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It was happening Thursday morning in the area of the 15700 block of southwest 140th Street.

According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who was on duty was inside his car when someone who was standing on the street began to strike the window of the agent’s vehicle.

Deputies said the agent got out of his car and an altercation between the two began immediately, with the individual slamming the agent to the ground and climbing on top of him.

During the altercation, deputies said the agent discharged his firearm, striking the individual.

Crews with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue responded and pronounced the individual deceased at the scene.

A nearby school, Jorge Mas Canosa Middle School, was placed on a temporary lockdown that has since been lifted.

Officials with Miami-Dade County Public Schools told Local 10 News the lockdown was due to “non-school related police activity in the area.”

Video obtained by Local 10 News shows two men scuffling in the area near the school, and at one point in the video, what sounds like a gunshot is heard.

Soon after, MDSO deputies converged on the area, where a body could be seen covered by a tarp in the road.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said one person was treated at the scene but was not transported to an area hospital.

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Police later clarified that there was no fight or evidence a gun was ever on campus.

“The investigation determined that no fight had occurred and no firearm was ever on the Plantation High School campus,” police wrote in a statement. They said officers searched the school grounds after the report of a possible weapon but did not find a gun.

No injuries were reported.

The incident initially prompted a police response and perimeter around the school as officers investigated a report that a student may have been in possession of a weapon. Police said the student was located immediately, but no weapon was found.

Broward County Public Schools confirmed that the school, located at 6901 NW 16th St., received an “all-clear” from law enforcement and resumed its normal schedule.

Sky 10 was over the scene at about 1:20 p.m. as police established a perimeter around the campus. During the investigation, no one was allowed to enter or leave the area while officers searched for evidence of a weapon.

Once officers confirmed there was no threat to students or staff, police said they cleared the perimeter and lifted the lockdown.

Prosecutors filed a felony case against Shauntay Poole, of Fort Lauderdale, on Wednesday, over the school board’s accusations, according to Broward County court records.

The staff directory for McArthur High School, at 6501 Hollywood Boulevard, in Hollywood, listed Poole, also known as Shauntay Cunningham-Poole, as a bookkeeper III.

A 2022 Broward County Public Schools ' audit report and a 2017 BCPS audit report listed Cunningham-Poole as a bookkeeper for the Whiddon-Rogers Education Center at 700 SW 26 St., in Fort Lauderdale.

Corrections booked Poole on Wednesday at the Broward County Main Jail in Fort Lauderdale. She faced a charge of third-degree felony grand theft of more than $750 and less than $5,000. Her bond was $2,500.

Broward County Circuit Judge Francis Viamontes was set to preside over the case.

This is a developing story. Local 10 News has a pending request for the arrest report in the case.

Related links

• Justice Department: Broward County School Board employee charged with bribery and extortion
• FBI: Former Broward County School Board member indicted on public corruption charges

The State Department said Thursday that it had approved visas for Iran’s “core delegation,” along with essential staffers to participate in the U.N. meetings. The core delegation includes President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, according to U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to visa privacy laws.

“Consistent with our host country obligations, the core delegation from the Iranian regime will be able to attend UN General Assembly High Level week. The delegation will be under travel restrictions and will face prohibitions on the purchase of luxury and other goods per our policy. The delegation is smaller than last year,” the statement said.

The move is unusual due to the more than six-month-long conflict between Iran and the United States and no sign that agreements to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or return to talks on Iran’s nuclear program are close. It also comes as Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have stepped up attacks on Saudi infrastructure and shipping in the Red Sea, another major maritime route in the region where impediments have helped drive a surge in global oil prices.

In addition, Iran remains the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, according to the United States, which has imposed significant sanctions against the country and launched a new campaign in recent weeks aimed at severing “critical financial lifelines."

As the host country for the United Nations headquarters, the U.S. is generally limited in what it can do to prevent foreign leaders from coming to the General Assembly. However, it has in the past denied visas to — or discouraged applications from — leaders involved in active conflicts with the United States.

For last year's U.N. meetings of world leaders — which took place before the Iran war began on Feb. 28 but after the U.S. and Israel launched air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 — the State Department also approved a limited number of visas for Iranian diplomats but also imposed rigid restrictions on the delegation's movements.

Those included severe limitations on how far Iranian officials could travel in New York City from their U.N. mission and barred them from shopping at wholesale membership stores, such as Costco and Sam's Club.

The decision on the Iranian visas was announced just a day after the State Department denied visas to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his delegation to come to the General Assembly.

“Consistent with our host country obligations, the core delegation from the Iranian regime will be able to attend UN General Assembly High Level week," the State Department said. "The delegation will be under travel restrictions and will face prohibitions on the purchase of luxury and other goods per our policy. The delegation is smaller than last year.”

The department accused the Palestinian Authority — which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank — of trying to “internationalize” the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza by bringing cases to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court as well as continuing to pay stipends to prisoners jailed in Israel for attacks on Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the move and called Israel’s actions “the real threat to the two-state solution and prospects for peace.” It also said it remained committed to long-stalled negotiations but defended its efforts to gain Palestinian recognition through international bodies and courts.

“Punitive measures and restrictions imposed on Palestinian officials do not contribute to advancing peace or combating violence,” the authority’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “Rather, they weaken the Palestinian partner committed to a political solution and encourage forces working to undermine the two-state solution and impose the reality of occupation, settlement and annexation by force."

The U.S. does not recognize the Palestinian Authority as a full member of the United Nations, although the General Assembly and certain U.N. agencies and bodies have done so.

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Associated Press writer Sam Metz in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Postgame video showed Messi pointing at Garber and speaking to him before walking away. He then appears later in the video pointing at him and talking to him again. Another video showed them pointing at each other as they spoke.

MLS declined comment on the matter. Inter Miami didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The exchange came after Inter Miami defeated Cruz Azul 2-0 to win the Campeones Cup. Messi scored the 100th goal of his Inter Miami career during the game.

This victory gave Inter Miami another trophy three years after Messi’s arrival. Miami won the Leagues Cup in 2023, the Supporters’ Shield in 2024 and MLS Cup in 2025.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

But on Wednesday, the Fed's rate-setting committee unanimously agreed to a rate hike, and nearly all policymakers signaled that a second increase later this year would likely be appropriate.

So what changed?

In short, the renewed fighting in the Middle East has pushed up gas prices again. And there are signs the economy is still growing at a healthy pace even as inflation stays stubbornly high. All three factors appear to have pushed the committee from wait-and-see mode to determined action.

Yet the Fed's move doesn't necessarily mean Americans will pay significantly higher costs for mortgages or other borrowing in the short-term, because financial markets appear reassured by the Fed's commitment to fighting inflation. On Thursday, the 10-year Treasury yield even slipped a bit, a likely sign of reduced inflation worries among investors.

The Fed's increase “alleviates concerns around the Fed taking sticky inflation seriously,” Oscar Munoz, head of U.S. economic research at TD Securities, said. “And that they’re ready to act, not just talk about it but actually act.”

The Fed increases the short-term rate it controls to slow borrowing and spending and ideally cool inflation. The Fed's rate can influence longer-term costs such as mortgage rates, but the Fed doesn't directly control them.

Warsh throws in towel on ‘temporary’ shocks

For months, Fed officials have considered whether higher oil and gas prices from the Iran war would just amount to a temporary hit to inflation. If so, it might not make sense to hike rates: By the time higher borrowing costs started to slow the economy, the gas price shock could be over and inflation would fall back to the Fed's 2% target on its own.

But with the Iran war now in its seventh month, Fed officials are no longer counting on it being a temporary shock.

At the Fed's previous meeting July 29, its statement said inflation was elevated “in part reflecting supply shocks that have driven price increases in certain sectors, including energy.”

But its latest statement Wednesday dropped that reference to supply shocks, and instead noted that consumer and business spending “has been resilient.”

And at his news conference Wednesday afternoon, Warsh said, “our judgment about ... the geopolitical situation has changed.”

Gas prices, meanwhile, have continued their steady march higher, reaching $4.44 a gallon Thursday, according to AAA. That's 38 cents higher than a month ago. Diesel prices have hit record highs at $6.40, which will push up shipping costs for many types of goods.

The Fed thinks the economy can take it

Whenever the Fed increases interest rates, it raises concerns that higher borrowing costs will ultimately weigh down the economy so much that a recession results. Yet Warsh emphasized that the economy is healthy and has continued to grow despite repeated blows from things like higher gas prices, tariffs, and higher interest rates.

“Our decision comes at a time when the American economy appears to be strengthening,” Warsh said. “New hiring, private-sector earnings, business capital investment — each of these markers has improved in recent months and is pointing in a good direction.

“Consider the geopolitical landscape of shocks and uncertainty, and you begin to appreciate the resilience of the U.S. economy,” he added.

Bigger paychecks sought

While the economy may be showing signs of acceleration, stubborn inflation has eroded Americans' take-home pay. Inflation has now risen faster, on a yearly basis, than average incomes for five months, making it harder for Americans to afford necessities such as gas, food, and rent.

Warsh said the “least well-off” have the “most to gain” from steady growth and stable prices.

If the Fed can get inflation to its 2% goal, when Americans “get their wages, they can put their head above water and deliver real take home pay increases,” Warsh said.

Trump attacks on Fed are misguided, economists say

President Donald Trump renewed his criticisms of the Fed Wednesday night and called for much lower interest rates, but did not attack Warsh, whom he appointed as chairman earlier this year. That's a big change from Warsh's predecessor, Jerome Powell, who was the subject of repeated personal attacks from Trump, as well as a criminal investigation, which was later dropped.

“The board is very hostile. They’re very political. They’re doing the wrong thing. They’re a bunch of politicians,” Trump said, referring to the 12 Fed officials on the central bank's rate-setting committee. “They’re raising rates to make Trump do as bad as they can possibly do.”

