El viento puede desplazar las brasas por encima de los cortafuegos e iniciar nuevos frentes fuera del alcance de los equipos.

Météo-France dijo que el miércoles sería el día más caluroso y seco de la semana, con un riesgo elevado de incendios forestales en todas las regiones de Francia . La sequía afecta ahora a la Francia continental y a Córcega, y el terreno se acerca al nivel récord de sequía que se alcanzó en agosto de 2022.

El humo de los incendios de Gironda y Landas también elevó la contaminación por partículas en ambos departamentos, informaron los monitores regionales de calidad del aire.

Las autoridades de Gironda ordenaron el desalojo de otras 4.000 personas el martes de sitios turísticos a lo largo de la costa atlántica, ampliando lo que podría ser la mayor evacuación en tiempos de paz en Francia.

“La situación sigue siendo complicada. Eso está claro. Aún no estamos fuera de peligro”, manifestó la prefecta de Gironda, Sophie Brocas, que también dio luz verde para que 60.000 evacuados regresaran a tres suburbios de Burdeos a los que no llegó el fuego.

Los movimientos opuestos —miles con orden de abandonar complejos turísticos costeros mientras otros regresaban con los celulares encendidos y bolsas de emergencia preparadas— captaron lo precaria que sigue siendo la situación.

Las consecuencias se estaban ampliando más allá de la zona quemada hacia la temporada alta de turismo en Burdeos.

Edouard le Grix de la Salle, que dirige Château du Grand Verdus con su hermano, afirmóque los llamados oficiales a evitar la región amenazaban su negocio de enoturismo. “¿Cómo no pensaron en proteger ese sector?”, dijo a The Associated Press.

En el apogeo de la crisis, alrededor de 330.000 personas fueron obligadas a abandonar sus hogares y lugares de vacaciones en Francia y España.

Decenas de miles de personas comenzaron a regresar a sus hogares en el centro de España después de que los bomberos lograran avances alrededor de Madrid y Ávila. Se levantaron las órdenes de evacuación para unas 20.000 personas en la región de Madrid, así como las de confinamiento para otras 14.000.

Pero 10.000 personas siguen desalojadas en Castellón, en el este del país, donde un incendio seguía ardiendo sin control mientras España se preparaba para su cuarta ola de calor del verano.

En su momento más violento, el incendio de Gironda creó una nube negra de tormenta, electrificada e iluminada desde dentro, que generó rayos, vientos violentos y nuevos incendios más allá del frente original. El fenómeno, conocido como nube pirocumulonimbus, fue el primero registrado en Francia.

Más de 1.160 kilómetros cuadrados (448 millas cuadradas) se han quemado en Francia este año, según el Ministerio del Interior.

Europa es el continente que más rápido se calienta en el mundo, más del doble del promedio global, según el servicio climático Copernicus de la Unión Europea. Europa occidental registró su junio más caluroso del que se tenga registro, y el calor extremo y la sequía generalizada contribuyeron a la propagación e intensificación de los incendios en Francia y España, de acuerdo con Copernicus.

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Adamson informó desde París. Los periodistas de The Associated Press Suman Naishadham en Madrid y John Leicester y Masha Macpherson en París contribuyeron 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.

Authorities in the Gironde region said the blaze had not spread overnight, but rising heat and afternoon winds could revive smoldering hot spots, carry embers across firebreaks and open new fronts beyond crews’ reach.

The fire’s apparent origin underscored how little it took to ignite the parched landscape: Investigators believe routine brush-clearing work near a high-voltage line may have sparked the inferno, even though the work appeared to comply with regulations then in force.

At the command center in Lège, firefighters bent over maps spread across a car hood, tracking three danger zones: northern Cap-Ferret; the wooded corridor around Marcheprime, Cestas and Saint-Jean-d’Illac; and a military site near Martignas, where a major outbreak forced a large deployment.

More than 2,200 firefighters and over 20 aircraft remained mobilized, backed by crews from across France and European partners.

“We strike quickly and strike hard at any new smoke emissions,” Gironde fire commander Matthieu Jomain said.

Beyond the command center, civilians were trying to hold the line themselves. At Souge, volunteers flooded the edges of dirt tracks while a local digger driver plowed through still-burning soil, trying to keep flames from crossing back when the expected west wind arrived. In Lacanau, residents pumped water from a lake into tanks headed for hot spots and firefighters’ cisterns.

“If one day the fire starts in our neck of the woods, I know very well that all the people here would do the same for us,” said Flavien Dubuch, 33, who drove from Saint-Émilion with his father to help.

Hottest day this week

The advance of major fires in the Landes and Var regions has been halted. That left Gironde as France’s biggest remaining wildfire battle, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said.

The Gironde fire forced 220,000 people to flee at the peak of the crisis. Tens of thousands have since been allowed home, but authorities warned that the danger had not passed.

Extreme heat strips moisture from vegetation and drives down humidity, turning grasses, brush and forest litter into faster-burning fuel.

Investigators believe contractors working near a high-voltage line for power-grid operator Enedis ignited the blaze while using a brush-cutting machine, Bordeaux prosecutor Renaud Gaudeul said.

Météo-France said Wednesday would be the hottest and driest day of the week, with elevated wildfire danger across every region of France. Drought now covers mainland France and Corsica, with soils nearing the record dryness reached in August 2022.

Smoke from the Gironde and Landes fires also pushed particulate pollution higher across both departments, regional air-quality monitors said.

Gironde authorities ordered 4,000 more people out of tourist sites along the Atlantic coast on Tuesday, widening what may be France’s largest peacetime evacuation.

“The situation remains complicated. That’s clear. We’re not out of the woods,” said Gironde prefect Sophie Brocas, who also authorized 60,000 evacuees to return to three Bordeaux suburbs untouched by fire.

The opposing movements — thousands ordered out of coastal resorts as others returned with mobile phones on and emergency bags packed — captured how precarious the situation remains.

The disruption was spreading beyond the burn zone into Bordeaux’s peak tourism season.

Edouard le Grix de la Salle, who runs Château du Grand Verdus with his brother, said official appeals to avoid the region threatened its wine-tourism trade. “How did they not think about protecting that sector?” he told The Associated Press.

At one point the Gironde blaze created a black thundercloud, electrified and lit from within, that generated lightning, violent winds and new fires beyond the original front. The pyrocumulonimbus was the first recorded in France.

Tens of thousands begin returning home in Spain

At the height of the crisis, roughly 330,000 people were driven from homes and vacation sites across France and Spain.

Tens of thousands of people began returning home in central Spain after firefighters made progress around Madrid and Ávila. Evacuation orders were lifted for about 20,000 people in the Madrid region, while stay-at-home restrictions ended for another 14,000.

But 10,000 people remain under evacuation orders in Castellón, where a fire was still out of control as Spain braced for its fourth heat wave of the summer.

More than 1,160 square kilometers (448 square miles) have burned across France this year, according to the Interior Ministry.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, warming at more than twice the global average, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate service. Western Europe recorded its hottest June on record, with extreme heat and widespread dryness contributing to the spread and intensification of fires in France and Spain, Copernicus said.

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Adamson reported from Paris. Suman Naishadham in Madrid, Alex Turnbull in Souge, France and John Leicester and Masha Macpherson in Paris contributed.

The charges against the Russian-born Durov, who lives abroad, came as authorities have sought to restrict the use of Telegram as part of a widespread crackdown on online freedom that followed Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, said in a statement it had accused Telegram’s administration of failing to remove “numerous channels, chats and bots” allegedly used by "Ukrainian intelligence agencies, terrorist and extremist organizations to prepare and coordinate acts of sabotage and terrorism, mass murder, and cyber fraud" in Russia, which resulted in “numerous human casualties.”

The FSB accused Ukrainian security services of using a popular dating chatbot on Telegram to lure and recruit Russians for “sabotage and terrorist activities,” and said 46 users of the chatbot, from 12 to 22 years old, have been detained in Russia over the past year for assaulting law enforcement officers, arson and other acts.

It also said it was adding the name of the 41-year-old billionaire to international wanted lists.

Durov had said earlier this year that Russian authorities opened a criminal investigation against him, and he accused them of fabricating pretexts to restrict access to Telegram as part of an attempt to “suppress the right to privacy and free speech.”

If convicted, he could face up to life in prison in Russia.

Telegram, which boasts of more than 1 billion users worldwide, did not respond to a request for comment. Its official website links to an account on X that on Wednesday posted am image of Durov raising a middle finger to the camera.

Telegram's website says that the company is based in Dubai and that Durov, who holds dual citizenship in France and the United Arab Emirates, lives there, too.

Russia has sought to censor the internet

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russian authorities have engaged in multipronged efforts to rein in the internet, adopting restrictive laws and banning websites and platforms that don’t comply and focused on improving technology to monitor and manipulate online traffic.

Popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and X, have been banned in Russia; YouTube has been throttled; popular messaging apps, such as Signal and Viber, have been blocked, and the most popular ones — WhatsApp and Telegram — have been restricted.

Russia’s popular Facebook-like social media platform Vkontakte, founded by Durov long before he launched Telegram, had come under the control of Kremlin-friendly companies. Russia tried to block Telegram between 2018-20 but failed.

While it’s still possible to circumvent some of the restrictions by using virtual private network services, many of them are routinely blocked, too.

At the same time, Russia actively promotes what it calls a “national” messaging app known as MAX, which critics say could be used for surveillance. The platform is touted as a one-stop shop for messaging, getting online government services, making payments and other activities. It openly says it will share user data with authorities upon request, and experts also say it doesn’t use end-to-end encryption.

The Telegram restrictions have elicited widespread discontent in Russia, and this year activists in multiple regions tried to organize protests against it, but authorities quashed nearly all their attempts.

Military bloggers also have denounced the crackdown, arguing the app is an indispensable communications tool for Russian troops in Ukraine and for activists running crowdfunding campaigns to help Moscow’s forces.

The government initially promised not to restrict Telegram on the battlefield, but a different message later came from the Kremlin. At a meeting with Putin for International Women’s Day, a servicewoman called Telegram “an adversarial communications tool” and agreed with him when he said that “the use of communications systems that are not ours, not under our control, poses a danger to personnel” in battle.

Despite the restrictions, multiple Russian officials still use Telegram and regularly update their "channels" — its term for blogs — on the platform. The Kremlin's Telegram page had more than 284,000 followers as of Wednesday.

Durov was arrested in France in 2024

In 2024, Durov was arrested in Paris amid allegations that his platform was being used for illicit activity, including drug trafficking and the distribution of images of child sexual abuse. French authorities handed him preliminary charges for allegedly allowing criminal activity on the platform. In March 2025, Durov said he had returned to Dubai after spending “several months” in France.

The Kremlin at the time criticized the French authorities for their move against Durov as selective. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at the time that “yes, indeed, terrorists use Telegram. But terrorists also use cars. Why aren't they arresting the CEO of Renault or Citroen?”

Peskov didn't respond to a request for comment on what made Russian authorities change their position.

The Paris prosecutor's office told The Associated Press that Durov remains under formal investigation, facing an array of potential charges for alleged criminal activities linked to Telegram. French investigators have questioned him repeatedly, most recently this month, the office said in written comments Wednesday.

Russia is accused of using Telegram as a recruitment tool

Russia itself has faced accusations of using Telegram coordinate and recruit people to carry out acts of arson and sabotage in Ukraine and across Europe. In the U.K., a British man was recruited, likely by Russian military intelligence, on the platform to organize a plot in 2024 to set fire to a warehouse in London containing satellite equipment for Ukraine. He was also asked to kidnap a pro-Ukrainian exiled Russian billionaire living in London.

Dutch teenagers were arrested in the Netherlands in September after being contacted by Russian hackers on Telegram who wanted them to map Wi-Fi networks in The Hague. The city is the location of many sensitive organizations, including the International Criminal Court -- which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin -- as well as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and Europol which helps European countries fight international crime.

Moscow has repeatedly denied involvement in acts of sabotage in Europe.

——

Associated Press writer Emma Burrows in London and John Leicester in Paris contributed.

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This story has been corrected to show the potential penalty is life in prison, not 15 years.

The four-time MVP hasn't pitched in a game since July 3 but has continued to play regularly as the designated hitter for Los Angeles.

“My biceps is not 100%,” Ohtani said through a translator Tuesday night while speaking with media for the first time since before the All-Star break. "Just similar issue with the knee. Do we consider pushing this? It is still July. So I think the conversation would be a little different if we’re in August or September.”

Ohtani hit his 10th leadoff home run of the season in a 7-6 loss to the Seattle Mariners. It was his 28th leadoff shot as a Dodger, tying him with the late Davey Lopes for second all-time. Ohtani finished 3 for 4 with a walk, a double, three RBIs and a run.

"I do think that the road trip was exhausting for everyone. I do think that with the day off, he came in fresh and looked more like himself," manager Dave Roberts said. “Certainly the way he swung the bat, the way he’s running, he’s not compromised. Until I hear otherwise, he’s going to be in the lineup.”

Ohtani had a lubricant injection in his knee just before the All-Star break and he skipped the game in Philadelphia to rest.

“I really took the All-Star break as that opportunity to really stay off my knees,” he said. “It’s really something that I have to just deal with over the course of the season.”

Ohtani said in Japanese that the injection wasn't a cure-all and he mentioned “a decision that I'm going to ultimately make after the season's over” without clarifying what he was referring to.

He explained the lingering knee soreness was caused by pitching.

“In terms of running, I’m not exactly at 100% capacity,” he said. "When I know it’s not, then it’s always a little harder to be aggressive on the basepath.”

Ohtani said his knee is getting better, which is a priority.

“I don’t think the team has really come to a place exactly where, do I pitch through it or not?” he said. "That’s still really up in the air.”

If Ohtani's health issues don't improve, Roberts was asked whether it's possible the right-hander wouldn't pitch in the postseason for the two-time defending World Series champions.

“I guess anything’s possible, but for me, it’s highly unlikely,” Roberts said. “Given where we’re at in the calendar, if the knee continues to get better, the arm continues to feel better, I would expect him to pitch. All I know is that we’re trying to, I’m trying to, give him the best opportunity to be as healthy as possible, so he can help us on both ends of the baseball.”

Roberts said when Ohtani is cleared to pitch again, he'll need to go through a buildup process.

“I don’t think anyone can kind of foresee what that looks like,” the manager said.

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

A crowd of a few dozen gathered outside Climate Pledge Arena to both support Cunningham and promote statewide Initiatives 638 and 011, which would bar transgender students from participating in girls’ athletics at Washington schools.

Cunningham voiced support for barring transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s sports in an ESPN article published last week. Cunningham was booed by Storm fans when she checked into Tuesday’s game, as well as when attempting her first free throws of the night.

Media members asked to speak to Cunningham and Clark postgame, but neither player was made available. Kelsey Mitchell and Monique Billings addressed the media instead, alongside head coach Stephanie White.

When White was asked about the rally and Cunningham’s recent comments, a Fever public relations representative intervened with the following statement:

“Neither our organization nor Sophie had any knowledge of this demonstration and no contact with its organizers,” the statement said. “Our only goal as a team, whether at home or away, is to win basketball games and make Fever fans for life, and we are united in that mission.”

Storm head coach Sonia Raman answered a question about the pregame protest following her team’s seventh consecutive loss.

“Seattle and this organization and Climate Pledge, we always want to be an area where people feel welcome coming into this building,” Raman said. “I think we’ve always done a really good job with that. So, I know our organization was working closely with Climate Pledge and the security just to make sure that everybody feels safe and included and welcome when they walk in this door.

“From what I understand, that was successful.”

Heather Weiner, a spokesperson for No Hate in Washington State, a coalition of doctors, nurses, anti-domestic violence groups and other community organizations opposing statewide Initiatives 638 and 011, found it to be a positive experience on the whole outside Climate Pledge Arena.

“Washington State is a very caring, inclusive place,” Weiner said. “We don’t always agree, but we do agree against hate, and we will come together about that.”

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AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

The measures are likely to test relations with Beijing ahead of a planned U.S. visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in September. China dominates the global market for humanoid robots with an estimated market share of roughly 85%.

The FCC’s ban also includes new imports of quadruped robots, often referred to as four-legged robot dogs. The agency said imports of advanced robots pose cybersecurity and other national security risks. Offshore production of such equipment also leaves U.S. supply chains vulnerable to disruptions.

The ban on power inverters, which are used to convert direct current (DC) electricity into alternating current (AC) electricity and are used in renewable energy systems, data centers and household appliances, could have sweeping ramifications.

This is the latest in US restrictions on Chinese imports

FCC chairperson Brendan Carr said Tuesday that the move was to “secure America’s critical supply chains.” He said the bans apply to “new versions” of such imports.

The FCC’s bans follow a slew of U.S. restrictions on imports of Chinese products, including drones, and on exports of U.S. advanced technology to China.

The U.S. is also weighing controls on use of Chinese open-source artificial intelligence models at a time when Chinese AI is rapidly gaining ground.

“It’s a steady drumbeat of potential flashpoints heading into (the) Trump-Xi summit planned for September,” said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the New America think tank focused on Chinese technology policies.

China has been rapidly expanding the use of robots, with policies supporting its technology sector. Morgan Stanley analysts forecast its market for humanoids could reach $15 billion by 2030.

“Chinese manufacturers have been scaling production and reducing costs faster than most overseas competitors,” said analyst Kangyuxiao Li at Morningstar.

“Restricting their access to the U.S. removes an important future market and protects U.S. developers from potential price competition,” he said. “However, it will not materially slow China’s overall humanoid development, given the size of its domestic manufacturing base and opportunities in other export markets.”

Of the around 15,000 humanoid robots shipped globally in 2025, Unitree and AGIBOT, two of China’s largest advanced robotics companies, each shipped more than 5,000. Their U.S. counterparts, like Tesla and Figure AI, each shipped a few hundred or less, according to the technology research and advisory group Omdia.

On the restrictions on power inverters, Cheng Wang, another Morningstar analyst, said the pressure on U.S. markets should be limited. The ban appears to not impact the continued use of existing devices nor the selling by Chinese companies of models that were previously approved by the United States.