Yet economists argue Trump's criticisms are misguided. They note that beyond the Fed, there are multiple reasons why longer-term interest rates have jumped in the past two months. The 10-year Treasury, for instance, strongly influences mortgage rates and this week topped 5% for the first time since 2023. Meanwhile, the weekly average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate home loan climbed to just below 7% — its highest level in over 19 months.

Wall Street investors are demanding higher rates to hold bonds, partly because inflation remains elevated. Investors need higher interest rates to offset the impact of higher prices.

Surging investment in AI data centers has also lifted borrowing costs as large tech firms have issued hundreds of billions of dollars in bonds to finance the buildout. The flood of bonds has also pushed up rates.

Warsh also cited stronger economic growth, which typically raises interest rates as more businesses expect higher returns from new projects so they step up their borrowing to expand.

But Warsh did not mention another driver of rising interest rates that many economists point to: High and accumulating U.S. government debt, which recently topped $40 trillion and has grown sharply under Trump. Nor did he cite tariffs, something his predecessor, Powell, frequently highlighted.

Agentes de la policía de Hialeah arrestaron a Jose Cremades en 2002, 2012 y 2016, y agentes de la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade lo arrestaron en 2019 y 2022, según registros judiciales. Los fiscales presentaron cargos de hurto mayor en tercer grado en los cinco casos.

Cremades fue declarado culpable en cuatro de los cinco casos y sentenciado a libertad condicional, según registros judiciales. Su período de libertad condicional más reciente terminó el 25 de julio de 2024. El martes, volvió a estar tras las rejas.

La niña de 4 años dijo a su madre el sábado que “el hombre mayor que había estado junto a ella en el Lowe’s ubicado en 1650 West 37th St. la había tocado” después de que “le levantó la falda”, según el reporte de arresto de un agente de policía.

El martes, durante una entrevista forense en el Kristi House Children’s Advocacy Center, la niña dijo que Cremades “usó sus dedos para meterlos debajo de su vestido y tocarla varias veces”, escribió un agente de policía, según el reporte.

“Estamos haciendo todo lo posible para ayudar a las autoridades locales”, escribió un portavoz de Lowe’s en un comunicado el miércoles.

Videos de vigilancia mostraron a Cremades “agachado” junto a una exhibición de mercancía donde estaba la niña de 4 años antes de que ella corriera hacia su madre, y “caminando detrás” de otras dos niñas “mientras se desplazaban por la tienda”, según el reporte de un agente de policía.

La madre de la niña dijo a los agentes que ella y su hija de 4 años habían asistido al taller infantil de la tienda y que estaba pagando una compra en la caja cuando su hija se alejó de su lado, según el reporte policial.

Agentes de la policía de Hialeah arrestaron a Cremades el martes y fiscales de Miami-Dade presentaron tres nuevos casos en su contra el miércoles. Dos de los casos fueron por hurto menor y el otro por abuso lascivo y lujurioso.

Cremades compareció el miércoles ante la jueza del Circuito del Condado Miami-Dade Mindy S. Glazer. La jueza le negó la fianza y le ordenó mantenerse alejado de la tienda Lowe’s de Hialeah y de la víctima del caso de abuso lascivo y lujurioso.

Cremades, quien nació en Cuba y vive cerca de O’Quinn Park en Hialeah, permanecía el jueves en el Centro de Detención Metrowest con una orden de retención del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas de Estados Unidos, según muestran registros policiales y de reclusos.

La jueza del Circuito del Condado Miami-Dade Laura A. Stuzin presidía el caso de delito grave por abuso lascivo y lujurioso. La jueza del Circuito del Condado Michelle Roth presidía los casos de delitos menores por hurto.

Reporte relacionado: Hombre comparece ante tribunal acusado de abusar sexualmente de niña de 4 años en Hialeah

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Hialeah police officers arrested Jose Cremades in 2002, 2012, and 2016, and Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested him in 2019 and 2022, according to court records. Prosecutors filed third-degree grand theft charges in all five cases.

Cremades was convicted in four of the five cases and sentenced to probation, according to court records. His most recent probation ended on July 25, 2024. On Tuesday, he was back behind bars.

The 4-year-old girl told her mother on Saturday that ″the old man who had been next to her at the Lowe’s at 1650 West 37th St., had touched her” after he “lifted her skirt,” according to a police officer’s arrest report.

On Tuesday, during a forensic interview at the Kristi House Children’s Advocacy Center, the girl said Cremades “used his fingers to reach under her dress and touch ... several times,” a police officer wrote, according to the report.

“We are doing everything we can to assist local law enforcement,” a spokesperson for Lowe’s wrote in a statement on Wednesday.

Surveillance videos showed Cremades “crouched down” at a merchandise display where the 4-year-old girl was before she ran toward her mother, and “walking behind” two other girls, “as they moved through the store,” according to a police officer’s report.

The girl’s mother told police officers she and her 4-year-old daughter had attended the store’s kids workshop, and she was paying for a purchase at the register when her daughter left her side, according to the police report.

Hialeah police officers arrested Cremades on Tuesday, and Miami-Dade prosecutors filed three new cases against him on Wednesday. Two of the cases were petit theft, and the other was for lewd and lascivious molestation.

Cremades appeared before Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Mindy S. Glazer on Wednesday. She denied him bond and ordered him to stay away from the Lowe’s store in Hialeah and the victim of the lewd and lascivious molestation case.

Cremades, who was born in Cuba and lives near O’Quinn Park in Hialeah, was at the Metrowest Detention Center on Thursday with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s hold, police and inmate records show.

Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Laura A. Stuzin was presiding over the felony lewd and lascivious molestation case. County Circuit Judge Michelle Roth was presiding over the misdemeanor theft cases.

Related report: Man appears in court accused of sexually abusing 4-year-old girl in Hialeah

A U.S. government official said Abu Zubaydah, who wore a neatly trimmed beard and glasses, had “probably” served as one of Osama bin Laden's most trusted facilitators. The roughly 20-minute hearing offered rare visibility into the secretive military court proceedings of a suspect who had been tortured at CIA black sites during the U.S. war on terrorism and whose case still has not been resolved 25 years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Zubaydah's unidentified government-assigned representative and his private attorney, Annika Conrad, both acknowledged he had known bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind. But they said Zubaydah was never a member of the militant group that bin Laden founded.

Conrad argued that Zubaydah poses no security threat to the United States and that it can no longer justify his detention. She said Zubaydah should be approved for transfer out of Guantanamo, which would kick off a multiyear process that includes finding a country to accept him.

Lawyer describes lasting injuries from torture and says Zubaydah could be monitored if released

Conrad said Zubaydah is prepared to accept a range of security measures, including continuous monitoring. Conrad said he has the financial and personal support of his family, has rejected any extremist views “and simply wants to live a life of peace.”

She also argued that a chief military prosecutor for U.S. Military Commissions, which oversees the 15 men still held at Guantanamo Bay, has said that it is unlikely that Zubaydah will be charged. The Office of Military Commissions declined to comment.

Zubaydah's attorney said the most the government can offer is a “probable association” to bin Laden after more than two decades and noted that Zubaydah declined a direct request from bin Laden to work for al-Qaida.

Conrad also cited the torture that Zubaydah experienced, describing him as “a greatly injured man” who lost his left eye and his ability to write in English and “frequently struggles to recall words.”

Zubaydah’s detention is being reviewed by a U.S. government panel of senior defense, intelligence and homeland security officials. The Periodic Review Board was created under the Obama administration to evaluate prisoners and determine if they could be released without posing a threat to national security.

The review panel did not immediately decide on the case

The review panel issued no immediate ruling Thursday. A live video feed of the unclassified portion of his hearing at Guantanamo was made available to reporters at Fort Meade, an Army base in Maryland.

Detainees are not permitted to speak at their review hearings, and Zubaydah sat in silence next to his attorney and the government representative. Dressed in a gray suit jacket and patterned gray tie, he often pressed his left index finger to his left temple or fidgeted with something in his hands. A worn-looking book sat in front of him.

Zubaydah’s lawyers, Conrad and Ahmed Almudallal, said in a statement before the hearing that he may never face charges.

“For the first time in over two decades, the military’s Chief Prosecutor believes it is unlikely our client will ever be charged,” the attorneys said. “This is a major change in circumstances that warrants he be cleared for transfer.”

Almudallal and Conrad said Zubaydah has "no intent to engage in violence against the United States in the future.”

“Now, at 55 years old, he’s eager to re-connect with his family and live out the rest of his days as a free person,” they said. “Twenty-four years in prison plus being ‘patient zero’ in the US government’s torture program has been punishment enough.”

He was first in the CIA's ‘enhanced interrogation’ program after 9/11

Zubaydah was thought to be a high-ranking member of al-Qaida when he was captured in Pakistan in 2002. A Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, Zubaydah was tortured abroad before being transferred to the Guantanamo in 2006.

The U.S. later dropped the claim that Zubaydah was one of the most senior figures in al-Qaida, although it has continued to regard him as a security risk. Zubaydah’s lawyers have repeatedly said over the years that he was not an al-Qaida member and point to waterboarding and other harsh treatment he experienced in the early 2000s.

Zubaydah was the first person in the CIA’s detention and interrogation program following 9/11 and subjected to what is now widely viewed as torture. He was held at CIA black sites in Poland and Lithuania, according to the European Court of Human Rights.

Zubaydah was waterboarded more than 80 times in a month at one point and confined over 11 days in a coffin-size box, among a raft of other mistreatment, a Senate report found.

In 2022, the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by Zubaydah, who was seeking testimony from two former CIA contractors as part of an investigation into his treatment when he was held in Poland. The court rejected his case because the government said it would expose state secrets, despite much of the information having been widely reported.