China says protectionism will only hurt the US

China's Foreign Ministry hit back at the U.S. move, accusing Washington of overstretching the concept of national security to suppress Chinese companies.

China will take “all measures necessary” to defend the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese businesses, it said.

“Protectionism does not make the U.S. more competitive, and it will only hurt the interests of U.S. companies and consumers,” Mao Ning, a ministry spokesperson, told reporters at a regular press conference Wednesday in Beijing.

The new bans could also potentially interfere with collaborations between U.S. and Chinese technology companies, said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at Omdia.

Nvidia, for example, in June revealed a humanoid robot reference design which uses the humanoid chassis of China's Unitree.

The Pentagon recently included Unitree and several other major Chinese technology companies on its list of firms that it said have ties to or aid the Chinese military. Beijing has rejected that claim.

Los expertos señalan que estas tendencias aparentemente opuestas ocurren al mismo tiempo por lo que la humanidad le está haciendo al planeta.

“Sí parece una paradoja porque hablamos de aumentos de incendios, y sin embargo las cifras globales han ido bajando y bajando. Pero ambas cosas son ciertas”, comentó el científico experto en fuego Mike Flannigan, de la Universidad Thompson Rivers en Canadá.

España combate estos días el mayor incendio forestal registrado en el país, con más de 500 kilómetros cuadrados (193 millas cuadradas), mientras que los incendios en toda Europa están cerca de alcanzar el máximo histórico de 2025. En Canadá y Estados Unidos, la superficie quemada por incendios forestales este verano es al menos un 25% mayor que el promedio de 10 años y más del doble de lo que era hace décadas, según los centros nacionales de incendios forestales. Grandes zonas del continente quedaron asfixiadas por el humo, lo que provocó una calidad del aire insalubre.

Los incendios están empeorando en tamaño, intensidad, velocidad y frecuencia, especialmente en Estados Unidos, Canadá y Europa, afirmó la científica del fuego Jennifer Balch, de la Universidad de Colorado.

“Los incendios forestales extremos están aumentando a nivel mundial en distintas partes del mundo. Y esa es la parte que, ya sabe, nos tiene temblando de miedo”, señaló Balch.

Disminuyen los incendios en África y Asia

Y, sin embargo, el mundo llegó a julio de este año con emisiones globales récord a la baja provenientes de incendios, una medida clave de su presencia, informó el centro climático europeo Copernicus. Esto se debe a que los incendios en África y Asia han caído de forma marcada por cambios en las prácticas agrícolas, la gestión del fuego y hacia dónde se está desplazando la gente, explicó Mark Parrington, científico principal de Copernicus. Copernicus calculó que las emisiones de dióxido de carbono de este año por quema son las más bajas desde que los satélites comenzaron a medirlas hace casi 25 años —aproximadamente la mitad de lo que eran a inicios de la década de 2000.

“África domina la actividad global de incendios", explicó el científico del agua y del fuego Park Williams, de UCLA. "Así que si hay una tendencia en África, esa va a ser la tendencia en la actividad global de incendios. En el África subsahariana, la actividad de incendios en los últimos 25 años ha bajado de manera bastante drástica”.

En promedio, más de tres cuartas partes de las emisiones globales por la quema de material vegetal provienen de África y Asia, según las estadísticas de Copernicus. Menos de una octava parte proviene de Norteamérica y Europa.

Tradicionalmente, enormes incendios de pastizales en la sabana africana ardían cada año, en comparación con incendios forestales más intermitentes en otras regiones, lo que influía en los totales mundiales, dijo John Abatzoglou, científico del fuego de la Universidad de California en Merced. Pero, con más tierra destinada a vivienda y agricultura, los humanos están limitando los incendios en la sabana y también creando barreras para evitar que el fuego se propague, explicó.

En Asia y en la Amazonía, los incendios a menudo se usan para despejar tierras para la agricultura, indicaron los expertos. Por eso, dijo Williams, “en realidad todo está impulsado por el cambio demográfico humano”.

Huellas humanas en las tendencias de incendios en Norteamérica y Europa

En Norteamérica y Europa también hay “huellas humanas” en los incendios más extremos que dominan las noticias, pero eso proviene del cambio climático, afirmó Abatzoglou. El cambio climático derivado de la quema de carbón, petróleo y gas está haciendo que el clima sea más caluroso y más seco —condiciones ideales para incendios—, dijeron cinco expertos distintos a The Associated Press.

Las temperaturas más altas significan que los humanos “tenemos el pie en el acelerador” para incendios más grandes, “pero también hemos perdido los frenos frente al fuego” porque las noches más cálidas y húmedas no les dan a los bosques —ni a los bomberos— tiempo para recuperarse durante la oscuridad como antes, explicó Balch.

Cuando hace más calor, la atmósfera extrae más humedad del suelo, lo que lo deja más seco y más propenso a arder, señaló Flannigan. El cambio climático también aumenta la duración de la temporada de incendios en toda Norteamérica y especialmente en los bosques del norte, donde antes había sólo unos pocos días en que el clima favorecía los incendios forestales, pero ahora hay muchos más, añadió.

Y cuando el cambio climático vuelve el fuego más extremo en lugares con poblaciones más grandes, tiende a tener un mayor impacto al quemar propiedades más valiosas, dijo Flannigan.

Abatzoglou indicó que Norteamérica durante mucho tiempo ha hecho un buen trabajo suprimiendo incendios. Pero, con el cambio climático haciendo los incendios más intensos y frecuentes, “estamos perdiendo nuestra capacidad de hacerlo”, sostuvo.

El Niño aumentará los incendios

Es probable que la actividad de incendios empeore en los próximos meses debido al desarrollo de un El Niño súper fuerte. El patrón meteorológico por lo general desencadena incendios más peligrosos en los trópicos, y menos en Estados Unidos por el aumento de las lluvias, dijeron los expertos. Los gobiernos sudamericanos ya se están preparando.

“El resultado más predecible de El Niño va a ser más fuego tropical, específicamente en bosques tropicales”, afirmó Williams.

Williams dijo que El Niño podría incrementar los incendios en la región amazónica, el sudeste asiático y el Pacífico occidental.

Aunque El Niño implica más lluvia y menos incendios forestales en el oeste de Estados Unidos, también puede significar más crecimiento de pasto en los desiertos, lo que añade combustible para futuros incendios de pastizales, explicó Abatzoglou. Ejemplos de incendios de pastizales devastadores incluyen Los Ángeles en 2025 y Hawai en 2023.

Independientemente de El Niño, los científicos dijeron que las zonas de Norteamérica y Europa tendrán que mejorar la planificación y la adaptación ante el empeoramiento de los incendios forestales, incluidos fuegos prescritos para reducir el exceso de árboles y pastos.

“No es una cuestión de si nuestros paisajes van a arder, sino de cuándo van a arder”, advirtió Balch.

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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.

These were not Syrian militants attempting to breach Israel's border, but religious Jews who had slipped into Syria and were on their way back.

The episode, first reported last week by Israel's public broadcaster and confirmed to The Associated Press by the Israeli military, has helped raise the profile of a fringe group of Israeli settlers that has staged numerous incursions into Syria, where they hope to establish Jewish settlements.

Israel's military has occupied the area in southern Syria for more than a year, but forays by civilian settler groups into the region have only recently became a regular occurrence.

The groups, with members numbering in the dozens, have attempted to cross from Israel to Syria every few days in recent weeks. The military is tasked with reining them in and, while most Israelis regard them as fringe, the wider settlement movement in Israel has strong backers in the country's far-right government.

The most prominent of the groups behind the incursions in Syria is known as “Pioneers of Bashan.”

Pioneers of Bashan are named after a biblical region

Formed early last year, the Pioneers of Bashan are a group of right-wing Israeli activists aiming to establish Jewish settlements inside Syria. They are named after the biblical region of Bashan, which includes part of modern-day Syria and neighboring Jordan.

They have their sights set on an area of southwestern Syria that includes the provinces of Quneitra, Daraa and Sweida.

Part of this area, including the summit of Mount Hermon, is a “buffer zone” Israel declared in December 2024, soon after the ouster of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in an insurgent offensive.

The region was known in Scripture for its fertile land and came to be associated with strength and divine providence. In the Bible, the Israelites under Moses conquered the Bashan from the mythical King Og and it was then handed to some of the Israelite tribes.

Members of the group claim a historical right to these lands and argue that their presence there will help Israel defend the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed — a move not recognized by most of the international community.

Some claim that Israeli settlement of the areas would protect members of the Druze religious minority after violence erupted last year between Druze groups and Sunni Bedouin tribes and Syrian government security forces. Hundreds of civilians — mostly Druze — were killed in sectarian revenge attacks.

Amos Azaria, a Pioneers of Bashan leader, said the group aims to establish a “humanitarian corridor” from Israel to the Druze enclave of Sweida by depopulating adjacent Sunni-majority areas.

“The entire Daraa district ... must be cleared of the enemies seeking our destruction and instead be filled with Jewish settlement,” said Azaria, a computer science professor at Ariel University in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Aim to establish a Jewish outpost inside Syria

The group seeks first to establish a Jewish outpost in southern Syria next to the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Outposts, which settlers often call “young settlements,” describe rustic footholds in territory they desire.

Settlers normally establish outposts in the hope that one day Israel's government will legalize them. That's how many Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — which rights groups say are major drivers of settler violence and displacement of Palestinians — got their start.

So far their incursions into Syria have been brief. The military has removed the activists before they have been able to build anything.

Videos on the group's X account from July 5 show a group of religious teens seated on the ground with their arms linked together, as soldiers try to pry them apart.

A second video shows soldiers shoving several of the activists and zip tying their hands behind their backs.

A video posted by the group in April shows several dozen activists waving Israeli flags and chanting on the roof of a house said to be on the outskirts of the Syrian village of Hader, in Quneitra, as Israeli soldiers look on.

Israeli military says the group compromises its operations

Israel's military says it takes a firm hand with the border-crossers. It has repeatedly condemned the group for diverting troops' attention from military operations and compromising their security. It says it detains civilians caught crossing the border and hands them over to police, saying it “expects law enforcement authorities to bring those involved to justice.”

Israel’s Channel 12 reported last week that no indictments have been filed so far.

The border-crossers say they have cozy relationships with members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Several government ministers have expressed support for their cause, and the group’s social media platforms document meetings it has held with at least two cabinet ministers, Amihai Eliyahu and Shlomo Karhi.

“We have support from friends in the government and many members of the Knesset,” Azaria said.

Syria and Lebanon are more concerned about military occupation

Syrian officials have not commented publicly on the attempts by Israeli settler groups to enter Syria.

The Syrian government has condemned Israel’s occupation of southern Syria and frequently calls for Israeli forces to withdraw and for the international community to intervene. Israeli troops have carried out incursions and raids in areas of Syria outside the buffer zone, sometimes clashing with local residents, who have increasingly attempted to block roads to keep them out.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, a similar movement has stages occasional marches along the Gaza border calling to reestablish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Israel removed its 21 settlements as part of its 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

The Lebanese government has also paid little attention to a fringe Israeli settler group — “Uri Tzafon,” or “Awaken, O North” — that has staged incursions into southern Lebanon. Like Syrian officials, the Lebanese government has focused on calling for withdrawal of the Israeli army from southern Lebanon.

Still, some have warned against entirely discounting the settler groups.

Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Mitri wrote on X of the attempts by the Uri Tzafon group to enter the country, “It is true that they are a small and fringe group and they withdrew under orders from the Israeli army.”

But he pointed out that the movement to settle the West Bank began with an embattled band of right-wing religious activists, known as Gush Emunim, “which in its early days was a small group that faced some obstacles and difficulties.”

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Sewell reported from Beirut. Frankel reported from Jerusalem. AP videojournalist Alon Bernstein contributed to this report from the Golan Heights.

The flare-up on multiple fronts, after several days of relative calm, raised the risk of a return to all-out war. It also underscored the difficulty of winding down a five-month conflict that has jolted the world economy and is unpopular among Americans. The fighting was also likely to add to concerns that the U.S. is further drawing down already diminished stockpiles of sophisticated munitions needed to defend its bases and allies.

Saudi Arabia had accused the Iraqi militias of firing drones against its oil facilities over the past two days. An umbrella group of Iraqi militias initially denied the allegations, while another Iran-backed group — the Houthi rebels in Yemen — said they had attacked Saudi energy facilities as part of a separate but related conflict.

Before the latest eruption, mediators had expressed optimism about bringing the U.S. and Iran back to the negotiating table. An interim agreement collapsed in recent weeks over renewed fighting in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy supplies that Iranian attacks have again effectively closed.

A regional official said mediators are “still trying with both sides” to restore calm and get the ceasefire back on track. He gave no details on whether progress was being made and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door diplomacy.

The renewed hostilities sent oil prices spiking. Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 3.1% to $84.58 a barrel.

Jordan intercepts missiles and US strikes militias in Iraq

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it fired ballistic missiles at Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a key U.S. military hub for the region, in a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency.

Jordan’s military said five Iranian missiles had been intercepted and destroyed. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The U.S. military later announced that American and Saudi fighter aircraft had struck multiple logistics and weapons sites in eastern Iraq in response to the alleged drone attacks on Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Defense Ministry warned that it “does not seek escalation but will respond to any aggression.”

The Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of primarily Shiite, Iran-backed armed groups that is officially under the command of the Iraqi military, said at least 20 fighters were killed and 32 others wounded in the overnight strikes.

The groups making up the PMF joined the fight against the Islamic State group after it seized large sections of Iraq in 2014. The Iraqi government later designated it as an “independent military formation” within the armed forces, but in practice the militias have significant autonomy, and some have attacked U.S. facilities.

The office of Iraqi President Nizar Amidi condemned Wednesday’s U.S.-Saudi airstrikes, calling them “an unacceptable attack and a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty, targeting its official security institutions.”

Iraq’s National Security Council condemned the strikes, saying in a statement that they had been carried out “while the Iraqi government was in contact with relevant parties to investigate and address all the concerns raised by the Saudi and American sides regarding the targeting of Saudi territory.” It said “a number of innocent people” had been killed and wounded.

A visit to Saudi Arabia by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi that had been scheduled for Thursday was postponed indefinitely, said two Iraqi government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Attacks on Saudi oil facilities could worsen global energy crisis

Saudi Arabia is also locked in a renewed conflict with the Houthis. The rebels have declared a blockade of Saudi shipping that could choke off another crucial trade route in the Middle East running through the Bab el-Mandeb strait between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

On Monday, the Houthis said they had launched drones targeting oil facilities used to transport oil across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea port city of Yanbu, a key bypass for Saudi exports blocked by Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

The rebels said their attack was in response to a Saudi drone they said had breached Yemen’s airspace.

Planet Labs satellite imagery from Monday analyzed by The Associated Press showed damage to Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq oil processing facility in the kingdom’s east. The massive facility is capable of processing approximately 7 million barrels of crude oil per day.

In 2019, attacks on Abqaiq claimed by the Houthis disrupted production of 5.7 million barrels per day, spiking global oil prices and providing an initial demonstration of the vulnerability of Saudi oil facilities to missile and drone attacks.

Separately, a regional official said an oil refinery in Jazan, on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, has temporarily shut down due to “relatively significant” damage from a Houthi attack on Saturday. The official, who was not authorized to brief journalists and spoke on condition of anonymity, said it would take several days to be repaired. The refinery produces 400,000 barrels per day.

The Texas-based IIR Energy consultancy said the refinery was tentatively expected to restart on Aug. 15.

Iran rejects Oman proposal for managing Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz has been a major flashpoint in the conflict. Iran's deputy foreign minister said his country rejected a proposal by Oman, which lies on the other side of the strait, for jointly managing ship traffic.

In an interview with Iran’s state-run television that aired Tuesday night, Kazem Gharibabadi said the Omani proposal included dividing the strait into two routes, each allowing the transit of 50% of shipping through the waterway.

Iran offered a counterproposal with a temporary plan for transit of vessels through its territorial waters, he said, adding that Iran’s policy is for the strait “never to return to its prewar situation.” Before the conflict ships transited freely.

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Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece. Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Abby Sewell in Beirut, David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

The couple fled north shortly after the start of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, in early March. Now, their home in Zawtar al-Gharbieh — one of three zones where Israel agreed to turn over control to the Lebanese army — is among homes so damaged that they're unlivable. But Faqih said they've vowed to stay, settling inside the large grocery shop that they own in the village as they wait to have their home demolished and rebuilt.

“Zawtar is our small homeland, and we are very happy,” Faqih, 58, said. “We will sleep here to tell the Israelis that we will stay in our land and will not leave it, no matter what happens.”

A week after the Lebanese army took control, only about 15 families have returned, according to Mayor Abed Ezzeldine, who says nearly half the village’s 500 homes have been destroyed and many others damaged.

Hezbollah is strongly opposed to the initial deal reached between Israel and Lebanon — which remain technically in a state of war since Israel’s establishment in 1948 — and to the direct talks between the nations, ongoing for nearly three months.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began March 2, when the Lebanese militant group fired rockets into Israel two days after Israel and the U.S. launched their war on Iran. Israel has since invaded Lebanon and occupied dozens of villages in the south along its border.

Under the deal, Israeli forces are supposed to withdraw from some occupied areas of southern Lebanon. But the location of the initial pilot zones generated some controversy in Lebanon. Israeli troops weren't present in most of the areas, raising questions about how a withdrawal could happen. In Zawtar al-Gharbieh, it's unclear whether troops were on the ground. But they were in adjacent areas, and the village was under heavy fire, preventing civilian residents and the Lebanese army from entering until last week.

The Israeli military has destroyed 24 centuries-old villages and 15,000 to 20,000 houses in Lebanon, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told a TV station Tuesday. He said Israeli troops control 700 square kilometers (270 square miles) of southern Lebanon and “are preventing raids on the communities.”

Residents return to damaged or destroyed homes in Zawtar al-Gharbieh

On Tuesday, as Faqih sifted through debris, she was able to recover only nine plates from the kitchen. That room and the main sitting room were knocked out, with the ceiling partially collapsed. On the home's other side, an Israeli strike left a hole in the main bedroom's ceiling.

“We are gathering what remains of what we have collected over 45 years,” Faqih said, noting that she'd already sold $20,000 in jewelry to repair the home from damage in the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war — something she can no longer afford. She hopes the government will help them rebuild.

Mayor Ezzeldine said Zawtar al-Gharbieh is "disaster-stricken.”

“You can see some homes standing, but they are not suitable for living and cannot be renovated,” he said. The municipality is doing its best to bring water by tanker trucks to residents who return, he said, and he hopes about 100 families will be in the village by week's end.

Lebanese army bulldozers were clearing debris from the village's streets. In the main square, trucks with mounted machine guns were parked near a partially destroyed blue-domed mosque. About 100 meters (109 yards) away, an armored personnel carrier blocked a road leading to the adjacent village of Zawtar al-Sharqiyah, which is fully occupied by Israeli troops.

During The Associated Press team's visit Tuesday to Zawtar al-Gharbieh, three strong explosions occurred in occupied areas, and brown smoke billowed.

More Lebanon-Israel talks are scheduled next month

In his comments Tuesday to Channel 14, an ultranationalist station in Israel, Defense Minister Katz said that in the 24 villages destroyed in Lebanon, “there were Shiites who acted as enemies on behalf of Hezbollah and threatened our borders, our residents, and constantly carried out provocations.”

“Not house by house, not incrimination — all these villages, their destruction has been completed,” he said.

His comments and the return of some residents to the pilot zone come as technical teams from Lebanon and Israel are scheduled to hold another round of talks in Rome over three days starting Aug. 4.

In Beirut, a Lebanese foreign ministry official said the talks will focus on finding other pilot zones to be handed over by Israel's military to the Lebanese side. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

But in Zawtar al-Gharbieh, mayor Ezzeldine said he wouldn't call the pilot zone successful so far. Israeli troops are still stationed nearby, with drones continuously flying over the village, he said, adding that only the Lebanese army's presence is reassuring residents.

Faqih said that her family does not feel secure and that if Israel expands the pilot zones by a village every couple of months, it will take years “for it to withdraw and for the south to be liberated.”

“We don’t have safety, not even 1%,” she said. “I am not happy with the situation at all.”

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Associated Press writer Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, contributed to this report.

“Evacuate now,” it said.

Suddenly awake, Morgane Bonichot scrambled. She grabbed her 9-year-old daughter, their rabbit and their dog but didn't think to pack underwear.

The 40-year-old childcare worker found herself swept up in one of the biggest evacuations Europe has seen since World War II, forced with more than 220,000 other people to flee a monster wildfire in southwest France that has consumed an area four times the size of Paris and is defying a massive effort, involving a dozen countries, to bring it under control.

In hindsight, Bonichot thinks maybe she should have seen it coming.

Her daughter was in the blaze's epicenter when it ignited last week, staying with an uncle in the midst of the pine forests, scrub and farmland being consumed by an inferno so virulent that it has morphed at times into a self-feeding firestorm, spitting lightning bolts that have sparked yet more flames.

Among the fire's first evacuees, the daughter came home Friday. But with the flames spreading closer to her mother's house west of Bordeaux, the daughter began preparing to flee again.

“She packed a suitcase with a lot of things, telling me, 'Mum, you need to pack your suitcase because we’re going to have to be evacuated,'” Bonichot said.

Just hours later, at 2:47 a.m., she got the evacuation order for their town, Saint-Jean-d’Illac, on her phone.

“Forest fire underway,” it said.

All told, regional authorities have emptied two dozen towns and villages, some ravaged by fire. Others between the blaze and Bordeaux, including Saint-Jean-d’Illac, were evacuated as a precaution by government officials who say their priority is making sure that no lives are lost.

After a pause in evacuations Monday, when the fire's spread stopped, they resumed Tuesday as flames flared again. An additional 4,000 people were moved from camping sites and holiday homes on the blaze's northern edge, increasing the number of people forced to flee: more than 220,000 in the Gironde region alone. In Spain, historic wildfires have also forced tens of thousands of evacuations, bringing the number displaced in southwest Europe to roughly a third of a million.

“We left just like that,” Bonichot said. “My car had broken down, so neighbors had to drive me, along with my little girl and the animals. But one of the neighbors had a cat, and with the smell of the rabbit it became very complicated. So she had to drop me off.”

After a few days staying with Bonichot's mother, they moved again, this time to a huge exhibition center in Bordeaux that city authorities have converted into a temporary shelter. It has camp beds, food, medical and veterinary services, clothes and volunteers doing what they can to make people comfortable.

The rabbit stays in a cage between the mother and daughter’s beds and the dog curls up in a large bowl. After a couple of days in the makeshift conditions, “I’m starting to become really exhausted,” Bonichot said.

But she doesn't want to go home until she's sure they won't be evacuated again.

“I just can’t put my animals through another journey. The only trip they should have to make now is the one back home. Otherwise, for the rabbit, the stress could be fatal.”

“And my dog was dehydrated,” she said. “Here, there’s air conditioning and everything, so for the moment he’s doing a little better.”

Gironde authorities have said evacuees won’t be allowed back until the fire is contained, although on Tuesday they gave the go-ahead for returns to three suburbs of Bordeaux that haven’t had fires. It's unknown when others might be allowed home. Fire trucks are still racing from one flare-up to the next, as aircraft drop water and retardant. Smoke clouds could be seen from kilometers away Tuesday.

Even when this inferno is beaten, the next one may not be far behind. Successive heat waves this year have turned European forests tinder-dry. They have also served as sobering reminders that human-caused climate change makes such extreme events increasingly likely.

“What really drives me crazy is that it makes me very worried about the future, because year after year it’s getting worse,” Bonichot said.

“It’s going to be a catastrophe.”

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Leicester reported from Paris.

"I couldn’t stand all the lies on the stations,″ said Berent, arguing that there wasn't enough attention being paid to Palestinian suffering. "I started going to Instagram to get my news.”

Berent is among many progressive-minded Americans who have sworn off legacy media institutions. They're turning to a widening mix of independent podcasts, social media accounts and digital news sites, part of an increasingly influential ecosystem that has boosted this year's wave of anti-establishment, left-leaning candidates who may not have gotten as much attention otherwise.

Liberals remain more likely than conservatives to trust mainstream outlets, but the splintering echoes how conservatives skeptical of their party created a collection of insurgent news sites years ago. The shift has elevated individual commentators with opinions on the news, some of whom have proven influential in driving people’s votes.

Ryan Grim, a co-founder of Drop Site News and a veteran of online political debates, said progressive politicians have sought out his platform to reach voters. In a change from previous election cycles, "they have ways to get covered even if the mainstream just basically ignores them,” he said.

One of those candidates is Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan and faces the more moderate U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens in the Aug 4. primary.

“I think in a lot of ways, where traditional media has been gatekeepers, we’re watching that gatekeeping function fall away,” El-Sayed said.

Anti-establishment media has exploded lately

These changes have been on display this year in places like New York City, where a slate of progressive congressional candidates endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani defeated establishment-backed candidates.

Sara Hyler, a policy analyst in East Harlem, originally planned to support incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in last month's Democratic primary. But then Hyler started learning about progressive outsider Darializa Avila Chevalier through YouTube videos and podcasts, including from the liberal media company MeidasTouch.

“My actual beliefs are to the left of Democrats. I don't want a moderate,” said Hyler, who ultimately voted for Avila Chevalier in hopes she could help nudge Congress toward progressive policies.

The rise of independent media has been part of a digital transformation that transcends politics, as chronically online Americans are turning toward news from social media and content creators. But it's not just the popularity of smartphones driving that change.

“There’s a complete lack of trust in any and all institutions now,” said Mike Nellis, a Democratic consultant who hosts a podcast, writes a Substack and posts political analysis on social media. “That has led people to turn to individuals, and so now you’re picking your flavor of person to listen to.”

Among conservatives, faith in mainstream media and in the more moderate wing of the Republican Party faltered years ago, with the rise of the Tea Party movement paving the way for an alternative right-wing media ecosystem, including sites like the Daily Caller, Breitbart and The Blaze. Trump also tapped into a loose constellation of podcasts, including "The Joe Rogan Experience," for his successful comeback campaign.

Reece Peck, a media culture professor at the College of Staten Island, said the left-wing version of that has happened slowly, beginning with the momentum of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ first presidential run in 2016. At the time, left-wing, anti-establishment YouTube accounts and podcasts like “The Young Turks” and “Chapo Trap House” were gaining attention but didn't reach the majority of Democratic voters.

Now Democrats have realized their faith in institutions didn't prevent Trump's return.

“The ground has been made fertile for an anti-establishment media politics, where it just wasn’t quite there with the voter base in those previous cycles,” Peck said. Even older, moderate liberals, he said, have started to ″throw their hands in the air and look for alternatives.”

YouTube accounts like ”Secular Talk" and “Breaking Points,” streamers like Hasan Piker and new digital journalism organizations like More Perfect Union and The Lever are among those that have seen their audiences multiply.

Grim said Drop Site has amassed 800,000 free and 60,000 paid subscribers since launching two years ago — more than he'd anticipated.

Saul Levin, a Michigan progressive organizer who recently started his own podcast about artificial intelligence data centers, said Trump’s attacks on the existing media landscape are part of the reason for that growth.

“The investigations and raids on numerous different journalists, the appointment of specifically aligned billionaires to lead various major news agencies, is very troubling,” he said. “Creators and new media outlets are stepping in and trying to fill gaps.”

Alternative media is prominent in the Michigan primary

The Michigan primary will be the latest test of the evolving media ecosystem, which El-Sayed, a longtime podcaster himself, has tried to harness. Various progressive outlets, creators and organizers have aggressively promoted his campaign.

El-Sayed said the rise of independent media has let voters compare news across different channels and notice biases, but he doesn't turn down opportunities on legacy media, either.

“I go on Fox News, I go on podcasts, I Twitch stream, we have a YouTube channel,” he said.

Stevens, who received endorsements from outgoing incumbent Sen. Gary Peters, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, has a more traditional approach. She's also backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and its affiliated groups, which have spent close to $30 million on the race.

Stevens' campaign declined to comment for this story.

Reporting from progressive outlets has influenced how the race has unfolded. For example, Stevens parted ways with a campaign consultant when Drop Site revealed that she had also worked for tech company Palantir, which is controversial in liberal circles because of its government contracts involving immigration enforcement.

Democratic officials said Trump's return to the White House has also revived interest in the party's official channels. The Democratic National Committee's relatively new digital media offering, a rapid-response clipping and messaging account with the handle @FactPostNews, has amassed more than 2 billion impressions on Threads, X, Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky in 2026 alone.

“I remember thinking to myself, there’s a chance that this flops and doesn’t get any traction,” said DNC Deputy Chief Mobilization Officer Paulina Mangubat. “It's been really, really successful.”

At times, the mix of new voices on the left has erupted in public tensions.

Grim recently faced criticism for boosting failed Democratic candidate Graham Platner in Maine, and he was accused of trying to undermine the credibility of the sexual assault allegation that torpedoed Platner's campaign. Grim said while he recognized people were angry, his reporting on the allegation was meant to share additional context.

“If we’re going to litigate allegations in the court of public opinion, we can’t pick and choose what details we want to share with the public out of a fear of how they’ll be received,” he said.

More recently, when Drop Site interviewed progressive U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna of California, one of its journalists pressed Khanna on whether Hamas was justified to attack Israeli soldiers on Oct. 7, 2023. Khanna refused to agree.

But Grim said those are the kinds of tough questions independent media are there to ask — and that American voters increasingly want to see their representatives in Congress answer.

“People want to see you being accountable to questions, and if they don't agree with you, sometimes that's fine,” he said. “I think the smarter politicians are starting to recognize that.”

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This story has been updated to correct Farah Berent's job to physician assistant, not teacher.

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Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti in Grand Rapids, Mich., contributed to this report.

Whether Lindsay Clancy killed her children is not in dispute. But her attorney argues that she was driven by postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. Prosecutors contend that she acted intentionally and bears full responsibility for the deaths.

Prosecutors say Clancy strangled the children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — on Jan. 24, 2023, after sending her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out for some errands. She then used multiple methods to try to end her own life and was paralyzed from the waist down after jumping from the home’s second-story window.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — In the U.S., the national suicide and crisis lifeline is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org

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Patrick Clancy has said in interviews that he forgives his ex-wife, whom he viewed as ill rather than evil.

He was the first witness to take the stand Monday, when he testified about his former wife's deteriorating mental health in the months before the killings, including describing intrusive thoughts of harming the children and of suicide. But he said she appeared to be doing better as recently as two weeks before the killings.

Patrick Clancy closed out that testimony by going through the day of the deaths, which he said started as one of her “best days.” Lindsay Clancy took Cora to a doctor’s appointment and then returned home to build a snowman with her children and work on art projects.

If convicted of murder, Lindsay Clancy faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.

The trial took a break Tuesday before resuming Wednesday.

Postpartum psychosis is estimated to afflict only 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after delivery. Experts at the Cleveland Clinic describe it as a mental health emergency affecting someone’s sense of reality.

On the day of the killings, Clancy said she heard voices telling her, “This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself,” according to her lawyer.

Postpartum depression is a mood disorder that can also be dangerous but is much more common.

Postpartum psychosis can happen to anyone after giving birth, but the chances are higher for people with certain mental health conditions. In a journal article on the subject in 2023, researchers at the Medical University of Lublin in Poland said about half of people with postpartum psychosis have a previous history of psychiatric problems and the most common risk factor associated with the condition is bipolar affective disorder, which causes extreme mood swings.

Clancy's lawyer said she had bipolar disorder and that antidepressants prescribed after the birth of her third child worsened her condition. Clancy sought care from experts in postpregnancy mood disorders, was put on multiple psychiatric medications, and when nothing worked, checked in to a psychiatric hospital. She killed the children 19 days after she was discharged.

Experts say these seemingly opposite trends are happening at the same time because of what humanity is doing to the planet.

“It does seem like a paradox because we’re talking increases in fires, yet the global numbers have been going down and down. But they’re both true,” said fire scientist Mike Flannigan of Thompson Rivers University in Canada.

Spain's wildfire is that country's largest on record at more than 193 square miles (500 square kilometers) while wildfires in Europe have burned just a bit under 2025's all-time high. In Canada and the United States this summer, land burned by wildfires is at least 25% higher than the 10-year average and more than double what it was decades ago, according to national wildfire centers. Entire chunks of the continent were choked by smoke, causing unhealthy air quality.

Fires are worsening in terms of size, intensity, speed and frequency, especially in the U.S., Canada and Europe, said University of Colorado fire scientist Jennifer Balch.

“Extreme wildfires are on the rise globally in different parts of the world. And that’s the piece that you know has us shaking in our boots,'' Balch said.

Fires decrease in Africa, Asia

And yet the world went into July this year with record low global emissions from burning fires, a key measure of their prevalence, the European climate center Copernicus reported. That is because fires in Africa and Asia are way down due to changing agricultural practices, fire management and where people are moving to, said Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at Copernicus. Copernicus calculated that this year's carbon emissions from burning are the lowest since satellites first measured nearly 25 years ago — about half what they were in the early 2000s.

“Africa dominates the global fire activity,” said UCLA water and fire scientist Park Williams. “So if there’s a trend in Africa, then that’s going to be the trend in the global fire activity. In sub-Saharan Africa, fire activity over the last 25 years has gone down pretty dramatically.”

On average, more than three-quarters of the global emissions from the burning of plant material comes from Africa and Asia, Copernicus statistics show. Less than one-eighth comes from North America and Europe.

Traditionally, huge grassland fires on the African savanna burned each year, compared to more intermittent forest fires in other regions, influencing worldwide fire totals, said John Abatzaglou, a fire scientist at the University of California Merced. But with more land being used for housing and farming, humans are limiting savanna fires, while also creating barriers to prevent fires from spreading, he said.

In Asia and the Amazon fires are often used to clear land for agriculture, experts said. So, Williams said, “it really is all driven by human demographic change.”

Human fingerprints on North American and European fire trends

In North America and Europe there are also “human fingerprints” on the more extreme fires dominating the news, but that is from climate change Abatzaglou said. Climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas is making it hotter and drier — ideal fire weather — five different experts told The Associated Press.

Hotter temperatures mean humans “have our foot on the gas pedal” for bigger fires, “but we also have lost the brakes on fire” because warmer and wetter nights don't give forests — or firefighters — time to recover during darkness like they used to, Balch said.

When it gets hotter, the atmosphere sucks more moisture out of the ground, making it drier and easier to burn, Flannigan said. Climate change also increases the length of the burning season across North America and especially in northern forests where there used to be only a few days when the weather was conducive to wildfires, but now there are a lot more, he said.

And when climate change makes fire more extreme in places with larger populations, it tends to have a greater impact by burning more valuable property, Flannigan said.

Abatzaglou said that North America has long done a good job of fire suppression. But with climate change making fires more intense and frequent, “we're losing our ability to do that,” he said.

El Nino will add to fires

Fire activity is likely to get worse in the coming months because of the developing super strong El Nino. The weather pattern usually triggers more dangerous fires in the tropics, less so in the United States because of more rain, experts said. South American governments are already getting prepared.

“The most predictable outcome of El Nino is going to be more tropical fire, specifically tropical forests,” Williams said.

Williams said El Nino could increase fires in the Amazon region, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.

While El Nino means more rain and fewer forest fires in the U.S. West, it can also mean more grass growth in deserts that adds fuel for eventual grass fires, Abatzaglou said. Examples of devastating grass fires include Los Angeles in 2025 and Hawaii in 2023.

Regardless of El Nino, scientists said areas in North America and Europe will have to improve planning and adaptation for worsening wildfires, including prescribed burns to thin excess trees and grasses.

“It’s not a question of whether our landscapes are going to burn, it’s the question of when they’re going to burn,” Balch said.

___

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

The S&P 500 fell 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 614 points, or 1.2%, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% lower.

The action was stronger in the oil market, where the price of Brent crude leaped 6.2% to $87.14 per barrel after fighting resumed in the war with Iran and raised worries about the global flow of oil. Iran launched a barrage of missiles at American forces in the Middle East, while the U.S. military partnered with Saudi Arabia to strike Tehran-backed militias in Iraq.