In January, a lawyer for Zubaydah said the British government had agreed to pay a “substantial sum” to settle a lawsuit that said U.K. intelligence agencies were complicit in his torture. Attorney Helen Duffy said the confidential settlement was symbolically and practically significant for the “intolerable suffering” that Zubaydah endured.

A British parliamentary committee found in 2018 that U.K. security and intelligence services were aware Zubaydah was being tortured but continued to provide questions for the CIA to ask him without seeking assurances of his condition.

Agentes acudieron a la escuela, ubicada en 6901 NW 16th St., y estaban registrando activamente el campus, informó la policía.

Dijeron que se estableció un perímetro alrededor de la escuela y que no se permitía que nadie entrara ni saliera del área mientras se realizaba la búsqueda.

El departamento de policía no proporcionó detalles adicionales en el aviso sobre el arma reportada ni informó si alguna persona resultó herida.

Esta es una noticia en desarrollo. Vea Local 10 News o actualice la página para conocer las últimas novedades.

Schroyer is close to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma. He has little experience with immigration.

The White House offered no comment in a brief statement. When he nominated Schroyer in June, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that his pick was “a PATRIOT with real operational experience” and a “proven leader with DECADES of experience locking up the worst of the worst.”

ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed leader since the Obama administration. David Venturella returned to the agency as acting director earlier this year after Todd Lyons resigned.

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Deputies with the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office said they took 42-year-old Ketsia Pierre Paul of northwest Miami-Dade into custody on Monday.

According to investigators, officials at the girl’s school contacted the Department of Children and Families after observing “multiple marks on her neck, arms and chest which appeared to be burn marks.”

Authorities had the girl examined by the Child Protection Team, who advised deputies the girl was “covered in scars, scarred abrasions, and a keloid scar, which were consistent with being hit with a telephone charging cord.”

When detectives spoke with the girl, they said she told them she was being abused at home “almost daily” with a phone charging cord, but was afraid to say who her abuser was, only that her abuser’s name started with the letter “K”.

Deputies wrote in Pierre Paul’s arrest report that she was the only person who lived with the girl whose name began with the letter “K”.

When investigators spoke with Pierre Paul, she admitted to seeing the injuries on the child, but said she “never sought out medical attention or to inquire who was harming her child,” according to her arrest report.

Jail records show she is facing felony charges of aggravated child abuse with great bodily harm and child neglect with great bodily harm.

As of Thursday afternoon, Pierre Paul was being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $7,500 bond.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Christian Castro faces state and federal charges stemming from the shooting of Julio Ceasar Sosa-Celis during a federal immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis area. Prosecutors say Castro falsely told investigators that he had been attacked with a broom and a shovel.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said in a social media post that it arrested Castro on Wednesday in downtown Minneapolis on an outstanding warrant charging him with assault and false reporting of a crime. The arrest followed a dispute between Minnesota authorities and Texas' governor over Minnesota's attempts to extradite Castro from his home state to face the state charges.

Castro remained jailed without bond in Hennepin County on Thursday awaiting an afternoon hearing in a state court.

Castro is also scheduled to appear Friday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis on the separate federal case in which he is charged with making false statements to investigators regarding the same shooting.

Castro’s defense attorneys in the federal case have said he plans to plead not guilty. Daniel Gerdts, listed in court records as Castro’s defense attorney in the state case, did not immediately return phone and email messages seeking comment Thursday.

It’s the first Justice Department prosecution of a federal officer for actions taken during this year’s massive Operation Metro Surge, which brought thousands of agents to the Twin Cities and led to sweeping protests, arrests and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal officers.

In both the federal and state cases against Castro, prosecutors say he shot 24-year-old Sosa-Celis in the leg while firing through the front door of a Minneapolis home. They say Castro later falsely reported he had been attacked with a broom handle and a snow shovel before firing his gun.

Minnesota authorities have battled with President Donald Trump's administration over who should handle any charges against Castro. The Department of Homeland Security has called Minnesota’s prosecution of Castro “unlawful and nothing more than a political stunt,” saying only federal authorities have jurisdiction.

Minnesota charged Castro months before his federal indictment. He was arrested in Texas in May on the Minnesota charges. But Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month refused to sign an extradition warrant to hand him over to Minnesota authorities. He was released in Texas and soon after was indicted on the federal charges. He then turned himself in to federal authorities and returned to Minnesota on his own.

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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.

The NBA champions put individual game tickets for the 2026-27 season on sale this week. The get-in price for the Oct. 20 season opener against Philadelphia was more than $1,000.

“We are pausing Knicks individual ticket sales due to a mistake in our pricing. We are rolling back to last year’s prices plus an average increase of 12%. We will restart sales with new prices shortly, and anyone who already purchased individual tickets will be refunded the difference," Madison Square Garden Sports said in a statement.

There is generally a ticket increase after seasons when the Knicks made the playoffs. Owner James Dolan has not raised them when the team does not.

“Our intention was never to overcharge our loyal fans, and we thank everyone for their support of the Knicks and their patience as we get this right,” MSG said.

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See AP’s full NBA coverage here

Other works cited this week by National Book Foundation judges include a story collection by Louise Erdrich, the latest novel from Norway's Karl Ove Knausgaard and a middle grade novel by Chanel Miller.

The foundation released lists of 10 nominees in five competitive categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, books in translation and young people's literature. Judges will pare the finalists to five in each category, to be announced Oct. 6. Winners will be revealed during a Nov. 18 ceremony in Manhattan, when honorary medals will be presented to Salman Rushdie for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and Perri Klass for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

James' novel, which also was on the long list for the Booker Prize, is a fiction nominee for the National Book Award, with others including Erdrich's “Python's Kiss,” Edwidge Danticat's “Dèy,” Valeria Luiselli's “Beginning Middle End” and Alexander Maksik's “Passengers.”

Miller, whose other books include her acclaimed memoir about being a victim of sexual assault, “Know My Name," is a young adult nominee for “The Moon Without Stars.”

Knausgaard's “The School of Night,” translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken, is on the translation long list, along with Taiwanese author Ping Lu's “To the East of the East” and Indonesian Intan Paramaditha's “Night of a Thousand Hells,” among others.

Nonfiction nominees include Colin Asher's “The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music” and Camonghne Felix's “Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom.” Layli Long Soldier's “We,” Victoria Chang's “Tree of Knowledge” and Richie Hofmann's “The Bronze Arms” were among the poetry nominees.

The video for the United Russia party came to light this week, days before Ovechkin's Washington Capitals held their annual media day Thursday. The NHL's career goal-scoring leader is back with the Capitals for a 22nd season.

Ovechkin is seen in the commercial standing behind Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Longtime Soviet hockey star Viacheslav Fetisov also participated.

“I’m Russian, and I support my country," Ovechkin said Thursday. "I’m for peace and love, and I hope in the world it doesn’t matter who you are, I hope everybody understands everybody wants peace, and everybody hope everything’s going to be OK in the world.”

Ovechkin said he did not hesitate to participate in the ad.

“They asked me to do that. I say yes," he said. "So it’s as simple as that.”

Ovechkin previously voiced support for the Russian president in 2017 when he started a social movement called the “Putin Team.” At the time, he told reporters from the AP and The Washington Post, “I just support my country."

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ovechkin said, “Please, no more war,” when asked about the situation. Asked then about his relationship with Putin, Ovechkin said: “He’s my president, but I’m not in politics. I’m an athlete.”

Russia’s parliamentary election this week features United Russia, plus nine others that all support Putin’s policies. The only party that opposed the war in Ukraine has been barred from the ballot.

Ovechkin, who turned 41 on Thursday, confirmed he plans to live in Russia when he retires from the NHL.

“I’m going to stay there. I’m going to live there, my kids are going to live there, family. So I’m for peace and love, and I hope everything’s going to be OK,” Ovechkin said. “My home is Russia. DC is my second home. I have lots of friends. I grew up here as a person and I love DC. This is my second home. So I hope everything’s going to be OK, and how I said — peace and love for everybody.”

There was speculation last season would be Ovechkin's last, but he chose to stay with the Capitals for at least another year — and he remains noncommital about what the future might hold after 2026-27.

“I'm focusing right now on training camp,” Ovechkin said. “I have to make the team.”

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See AP’s full NHL coverage here

Esta semana ha llovido en el norte y el centro-norte de Vietnam, y algunas zonas han recibido más de 50 centímetros (19,7 pulgadas), según el departamento de prevención de desastres.

Más de 2.000 viviendas han quedado sumergidas, muchas rutas están bloqueadas y más de 1.000 hogares han quedado aislados. Las provincias de Ninh Binh y Thanh Hoa, que incluyen zonas de llanura y colinas al sur de la capital, Hanói, están entre las más afectadas.

Vietnam figura entre los países del mundo más vulnerables al cambio climático y es propenso a las inundaciones. Una serie de tormentas severas el año pasado impulsó al país a buscar nuevas formas de prepararse para las inundaciones y gestionarlas.

En la provincia de Thanh Hoa, los estudiantes tuvieron que quedarse en casa porque las inundaciones impedían el trayecto a la escuela, informaron los medios estatales.

Las fuertes lluvias e inundaciones han sumergido o dañado unas 10.014 hectáreas (24.745 acres) de arroz y otros cultivos, con las mayores pérdidas reportadas en las provincias de Ninh Binh, Thanh Hoa y Nghe An. También han perecido miles de cabezas de ganado y aves de corral.

“El diluvio ocurre todos los años”, declaró el residente de Ninh Binh Tran Ngoc Tai a la cadena nacional VTV, y añadió que la gente estaba preparada con agua potable y alimentos.