Brent oil’s price had swung as low as $72 early this month and as high as $102 last week on uncertainty about whether the United States and Iran could reach a deal to allow oil tankers to move freely again from the Middle East to customers worldwide.

The swings have raised worries that inflation will reaccelerate, just when it had begun to slow more than economists expected. That in turn has traders uncertain about what the Federal Reserve will announce after its two-day meeting on interest rates concludes later in the day.

Traders are betting on a roughly 36% probability that the Fed will raise its main interest rate, which would be the first increase in three years. Higher rates can keep a lid on inflation, but they can also slow the economy and undercut prices for stocks and other investments.

Higher rates particularly hurt stocks seen as the most expensive, and scrutiny has already been rising on makers of computer chips and other winners of the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology. The surges for their stock prices are backed by real growth, but it may not be sustainable if AI does not produce as much profit and productivity as hoped.

The skepticism has hit South Korea’s stock market in particular because it’s dominated by two tech giants, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. Seoul’s Kospi index tumbled 6% Wednesday, a day after it plunged 10.8%, and trimmed its gain for the year so far to 34.4%.

SK Hynix’s stock in Seoul dropped 9.6%. It reported record amounts of revenue and profit for a quarter thanks to strong demand because of AI. But its 257% growth in revenue still wasn’t enough to meet analysts’ expectations.

On Wall Street, Nvidia was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after the chip company sank 1.9%. Rival Advanced Micro Devices fell 2.9%, and Micron Technology dropped 1.8%.

KLA Corp. fell 5.5% even though it reported stronger-than-forecast profit and revenue for the latest quarter. Expectations were high after its stock surged nearly 150% in this year's first six months.

Helping to limit the U.S. stock market's losses was Apple, which rose 0.8%. Analysts say it's almost become an “anti-AI” bet among Big Tech stocks because of its more limited spending on the technology versus rivals.

In stock markets elsewhere around the world, indexes were mixed. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 2%, and Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.5% for two of the bigger moves.

In the bond market, Treasury yields edged up as oil prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.62% from 4.61% late Tuesday. High yields have already sent long-term U.S. mortgage rates to their highest level in nearly a year.

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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

It’s a two-day event that draws out tourists and locals alike to Florida’s waters for some fun spiny lobster fishing.

While catching spiny lobster is fair game in most areas, those participating must have the proper license and permit, and there are strict rules that must be followed.

There is a daily limit of 12 lobsters per person everywhere except at Biscayne National Park and in Monroe County, where the maximum is six lobsters.

The carapace, or upper shell, of the lobster must be bigger than three inches measured in the water, and it’s not permitted to harvest any egg-bearing lobsters.

This year’s lobster mini season runs through the end of Thursday.

For more information on the rules for lobster mini season, check out the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission official page on spiny lobster.

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Damián Valdez-Galloso appeared before Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez accused of killing the 37-year-old “Cubatón” artist.

“He came out today, and he didn’t even look at any of us. He knew we were present. The judge knew, and there was a room full of officers, they definitely know that our presence is here and it is felt,” said Teresa Padrón, the victim’s former manager and friend.

Valdez-Galloso, 51, rejected a plea deal, and his defense attorney, Ricardo Hermida, told reporters in Spanish that it was a case of self-defense.

Facing more delays, as the possibility of a trial moved to next year, Padrón and a group of supporters wore T-shirts calling for justice.

“Even though we cannot speak and we cannot disrespect the court, our shirts speak for us,” Padrón said.

Detectives accused Valdez-Galloso of shooting Carbajal Zaldívar in the head shortly after 5:25 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2024, in Hialeah, records show.

Police officers found Carbajal Zaldívar injured at about 6:45 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2024, in a parked 2023 Mercedes-Benz sports utility vehicle near Northwest Ninth Avenue and 17th Street in Allapattah, records show.

A doctor pronounced Carbajal Zaldívar dead on Oct. 10, 2024, at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office detectives investigated the homicide.

U.S. Marshals arrested Valdez-Galloso, a convicted felon, on Oct. 29, 2024, in Brooklyn, New York. He was extradited and booked on Nov. 6, 2024, at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami-Dade.

Miami-Dade prosecutors filed a case against Valdez Galloso, a registered sex offender, on Nov. 7, 2024, and a grand jury indictment was filed on Jan. 29, 2025, court records show.

Valdez Galloso, who is under pre-trial detention, faced charges of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, tampering with physical evidence, and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. His next status hearing is at 9:15 a.m. on Sept. 2.

Related report: Cuban rapper Chocolate MC found guilty in murder-for-hire case

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A manager at an establishment in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood said business was slower on Tuesday as many members in the community, it appears, are retreating from public life.

At the restaurant Chef Creole, State Rep. Wallace Aristide, D-Miami, said now that Haitian TPS beneficiaries have been stripped of their deportation protections and work permits, “I think you’re going to lose billions of dollars in the tax base when you take them out of the workplace, because these folks came here to work.”

Aristide, a Haitian American, said he is bracing for impact to the economy and South Florida seniors in the care of now-terminated TPS Haitian healthcare workers.

“I go into those (nursing) homes all the time and I spend a lot of time with seniors because it means a lot to me. Let’s make sure that we have something in place that these people could stay here,” Aristide said. “We’re making phone calls in Washington, reaching out to Congress and we’re reaching out to the Senate.”

Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican, sees things differently.

“They have been saying that the economy was going to crater and no one was going to be able to fill these jobs for two, three years,” he said. “Guess what? The economy is fine. We are humming along.”

He said, “I’ve said this before. I’ll continue to say it. The ‘T’ in TPS stands for ‘temporary.’”

TPS advocates say conditions in Haiti are not in a position for nationals to return safely, which was a designating criteria for TPS.

“If you don’t have papers, you can’t work, you can’t do anything,” resident Jean Baptiste said. “Haiti (is) no good now.”

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Local 10 News in a statement, “What we would say now is it’s closing time which means you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

Miami Roman Catholic Archbishop Thomas Wenski was in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to advocate for TPS recipients, championing a Senate bill that would extend TPS for Haitians for three years.

“They are working hard at many jobs nobody else would take or want and so having them removed from the workforce will have a negative impact on our economies, the economies of our communities,” he said. “(Senators’) response was they’re sympathetic, but they don’t think it’ll pass. But we say let’s get it passed and we’ll see what happens after that.”

MORE: Wenski in DC

Community organizers have also expressed fears of family separations, a major concern for TPS recipients with U.S.-born children.

The magnitude 7.1 earthquake that hit a day earlier in the Kumamoto area on the southern main island of Kyushu also left at least 62 people injured, six of them seriously, the prefectural government said. The tally has been steadily growing, fanning fears it may continue to rise.

Some of the most serious damage was at the Aeon Mall shopping center in the town of Kashima, which was bustling with thousands of people when the quake happened. The company said some 3,000 customers were evacuated to a parking lot before a gas explosion happened in another part of the mall, where some people were still working.

Fumika Ono was shopping at a mall with her older sister when the ground shook so fiercely she lost her balance and ducked. Children began screaming and goods scattered on the floor.

The 19-year-old was among the crowd of shoppers who managed to escape safely.

The sweltering weather heightened worries about the survivors as rescuers braved the heat. It remained unclear how many people might still be missing.

The mall’s second floor collapsed, trapping people. Witnesses said the explosion shook the area as much as the quake.

Three people remained missing, while four deaths were confirmed at the mall site, according to Aeon President Akio Yoshida.

“We take it seriously that an explosion happened and precious lives were lost,” Yoshida told a news conference in Kumamoto, where he bowed deeply along with two other executives.

Japanese media footage of the mall showed that part of the ceiling had caved in, and metal pieces and other debris were scattered about as helmeted and masked rescue workers searched the area.

Kiyoshi Matsunaga, 74, who lives in the mall's neighborhood and was at a supermarket just a few blocks away, said Tuesday's quake reminded him of a deadly quake 10 years ago that hit Kumamoto and killed 50 people.

He stopped in his tracks when the shaking began while he was pushing his cart toward a cash register. Things scattered from the shelves. He could not move, he recalled.

“I was frightened," he said.

Japan is one of the most quake-prone nations in the world.

In the Nuyamazu district, a pair of temple gates at a 16th-century Buddhist temple collapsed. They had just been repaired five years ago.

Yuki Kiyozumi, deputy chief priest at the temple, recalled how she had to crawl on the floor because the shaking was so violent. She had just returned home from a meeting and was about to feed her cat.

“I don’t even know if or how we can rebuild them again,” she said, while cleaning up damaged ornaments and furniture.

In nearby Yatsushiro, a chimney collapse at a Nippon Paper Industries factory killed five people while seven others were rescued from the debris, according to the Kumamoto prefectural government disaster team.

Four people were still believed to be trapped there, it said.

In the first reported death of a foreign national, a Vietnamese technical intern was killed after a crane fell on him at a factory where he worked, according to the Vietnamese government. He had arrived in Japan in January. Seven other Vietnamese technical interns at the factory evacuated safely

Separately, a Vietnamese woman married to one of the workers was injured when a wall collapsed and was being treated at a hospital.

Nearly 34,900 homes were still without electricity and some 15,000 homes without running water, Kumamoto officials said. More than 8,800 people left their homes to stay in over 400 shelters, where power sources were being added to provide air conditioning.

Aerial police footage showed some homes in residential areas were completely flattened, including a few that crumbled into a nearby river.

Japan's Self Defense Forces joined rescue workers in the search and rescue operations. Hundreds of professionals were helping with the effort, including firefighters from Taiwan.

“There are people who are still waiting to be rescued, and it’s a race against time,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said. “We will go all out to find and rescue as many people as we can.”

Takaichi said the government was preparing to deliver food and other necessities to hard-hit areas. She also offered her condolences to the victims and sympathy to their relatives, while urging those affected by the quake to take care of themselves under the hot weather.

Bullet train services remained suspended. Although operations at Aso Kumamoto Airport resumed Wednesday, some airlines canceled flights as a precautionary measure.

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Associated Press writers Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo and Aniruddha Ghosal in Hanoi, Vietnam contributed to this report.

The former Cy Young Award winner issued walks to six of the nine batters he faced — including three with the bases loaded — before departing after two-thirds of an inning Tuesday night in the Blue Jays' 8-6 loss. In his previous 149 pitching appearances, the 31-year-old right-hander's high for walks was five.

According to Stathead/Baseball Reference, Bieber is the 11th pitcher in major league history to walk at least six while recording two outs or less, and the first to do so since Florida’s Ryan Dempster on Oct. 5, 2001, at Atlanta.

Bieber said he had difficulty gripping the ball and struggled with his command as a result. Bieber didn't walk anyone in his previous start Thursday, when he allowed one run in seven innings against Tampa Bay.

“You have to find a way to get through it, right, and I wasn't able to do that tonight,” Bieber said. “Ultimately, I follow up what was maybe my best start as a Blue Jay with what was definitely my worst.”

Bieber is the first Cy Young winner to have such an outing, although Hall of Famers Bob Feller and Christy Mathewson did, too. Bieber won the AL Cy Young in 2020.

Bieber threw 42 pitches, with only 15 strikes. He is the second player this season to throw that many pitches with so few strikes. Kansas City’s Eric Cerantola threw 14 strikes in a 42-pitch relief outing against Tampa Bay on June 30.

“I have no excuses,” Bieber said. “I have to find a way to get out of that first inning. Dry my hands off and change shirts and eat up innings after that. That's what I was trying to do and unfortunately I wasn't able to. I don't think I've ever had anything like that happen.”

Washington’s James Wood led off the first with a walk, and Luis García Jr. followed with a grounder to second. Dylan Crews then earned a free pass, and CJ Abrams followed with a well-placed infield single.

The typically free-swinging Keibert Ruiz followed with a four-pitch walk that scored the first run, and Daylen Lile drew another walk that pushed in another run. Nasim Nuñez hit a sacrifice fly before Jorbit Vivas loaded the bases again with the inning's fifth walk, prompting a mound visit from Toronto pitching coach Pete Walker.

Jacob Young then took six pitches --- three balls and then two called strikes followed by a slider well outside the zone --- to force in a fourth run. That prompted manager John Schneider to head to the mound and end Bieber’s outing.

It was Bieber's seventh start of the season after missing almost three months with elbow inflammation. He was limited to a combined nine regular-season starts over the previous two seasons after undergoing Tommy John surgery in April 2024.

“Kind of just the last thing we thought was going to happen with him right there,” Schneider said. “When you get up to that pitch count in the first, with him, with his history and everything, just didn't want to push it.”

Reliever Brendon Little got Wood to ground out to end the inning.

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

India's capital city is in dire need of more charging facilities, EV drivers say, to implement an ambitious plan to phase out gas vehicles in one of the world’s most polluted cities.

“Charging facilities are not up to the mark yet,” said Shyam Singh, a marketing executive who owns a two-wheel electric scooter, adding that it is hard for long-distance drivers to switch to EVs because the current battery range is not enough.

Delhi uses a bold approach to mainstream EVs

Delhi adopted a new policy on July 1 that aims to make the vast majority of newly registered vehicles electric by 2027. While existing gas-powered vehicles won't be banned, their numbers are expected to dwindle in the coming years.

Energy experts say the plan is one of the country’s most ambitious electric-vehicle policies and a significant step toward improving the city's air quality and reducing pollution.

The policy provides EV buyers with subsidies and waivers on registration fees and some road taxes, incentives to scrap gas vehicles, and it offers plans to expand the charging infrastructure. It also targets two- and three-wheelers that make up nearly 70% of vehicles in the city: Starting in 2027, any newly registered three-wheeled vehicles and small trucks must be electric, with two-wheelers the following year.

Currently, only about 5% of the 8.7 million vehicles registered in Delhi are electric. But EV registrations have been increasing, with over 100,000 in the past year, most of them two- and three-wheelers. Registrations for new gas-powered cars and bigger trucks will still be allowed for the time being.

The plan, which is expected to cost the local government 150 billion rupees ($1.5 billion), will offer cash amounts of up to 50,000 rupees ($522) for residents who purchase EVs and up to 100,000 rupees ($1,044) for those who scrap their old gasoline-powered vehicles.

“Delhi’s EV policy is one of the most ambitious policies that I have seen in India,” said Jaideep Saraswat, who leads work on clean power and electric mobility at the Vasudha Foundation. The deadlines, he added, send a signal to automakers and consumers that change is “inevitable.”

While states including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu have offered incentives for electric vehicle owners and manufacturers, cut taxes and pumped money into setting up charging stations, Delhi is the first to phase out gas-powered vehicles.

Going electric can reduce pollution

Severe air pollution in Delhi frequently forces school closures, construction bans and emergency public health measures, especially during the winter months. Vehicles cause about a quarter of air pollution in the National Capital Region surrounding Delhi, and two- and three-wheelers are responsible for nearly half of vehicular pollution in the city.

Ruchita Shah, an energy analyst for the global energy think tank Ember, said the city has long been a clean energy pioneer, including its earlier shift toward compressed natural gas vehicles to cut pollution. She said electric vehicles accounted for about 12.7% of Delhi’s new vehicle sales in the 2026 financial year, compared with 8.3% nationally.

The new policy’s most forward-looking feature, she said, is linking subsidies to tight deadlines after which some internal combustion engine vehicles can no longer be newly registered.

Sunil Dahiya, founder of environmental research organization Envirocatalyst, said cleaner vehicles could significantly reduce public exposure to roadside emissions. Still, he cautioned that the benefits will take time to fully materialize because existing gasoline, diesel, and CNG vehicles will continue to operate for years.

Charging infrastructure is a key hurdle

Some owners of gasoline-powered two-wheelers say this isn't the right time to go electric.

Siddhant Jha, a 22-year-old software engineer and northern Delhi resident, is worried about the longevity of EVs compared with his traditional two-wheeler, and the annual street flooding damaging a vehicle’s electrical components.

“I'd like to wait for a few years for better models and the 150,000 rupees ($1,566) I'll spend (on an EV) will make more sense then.”

Jha is also concerned about EV charging accessibility.

Shah, the energy analyst, said the policy’s success hinges on Delhi building sufficient charging infrastructure and sourcing more supplied power from renewable resources rather than fossil fuel plants. Most vehicle charging now happens at night, when solar power is unavailable, forcing the dependence on thermal power plants to meet demand.

Delhi must also upgrade its electricity grid — especially fast chargers needed by buses, cargo vehicles and cars — to meet the surge in demand and avoid grid failures, said Dahiya, the environmentalist.

Dahiya recommended installing battery storage at charging stations and adopting time-of-day pricing to incentivize charging when renewable power is more abundant.

Delhi's next challenges will be coordinating with surrounding states to decarbonize the electricity grid and public transport electrification, said Saraswat of the Vasudha Foundation.

“As a resident of Delhi, I’m sure each and every one will be extremely thrilled to have this policy. To see that winter where there is no smog, no pollution.”

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Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India, and can be followed on X at @sibi123. Reach him at sarasu@ap.org.

___

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.

• ‘Going to lose billions’: TPS ending for Haitians sparks fears of lost tax revenue, labor shortage
• El Taiger’s accused killer appears in Miami-Dade court
• Pompano Beach to move forward with Broward Sheriff’s Office contract

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

The Red Sox acquired Mead on Saturday in a trade that sent left-hander Connelly Early to Washington. Mead was injured in his second at-bat with Boston on Monday when he was hit on the wrist by Athletics starter Jack Perkins.

Red Sox manager Chad Tracy said on Monday that X-rays were negative, but further tests on Tuesday showed an injury that will knock Mead out of the lineup.

“Super disappointing. It doesn’t feel real happening in first game," Mead told reporters before the Red Sox faced the A's on Tuesday. “There will be a break in between the next one.”

Mead is hitting .253 with 17 home runs and 48 RBIs this season.

The Red Sox recalled infielder Nick Sogard from Triple-A Worcester to fill Mead's roster spot.

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

Ohio State announced a multiyear sponsorship deal with JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday. Terms were not released, but multiple outlets reported it at $17 million annually.

Also Tuesday, Notre Dame announced a jersey patch deal with financial services company SoFi Technologies worth $18 million to $20 million, according to multiple outlets.

A sprawling $2.8 billion House antitrust settlement approved by a federal judge last month cleared the way for schools to directly pay players through licensing deals — and they're already cashing in.

Notre Dame will feature patches on uniforms for every sport and SoFi will establish an annual $1.4 million fund to support Notre Dame’s “4 for Forever” campaign, funding scholarships in 26 sports and supporting student-athletes through financial education, career development and other opportunities.

"Our ‘4 for Forever’ promise at Notre Dame is paramount to providing the best student-athlete experience in the country,” Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua said in a statement. “SoFi shares in this commitment to developing strong, ambitious leaders who are set up for success at Notre Dame and beyond. Together, our relationship will create lasting value for our student-athletes and their families for generations to come.”

Ohio State jerseys and uniforms will feature a jersey patch of the Chase Bank logo in a deal that spans the department's 36 varsity sports.

“This relationship creates meaningful opportunities for our student-athletes that support the sustained excellence and competitiveness of our athletic programs, while honoring the tradition and values of Ohio State," Ohio State athletic director Ross Bjork said in a statement.

Multiple other schools have already announced jersey patch sponsorships.

___

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

President Donald Trump vowed to seek a rehearing shortly after the opinion handed him a loss on a signature issue, but by Tuesday the 25-day window had elapsed with no new activity.

A petition would face long odds: The court has not agreed to rehear an argued case in more than 50 years.

The high court’s 6-3 decision in June struck down Trump’s executive order that would have denied automatic citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are in the U.S. illegally or temporarily.

The Republican president’s restrictions on birthright citizenship had been blocked by several lower courts before reaching the justices, and they did not take effect anywhere in the U.S.

Still, three justices — Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas – would have upheld them. A fourth justice, Brett Kavanaugh, found the Constitution wouldn't block the president's plan, though he found it did violate a federal law.

A week after the decision came down, Trump said in a social media post he would “be asking for a Rehearing by the United States Supreme Court, IMMEDIATELY.”

The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The last time the Supreme Court granted any petition to change an opinion was in 1965, and the last time it reversed a decision was almost a decade earlier, in a case from 1956, said Aaron-Andrew Bruhl, a law professor at William & Mary Law School.

The bar to grant a petition for rehearing is high. It would require at least one justice who ruled against Trump to change their mind and a majority of the court would have to agree, Bruhl said.

The bipartisan 86-12 procedural vote came hours after a funeral for Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the bill’s chief negotiator. Zelenskyy, who was in Washington to attend the service for Graham, met with senators beforehand and told them Ukraine is making gains in its war with Russia, but still needs more help from the U.S.

Zelenskyy then went to the Senate gallery to watch the vote, waving in support at the senators down below.

At the meeting, Zelenskyy told senators that the sanctions legislation "is important as a moral signal to a country that is weary and tired, though holding its own and then some against Russia," Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana said as he left the meeting.

In a post on X, Zelenskyy wrote, “We discussed many issues, first and foremost, anti-ballistic defense.”

“It was an honor to be present as the votes were counted," he said, adding, "This is the first step toward implementing Lindsey’s plans, and certainly a step toward peace.”

Graham and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., announced a deal with the White House on the sanctions legislation on July 10, a day before his sudden death, likely from an aortic tear. Graham had just returned from a trip to Ukraine, where he met with Zelenskyy.

Blumenthal said Graham told him that the deal they had struck was a “big effing deal” in the last conversation they had just before he died.

“It’s a significant part of his legacy,” Blumenthal said.

He said the bill has momentum partly because Ukraine is turning the tide in the war, because the bill was carefully negotiated and “there's feeling about Senator Graham.”

Zelenskyy's presence also helps, Blumenthal said, and “watching his face when he was in the gallery as we were voting was truly a moment of joy.”

Zelenskyy visits the Capitol

In Zelenskyy's latest visit to the Capitol, his message was “positive," Young said, and he talked about how the Ukrainians are making good progress against Russia in different areas of the war.

The bill is a “keystone in that overall effort” to handicap the Russian economy and drive Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, Young said.

Zelenskyy told them that “they are winning the war now," said Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va.

“In the first year it was survival. The next three years was getting your feet under you. But now they are winning,” Justice said.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Zelenskyy told the senators that “Putin would think a little bit more about trying to negotiate a settlement if the sanctions were in place and actually creating more irritation.”

The bill will “send Putin a bipartisan message in a language he understands,” said New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat. “This is our best opportunity to support Ukraine. We are defending not just their country but the rest of Europe from an increasingly aggressive Russia.”

Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump earlier in the day, and the two discussed ways that the U.S. could help in its war with Russia.

A long-sought deal on Russian sanctions

Graham, Blumenthal and other supporters of Ukraine had been working for more than a year to negotiate legislation that would win approval from both the White House and a majority of senators.

The bill allows the president to impose tariffs on the world’s top five purchasers of Russia oil or natural gas — with China and India at the top of that list. It provides exceptions for countries that import less than 15% of their natural gas from Russia and are taking steps to reduce those imports.

The legislation also includes sanctions on Putin, senior Russian political and military leaders, Russian financial institutions and Russian energy projects. It would expand U.S. sanctions to target older, reflagged oil tankers that Russia uses to circumvent existing U.S. sanctions on Russian oil and energy revenues.

The negotiated bill also includes waiver authority for the president, allowing the White House to waive sanctions or restrictions if the president certifies to Congress that the waiver is in the national interest.

Negotiators also added an extension of certain sanctions on Iran after Trump asked the Senate to add Iran to the bill.

Some Democrats are skeptical about tariff authority

While the president's authority was narrowed in the final negotiations, the latest version still met with some skepticism from Democrats who did not want to give Trump additional powers to impose tariffs.

“It is extremely dangerous to give Trump massive new tariff powers, particularly after we’ve seen the disastrous impacts of his corrupt, chaotic, and inflationary tariff spree," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in a statement with Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass.

Wyden said he plans to offer an amendment to change some of the tariff provisions in the bill as the Senate debates the measure this week.

Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, said before the meeting he was still undecided on his final vote because of the tariff issue. He said he would listen to Zelenskyy's appeal and then make “a game-time decision.”

The Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, has removed the four soldiers killed and dozens of troops wounded in the latest exchange of fire from its official Iran war tally and placed them in a new category called “Overseas Operations.”

The overall total of wounded from the conflict now stands at 642 troops, between the figures listed under Operation Epic Fury and those listed in the new category in the Pentagon’s online system.

A Pentagon official said Tuesday that because Operation Epic Fury has concluded, the military has decided to classify casualties tied to the latest strikes in the new category. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, would not offer a date for the formal end of the operation.

That characterization raises questions about properly counting the impact to U.S. service members after the U.S. military carried out nearly two weeks of consecutive strikes against Iran in a bid to gain control of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran responded by striking neighboring countries in the Middle East that host U.S. forces.

After a few days of paused hostilities and efforts by mediators to get both sides back to negotiations, U.S. Central Command said Tuesday that it intercepted multiple ballistic missiles fired at American troops in the region. The U.S. and Iran had agreed to a tenuous ceasefire in April and signed an interim deal to end the war in mid-June before strikes began again this month when Iran attacked ships in the crucial shipping route.

After the four soldiers who were killed this month were removed from the Iran war death toll in the online system, Pentagon spokespeople said last week on social media that it was not an effort to hide the growing human cost of the conflict but rather the result of “anomalies” and “temporary data disruptions” that were being resolved “imminently.”

On Sunday, those troops appeared by name in the new “Overseas Operations” category. Three soldiers were killed after a base in Jordan was struck July 17 by Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, and one died in Iraq a day later during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at a White House briefing in May that the operation had “concluded,” saying that “we achieved the objectives of that operation.”

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before Congress last week, he didn’t argue that the Iran war had concluded and even offered lawmakers some cost estimates for the conflict that ran through Sept. 30.

The show's new executive producer, Nick Bilton, announced the news in a staff memo Tuesday, shared on X. Joining Douthat and O'Donnell will be author Sebastian Junger, Trevor Phillips and Gianna Toboni. All will be contributors to the show.

The new journalists join current correspondents Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker. Their hirings come two months after a shakeup at the storied program, led by the network's new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.

Weiss installed Bilton, who has little substantive broadcast news experience, as executive producer, replacing Tanya Simon, who was let go after a 30-plus year tenure with the show. Also let go were correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega — and soon after, Scott Pelley, after a tense confrontation with his bosses over the changes.

In addition to the three dismissed, Anderson Cooper — whose primary job is at CNN — said earlier this year he was leaving of his own accord after two decades.

CBS News leaders enthused about the hires

Weiss and Tom Cibrowski, the CBS News president, praised the new hires in an internal memo. “We couldn’t be more excited about this news,” the two said, welcoming the new additions. “Onward!”

Bilton called Douthat “one of the preeminent public intellectuals in America today, a thinker of uncommon rigor and a journalist of deep empathy.” The columnist has spent nearly two decades at the Times and is an author of numerous books.

The producer called O’Donnell “a powerhouse.”

“You’ve seen her all over the network. She’s launched a new podcast. And you’ll see much more of her in our halls because Norah will be a correspondent on 60 Minutes."

Bilton praised Junger for his nonfiction work “The Perfect Storm,” about a catastrophic 1991 storm. The book “landed with an electric charge in the world of reported nonfiction, defining an intense and intimate form of storytelling and establishing Sebastian as a generational talent,” Bilton said.

Toboni joins“60 Minutes” as a contributor and CBS News as a national correspondent. Previously a senior correspondent with VICE News and VICE on HBO, she comes to the program from CNN.

Calling her a journalist of “extraordinary range,” Bilton noted that Toboni has interviewed members of ISIS, investigated cartel violence in Mexico and has written a book on the death penalty.

Also serving as contributor will be Trevor Phillips, announced last month as the news division's senior global affairs correspondent. Based in London, he is “one of the most respected and trusted voices in the United Kingdom for his ability to ask the toughest questions and hold anyone in power to account,” Bilton wrote in his memo.

‘60 Minutes’ has faced upheaval for a while

Turmoil had raged at “60 Minutes” for more than a year before the May shakeup. Much of it came after President Donald Trump sued the show over its editing of a 2024 interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

That became part of a broader shakeup at CBS News after Weiss was named to the new role of editor-in-chief by parent company Paramount late last year following David Ellison’s arrival as the network’s corporate leader.

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Jocelyn Noveck covers the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in California on Tuesday alleges that Penske Media and owner Jay Penske colluded with holding company Eldridge Industries and its CEO Todd Boehly to fuel a backlash and boycott against the Globes to devalue it and acquire it, and to deceive the HFPA about a sale they were pressured into accepting.

“This case arises from a clandestine scheme to fraudulently acquire the prestigious and valuable 80-year-old Golden Globe Awards,” the lawsuit says, “and exert monopolistic control over the Hollywood trades, awards, and advertising markets, all in violation of state and federal unfair competition and antitrust laws.”

It alleges Boehly and Eldridge hid the involvement of Penske in the 2023 deal from the HFPA board, which never would have approved it if they had known of it. Penske Media's assets include Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, Billboard and Dick Clark Productions, which owns or produces several awards shows including the American Music Awards and is now part owner of the Globes.

The lawsuit says the HFPA members were promised lifetime Golden Globes tickets and voting privileges, along with other perks, which Penske reneged on by attaching unworkable conditions. And it says the buyers infiltrated the HFPA leadership to push through the deal.

A representative of the Golden Globes’ current owners said in a statement that the lawsuit “continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organization formerly known as the HFPA.”

The Golden Globes, long treasured as a glitzy, champagne-soaked opening of Hollywood's awards season, has had a turbulent 2020s full of lawsuits and public controversies. In 2021, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed the group had only one Black member.

That brought a public outcry and boycott that led to NBC refusing to air the awards in 2022. The lawsuit claims that Boehly and Penske “surreptitiously instigated” the boycott and used Penske's publications to fuel it.

After the 2023 acquisition and reorganization of the Globes, the show got a new broadcast home on CBS.

Boehly, who is also part owner of sports franchises including Chelsea FC and the Los Angeles Dodgers, was not named as a defendant, nor was his Eldridge Industries. The reasons weren't immediately clear, and the plaintiffs declined to comment. There was also no immediate reply to an email seeking comment from Boehly and his company.

The lawsuit also alleges that Penske and Boehly manipulated and misused California's nonprofit laws. It says the Golden Globe Foundation, established as the successor to the HFPA's philanthropic arm, was used to drive down the price of the acquisition, and that it functions a de facto extension of the for-profit entity established by Penske and Boehly, Globes LLC.

“This latest act of duplicity is a new low, even for the HFPA,” the Golden Globes statement said in response. “The attempt by former HFPA members to leverage the Golden Globe Foundation, an independent nonprofit, simply to secure Golden Globes tickets is an unfortunate distraction that inappropriately diverts resources from legitimate charitable causes.”

The statement adds, “We remain troubled that the HFPA, an organization so widely criticized for ethical failures, non-inclusivity, racism, and misconduct involving talent, continues to find attorneys willing to push such illegitimate claims.”

The lawsuit seeks at least $150 million in damages and asks the court to cancel the agreement to dissolve the HFPA.

Zelenskyy and Netanyahu were in Washington, D.C., to attend the funeral for Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died on July 11 at 71 after returning from Kyiv.

Netanyahu described the meeting with Trump as “a conversation” about “the common goal of ensuring that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.”

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy had reported Russia had provided satellite images to Iran of U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf.

“The President and I discussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help,” Zelenskyy wrote in a statement about the surface-to-air missiles.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he plans to discuss Zelenskyy’s report with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I don’t think they’ve been doing it, certainly not at a high level, and if they have, it has been very un-impactful,” Trump said.

Related stories

• Recent fighting with Iran further draws down key US air defense stockpiles, analysis says
• The US military says it’s thwarted an Iranian missile attack on American troops
• Americans’ confidence in US economy falls as Iran conflict sends gas prices higher

The five-time Pro Brown cornerback will sign a two-year extension worth $62.2 million — including $52.3 million guaranteed, the person told the AP on condition of anonymity because the deal had not been publicly announced.

The $31.1 million average surpasses the $31 million average when Trent McDuffie signed a four-year, $124 million contract with the Los Angeles Rams after being traded by Kansas City in March.

The 29-year old Ward had two years remaining on a five-year, $100 million contract he signed in 2022.

Ward — who grew up less than an hour from Cleveland in Macedonia — is Cleveland's longest-tenured player after the franchise traded reigning AP Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett to the Rams in June. Ward was the fourth overall pick in the 2018 draft out of Ohio State.

Since entering the league in 2018, he leads the NFL with 104 passes defensed, and his 18 interceptions are tied for 19th. Ward had 39 tackles and picked off one pass in 15 games last season.

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Fourteen Broward County elementary schools offered fewer than three specials last school year. After receiving negative feedback, district officials said they’re changing course.

“Specials like music, art, PE, media, those are the classes that really get kids excited about school, that nurture our students’ learning and make parents feel good about sending their kids to our schools,” Broward County School Board Chair Sarah Leonardi said.

Leonardi joined Superintendent Howard Hepburn and the rest of the school board in making the announcement on Tuesday.

“There was a call to action by our board, from listening to parents, constituents, teachers, and even students, to ensure that we have special instructional opportunities for all of our kids, especially in our elementary schools,” Hepburn said.

All 128 Broward elementary schools will have a minimum of three specials. Those are non-core subjects like art, music, or physical education. Previously, 14 smaller elementary campuses only offered two.

Frustration over some schools’ lack of specials was a driving factor for some families opting for charter or private schools. But district leaders are hoping this new $800,000 specials allocation will help bring families back.

“Our board wanted to make sure, regardless of the situation or the low enrollment at that school, that they get the best learning opportunities, just like any school that’s well-equipped to do the capacity,” Hepburn said.

Hepburn also announced an $8 million allocation to high schools to offer more classes and balance out class sizes.

Kubiak made clear Tuesday that when Las Vegas takes the field early Wednesday for its first training camp practice that Cousins will run the first-team offense.

But there also will be plenty of focus on Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner who led Indiana to the national championship last season and whom so many fans have placed their hope that he is the long-awaited franchise quarterback. Mendoza operated the third-team offense in offseason practices behind Cousins and Aidan O'Connell, so the Raiders initially eased him into the lineup.

Now it comes down to performance.

“It’s important for me to be fair to the players and to put the best player out there,” Kubiak said. "When we go out to practice tomorrow, Kirk Cousins is the starting quarterback. He’s the guy, and he’s going to get a ton of reps. He deserves them because he has played really good football, but I want Fernando and I want Aidan to push him.”

Kubiak and his coaches enter camp with a plan for how to navigate the quarterbacks' competition early, but they are ready to make adjustments depending on how it plays out.

“We have a starting point on where those reps want to be for the guys," Kubiak said. "We’re really thoughtful about how many reps each guy’s getting up against what defense. There’s going to be times where it moves and certain guys are with the twos, certain guys are with the threes. We’ll get the second guy with the ones. We have an early-on plan, but it’s always a moving target.”

Crosby is back with the starters

Kubiak had said he expected star pass rusher Maxx Crosby, who underwent knee surgery in January, to be ready to go once camp begins.

That is indeed the case.

“He’s ready to practice,” Kubiak said. "As practice unfolds and we’re watching our players, it’s always a moving target. But as of right now, tomorrow is a pretty short workday, hour and 30 minutes. So, we’re expecting (Crosby) to be ready to take all those reps.”

Crosby's surgery was to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee that caused him to miss the final two games last season.

He was traded to Baltimore in March only to have the Ravens nix the deal four days later over a failed physical, someone with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press at the time.

Crosby said in June he had moved on and was focused on playing for the Raiders.

McCoy gets his chance

The Raiders traded up a spot into the first selection of the fourth round of this year's draft to take cornerback Jermod McCoy.

He was thought to be a first-round talent before a torn ACL forced McCoy to miss all of last season at Tennessee.

Now McCoy will begin to show whether the Raiders' risk was a good one.