Muchas calles de Hanói estaban profundamente inundadas la mañana del jueves, con casi un metro (3,2 pies) de agua en algunos lugares, lo que alteró el tráfico y dificultó a los residentes llegar al trabajo, llevar a los niños a la escuela o salir de sus casas.

Las precipitaciones desde la noche del miércoles hasta la mañana del jueves superaron los 15 centímetros (5,9 pulgadas) en algunas zonas, informaron los medios estatales.

Muchas escuelas secundarias y universidades de Hanói permanecieron cerradas o pasaron a clases en línea la tarde del jueves debido a las inundaciones.

El aumento del caudal del río Bui, en las afueras del suroeste de Hanói, amenazó con inundar viviendas, lo que llevó a las autoridades a desplegar a cientos de soldados para ayudar a los residentes a trasladar sus pertenencias a zonas más elevadas, informaron los medios estatales.

Una masa de aire frío se desplaza hacia el sur y podría traer fuertes lluvias al sur, incluyendo Ciudad Ho Chi Minh, capital financiera del país, según el Centro Hidrometeorológico Regional del Sur.

Los meteorólogos pronostican lluvias generalizadas hasta el 21 de septiembre. Las autoridades han advertido sobre inundaciones en zonas bajas y a lo largo de vías fluviales. Ciudad Ho Chi Minh podría recibir de 10 a 20 centímetros (4 a 8 pulgadas) de lluvia, y otros lugares aún más.

Vietnam sufrió repetidas inundaciones severas en 2025. La tormenta tropical Wipha trajo fuertes lluvias e inundaciones en julio, seguida de más inundaciones y deslizamientos en agosto cuando golpeó la tormenta tropical Kajiki. El tifón Bualoi causó al menos 26 muertos en septiembre. En octubre, las ciudades históricas de Hue y Hoi An, en el centro de Vietnam, se inundaron, junto con gran parte del norte del país.

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

Led by head coach Paul Maurice, the Panthers are healthy and excited to get back to their winning ways after suffering through an injury-plagued season a year ago that saw Florida fail to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2019.

Players were split into two groups during the first day of practice, with many of the team’s expected Opening Night roster going out with group one.

That included Panthers captain Sasha Barkov, who missed the entire 2025-26 season after suffering a knee injury during his first training camp practice almost exactly one year ago.

Barkov looked like his usual self during Thursday’s practice, much to the delight of his coaches and teammates.

One of the new faces on the ice was goaltender Jacob Markstrom.

He was actually drafted by the Panthers all the way back in 2008 and made his NHL debut in Florida a couple years later, but only played 43 games in a Florida sweater before he was traded to Vancouver in the 2014 deal that brought Roberto Luongo back to the Cats.

Twelve years and 535 games later, Markstrom is back in South Florida ready to help the team that brought him into the league win another Stanley Cup or two.

“Ever since I got here over a month ago, I’ve been super impressed with the team and the organization and what (owner) Vinny Viola has done to this franchise, its really impressive,” Markstrom said.

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Umbrellas were a common sight as people waited at bus stops and made their way to work and other morning destinations.

For some Fort Lauderdale residents, however, the heavy rain can mean more than a wet commute. Rising water can quickly lead to flooding around homes and yards.

A resident who lives near Northwest 13th Street and Ninth Avenue said rising water can wash out his entire yard during periods of heavy rainfall.

The downpours also can overwhelm storm drains, causing water to collect on streets and in low-lying areas.

In some neighborhoods, the flooding began to recede once the rain eased, allowing standing water to drain away.

Broward County officials said all available vacuum trucks have been deployed to clear stormwater systems and assist with flooding in high-risk areas.

The county also has pumps ready for use in low-lying areas and said crews will continue flood-control operations throughout the day.

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The proposals come after Miami commissioners voted 4-1 last week to continue using the historic waterfront building at 3500 Pan American Drive for City Commission meetings, even as much of the city government prepares to move to a new administrative complex near Miami Freedom Park.

The building, constructed in 1933 as a Pan American World Airways seaplane terminal, has served as Miami City Hall since 1954.

The Museum of Miami and Pan Am had previously pitched potential uses for the site.

The Museum of Miami proposed preserving the historic terminal while building a dedicated museum nearby. The museum said the site could become a civic campus featuring Miami history, community programming and continued government functions.

Pan American World Airways, LLC proposed using some offices in the building for its sales, marketing and corporate communications teams while allowing commissioners to continue meeting on the ground floor. The company also proposed incorporating Pan Am memorabilia into the building and, eventually, operating 12-seat, all-electric seaplanes from the waterfront.

The proposals and renderings have now been submitted to the city as part of letters of intent and formal proposals.

For now, however, the city says it is not entertaining a different use of the Dinner Key facilities.

The historic building has been at the center of a debate over how Miami can preserve its architectural and aviation history while accommodating the city’s future administrative needs. Commissioners supporting continued City Hall use have emphasized the building’s civic role and its connection to Miami’s history as an international gateway.

The Sept. 10 resolution by District 2 Commissioner Damian Pardo called for continued use of the building as City Hall and for regular commission meetings to remain there. District 1 Commissioner Miguel Gabela was the lone vote against the measure, citing concerns about potential duplication of taxpayer-funded facilities.

Las propuestas llegan después de que los comisionados de Miami votaran 4-1 la semana pasada para continuar utilizando el histórico edificio frente al mar, ubicado en 3500 Pan American Drive, para las reuniones de la Comisión de la Ciudad, incluso mientras gran parte del gobierno municipal se prepara para trasladarse a un nuevo complejo administrativo cerca de Miami Freedom Park.

El edificio, construido en 1933 como una terminal de hidroaviones de Pan American World Airways, ha servido como Ayuntamiento de Miami desde 1954.

El Museum of Miami y Pan Am habían propuesto anteriormente posibles usos para el lugar.

El Museum of Miami propuso preservar la histórica terminal mientras construye un museo dedicado en las cercanías. El museo dijo que el lugar podría convertirse en un campus cívico que incluya la historia de Miami, programas comunitarios y la continuidad de funciones gubernamentales.

Pan American World Airways, LLC propuso utilizar algunas oficinas del edificio para sus equipos de ventas, mercadeo y comunicaciones corporativas, mientras permite que los comisionados continúen reuniéndose en la planta baja. La compañía también propuso incorporar objetos históricos de Pan Am en el edificio y, eventualmente, operar hidroaviones totalmente eléctricos con capacidad para 12 personas desde el frente marítimo.

Las propuestas y representaciones gráficas ya fueron presentadas a la ciudad como parte de cartas de intención y propuestas formales.

Sin embargo, por ahora, la ciudad dice que no está considerando un uso diferente para las instalaciones de Dinner Key.

El histórico edificio ha estado en el centro de un debate sobre cómo Miami puede preservar su historia arquitectónica y de aviación mientras atiende las futuras necesidades administrativas de la ciudad. Los comisionados que apoyan que continúe utilizándose como Ayuntamiento han enfatizado el papel cívico del edificio y su conexión con la historia de Miami como puerta de entrada internacional.

La resolución del 10 de septiembre del comisionado del Distrito 2, Damian Pardo, pidió que el edificio continúe utilizándose como Ayuntamiento y que las reuniones regulares de la comisión permanezcan allí. El comisionado del Distrito 1, Miguel Gabela, fue el único que votó en contra de la medida, citando preocupaciones sobre una posible duplicación de instalaciones financiadas por los contribuyentes.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the long-running dispute over whether the state should use the new Republican-drawn U.S. House districts, just as the state did in its August primary. But it wasn't immediately clear what the impact would be, even if the panel rules in favor of the new map. That's because the U.S. Supreme Court previously blocked the enforcement of a lower court order favoring the map pending a potential appeal and eventual decision by the high court.

Missouri currently is set to run its November election with the same congressional districts it used in 2024 and 2022, following prior decisions by both the Missouri Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court.

Local elections officials said in a court filing that they already are printing ballots with those districts and face a Friday deadline under federal law to mail absentee ballots to overseas citizens and military voters. State law requires absentee ballots to be available to all other voters by next Tuesday.

To try to change districts at this late date would be “practically impossible” and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the filing by the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities.

Republicans press for a map switch

An attorney representing Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Onder and state Sen. Rick Brattin — the GOP nominee in one of the congressional districts — suggested to appeals court judges that there still is time to revert to the Trump-backed map.

As he had argued in lower courts, Missouri Solicitor General Lou Capozzi urged the appeals panel to rule that the U.S. Constitution forbids a referendum petition from suspending a congressional map passed by lawmakers until a statewide vote can be held on it — though that's exactly what Missouri's top court has ruled is required under the state constitution.

The appeals court judges indicated they would rule quickly, noting any decision they make is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We’ve got to decide, and then they’ve got to decide, and then the poor election officials have to deal with where everything is,” said Judge James Loken, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush.

Loken pointedly questioned the attorney for the group People Not Politicians, which gathered petition signatures forcing the new Trump-backed map to a statewide vote. As attorney Chuck Hatfield argued it was too late for the appeals panel to try to make changes to the election, an exasperated Loken eventually cut him off, declaring: “You’re out of time, dang it!”

The two other panelists — judges David Stras and Justin Smith — are both Trump appointees. Prior to his June appointment, Smith was an attorney who represented Trump as he unsuccessfully appealed a $5 million jury verdict in a lawsuit filed by the writer E. Jean Carroll to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Missouri redistricting battle took many twists

Missouri’s redistricting battle has been the longest, most complex and confusing among roughly a dozen states that sought to change their U.S. House districts over the past year. Trump spurred the unusual spate of mid-decade redistricting when he urged Republican-led states to redraw districts to gain an edge in the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress and affect his agenda.