“The plan is to get him reps early and see how he responds in his recovery," Kubiak said. "It is a moving target with him. He’s a guy that’s worked extremely hard and has been dedicated to the program that we’ve put in front of him. Jermod hasn’t played football in a year, and we’re aware of that, but he’s ready to go practice tomorrow. We’re also going to be really smart with him and develop him the right way.”

First training camp in charge for new coach

Kubiak was hired in February after serving as offensive coordinator of Seattle's Super Bowl champions, and the 39-year-old hired some veteran assistants who can help his transition to running his own team.

He specifically mentioned Mike McCoy, Joe DeCamillis and Rick Dennison as coaches he could rely on.

“Those are guys that I lean on every day,” Kubiak said.

Few questions about health

All the players, Kubiak said, are set to practice when camp opens.

He also said the conditioning tests were encouraging.

“Guys did a great job there, but playing football is a whole lot different than running 60 yards,” Kubiak said. “So we’ll find out who the most self-motivated people were.”

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Colt Gray, 16, had pleaded guilty Friday to 55 counts, including murder, in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at the school about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta.

Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm handed down the sentence after hearing from family members of those killed and victims, as well as investigators, Gray’s grandmother and a forensic psychologist who had evaluated Gray.

Murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison in Georgia, so the only decision Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm had to make was whether Gray should ever be eligible for parole. He decided the teen should never be allowed out.

“You do not seem to be tormented by what you did. You seem to relish following in the footsteps of the murderers you idolize. You aren’t wracked with guilt. You’re proud of yourself,” Primm said.

“We’ve seen no evidence he has any ability to develop a conscience or any ability ever to fully value human life,” District Attorney Brad Smith had said during his closing argument, insisting that Gray “cannot be in society.”

Defense attorney W. Charlton Allen told the judge his client was “not irretrievably broken.” Allowing him the possibility of parole would give him “an opportunity of hope,” Allen said, adding that a lack of hope “takes away the ability for him to change.”

The victims got the sentence they asked for

“This is not a happy day. This is a relief day, I would say,” Smith told reporters after the sentencing, adding that he hoped his team had “done honor” to the victims and their loved ones.

Teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire.

Victims of the shooting and family members of those killed conveyed their anger and grief to Primm on Friday, almost all of them asking him not to allow the possibility of parole.

Shayna Aspinwall, the wife of math teacher and football coach Richard Aspinwall, described “a life sentence of grief and trauma for those left behind.”

Investigators say Gray aspired to be a mass shooter

Investigators testified during the three-day sentencing hearing that Gray idolized mass shooters, talking about them online with other members of the “true crime community,” a group of young people online who are fascinated with such attacks. Gray had chatted online about gaining notoriety through a school shooting.

Prosecutors played recordings of phone conversations Gray had with his mother, Marcee Gray, from a youth detention center in the months after the shooting. During those calls, he directed his mother to look up what people were saying about him online. He was excited when she described “fan art” drawings depicting him or comments people made about him and the attention he was getting online.

Gray had the “mental wherewithal” to mimic details of other mass killings on the day of the shooting, Smith said. He placed those “Easter eggs,” anticipating that they would be mentioned in court one day and would perpetuate his fame, the prosecutor said.

“The shooting was not the culmination of the plan. The shooting was just one of the steps of the plan. The plan was ultimate and lifelong fame inside of the TCC,” Smith said, referencing the “true crime community.”

Gray’s grandmother says he needed help

“Colt got less stability than he needed, which made him even more vulnerable,” Allen, the defense attorney, argued. He said his client got wrapped up in an online community where he found the acceptance he craved but wasn’t getting at home.

Gray’s maternal grandmother, Debbie Polhamus, testified that the teen had a troubled childhood and that his parents failed him. Her grandson had grown “highly agitated and aggressive” in the weeks before the shooting, she said, adding that she had urged his parents to get him some help but they didn’t follow through.

“I tried to help Colt because nobody else was helping him,” she said.

Polhamus said she visits her grandson once a week at a youth detention center and that he has improved enormously with treatment and medication. She said her grandson has been doing a lot of reading and wants to study to get a GED diploma.

“I’d like to see him have a chance at some point to prove himself,” Polhamus said.

Gray was put in foster care while in detention because his father was in prison and there were concerns about his mother’s contact with him. Candice Broce, director of the state Division of Family & Children Services and commissioner of the Georgia Department of Human Services, managed his case.

Broce testified that Gray appeared to show improvement. After Marcee Gray was barred from speaking with her son by a July 2025 no-contact order and he started taking medication, staff at the youth detention center told Broce it “changed him essentially into a different child,” she said.

The judge acknowledged that Gray had been failed by his parents, his extended family and, to a certain extent, society.

“But that failure does not absolve you from who you chose to idolize, worship and become,” Primm told Gray.

El escaño actualmente lo ocupa Lori Alhadeff, quien no busca la reelección.

Las candidatas en la elección son Sharry Adler Kimmel, quien recibió el respaldo de Alhadeff, y Nicole Morst, quien cuenta con el respaldo de la miembro de la Junta Escolar Debbi Hixon.

El Distrito 4 incluye Coral Springs, Margate, North Lauderdale, Parkland y Tamarac.

“Soy una defensora de los maestros”, dijo Kimmel. “Enseño a maestros cómo ser maestros y soy una experta en la materia con un doctorado en educación sobre todo lo relacionado con K-12. Tengo experiencia en presupuestos, experiencia en enseñanza, experiencia en salones de clases y también tengo mucha experiencia en liderazgo”.

Morst dijo: “He estado defendiendo a los maestros y las familias en este distrito durante los últimos nueve años. Este año fui presidenta del Comité Asesor del Área Norte, que representa a casi 70 escuelas en la región norte del condado Broward. Trabajé con los directores, los maestros y los padres para asegurarme de que sus preocupaciones fueran escuchadas y sus necesidades fueran atendidas”.

Ambas candidatas hablaron sobre sus enfoques para abordar la disminución de la matrícula estudiantil del distrito y los graves desafíos presupuestarios.

“Si esperamos que las familias sigan enviando a sus hijos a las escuelas de Broward, tenemos que invertir en sus instalaciones”, dijo Morst. “Tenemos escuelas que tienen moho y aires acondicionados dañados. Y estas condiciones no son aceptables para nuestros padres”.

Kimmel agregó: “La primera prioridad es poner en orden la situación fiscal. Tenemos que monetizar nuestros activos. Tenemos activos y tenemos que monetizarlos como si fuera una emergencia porque lo es”.

Ambas candidatas también abordaron la seguridad escolar y las mejoras.

“Parte de mi plataforma, una vez que moneticemos nuestros activos, es tener vidrio a prueba de balas en cada uno de esos paneles en todas las escuelas”, dijo Kimmel. “Así que si ocurre lo peor, en el peor de los casos, y un atacante armado logra atravesar de alguna manera todas las demás medidas de seguridad hasta llegar al campus, nunca podrá hacerlo otra vez. Nunca podrá disparar a través de ese vidrio”.

Morst dijo: “Soy la única que tiene un hijo actualmente inscrito y por eso estoy involucrada todos los días. Conozco los desafíos, sé qué funciona y qué necesita ser arreglado. Y entiendo las comunidades porque he estado sirviendo en todo Broward. Así que entiendo más allá de lo que ocurre en mi escuela y en mi comunidad, lo que está pasando en general”.

Hinch confirmed Tuesday that Skubal is still scheduled to start on Wednesday against the Baltimore Orioles.

With the Tigers at 50-57 and the Aug. 3 trade deadline quickly approaching, it seemed possible that the Tigers would rest Skubal to avoid a possible injury heading into the trade deadline.

“We’re trying to win the series to put us in a better position to be a playoff team,” Hinch said. “The information I have is, win the series. We obviously need to win tonight to get to that position. But I fully expect him to start.”

The two-time defending American League Cy Young Award winner is 4-3 with a 2.70 ERA and 65 strikeouts in 46 2/3 innings since returning from experimental elbow surgery in just six weeks.

Skubal has made it clear he wants to finish the season with the Tigers and lead them to a third straight postseason berth. But, the decision is out of his hands. He's a free agent at the end of the season, and with Scott Boras as his agent, the odds are high that he's going to make it to the open market.

That's a tough spot for a franchise that doesn't normally compete with the Dodgers, Yankees and other big-city teams for top free agents. That means Scott Harris, Detroit's president of baseball operations, has to focus on the balance between winning this season and making sure Skubal doesn't leave for nothing.

Skubal is obviously tired of talking about the trade possibilities, and is staying focused on facing the Orioles.

“I'm pitching tomorrow and I've got something cool that I want to accomplish at home,” he said Tuesday, referring to the one strikeout he needs to reach 1,000 for his career. “That hasn't changed.”

Skubal is still around, but the Tigers did say goodbye to the player who was his exclusive catcher early in his career.

Catcher Jake Rogers was designated for assignment to make room for Javier Báez, who has been out since April 28 with an ankle injury.

Ironically, the Tigers acquired Rogers the last time they dealt away their ace — he was part of the return when Justin Verlander was traded to the Houston Astros at the 2017 trade deadline.

Rogers was considered one of the game's best defensive catchers from the day he made his debut in 2019, but his bat kept him from having a better career in Detroit. He spent 2020 on Detroit's taxi squad, then missed the 2022 season due to Tommy John surgery.

He's hitting .161 in 34 games this year, bringing his career average to .197, and lost his job as Skubal's personal catcher to All-Star Dillon Dingler.

None of that made it easier for his teammates when they found out Monday night.

“We were all holding back tears,” first baseman Spencer Torkelson said. “Jake was a big piece of this team for a long time. He helped create our identity. Talk about a guy who showed up each and every day as the same guy.

"It hurts.”

Hinch agreed.

“It's tough,” he said. “I love Jake. He's been here as long as I have.”

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Shrunken inventories of Patriot and THAAD interceptors may force the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies to take more risks to conserve those air defenses, according to the analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. For example, it said, American forces may launch fewer missiles against incoming Iranian drones and missiles, raising the chance of one getting through.

“That percentage may not go up a lot, but it goes up a little,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and now senior adviser at CSIS who co-authored Monday's report with research associate Chris H. Park.

The issue came into sharp relief when the U.S. military announced Tuesday that it had intercepted “multiple ballistic missiles from Iran in an attempted surprise attack on U.S. forces based in the Middle East."

The nation’s advanced weapons stockpiles have become a flashpoint in the five-month-long conflict, along with the threat to the lives of American service members, heightened gasoline prices and increasing costs to taxpayers. The war has been unpopular with many Americans and is posing political problems for President Donald Trump and Republicans ahead of November's midterm congressional elections.

Recent fighting adds to anxieties over weapons stockpiles

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Trump that the state of the country’s munitions stockpile could have an impact on military operations in Iran, a U.S. official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations, said the message was delivered as part of Caine’s regular duties of providing military advice and options to Trump.

The Pentagon, however, pushed back against concerns that its capabilities have diminished.

“America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday. “We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests.”

While renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran had been paused in recent days before Tuesday's attempted strikes, the Islamic Republic is capable of launching deadly attacks. It fired missiles and drones at a base in Jordan on July 17, killing three U.S. troops. Another American soldier was killed a day later in Iraq during a controlled detonation of an Iranian drone, bringing the war’s toll to 18 U.S. service members.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers last week that the war has cost an estimated $37.5 billion. The Pentagon is asking Congress for $67 billion to replenish the military in the wake of the war, which would include funding for more high-end munitions, such as Patriots and THAADs, or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors.

Democrats in Congress often cite the use of such finite weapons as a damning metric against the war, which Trump launched without congressional approval alongside Israel on Feb. 28.

It also has raised concerns that the U.S. military would have diminished firepower in any potential future conflict with China. CSIS warned in May that it could take at least three years to replenish stockpiles of Patriots, THAADs and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Saving missiles reduces chances of interception

The latest estimates from CSIS for Patriot and THAAD interceptors are based on budget documents and other publicly released information.

The number of Patriot interceptors fell from 2,330 before the war to 1,030 when the April ceasefire took effect, CSIS estimated. Following the recent fighting, the stockpile is now estimated to be between 759 and 827, a decrease of at least 65% since before the conflict began.

The number of THAAD interceptors fell from 452 before the war to between 232 and 262 at the start of the April ceasefire, CSIS said. The U.S. was able to replenish some of the inventory to between 234 and 278 interceptors. But the stockpile is still at least 38% smaller than it was before the conflict.

Cancian said the concern is that lower inventories could influence the U.S. military's doctrine for shooting down incoming drones and missiles. The specifics are typically classified. But as an example, Cancian said American forces could start firing off two interceptors instead of three.

“It reduces the chances of interception, but you save a missile," Cancian said.

Another possibility is that American forces hold off firing any interceptors if an Iranian missile is expected to miss its target and strike an area free of people and infrastructure.

“They may just let it go and accept the fact that there might be some small amount of damage,” Cancian said.

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Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

Catorce escuelas primarias del condado Broward ofrecieron menos de tres materias especiales durante el pasado año escolar. Tras recibir comentarios negativos, los funcionarios del distrito dijeron que cambiarán el rumbo.

“Las materias especiales como música, arte, educación física y medios son las clases que realmente entusiasman a los niños con la escuela, fomentan el aprendizaje de nuestros estudiantes y hacen que los padres se sientan bien al enviar a sus hijos a nuestras escuelas”, dijo la presidenta de la Junta Escolar del condado Broward, Sarah Leonardi.

Leonardi se unió al superintendente Howard Hepburn y al resto de la junta escolar para hacer el anuncio el martes.

“Hubo un llamado a la acción por parte de nuestra junta, tras escuchar a padres, miembros de la comunidad, maestros e incluso estudiantes, para garantizar que todos nuestros niños, especialmente los de las escuelas primarias, tengan oportunidades de instrucción especial”, dijo Hepburn.

Las 128 escuelas primarias de Broward tendrán un mínimo de tres materias especiales. Estas son asignaturas que no forman parte del currículo básico, como arte, música o educación física. Anteriormente, 14 escuelas primarias más pequeñas solo ofrecían dos.

La frustración por la falta de estas materias especiales en algunas escuelas fue uno de los factores que llevó a algunas familias a optar por escuelas chárter o privadas. Sin embargo, los líderes del distrito esperan que esta asignación de 800,000 millones de dólares para materias especiales ayude a que las familias regresen.

“Nuestra junta quería asegurarse de que, independientemente de la situación o de la baja matrícula de una escuela, los estudiantes tengan las mejores oportunidades de aprendizaje, al igual que cualquier otra escuela con la capacidad para ofrecerlas”, dijo Hepburn.

Hepburn también anunció una asignación de 8 millones de dólares para las escuelas secundarias con el fin de ofrecer más clases y equilibrar el tamaño de los grupos.

Wednesday will feature a sun/cloud mix and southwest winds, sustained 5 to 10 mph. A spotty storm or two could “pop” with daytime heating. Indeed, it will be a hot day with highs forecast to reach the mid-90s. The heat index is expected to peak over 105°F.

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Genevieve is the first Category 5 hurricane in the eastern Pacific since Kristy in October 2024 and only the 21st Category 5 hurricane observed in the eastern Pacific since routine satellite monitoring began 60 years ago.

Eastern Pacific kicking into high gear

Genevieve and its predecessor Fausto – which peaked as a Category 2 hurricane last Friday – pushed overall tropical activity in the eastern Pacific to above average levels for the season. The eastern Pacific hurricane season begins earlier than the Atlantic (May 15th versus June 1st in the Atlantic) and activity typically ramps up much sooner – by the first week of July in the eastern Pacific versus late August in the Atlantic.

During strong El Niño years like this, we often see a later ramp up to eastern Pacific seasonal activity – similar to what we’ve seen over the past week – with a more defined peak in mid-August and a later end to the hurricane season than in non-El Niño years.

Though the center of a weakening Tropical Storm Fausto will pass about 100 to 150 miles to the north of the Hawaiian Islands today and tomorrow, treacherous surf and large breaking waves – with surf reaching 14 to 18 feet – will cause problems for east-facing shorelines and lead to dangerous marine conditions and coastal flooding issues, especially around the times of high tide, primarily through Wednesday evening local time.

Genevieve remained a powerful hurricane early Tuesday but is expected to gradually weaken this week over the open Pacific and poses no threat to land.

August in like a lamb in the Atlantic

Wind shear remains exceptionally high across the bellwether Caribbean and into the tropical Atlantic.

In fact, over the past two weeks, wind shear over the western Atlantic has been highest on record (since at least 1979), surpassing even other strong El Niño years like 2015.

The hostile shear is forecast to continue for the foreseeable future and the Atlantic is expected to stay dormant through at least the first week of August.

Andrew Tate afirma que su vecino de celda es un caníbal que se come la pintura de las paredes, según una publicación en su cuenta de X.

La mañana del martes escribió: “Día diez en la unidad de alojamiento especial”, calificándola como “las peores condiciones posibles que el gobierno de Estados Unidos ofrece a terroristas y psicópatas”.

También publicó: “¿Cuántos amigos de Epstein fueron arrestados por 15 agentes federales armados?”.

Tristan y Andrew Tate están luchando contra su extradición al Reino Unido tras enfrentar 38 nuevos cargos relacionados con violación y trata de personas.

Fueron arrestados en Miami el 18 de julio.

Ambos permanecerán detenidos al menos dos semanas más mientras esperan su próxima audiencia.

Su abogado, Joseph McBride, sostiene que son inocentes.

“Cuando se pone a hombres inocentes, o a cualquier hombre, en confinamiento solitario, después de cierto tiempo comienzan a deteriorarse, comienzan a descompensarse, comienzan a quebrarse, y eso nunca, nunca es bueno”, dijo McBride.

Agregó: “El proceso es el castigo”.

Aunque es ilegal usar teléfonos celulares en la cárcel, todo indica que alguien desde el exterior publica en redes sociales en nombre de los hermanos Tate.

Su abogado, Joseph McBride, dijo que él y su equipo mantienen contacto frecuente con ellos.

“En este momento estamos hablando con ellos”, dijo. “Siguen detrás de un vidrio de Plexiglas”.