Missouri lawmakers passed a new congressional map last September that significantly reshaped a Kansas City-based district held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. Brattin won a Republican primary to challenge Cleaver. Republicans hoped the map could help them win seven of the state’s eight House seats — one more than they currently hold.

But opponents submitted thousands of petition signatures in December seeking to force a statewide vote on the new districts. Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins waited until August — on the same day that the primary was held under the new districts — to reject the petition. He asserted that referendum petitions aren’t allowed for congressional redistricting.

The Missouri Supreme Court reversed Hoskins’ finding in September, barring the new map from being used until voters can decide whether to uphold or reject it in a November referendum. The court said the state must instead use the districts approved in 2022.

But that wasn’t the end of the matter. A federal judge in St. Louis later issued a conflicting order barring the use of anything other than the new Trump-backed map. That judge said it could violate federal rights to switch districts between the primary and general elections. The U.S. Supreme Court halted that judge’s order last week, but the 8th Circuit appellate court proceeded to hear arguments on the issue Thursday.

Los paraguas fueron una imagen común mientras las personas esperaban en las paradas de autobús y se dirigían al trabajo y a otros destinos durante la mañana.

Sin embargo, para algunos residentes de Fort Lauderdale, las fuertes lluvias pueden significar más que un trayecto mojado. El aumento del nivel del agua puede provocar rápidamente inundaciones alrededor de viviendas y patios.

Un residente que vive cerca de Northwest 13th Street y Ninth Avenue dijo que el aumento del nivel del agua puede inundar por completo su patio durante períodos de fuertes lluvias.

Los aguaceros también pueden sobrecargar los desagües pluviales, provocando que el agua se acumule en las calles y en áreas bajas.

En algunos vecindarios, las inundaciones comenzaron a disminuir una vez que amainó la lluvia, permitiendo que el agua estancada drenara.

Funcionarios del condado Broward dijeron que todos los camiones de succión disponibles han sido desplegados para despejar los sistemas de drenaje pluvial y ayudar con las inundaciones en áreas de alto riesgo.

El condado también tiene bombas listas para ser utilizadas en áreas bajas y dijo que las cuadrillas continuarán las operaciones de control de inundaciones durante todo el día.

Ocurría la mañana de este jueves en el área de la cuadra 15000 de Southwest 140th Street.

Una escuela cercana, Jorge Mas Canosa Middle School, fue puesta bajo cierre temporal, que desde entonces fue levantado.

Funcionarios de las Escuelas Públicas del Condado Miami-Dade dijeron a Local 10 News que el cierre se debió a “actividad policial en el área no relacionada con la escuela”.

Un video obtenido por Local 10 News muestra a dos hombres forcejeando en el área cerca de la escuela y, en un momento del video, se escucha lo que parece ser un disparo.

La policía aún no ha proporcionado información oficial sobre lo ocurrido o lo que está investigando.

Según Bomberos y Rescate de Miami-Dade, una persona fue atendida en el lugar, pero no fue trasladada a un hospital del área.

When officers pulled the vehicle over for inspection, in Baerum, west of the capital, in April 2025, they discovered tens of thousands of American Eagle silver coins. A second van that arrived shortly afterward was found to be carrying tens of thousands more.

The total take: Nearly 67,000 coins worth at least 25 million Norwegian krone (about $2.65 million), officials said.

On Thursday, the economic crime unit Okokrim announced that three Norwegians have been sentenced to prison over the illegal possession of the coins.

The convictions on charges of aggravated money laundering followed allegations that proceeds from a “major investment scheme" in the United States had been converted into millions of dollars worth of coins.

The three Norwegians — two men and a woman — were convicted in connection with organizing the scheme and storing the coins, and sentenced up to 2-1/2 years in prison.

Two Britons facing charges were acquitted. Both sides can appeal, and the verdict is not final.

“It is gratifying that the silver has been recovered and that a verdict has now been handed down, enabling the victims of the fraud in the U.S.A to have the misappropriated assets returned to them,” Public Prosecutor Jon André Hvoslef-Eide said in a statement.

Speaking to The Associated Press, Hvoslef-Eide said the victims, who he did not identify, could only have the assets returned once the judicial process had been completed.

An earlier hoard of 79,500 silver coins was found in 2019. Investigators were still searching for more missing U.S. silver coins, at the request of American authorities, when they made their discovery in 2025, Hvoslef-Eide said.

The U.S. Mint produces American Eagle coins for collectors in a variety of metals, including gold, silver and palladium, each with a different value. Because the price of silver has risen significantly in the past year, the Norwegian haul is even more valuable than when it disappeared.

He’s returned three decades later with far more numerous and somewhat smaller instruments at his disposal as music director of the New York Philharmonic.

“It’s a lot about that bubbling energy, this city,” he said this week at his office in David Geffen Hall.

Now 45, Dudamel took over as music and artistic director last week after 17 celebrated seasons leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He is the 27th man to head the New York orchestra, following luminaries that included Gustav Mahler, Willem Mengelberg, Bruno Walter, Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez.

A product of Venezuela’s El Sistema music education program, Dudamel was a violinist with the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela when he played at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in October 1995 and traveled with the orchestra by bus for a concert at the United Nations.

“They said we were going to cross a tunnel that is under the river, and we were: `Like, what?’ That was kind of another world,” Dudamel said. “I remember before getting to the river, there were the Twin Towers. Then I saw Statue of Liberty, and then they took us to the U.N. And then they took us to the toy store. We were like in paradise.”

High-profile start mixing genres

Dudamel's early schedule is a whirlwind. An opening concert at Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 10 was hosted by actor Liev Schreiber and featured Lizzo, St. Vincent, Joaquina and Aaron Tveit. The celebration continued with an after-party high atop Manhattan in the Rainbow Room.

“Gustavo Dudamel is not an easy person to describe,” Schreiber told the concert crowd. “Imagine if you added a teaspoon of Billy Joel, an ounce of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a cup of Tito Puente to a dash of Barbra Streisand.”

Dudamel shifted downtown the next day for a Sounds of Remembrance performance at the World Trade Center arts center for the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“Music belongs so profoundly to moments like this,” Dudamel said softly. “Music cannot undo what happened. But when words can no longer reach where we need them to go, sometimes music can. It can give sorrow a voice.”

Subscription concerts started this week with Sergei Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, which he conducted for his New York Philharmonic debut on Nov. 29, 2007.

“There are not borders. There are bridges," Dudamel said. “A symphonic orchestra can also be immersed in a pop, folk, musicals. We are all in the same space. I think that is the message.”

Just a month into his tenure, the orchestra embarks Oct. 9 on a two-week, 10-show European tour, then returns in November to Carnegie Hall, its home from 1891 to 1962, for concert performances of Puccini's “Tosca.”

“There’s this chemistry and passion that he brings to the table, which is infectious,” said Sherry Sylar, associate principal oboe since 1984. “When he’s rehearsing, he addresses the orchestra as `My dears.’ He’ll start to give you a constructive criticism, but it’s always with that as the address to the orchestra. Nobody has ever done that before. It just sort of changes the way you accept the criticism or suggestions.”

Celebrity beyond classical music

While he usually has a car with a driver, Dudamel also walks around New York and takes the subway when there is heavy traffic, getting recognized at times.

With his dark mop of black hair and Giorgio Armani conducting suits, Dudamel is so much the image of a 21st century conductor that Gael García Bernal's character for the “Mozart in the Jungle” television series was patterned after him.

Still, he is somewhat traditional: He prefers listening to music on vinyl records and frequented The Record Collector on Melrose Ave. in Los Angeles for additions to his collection. He thinks his first record was of Daniel Barenboim leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky's “1812” overture.

“I love the sound of the LPs,” Dudamel said. “I destroyed some of them because I was stopping, because I was rehearsing conducting. My father was so angry."

Dudamel also maintains a home in Madrid and remains undecided whether to seek an apartment on New York's Upper West Side, near the orchestra's Lincoln Center home, or in the Chelsea neighborhood downtown. He's become a fan of some of the city's top restaurants, mentioning Cosme, Milos, Mercado Little Spain and Casa Ora, renowned for its Venezuelan cuisine.

Repositioning the orchestra, on stage as well as commercially

Ticket revenue for this season has increased by 8% through the same time last year and seats sold in September are up 20% vs. 2025. Subscription package revenue is at $12.4 million, rising from $11.3 million.

One of Dudamel's first changes was to move the second violin section from his left to his right, opposite the first violins, and to switch the double basses from his right to his left — a formation he used in LA. He's shifted the entire orchestra closer to the front of the stage at David Geffen Hall and had their seats bunched closer together.

“It feels like giant chamber music,” violinist Alina Ming Kobialka said. “It’s nice to have the brass and not 500 miles away from us.”

Dudamel has a five-year contract and will spend about 15 weeks with the orchestra each season. He began his first rehearsal on Labor Day, Sept. 7, with a short speech to the musicians, some of whom played in his New York Philharmonic debut.

Dudamel recalled then music director Lorin Maazel took the unusual step to personally introduce him at his first rehearsal in 2007. Dudamel was aware of the orchestra’s reputation then as a difficult ensemble.

“I was very afraid,” he remembered thinking. “I’m going to be shaking for the very first few minutes. But at the end it was such a beautiful and wonderful journey,”

So she expressed her milk sitting at a dining table when none of her colleagues were eating meals there.

One day, the CEO of the private ambulance company she worked for paid a surprise visit to the station and introduced himself to Fernandez while she was pumping.

“This is his first impression of me, and I was in a panic," Fernandez said, recalling how she told the CEO she could not shake his hand because hers probably had milk on it. She worried the awkward exchange might have career consequences. "Am I going to get fired? Or is this going to impact my future here if I move up within the company?” she thought.