Añadió: “Andrew era un maestro de la meditación y la forma en que hace llegar su mensaje al mundo es algo que nuestro equipo discutirá, pero nos alegra que pueda hacerlo”.

Local 10 News contactó a la Oficina Federal de Prisiones para preguntar sobre las condiciones de reclusión y el encarcelamiento de los Tate. Una publicación de Andrew Tate en X hacía referencia a agua potable marrón y sucia.

Un portavoz de la agencia respondió en un comunicado que no puede hacer comentarios sobre reclusos específicos. Sin embargo, sí abordó las preocupaciones sobre el agua al señalar: “El Centro Federal de Detención de Miami recibe una certificación anual de Miami-Dade Water and Sewer sobre la calidad del suministro de agua potable. Actualmente, el agua potable del FDC Miami está certificada como segura para el consumo”.

Tate también comentó una fotografía de una persona sosteniendo un cartel frente al centro de detención, escribiendo: “Puedo verte, G”.

También se han publicado varios mensajes compartiendo una dirección de correo electrónico para quienes deseen comunicarse con los hermanos Tate. La reportera de Local 10 News, Bridgette Matter, envió un correo electrónico la noche del lunes con una lista de preguntas, pero nunca recibió respuesta.

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Andrew Tate says his neighbor is a cannibal that eats paint off the walls, according to a post on his X account.

Tuesday morning, he wrote, “Day ten in the special housing unit,” calling it “the worst possible conditions the U.S. government provides to terrorists and psychopaths.”

And this: “How many of Epstein’s friends were arrested by 15 U.S. marshals at gunpoint?”

Tristan and Andrew Tate are fighting extradition to the United Kingdom following 38 new charges related to rape and trafficking.

They were arrested in Miami on July 18.

The pair will remain locked up for at least two more weeks while awaiting their next hearing.

Their lawyer, Joseph McBride says they are innocent.

“When you put innocent men, or any man, in solitary confinement, at a certain period of time, they begin to deteriorate, they begin to decompensate, they begin to break down and it’s never, ever good,” McBride said.

He added, “The process is the punishment.”

While it is illegal to use cellphones in jail, it appears someone on the outside is posting to social media on their behalf.

Their lawyer, Joseph McBride, says he and his team are frequently in contact with the Tates:

“Right now, we’re speaking to them,” he said. “They’re still behind Plexiglas.”

He adds, “Andrew was a master of meditation and how he gets his message out there into the world is for our team to discuss, but we’re glad that he’s able to get it out there.”

Local 10 News reached out to the Federal Bureau of Prisons asking about conditions and the Tates’ incarceration. A post on X by Andrew Tate pointed to dirty brown drinking water.

An agency spokesperson said in a statement that comments on specific inmates cannot be made. But the statement did address the water concerns, saying, “FDC Miami receives an annual water certification from Miami-Dade Water and Sewer concerning the quality of the drinking water supply. Currently, the drinking water at FDC Miami is certified safe to drink.”

Tate also commented on a photo of a person holding a sign outside of the facility, saying, “I can see you, G.”

There have been several posts sharing an email address for anyone who wants to get in contact with the Tates. Local 10 News reporter Bridgette Matter sent an email last night with a list of questions but never heard back.

The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly about the personnel matter and spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday that teleprompter operator, Gabriel Perez, “no longer works in the federal government." The official would not say whether he resigned or was fired.

The White House confirmed earlier this month that Perez had been placed on unpaid leave after ABC News reported he had used his inside knowledge to win more than $100,000 betting on what the president would say in big speeches, including the State of the Union address earlier this year.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had described the reports of the insider trading as “deeply unfortunate and, frankly, a disgrace.”

Robert Denault, Kalshi’s lawyer and head of enforcement, said on X following the ABC News report that the “Kalshi surveillance team promptly flagged, investigated and referred these trades” to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission that has regulatory authority over such matters.

His statement did not name Perez.

The ABC report described suspicious activity on Kalshi’s “Mentions” market, in which users can place bets on what phrases and specific words might be used in public speeches. Kalshi recently began requiring users to disclose their place of employment, and the platform’s policy prohibits betting based on information that users gain because of their job.

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Associated Press writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

All Iranian missiles launched against American forces in the Middle East were intercepted, U.S. Central Command said, adding that they “remain vigilant and at a high state of readiness.” In announcing the strikes in Iraq, the U.S. warned that further attacks on American troops or Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure risked additional action.

The United States and Iran had experienced a period of calm, during which neither announced attacks for days following weeks of escalation over the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf waterway and narrow chokepoint through which 20% of the world’s traded oil normally flows.

There was no immediate comment from Tehran on the U.S. military statement or the strikes.

The fighting flared at the end of a month packed with multiple pressure points on President Donald Trump. In recent weeks, four U.S. troops died during the fighting, while the Pentagon asked an increasingly skeptical Congress for money to cover the conflict’s ballooning costs.

High gasoline prices tied to the choked-off Strait of Hormuz are contributing to fears that Republicans are vulnerable in November’s midterm elections. The U.S. House narrowly passed a resolution to halt military action in Iran last week, sending another warning to Trump that reflects the war’s unpopularity with many Americans.

Trump has repeatedly retreated from threats to knock out bridges, power plants and other infrastructure but he told Fox News Channel earlier Tuesday that Iran knows he’ll “finish the job” if its leaders don’t make a deal to end the war.

Saudi Arabia and US strike Iran-backed militias in Iraq

Iran launched its ballistic missile attack before American and Saudi forces carried out strikes in Iraq, according to a U.S. official, who stressed that the two attacks were not connected. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to detail sensitive military operations.

“U.S. and Saudi fighter aircraft struck multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq in a strong response to over 30 IRGC-directed aerial drone attacks in the last 72 hours,” U.S. Central Command said, using an acronym for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

It said the Revolutionary Guard “and its terrorist proxies must cease these attacks to avoid further U.S. military response.”

The Saudi Defense Ministry acknowledged the strikes in a post on social media, warning that “the Kingdom emphasizes that it does not seek escalation but will respond to any aggression it faces.”

Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that it shot down drones fired by Iran-backed militias in Iraq for a second day, while Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed to have forced a Saudi oil tanker to turn around as part of their self-styled blockade of the kingdom.

The kingdom's Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted and destroyed several drones that had tried to target petroleum facilities in the nation's eastern region.

Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi ordered security agencies to investigate after the Saudis alleged a similar attack on Monday. The Iraqi military said the country is committed to “preventing Iraqi territory from being used as a route or launching point for any attack targeting brotherly or friendly countries.”

The Iraqi militias have denied any role in the drone attacks. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed groups, called the Saudi claims “fabrications" and implied that Monday's attacks were carried out by the Houthis, who had themselves claimed to have attacked Saudi oil facilities.

A Saudi oil tanker is targeted

The Houthis claimed to have fired missiles at the Saudi oil tanker NCC Ghazal, forcing it to turn back. Last week, they announced a blockade of Saudi shipping, putting another key Middle Eastern waterway — through the Bab el-Mandeb strait leading to the Red Sea — at risk.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said a tanker reported hearing explosions while traveling in the southern Red Sea. It did not name the tanker but said the crew and vessel were safe.

The rebels fired on at least one Saudi tanker in the Red Sea last week.

Iran and the U.S. had paused their fighting over the weekend, though tensions remained high even as officials said mediators achieved progress in getting the two sides back to negotiations.

Iran said earlier Tuesday that U.S. strikes during an earlier period of escalation destroyed an airport and a marine control tower, and caused damage to 12 bridges and two tunnels, among other infrastructure.

Iran had effectively closed the strait when the war began by firing at freighters and tankers off its coast or threatening them. Following the signing of an interim ceasefire deal in June, a battle for control over the strait erupted.

Iran demanded that ships use a route near its coastline and said it can potentially charge fees. Ships were increasingly navigating a southern route along the coast of Oman under a U.S. overwatch operation when Iran attacked some vessels.

Trump sits down with Netanyahu in Washington

The new strikes came on the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Trump at the White House for the first time since the two launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28. Israel has been notably absent from the recent fighting with the Islamic Republic.

Netanyahu said it was an “excellent” meeting, and Trump called it “very good,” noting that “many important subjects were discussed.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. ability to intercept Iran’s incoming strikes has become an increasingly salient issue as lawmakers, members of the military and experts raise concerns over the nation’s diminishing stockpiles of missile interceptors.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, pushed back on those concerns, saying the military “has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the president’s choosing.”

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Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Washington and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Isabel Gurvitch, whose mother underwent treatment for breast cancer, is the chief executive officer of MammogramMe, a nonprofit organization with chapters in the U.S. and Europe.

Through a partnership with Adonis, a private healthcare network in Ukraine, the nonprofit fundraises to cover the cost of 30 mammograms per month. The organization also works to support treatment.

“We’re helping Tatiana right now. Tatiana is a mother of two and a grandmother. She’s a wife, and unfortunately, she was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer, and right now, what we’re doing is we’re paying for her treatment,” Isabel said. “She’s getting a lumpectomy and then radiation.”

Isabel co-founded the nonprofit in 2023 with Mahika Jassal, a student at the American School of Warsaw in Poland who serves as the nonprofit’s chief financial officer.

“They did it all on their own, completely. And, it continues, and continues, and continues, and I’m beyond proud that they’re doing it,” Isabel’s mother, Anna Gurvitch, said.

The teens’ friendship started when they were 4th-grade classmates in Kyiv and continued despite their separation after Russia launched the military invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Anna Gurvitch said she was diagnosed with breast cancer during a routine checkup, and her experience helped her to see how women in Ukraine really need both education and resources.

“They don’t want to definitely spend money on their health because they have a lot of places to spend money,” Gurvitch said.

Isabel, an aspiring gynecologist, said she feels the urgency since mammograms are “essential” healthcare.

“There are so many different kinds of breast cancers out there. It’s not just the one that most women expect to feel a lump,” Isabel said. “There’s invasive lobular carcinoma where you don’t even feel a lump until you’re around stage four.”

Isabel asked the public to think about the women they love and how they can inspire them to help save lives.

“There’s always a woman in your life that you’re afraid to lose, and someone might lose, hurt, just because they can’t afford a mammogram,” Isabel said.

For more information about the nonprofit and how to contribute, visit this page.

Katalyst Space Technologies said Tuesday that its Link satellite is experiencing thruster problems and has gone into an uncontrollable spin that is disrupting communication.

The trouble struck over the weekend, three weeks after the three-armed robotic spacecraft blasted into orbit.

The startup company said it's working nonstop to get Link back in action so it can capture Swift and boost the telescope to a higher orbit. Swift will crash back to Earth this fall without help. NASA is paying $30 million for the rescue effort, which was thrown together in under a year.

Launched in 2004, Swift is descending faster than expected because of recent solar activity. It needs a lift as soon as possible in order to continue scanning the universe for some of the biggest explosions, including gamma ray bursts and exploded stars. Scientific observations are on hold until then.

Neither Katalyst nor NASA is giving up hope. All of Link's other major subsystems appear to be doing fine, according to the company.

"The mission remains active and we continue to believe that with these changes, Link has a viable path to rendezvous with Swift," Katalyst said in a statement.

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

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It happened in the southbound express lanes near Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale.

According to Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue, the three victims are expected to survive.

Video from Sky 10 showed the southbound express lanes ― as well as two regular I-95 lanes ― closed, leading to a heavy backup.

El accidente ocurrió en los carriles expresos en dirección sur, cerca de Sunrise Boulevard, en Fort Lauderdale.

Según Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue, se espera que las tres víctimas sobrevivan.

Un video de Sky 10 mostró los carriles expresos en dirección sur, así como dos carriles regulares de la I-95, cerrados, lo que provocó una fuerte congestión vehicular.

Keana Johnson is one of them.

The 17-year-old was looking forward to starting classes next month at Howard University as the next step on her educational journey and a way out of the New York City shelter where she lives. She told The Associated Press Tuesday that she may consider the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, which is extending its undergraduate application deadline to Aug. 7. She’s also looking into historically Black colleges and universities in the South, but realizes her options are limited and time is running short.

“I will still love to go to Howard,” Johnson said. “I’ve invested too much into going to that university to give up now.”

Howard, one of about 100 historically Black colleges and universities in the United States, said Friday that it notified 502 first-time-in-college students that their spots for the upcoming semester were no longer being held. The school said the students had not met deadlines for enrollment and financial obligations.

Howard also said students who believe their accounts did not reflect their financial standing should contact its financial aid office and that “each case will be reviewed individually to determine whether adjustments or reinstatement are appropriate.”

Howard University has not responded to an AP request for the number of unenrolled students reinstated or the status of cases being reviewed.

Johnson said she has emailed the school multiple times for answers she's yet to receive. “I called every single office there is a number for,” she added.

The Howard staff on the other end of the calls were of no help, Johnson said.

The University of the District of Columbia, like Howard, is an HBCU and located in Washington. The public university has committed to offering a hand to students who especially need one right now, said Hasanna Tyus, the vice president of enrollment services.

“We understand that college plans can change unexpectedly, and we want students to know that they still have options,” Tyus said.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday that the State University of New York and City University of New York also are expediting late admissions reviews at some schools for state residents unenrolled by Howard.

Participating campuses also will provide an $800 credit per student to offset enrollment deposits paid to Howard that have not been refunded.

“New York is home to the nation’s finest systems of public higher education, and we are ready to welcome these talented students with the opportunity they deserve,” Hochul said.

Johnson, who is Black and uses “Star” as her preferred name, was notified in December of her admittance to Howard's nursing program for the fall 2026 semester.

She said she doesn’t live with either parent and has been staying at a homeless shelter for teens and young adults since early June while attending the Charter School of Educational Excellence in Yonkers.

She still hopes to land at an HBCU.

“The main thing that kept me going was knowing I was going to end up at Howard,” Johnson said. “It's a community of peers that look like you and struggle like you.”

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Williams is a member of AP's Race & Ethnicity team.

The service, known as X Money, is not a new bank. X Money is using technology and banking services provided by Cross River Bank, and branding that backbone as X Money. It is common for new financial companies to use a traditional bank's backbone to launch its services, as chartering a new bank is a timely and costly process.

Currently X Money is invite only, and users will receive a “X”-branded Visa debit card that is useable at any ATM. Users of X will be able to send money to other X users in real-time, the company said. Invitations are only available to X's paying members presently.

In order to attract customers, X Money is offering a 6% yield on deposits and 3% cashback on eligible purchases. In order to earn the 6% yield, a customer would need to deposit at least $1,000 into an account. Customers would also have to be signed up for X's premium services, which is at least $8 a month. It would require at least a deposit of $1,600 in order to cover X's premium services cost.

Musk has long talked about turning X into an “everything app” that would include financial services. Musk has his origins in financial services, creating one of the first online banks under the brand X.com. That company was later bought and merged into what is now known as PayPal.

It's still early for X Money, but the company is entering into a competitive market, dominated by PayPal's Venmo money transfer service and other peer-to-peer money transfer services like Zelle and Cash App.

El incidente ocurrió en un complejo de apartamentos ubicado en la cuadra 2100 de Northeast 167th Street.

Según la policía, De’Undre Turner disparó 10 veces contra un apartamento y luego huyó del lugar.

Las autoridades habían emitido una orden de arresto en su contra y fue detenido por la policía el lunes.

La policía informó que Turner viajaba como pasajero en un vehículo cuando vio a la víctima caminando por la calle. Turner acusó a la víctima de haber irrumpido en el vehículo de su esposa, lo que provocó que la víctima corriera a refugiarse en el apartamento de un amigo, según las autoridades.

Seis personas se encontraban dentro del apartamento al momento de la balacera, pero nadie resultó herido, de acuerdo con los funcionarios.

Las autoridades indicaron que pudieron identificar a Turner gracias a un tatuaje de unos labios en el lado izquierdo de su cuello, que fue captado en el video de vigilancia y mejorado por la policía.

Turner permanece detenido sin derecho a fianza y enfrenta siete cargos de intento de asesinato en segundo grado con un arma mortal.

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Steve Lee Lawson, 45, was taken into custody after disembarking the Norwegian Getaway on Friday after it arrived from the Bahamas, according to a federal criminal complaint. Records show he faced a Miami federal judge on Monday.

In the complaint, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent wrote that customs officers referred Lawson to a secondary inspection, searched his phone and found two illicit videos in a messaging application. They said they later found more than a dozen child sexual abuse videos.

Those clips included a “video over (one) hour in length that simultaneously played three separate compilation videos that depict approximately more than 100 prepubescent (girls)” being raped and sexually abused, according to the complaint.

Authorities said the application showed that Lawson downloaded the clips while the ship was docked in the Bahamas. They said he admitted to paying for the videos using cryptocurrency and claimed “that he was enticed to do so after he observed female minors in bikinis on the cruise.”

Records show that Lawson, facing federal charges related to the possession and transportation of child sexual abuse material, remained in the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami as of Tuesday afternoon. No booking photo was available.

The complaint indicates that authorities are seeking to keep him locked up on pre-trial detention.

Lawson, after appearing in Miami federal court on Monday, was ordered held ahead of a pre-trial detention hearing scheduled for Thursday, court documents show.

In those documents, prosecutors said they are seeking to keep him locked up “based on risk of flight.”

Steve Lee Lawson, de 45 años, fue detenido el viernes a su llegada procedente de las Bahamas y tras bajar del crucero Norwegian Getaway, según una denuncia penal federal. Los registros indican que compareció ante un juez federal de Miami el lunes.

En la denuncia, un agente especial de Investigaciones de Seguridad Nacional (HSI) detalló que los agentes de aduanas remitieron a Lawson a una inspección secundaria, revisaron su teléfono y hallaron dos videos ilícitos en una aplicación de mensajería. Posteriormente, encontraron más de una docena de videos de abuso sexual infantil.

Dichas grabaciones incluían un “video de más de una hora de duración que reproducía simultáneamente tres compilaciones distintas en las que aparecían más de 100 niñas prepúberes” siendo violadas y objeto de abuso sexual, según la denuncia.