Many women encounter discrimination during pregnancy and after childbirth, despite state and federal laws designed to protect them. As a result, pregnant and postpartum workers often worry about how hiring managers or their existing employers will view them if they disclose a pregnancy or request job modifications as new mothers.

“Their employer is required to provide them accommodations, if those are available, and see if there’s a different job that they can do while they’re pregnant," said Cortney Shegerian, co-founder of Shegerian Conniff, a Los Angeles law firm that represents workers alleging pregnancy discrimination and breastfeeding rights violations. “That oftentimes is seen by the employer as a big inconvenience, as something that they just don’t want to deal with.”

These are suggestions from legal experts and workers for ensuring pregnancy-related employment needs are respected before and after a baby is born.

Know your rights under the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

Under a U.S. law that took effect in June 2023, employers with at least 15 workers are required to make reasonable health and safety accommodations so employees who are pregnant or have recently gave birth can remain in their jobs.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act entitles women to seek a wide range of changes at work, including help with physically demanding tasks like lifting heavy objects, flexible scheduling to attend medical appointments and reduced exposure to hazardous chemicals, according to guidance published by A Better Balance, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that promotes gender and racial equality in workplace policies.

The law also protects those who are trying to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization and pregnant workers with medical conditions such as severe nausea and vomiting, A Better Balance President Inimai Chettiar said. For nursing mothers, the law guarantees breaks and a private space other than a bathroom for lactation needs.

“Your employer cannot force you on leave or retaliate against you for requesting accommodation,” Chettiar said. “And the employer has to prove that it would be an undue hardship for them to deny the accommodation, and that’s a really high legal standard. They have to prove it would cause them significant difficulty or expense.”

Weigh the best time to tell your employer about your pregnancy

Deciding when to tell a manager or a potential employer about a pregnancy is one of the first considerations for most women.

“The sad reality is that pregnant workers still need to tread really carefully, and in our experience pregnancy discrimination is still insidious and rampant,” Chettiar said. “But I want to also emphasize that you do have rights as a pregnant worker.”

To access the protections of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, your employer needs to know you have a need related to pregnancy, childbirth or a medical condition. But that doesn't mean your direct supervisor and all of your co-workers do; some companies allow you to discuss requests directly with the human resources department, according to A Better Balance.

“If you do decide to tell your workplace what’s going on, keep track of how it goes, take notes, put things in writing, especially if you’re worried that they could retaliate," Chettiar added.

Shegerian recommends informing employers about a pregnancy when it's far enough along that you would tell friends. For many people, that's after the first trimester.

“Let them know, ‘Listen, I’m pregnant ... and feeling fine so far but I’m due on such-and-such date, and I’m not sure about my leave yet, but I’ll keep you posted,’” Shegerian said.

If a doctor advises modifications to your duties or work environment, get the specific advice in writing, and let your employer know as soon as possible, Shegerian suggested.

Decide how to handle job interviews

Women may be reluctant to mention pregnancies out of fear the information might put them out of the running for promotions or new jobs. A disqualification on that basis counts as discrimination under the law, Shegerian said.

“I would hate for the illegal thing to happen, which is that an employer automatically says, ‘This person is going to be out in nine months ... and we just don’t want to deal with that, so let’s take her out of the pile,'” she said.

Amy Green had three miscarriages before she started receiving daily hormone injections to help maintain another pregnancy. The shots made her feel ill, but she was well enough by the end of the first trimester to look for work as a school counselor.

A 1978 amendment to the groundbreaking Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited workplace discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions. Green still worried she wouldn't be considered for jobs and wore a loose tank top and a cardigan to conceal her condition. She needed work, especially the health insurance.

“There's no right answer,” Green said, adding that disclosing might increase the risk of not getting hired but withholding could create the impression of intentional deception. “We’ve built this process for women where there’s no good choice.”

After your child's birth or miscarriage, you still have rights

Protections don't end with a pregnancy. New mothers can request pair or unpaid time off to recover from miscarriages or for medical conditions such as postpartum depression.

They are also entitled to breaks and private spaces for expressing breast milk. With no space available at her dispatch station, Fernandez, the EMT, used rooms in hospitals to pump when she was out delivering patients.

Then a manager told Fernandez her pumping breaks interfered with the needs of hospital and patient customers. If a transport call came in while she was pumping and she couldn't respond immediately, it would be passed to another medical service; the manager gave Fernandez two weeks to pick a new shift to work.

She panicked, not knowing how she would manage childcare if her hours changed. She called a help line at A Better Balance and learned that imposing schedule changes because of lactation was considered retaliation, which both the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and a law that took force in 2022, the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act, prohibit.

In the end, Fernandez got to stick with her original schedule.

“If my ambulance service ... is willing to accommodate my breastfeeding needs, there’s no reason why any other job should not be willing to,” Fernandez said.

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Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at cbussewitz@ap.org. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well

El hallazgo de Timothy Allen Smith elevó a tres el número de muertos por las inundaciones que devastaron la zona de Phantom Ranch, en el fondo del cañón, y dañaron la tubería de agua que abastece al Borde Sur.

Smith, de 53 años, era piloto y vivía en Star Valley, en el oeste de Wyoming. Sus restos fueron encontrados el lunes cerca de Crystal Rapids, en el río Colorado, que atraviesa el cañón.

Los restos de los dos compañeros de Smith -- Brent Rosenkranz, de 42 años, y John Giusti, de 46, ambos de Granbury, Texas -- fueron hallados anteriormente.

Smith creció en Granbury y vivía con su esposa en Star Valley Ranch, a unos 64 kilómetros (40 millas) al suroeste de Jackson.

Él, Rosenkranz y Giusti estaban en un viaje de senderismo, pesca y campamento cuando las inundaciones arrasaron el Gran Cañón.

Durante el diluvio, los equipos de búsqueda utilizaron visión nocturna y otros equipos para encontrar a personas varadas. Usaron el sistema de permisos del Parque Nacional del Gran Cañón y revisaron matrículas de vehículos para rastrear a quienes seguían desaparecidos. Más de 80 personas fueron rescatadas.

Pronto, Smith fue el único que permanecía desaparecido. En un video de Facebook de ese momento, su esposa, Carrie, y sus hijos agradecieron a la gente por el apoyo y las oraciones.

Carrie Smith publicó en Facebook el martes por la mañana que la familia sabía que se había encontrado un cuerpo un día antes y pidió que oraran con ellos.

Smith confirmó en una publicación de Facebook el jueves que los restos habían sido identificados como los de su esposo.

“Mi familia ha esperado mucho durante las últimas tres semanas… esperando y con la esperanza de que Tim (papá) volviera a casa, esperando y preguntándonos si los restos encontrados eran Tim (papá)”, escribió. “Ya no tenemos que esperar; Tim fue encontrado hace dos días por los guardabosques del Parque Nacional del Gran Cañón. No de la manera que esperábamos, pero sabemos que estaba haciendo algo que amaba con John y Brent”.

Añadió: “Sabemos que estos tres hombres amaban al Señor y eran una luz brillante para Él. El impacto que sus vidas tuvieron en los demás todavía se refleja a diario en nuestras familias”.

El Servicio de Parques Nacionales y el Departamento del Interior no respondieron el jueves a correos electrónicos en que se solicitaban comentarios. Las agencias no han identificado públicamente los restos hallados esta semana.

Las inundaciones comenzaron el 29 de agosto durante la temporada de monzones cuando los cielos despejados pueden dar paso rápidamente a tormentas eléctricas y lluvias intensas. Un paisaje desértico puede canalizar el agua hacia torrentes repentinos por barrancos y cañones que antes estaban secos.

La lluvia cayó sobre parte de una zona quemada del Borde Norte que quedó tras un incendio forestal provocado por un rayo en julio de 2025. El fuego destruyó el histórico Grand Canyon Lodge, cabañas y otras estructuras.

Los parajes chamuscados pueden agravar inundaciones repentinas porque tienen menos vegetación para absorber la escorrentía.

Las inundaciones dañaron una tubería que atraviesa el cañón y suministra agua a millones de turistas y residentes. La falta de agua obligó a suspender todos los alojamientos nocturnos hasta que pudiera restablecerse la tubería. El Servicio de Parques Nacionales declaró recientemente que esperaba restablecer el suministro de agua en el cañón en cuestión de semanas después de determinar que la mayor parte de un proyecto de tubería casi terminado no resultó dañada durante el suceso.

Muchos senderos y zonas de alojamiento siguen cerrados, y se ha cortado el agua en el interior del cañón, lo que ha motivado avisos para que los excursionistas lleven su propia agua o dispositivos de filtración.

Otra inundación repentina golpeó el cañón a lo largo de Bright Angel Creek y el río Colorado durante una tormenta el miércoles, informaron funcionarios del parque. No se reportaron heridos. Las autoridades indicaron que los esfuerzos por reducir al mínimo el personal en el cañón antes de la tormenta, así como las alertas por inundaciones repentinas, permitieron que los equipos se pusieran a salvo. Se estaban realizando evaluaciones de daños.

_________________________________

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

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said his ruling would “avoid any confusion on that score given more recent events,” including the sudden closure of the building to the public on Wednesday.

Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s executive director and chief operating officer, said he closed the iconic performing arts center temporarily due to “acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration” of the aging building. The building will be closed for at least seven days to “assess existing safety risks in those portions of the main building exhibiting severe structural deterioration,” Floca said.

The temporary closure, which occurred without notice, is separate from a vote Tuesday by the Kennedy Center’s board to close the performing arts center indefinitely for repairs, Floca and other officials said. The closure was based on an inspection of the roof terrace canopy and a partial ceiling collapse earlier this month, Floca said. The closure may be extended after evaluation next week, he added.

Trump said the Kennedy Center could be ‘ripped down’

Trump, who was named the Kennedy Center’s chairman last year by loyalists on the board, said Wednesday that his efforts to restore the aging building deserve recognition, “because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down. It’s in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape.”

The announcement of the closure came in response to a court case filed by a Democratic congresswoman who is a trustee and sought an emergency court hearing to prevent what she called the building’s “unlawful closing.”

Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board, has led efforts to block Trump’s name from being added to the building. Beatty had a verbal confrontation with the Republican president Tuesday during a virtual board meeting.

Beatty's lawyers said in a court filing Thursday that the board members' “rationale that they are only temporarily closing the Kennedy Center is a plain pretext to justify shutting down the Center permanently. The facts before the Court are deeply concerning.”

Cooper denied a request by Beatty's legal team to hold a hearing to clarify the board's actions and intent. But he agreed to their request “to make crystal clear” that his order prohibits demolition of the building without 30 days’ notice.

The Trump-aligned board, chaired by the president, voted to close the center after Cooper blocked the institution from returning Trump’s name to the building.

Congress has allocated $257 million to cover the repairs, but Trump said they only would happen if the board was permitted to move forward with plans to add his name to the building.

Barbra Streisand calls the dispute ‘painful to witness’

On Thursday, Barbra Streisand, a Kennedy Center honoree in 2008, questioned the closing of the center for repairs and called the controversy surrounding its operation “galling and painful to witness.”

Of Trump’s attempts to add his name to the center, she said in a statement to The Associated Press: “You can easily imagine my indignation at seeing this revered institution become the subject of such a bitter struggle over one man’s name and unchecked ego.”

The Kennedy Center board voted in August to inscribe Trump's name on the Kennedy Center’s facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.” If the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million, another inscription would be added reading “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

The plaza in front of the Kennedy Center would also have been renamed in Trump’s honor.

All of those proposals were shot down Tuesday by Cooper, who ruled that nothing could happen “without Congress’s blessing.”

Cooper ruled in May that the Kennedy Center illegally added Trump’s name to the building, ordering it removed. The institution’s leaders complied in June but left a tarp and scaffolding in place where Trump’s name was once displayed.

Streisand told AP she was deeply honored to be included in the 31st annual class of Kennedy Center Honorees, adding, “for me, and for so many artists, that honor represented something larger than a career recognition. It represented a belief in the importance of art to the life of a democracy.”

___

Associated Press writer Glenn Gamboa in Cleveland contributed to this report.

“Los deberes los tenemos que hacer nosotros, nuestras Fuerzas Armadas y nuestra policía”, dijo el mandatario en declaraciones a radio Élite al explicar que el gobierno enfrenta a unos 80.000 integrantes de bandas criminales.

Noboa afirmó que para la lucha contra estas redes delictivas Ecuador ha recibido la cooperación de Estados Unidos, que entregó equipos, asistencia económica, información e inteligencia; de Italia y de otros países europeos, así como de Argentina, Brasil, Israel, Corea del Sur y Japón.

A su vez destacó la iniciativa Escudo de las Américas, una coalición de países afines en la región para ejecutar acciones conjuntas contra los cárteles impulsada por el mandatario estadounidense Donald Trump. "Por fin hay un acuerdo continental sobre la lucha contra el narcotráfico”, expresó Noboa.

Pero la alianza con Estados Unidos ha sido cuestionada por su falta de efectividad para disminuir el delito.

“Hay que revisar indicadores de inversión social, qué tipo de oportunidades laborales se están generando” para neutralizar la influencia delictiva, destacó Diego Pérez, catedrático de la Escuela de Seguridad y Defensa del Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales. En diálogo con The Associated Press añadió que “las dinámicas de criminalidad en ningún país se revierten con mano dura”.

Desde 2021 las disputas entre bandas locales asociadas con cárteles de Colombia y México por rutas de distribución de drogas han desencadenado una escalada criminal en Ecuador y el aumento de delitos como el sicariato, el secuestro y la extorsión.

Noboa atribuyó el crecimiento del narcotráfico en Ecuador a que “no había control en la frontera con Colombia y no había tampoco control al ingreso de armas en la frontera sur” con Perú. De acuerdo con organismos internacionales, la mayor parte de la droga que llega a Ecuador procede de esos países.

El presidente señaló que en el sur colombiano, fronterizo con Ecuador, hay “un récord de siembra de coca", especialmente en la zona de Nariño y Putumayo, por lo que "nosotros terminamos afectados directamente, debido a lo permisivos que fueron gobiernos anteriores en Colombia".

El área sembrada con coca en Colombia en 2024 alcanzó las 261.000 hectáreas, de acuerdo con el último informe disponible de la Oficina de las Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito.

Desde inicios de año, alrededor de una docena de barcos pesqueros ecuatorianos han sido hundidos por Estados Unidos en el océano Pacífico acusados de ser estaciones de combustible flotantes al servicio del narcotráfico. Organismos internacionales señalan que un 70% de la cocaína mundial es exportada desde Ecuador.

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The girl told her parents a man had molested her on Sept. 12 at at the Lowe’s at 1650 West 37th St., records show.

Hialeah police officers arrested Jose Cremades on Tuesday after surveillance video showed him crouching down near the girl, according to police.

Cremades faced a charge of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under 12.

Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Mindy S. Glazer denied him bond. Cremades also had an immigration hold.

Local 10 News reached out to Lowe’s for comment, and they responded with the following statement:

“Safety is our top priority and we are doing everything we can to assist local law enforcement. Because this is an active investigation, we ask that you reach out to the Hialeah Police Department.”

Lowe's

Kyl died Wednesday night from a neurological disorder, said Gordon James, a communications professional who is a longtime friend of the Kyl family. Kyl had withdrawn from public life in December 2025 after announcing he had been diagnosed with dementia.

Kyl spent almost three decades in Congress, serving in both chambers, and watched his party undergo a drastic transformation, with his career spanning Ronald Reagan’s presidency to President Donald Trump’s first term.

“Arizonans are mourning the loss of former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl,” Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said in a post. “Throughout his decades of public service in the House and Senate, he was a dedicated statesman who always cared deeply for our state.”

Former Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who considered Kyl a mentor, described the former senator in a February 2025 interview with The Associated Press as a true statesman and a “workhorse” among Washington, D.C.’s “showhorses.”

“If you saw him on the plane, he was sitting in the aisle, in coach, and he was reading,” Ducey said. “And he was reading potential bills or Senate business.”

Kyl returns briefly to Senate to fill McCain seat

Kyl rose to a leadership position during his last full term in the Senate, when his Republican colleagues selected him as minority whip. After retiring from politics in 2013 and becoming a lobbyist, Kyl returned to Congress briefly in 2018, when Ducey appointed him to fill the vacancy left by the late U.S. Sen. John McCain.

His appointment drew high praise from Trump, who said he was looking forward to working with “the extraordinary senator.” Kyl stayed for less than four months before rejoining lobbying firm Covington and Burling.

“At the federal level, and I regret to say that this is the case, but probably a lot of my better achievements were in preventing bad things from happening (rather) than forcing good things to happen,” Kyl said in a 2012 conversation with former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Lawyer with expertise in water gets elected

Kyl was born in Oakland, Nebraska, on April 25, 1942, and grew up in a rural farming district in Iowa that his father represented in the U.S. House. At 18, he headed southwest to attend the University of Arizona, where he met his wife, Caryll, and earned a law degree.

Before being elected for the first of his four terms in the House in 1987, Kyl was a key participant in shaping Arizona’s 1980 groundwater code as a lawyer representing a large water utility. The first-of-its-kind code created a regulatory framework for managing groundwater in the drought-stricken state, largely centering on the state’s population centers, including Phoenix and Tucson.

In 2004, Kyl authored legislation that provided one of the largest tribal water rights settlements, which, after a decades-long battle, gave the Gila River Indian Community enough water to fill nearly 313,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools annually. Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who later served as majority leader, called Kyl's work ethic “legendary” in a 2012 floor speech and said Kyl had labored mostly behind the scenes for 15 years to advance the settlement.

Former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake said he had long admired Kyl and appreciated the advice he offered when Flake started his political career. “The government needs people who are willing to serve a cause greater than their own self-interest, and that personified Jon,” Flake said. “He was a true public servant.”

Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy takes its name from him. Its director, Sarah Porter, said Kyl was generous with his time and an effective member of the state’s congressional delegation who took a practical approach to water policy. “He’s always sort of cared about the public good and been able to think about, ‘What will this mean for the generations to come?’” Porter said, adding that Kyl remained “quite a dynamo” until recent years, as his wife battled health problems.

‘Giant’ in the Senate kept Republican caucus together

Ducey said Kyl was a “giant” in the Senate, further describing him as serious, engaging, forthright and thoughtful. His biggest impacts, Ducey said, came from the way he kept the Republican caucus together in opposition to Obamacare and his staunch support of Israel.

Kyl also backed legislation to authorize construction of a fence stretching hundreds of miles along the U.S.-Mexico border. He later joined with Democrats to support a bill that would provide a path to citizenship and temporary guest-worker status for those in the U.S. without authorization. The proposal ultimately failed.

As a lobbyist, Kyl helped guide the confirmation of Trump-picked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. When Kyl returned to the halls of Congress in 2018, he was known as Kavanaugh’s chief Sherpa — an informal but widely known term for a nominee’s guide to the political tundra in the Senate.

In a statement disclosing his dementia diagnosis, Kyl harkened back to the words of Reagan, when the former president revealed his own Alzheimer’s diagnosis and said he was starting a journey that would lead him to the end of his life.

Kyl said he shared Reagan’s confidence for Arizona and the nation’s future, and that despite his diagnosis, he was a “very fortunate man.”

____ Video journalist Nathan Ellgren in Washington and former Associated Press writer Sejal Govindarao contributed to this report.