Las autoridades señalaron que la aplicación mostraba que Lawson había descargado los videos mientras el barco estaba atracado en las Bahamas. Indicaron que él admitió haber pagado por los videos con criptomonedas y alegó “que se sintió incitado a hacerlo tras ver a menores de edad en bikini durante el crucero”.

Los registros muestran que Lawson, quien enfrenta cargos federales relacionados con la posesión y el transporte de material de abuso sexual infantil, permanecía recluido en el Centro de Detención Federal del centro de Miami hasta la tarde del martes. No se dispuso de ninguna fotografía de su fichaje policial.

La denuncia indica que las autoridades buscan mantenerlo bajo custodia mediante prisión preventiva.

Tras comparecer el lunes ante el tribunal federal de Miami, se ordenó que Lawson permaneciera detenido a la espera de una audiencia sobre prisión preventiva programada para el jueves, según los documentos judiciales.

En dichos documentos, los fiscales manifestaron que solicitan mantenerlo detenido “debido al riesgo de fuga”.

El incidente ocurrió poco después de las 5 a.m. del martes en Northwest 23rd Street, cerca de la 44th Avenue, en Lauderhill.

Las imágenes muestran a los delincuentes, con el rostro cubierto por mascarillas y capuchas, irrumpiendo en más de una docena de vehículos.

Los criminales no parecían preocuparse por las luces, las cámaras de vigilancia ni por los residentes que aún estaban dentro de sus viviendas.

Una de las víctimas fue la enfermera registrada Marry Gooding, a quien le robaron su bolso de trabajo, dinero en efectivo e información personal. Además, ahora tendrá que pagar la reparación de su vehículo tras el robo.

“Esta mañana estoy recibiendo cotizaciones de entre $450 USD y $500 USD”, dijo. “En mi billetera tenía una tarjeta de regalo de Costco de $800 USD, mi tarjeta de débito y mis dos tarjetas de crédito”.

Gooding fue solo una de varios vecinos que despertaron y descubrieron que sus cámaras de vigilancia también captaron a los ladrones revisando sus pertenencias.

“Es como si te quitaran la vida porque todo está en tu billetera”, dijo.

El Departamento de Policía de Lauderhill informó que investiga varios robos en vehículos en la zona y que está revisando los videos de vigilancia.

Cualquier persona con información que pueda ayudar a la investigación debe comunicarse con la Policía de Lauderhill o con Broward Crime Stoppers al 954-493-TIPS.

The investigation, requested in December by Mayor Muriel Bowser, reviewed MPD crime data from 2015 through 2025. While the report did not indicate any fraud or intentionality in the flaws in the crime stats collection, it recommended a series of steps meant to ensure accuracy in the data gathering going forward.

“We found that MPD’s crime reporting controls broke down significantly during the period we examined,” it said.

The police force’s crime statistics collection faced increasing scrutiny after President Donald Trump issued a monthlong emergency order last summer that federalized the police force and launched a law enforcement operation in the nation’s capital that his Republican administration said was meant to fight crime.

Local officials maintained that crime was already dropping when Trump took the action. Critics said the problematic statistics erroneously downplayed the true impact of Trump’s initiative.

The report made five recommendations to the department, including establishing a permanent, independent crime report review function with personnel who are appropriately trained with the authority to return reports to officers for correction.

It highlighted the 2013 dissolution of an independent unit that reviewed the statistics gathering process, which the report said led to crime classification errors and meant that incomplete explanations could pass through the approval process, uncorrected.

“Crime data is the informational foundation on which MPD makes operational decisions, the District allocates resources, and the public evaluates the safety of its community,” the report concluded. When that data is unreliable “the consequences extend beyond inaccurate statistics.”

The report did not weigh in more broadly on Trump's law enforcement efforts in Washington.

The report noted that in recent months the department has taken steps to address concerns in crime classification and reporting.

An emailed response from MPD said a number of steps the department is taking, including increased training, as well as the creation of the Data Quality and Compliance Branch to “enforce objective reporting, and conduct systematic reviews of police reports.”

A Republican-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform accused Washington's former police chief of pressuring subordinates to manipulate department data to artificially lower the city’s crime rates.

A separate investigation by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office also found that a significant number of MPD reports had been misclassified to make crime rates appear lower than they are.

Pirro’s office began its investigation in August at the height of a political showdown between Trump’s administration and the city over control of the police department. Trump claimed violent crime in Washington was getting worse as he ordered a federal takeover of the police department.

Neither investigation found grounds for charging anybody with a crime.

In May, Washington interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll announced that 13 officers had been placed on administrative leave in connection with an internal investigation into how the department keeps crime statistics.

Eleven are still on administrative leave and two have “separated from services,” the department said in an email.

Commissioner Tony Petitti says that’s a worthwhile sacrifice to get his preferred postseason format.

“When we make this decision as a league – are we going to support 24 – that’s where you start the conversation,” Petitti said Tuesday as the Big Ten opened its football media days. “Are you willing to give up your championship game to have the expanded playoff?”

Pettiti mentioned this possibility back in May as he stepped up his push to double the 12-team playoff. He conceded a 24-team College Football Playoff would mean no Big Ten championship game, which has been held annually in Indianapolis since 2011.

“Yeah, I think it’s pretty much we won’t be playing a championship game if we go to 24,” he said.

The bid to expand the playoff to 24 teams also has the support of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 and Notre Dame. The Southeastern Conference remains a holdout.

During the SEC’s media days event last week, commissioner Greg Sankey cited the risk to conference championship games as one potential drawback of a 24-team format. The SEC was the first major conference to adopt a league championship game and held its first one in 1992.

Petitti noted the potential drawbacks a team would face when it enters the playoff after competing in a championship game.

“There’s a lot of conflicting incentives,” Petitti said. “It’s still very powerful to win a Big Ten championship, and teams play hard. They want to win that game. But you’re talking about a pretty tough journey to go all the way through and where you are playing next, and what happens if a team loses that game, they don’t get a bye, and they have to go play relatively quickly.”

Petitti also outlined his reasons for wanting a 24-team playoff rather than merely expanding to 16. He said it would assure that more late-season games carried postseason implications.

“The format creates all kinds of incentives,” Petitti said. “If you think about a 24-team playoff, right, a bunch of teams are going to be ranked between 16 and 24 that are just trying to make sure they’re in. You’re going to have teams playing until the very end to see if they’re in. You’re going to have teams playing to see if they can get a home game. So every game is going to matter because your seeding is always going to be determined by somebody else.”

While some SEC coaches such as Georgia's Kirby Smart and Tennessee’s Josh Heupel have countered Sankey’s position by saying they’re intrigued by a 24-team playoff, Big Ten coaches seem universally behind Petitti.

“When you get a room of 50 coaches or whatever we have in this conference together, it’s hard to get everybody to be unanimous on something,” Southern California's Lincoln Riley said. “This is something that our room has been unanimous on.”

Riley said the lack of a conference championship game would make this more like the NFL model, where people simply pay more attention to the national championship than anything else.

“I know obviously those (conference championship games) are huge revenue drivers for these conferences, which matters in this day and ae maybe a little bit more than it used to,” Riley said. “But to think that that could not be made up when you start adding in some of those playoff games…. I have a hard time believing that couldn’t be recouped, that these conferences can’t just decide the regular-season champion, have your tiebreaker structure or whatever and let’s get into the playoffs.”

The standoff between the Big Ten and the SEC represented the latest disagreement between college football’s two heavyweight conferences, but Petitti downplayed their off-field disagreements. He pointed out that he and Sankey had spoken over five separate times Tuesday morning while awaiting proposed changes to Congress’ Protect College Sports Act.

Petitti even said he’d like to see more SEC-Big Ten matchups similar to Ohio State’s trip to Texas and Oklahoma’s visit to Michigan this season.

But that couldn’t stop the Big Ten from crowing a bit about getting the upper hand the last few years.

As Petitti spoke to reporters, the last three College Football Playoff trophies were to his right, representing the national titles won by Big Ten members Michigan in 2023, Ohio State in 2024 and Indiana in 2025. Petitti noted the Big Ten also has the reigning champions in men’s basketball ( Michigan ) and women’s basketball ( UCLA ).

Illinois coach Bret Bielema, who coached in the SEC at Arkansas from 2013-17, offered the line of the day by saying SEC schools “kind of want to live in 2005 forever.”

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

The Salamanca City Central School District's board approved the nearly $60,000 purchase from Realbotix with visions that “Sally,” as the stationary robot with long dark hair has already been nicknamed, would enhance the education of high school students studying robotics and technology fields.

“Having a difficult time programming an Arduino board? Don’t even know what an Arduino board is? Ask Sally and she can explain it,” Superintendent Mark Beehler, said Tuesday. “The robot also provides opportunities for students to learn how the robot is maintained, how it is updated with new approved content, and how to troubleshoot issues.”

But as news spread in the small community located on the Seneca Nation of Indians reservation, parents and teachers worried about how students' personal information would be used. Unionized teachers took aim at Realbotix's sex doll sister company, even as district officials and the company itself stressed the two manufacturers operate independently.

“A robot built by a company associated with sex dolls has no business in our classrooms,” said Melinda Person, president of the labor union New York State United Teachers.

For now, the robot pilot remains on hold as the district works through “enhanced student data privacy agreements” with the state education officials and continues outreach to the community, according to a statement the district posted Friday on its Facebook page.

State officials and teacher voice concerns

State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said she remained concerned about the robot’s role in the classroom even after her staff met with district officials.

“Although you confirmed that the robot would not have any role delivering classroom instruction, a recent presentation to the board characterized the robot as a ‘tutoring platform,' ” Rosa wrote in a letter to the district Friday.

She also echoed residents’ concerns about what data privacy and security protections would be in place.

Unionized teachers, meanwhile, suggested the effort was a first step toward replacing, flesh-and-bone educators. “Sally” will be able to move her arms and hands but have nonworking legs.

“Our students don’t need robots," Person said. "They need real relationships with caring adults.”

District officials defend robot purchase

Beehler stressed the pilot, which also includes rollout of a virtual, AI-powered teacher’s assistant and at-home tutoring program, is not about replacing staff.

“There is no possible way a robot can replace a human in a school,” he said Tuesday. “Even if it were possible, it would in no way be in the best interest of students. Teaching is a human-to-human process.”

Beehler, who was connected to Realbotix through a former colleague, said the Las Vegas-based company was a natural fit because its robots are already programmed with WozEd, a curriculum from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak that the district uses.

Last year, a San Diego charter school rolled out two AI-powered robots purchased from Engineered Arts, a robotics company based in the United Kingdom, for $500,000.

Salamanca Schools, in social media posts, stressed that “Sally” won’t be collecting students’ personal information, recording audio or video of its interactions or sending data back to Realbotix.

The robot also has been programmed to steer clear of inappropriate topics such as sex, violence and gambling, and it won’t be able to search the public internet or draw answers from unvetted generative AI services.

Instead, all information on “Sally” will be stored locally, with the life-sized robot consuming roughly the same amount of energy as a laptop, according to the district.

Robot maker responds to criticism

Realbotix added Tuesday that student authentication would be handled through the district’s existing systems, and any student-linked information would remain encrypted and under the district’s control.

The company also pushed back at suggestions that “Sally” was simply a repurposed sex doll, saying it was a “newly manufactured, purpose-built educational unit” with no modified hardware.

The school’s robot comes from Realbotix LLC, which focuses on healthcare, education and other nonadult commercial applications. A sister company, Intima LLC, holds an ownership stake in RealDoll, a longtime maker of sex dolls, including a line of AI-powered models billed as the “world’s most advanced sex robot.”

“Realbotix LLC and Intima LLC have different product offerings with no crossover,” the company said in a statement last week. “The two subsidiaries maintain their own management, personnel, payroll, facilities, manufacturing operations, product development, and market strategies.”

Some residents remain wary

Beehler argued that it is crucial for isolated districts like Salamanca, which is located along the Allegheny River near the Pennsylvania state line, to find new ways to introduce cutting-edge products into classrooms.

“In most cases, our students need to travel 1-2 hours to have opportunities to see emergent technology,” he said Tuesday. “One of the intents of the robot is to help level the playing field and motivate students to continue studying robotics, AI, and STEAM related career pathways.”

Some Salamanca residents, though, remain unconvinced.

Joplin Ficek, who graduated from Salamanca High School in 2024 and now works at a daycare, said she doesn’t see any reason to have robots or AI take such a prominent role at her alma mater at all.

“They just need to hire more people who are willing to put in the effort for the children,” Ficek said. “They need more interaction with the children than having some robot raise our kids.”

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

Shanahan crashed into a 21-year-old woman driving in the other direction in Palo Alto on July 14 and was left with a concussion, broken ribs, a broken nose and broken left hand and stitches for a large cut above his right eye. Shanahan was briefly hospitalized following the crash and hasn't been able to coach the team at the start of training camp. The other driver suffered minor injuries and did not need to be hospitalized.

Shanahan spoke to a small group of reporters on Tuesday for the first time since the crash to explain what happened from his vantage point and to make clear the crash was his fault.

“I was going 20 miles an hour,” Shanahan said. “I was not on my phone, but I dropped my phone, and it was stuck in my seats. It was on my lap, and it slid off, and I went down to look for it, and took my eyes off the road for two seconds, and as I was coming up, the air bags hit me in my face.”

Police filed no charges in the crash.

Palo Alto police Lt. Nicholas Martinez confirmed Shanahan's version of the crash was correct and that a mistake in a report transmitted to a state database incorrectly blamed the crash on the other driver.

“I can confirm that Kyle Shanahan’s statement that he provided is correct and that he was found at fault for the collision,” Martinez said in a statement Tuesday. “There was a clerical error in the preparation of the report that was transmitted to the state database. We are in the process of correcting that error. It is the officer’s discretion at the scene of the collision as to whether they issue a citation to either party. It is not uncommon for officers to elect to not issue a citation to either party involved in a collision. Neither party in this situation was provided preferential treatment."

Shanahan has been unable to run the team or practice since training camp started on Saturday with assistant Chris Foerster in charge with assistance from coordinators Raheem Morris, Klay Kubiak and Brant Boyer.

Shanahan has come out for portions of the first two practices to watch alongside general manager John Lynch. He said he is not bothered by the sunlight but loud noises like the music at practice are still an issue.

Shanahan said he has made considerable progress and expects to make a full recovery. The 49ers have said that Shanahan is going through a similar protocol to the one used for players after a concussion and will resume coaching when he is recovered.

Shanahan is entering his 10th season as 49ers coach and is one of the most highly regarded coaches in the game for his offensive acumen. San Francisco has made two trips to the Super Bowl under his watch following the 2019 and 2023 seasons and made two additional appearances in the NFC title game in the 2021 and ’22 seasons.

Shanahan has a 91-72 record in the regular season and playoffs for the 49ers, ranking third in franchise history in wins behind George Seifert (108) and Bill Walsh (102).

The team overcame significant injuries last season to finish 12-5 in the regular season and win a playoff game as Shanahan finished fifth in voting for the AP NFL Coach of the Year.

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

The lawsuit claims that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ordered an indefinite suspension of federal-sector class complaints pending before the agency's administrative judges, who handle discrimination complaints from federal workers in a process that is different than for private sector workers.

The two women, who are correctional officers at a Louisiana federal prison, have a pending certified class complaint against the Federal Bureau of Prisons, claiming that prison management failed to prevent and correct widespread sexual harassment by inmates against female workers, including rape threats, unwanted touching and nudity. The women, Deanna Chelette and Alexzandria Boyd, were joined in their lawsuit by the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers.

It is not clear why the EEOC gave the suspension directive, which the agency had not publicly disclosed, or how many other cases are affected. The EEOC referred all questions to the Department of Justice, which declined to comment.

Under President Donald Trump, the EEOC has drastically overhauled its civil rights enforcement priorities, including prioritizing cases aimed at stamping out diversity and inclusion policies, dropping cases on behalf of transgender workers and abandoning longstanding tools for investigating systemic discrimination. The changes have prompted several lawsuits against EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, who says she is pursuing an “even-handed” and “colorblind” vision of workplace civil rights.

But it's not apparent how the order to suspend federal-sector class claims fits into the EEOC's new priorities. In the court filing, attorneys for the plaintiffs said the EEOC had provided “no reasoned explanation for a blanket policy that halts an entire category of discrimination cases.” The lawsuit seeks to have the suspension directive vacated.

“Without an explanation, it's hard to infer what the EEOC’s intentions behind this were, but it’s hard to ignore that this is part of a broader campaign at the EEOC to undermine the ability of employees to protect rights that Congress has provided to them under the civil rights laws,” said Joseph Sellers, co-chair of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll’s civil rights and employment practice and one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs.

The pending class complaint claimed that management at Louisiana's Federal Correctional Complex at Pollock failed to stop inmates from subjecting female workers to sexual harassment. The complaint included declarations from eight other women who also described the harassment and management's response, and estimated that the class complaint would include least 182 women. The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not respond to requests for comment.

According the lawsuit against the EEOC, Administrative Judge Erania Ebron had certified the class in March 2025. But in December, Ebron issued a notice that case had been paused until further notice.

Attorneys in the case argued that the suspension violates the EEOC's own regulations governing complaints filed by federal workers requiring the agency to handle complaints promptly.

The lawsuit said that during the seven months the case has been halted, Chelette, Boyd and other women “have been subjected to, or are at risk of, ongoing and escalating sexual harassment that continues to go unremedied. They have no information about when, if ever, their case will continue.”

“Management is just sort of emboldened and taking even less corrective action, sending the message to the inmates that you can sexually harass and abuse these female staff and get away with it because we’re not going to do anything to do you,” said Heidi Burakiewicz, an attorney for the plaintiffs and founding partner at Burakiewicz & DePriest.

While it remains unclear how many cases the EEOC has paused, the attorneys who filed the lawsuit said they are representing federal workers in at least five other class complaints that are stalled, including cases against the FBI and the Department of Defense.

While the plaintiffs have the legal right to opt out of the EEOC process and bring their case to federal court, attorney said it would require them to essentially build their case anew, including securing class status from scratch in a process that could take years.

_______ The Associated Press’ women in the workforce coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. 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.

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AP Business Writer Claire Savage contributed to this story from Chicago.