They will be available starting Oct. 1 in the U.S. and a week earlier in China.

“I’m just super excited,” she told The Associated Press in Germany last week. “I look down at my feet and I’m, man, I’m wearing my shoes. There’s not many people that get a Nike signature shoe.”

Clark will be the fifth active player to have a signature shoe, joining fellow Nike athletes Sabrina Ionescu and A’ja Wilson. Angel Reese has one with Reebok and Breanna Stewart with Puma. Sheryl Swoopes was the first women’s basketball player to have her own one in 1995. Elena Delle Donne’s signature shoe debuted at the same time as Stewart in 2022. They were the first players with signature shoes since Candace Parker in 2011.

“I don’t even think that’s something I dreamed about as a kid, because it felt so far away from something that I could ever achieve," Clark said of having her own shoe. "I was always a kid that wanted the coolest shoes and I’m so excited.”

The shoe will sell for $140, putting it around the same as Wilson and Ionescu's shoes. It will be available in "Caitlin Blue" and "Warning Code Yellow" when it first comes out.

“I hope when people put the shoe on, they can feel a part of me,” Clark said. “I hope more than anything, it gives people confidence that they can dream to achieve whatever they want and they feel like they can be me in the shoe.”

Clark, who gifted the shoes to her Indiana Fever teammates when she returned from helping the U.S. win a gold medal at the women's FIBA World Cup, said a lot of her personality has come through in the shoe with the colors that she wears.

“It’s just been really cool and a fun process. I hope everybody knows that I put a lot of time and effort into it. It’s not just like Nike mocked this up and I check the box,” she said. “This was something that was super important for me because I really want my fans to feel connected and to feel like they can play just like how I play.”

Clark said there are many more colors coming down the road. They'll also be a signature line of apparel coming out as well with T-shirts, jackets and sweatshirts.

“It’s been a really fun process and it never gets old," Clark said. "Lacing up your shoes that have your logo on it and that you designed and have a Nike swoosh — I don’t think it gets much better than that, to be honest."

___

See AP’s full WNBA coverage here

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Officers with the Homestead Police Department said they took Rebecca Bouie, 37, and Jamaury Elijah Benoit, 19, into custody on Monday after they said the 8-year-old victim reported the abuse while she was at school.

According to police, the child said her mother, Bouie, and brother, Benoit, “hit her with a belt on her arms, legs and abdomen,” according to an arrest report, which also stated, “The victim has multiple healed patterned markings on her arms, legs, and abdomen consistent with having been struck with a belt.”

The victim also told police that Benoit would “bound her wrists and ankles together with shoelaces” and left her like that for at least an hour, the arrest report states.

Additionally, records revealed that in January, Benoit was arrested for child abuse on the same victim and was issued a non-expiring stay away order, which said he could not have any contact with the victim.

Investigators then discovered that at some point after the order was issued, Bouie allowed Benoit back into the home where the victim also lived.

Jail records show Bouie is facing felony charges of child abuse with no great bodily harm and child neglect with no great bodily harm, while Benoit was charged with a felony count of aggravated child abuse or torture with great bodily harm and a misdemeanor charge of violation of a domestic violence injunction.

As of Thursday morning, both were being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, with Bouie on a $5,000 bond and Benoit’s bond listed as “to be set.”

Agentes del Departamento de Policía de Homestead dijeron que detuvieron el lunes a Rebecca Bouie, de 37 años, y a Jamaury Elijah Benoit, de 19, después de que la víctima de 8 años reportara el abuso mientras estaba en la escuela.

Según la policía, la menor dijo que su madre, Bouie, y su hermano, Benoit, “la golpearon con un cinturón en los brazos, piernas y abdomen”, según un reporte de arresto, que también señaló: “La víctima tiene múltiples marcas con patrones ya cicatrizadas en los brazos, piernas y abdomen, compatibles con haber sido golpeada con un cinturón”.

La víctima también dijo a la policía que Benoit le “ataba las muñecas y los tobillos con cordones de zapatos” y la dejaba así durante al menos una hora, señala el reporte de arresto.

Además, los registros revelaron que en enero Benoit fue arrestado por abuso infantil contra la misma víctima y recibió una orden de alejamiento sin fecha de vencimiento, que establecía que no podía tener ningún contacto con la víctima.

Los investigadores descubrieron entonces que, en algún momento después de que se emitiera la orden, Bouie permitió que Benoit regresara a la vivienda donde también vivía la víctima.

Los registros de la cárcel muestran que Bouie enfrenta cargos graves de abuso infantil sin lesiones corporales graves y negligencia infantil sin lesiones corporales graves, mientras que Benoit fue acusado de un cargo grave de abuso infantil agravado o tortura con lesiones corporales graves y un cargo menor por violación de una orden judicial por violencia doméstica.

Hasta la mañana del jueves, ambos permanecían detenidos en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight, con una fianza de $5,000 USD para Bouie, mientras que la fianza de Benoit figuraba como “por determinar”.

The town is Hesperia, California, and the producers wanted Chang to try an Indian restaurant near a windshield repair store. But Chang spots a Mexican cantina that looks promising.

He naturally chooses to eat at both, freaking out his camera crew.

“I just wanted to taste things. When I see something, I’m like, ‘Oh, that looks interesting. I would like to taste that,’” he says in an interview. “To the dismay of the producers and the team, they’re like, ‘No, no. We got to go here.’ I was like, ‘You don’t understand. I told you guys that if we’re going to do the show, everything’s on the table.'”

“Everything's On the Table” might be a good alternative title for the six-part “The Detour with David Chang,” where the famed founder of the Momofuku global restaurant chain pairs with a companion and hits the open road, eating his way through America. It begins airing Sunday.

What's the show about?

Chang chows down on Filipino food in South Las Vegas, bites into a traditional Czech puff pastry in Texas and tries Haitian food for the first time in Miami. The show's motto is: “All we’ve got is a destination. Everything else is a detour.”

He's paired by friends and strangers alike, from “American Fiction” director and writer Cord Jefferson to comedian, actor and writer Cristela Alonzo, who shows him her Texas. In Tennessee, he rides with Christina Tosi, the Milk Bar creator, who is almost a surrogate sister.

The show is about exploring and connecting with locals to find hidden gems, like the spot that serves killer Cuban fritas at a laundromat. Or the chefs who take barbecue and combine Asian flavors, creating oak-smoked pulled pork with Penang curry. Or the family serving Honduran food truck breakfast that helps heal Chang's terrible rum hangover.

“I love going out to eat, but as I get older, staying inside, not doing as much, is also nice. And I think that over the past few years, I’ve certainly been calcified,” says Chang. “Anytime you get out of your comfort zone or your little bubble, I think it’s a good reminder that there’s so much other stuff out there.”

Eating choices don't follow the algorithm

Chang joins a crowded field of celebrity travel hosts, which includes Daniel Dae Kim, Tony Shalhoub, Rainn Wilson, Eugene Levy, Stanley Tucci,Orlando Bloom, Zac Efron, José Andrés, Chris Hemsworth, Will Smith, Eva Longoria and Ewan McGregor. Awkwafina is on deck.

All owe a debt to Anthony Bourdain, who inspired millions to share his delight in food and the bonds it created. Bourdain died in 2018. Amy Entelis, executive vice president of talent, CNN Originals and creative development, notes that Chang is the first chef to host a CNN original series since Bourdain.

“Dave isn’t setting out to define American food or find the ‘best’ restaurant in every city. It’s almost the opposite,” she says. “He gets in the car, talks to people and follows recommendations that take him somewhere he didn’t expect to go. At a time when an algorithm can tell you where to eat, where to stay and what to see, there’s something really appealing about just getting a little lost and seeing what you find.”

The seed of the series was planted when Chang and executive producer Morgan Neville were chatting one day about what it was like to discover new indie rock bands back in the old days before the internet and influencers, and the joy when you found one.

“I felt like that was sort of how I felt about food as well,” says Chang. “Listen, it’s easier to eat than ever before. But, in some ways, it is harder to find something that is meaningful to you.”

He finds twists on brisket and Ethiopian food

One show highlight is the delightful way he ends up at an Ethiopian restaurant in Las Vegas after listening to the recommendation of a taxi driver. Eating slow-cooked chicken and injera — the sour, spongy flatbread — reminded Chang of how good that cuisine is.

“I will die on the hill that Ethiopian food is one of the world’s greatest cuisines. There’s nothing like it, and it’s a singular approach to texture, flavor, and the kind of food that everyone loves these days — communal dining, where everyone can eat the same thing but customize it themselves.”

He learns that in Texas the Holy Trinity is brisket, ribs and sausage, but some local chefs are also putting their own spins on classic dishes. Like pitmaster Chuck Charnichart at the eatery Barbs in Lockhart, who adds serrano glaze on her ribs and zests fresh limes over them. “It feels like I have a front-row seat to Dylan going electric,” Chang says in admiration.

Throughout the series is Chang's gentle humor and willingness to try and do anything, dropping references to the painter Rothko, musician John Coltrane and director Terrence Malick along the way. And, of course, always popping corn nuts.

“When you think about it, I’m getting paid to go eat and hang out with friends,” he says, laughing. “I have nothing to complain about. And it’s a nice reminder that this is literally a dream job.”

Un hombre de 28 años fue arrestado el miércoles luego de que, según agentes de la Oficina del Sheriff de Broward (BSO), presuntamente hiciera amenazas de bomba contra dos escuelas del condado Broward antes del inicio de la jornada escolar.

Las autoridades policiales notificaron a Pioneer Middle School, ubicada en el 5350 SW 90th Ave. en Cooper City, y a Larkdale Elementary School, en el 3250 NW 12th Place en Lauderhill, sobre las amenazas contra sus planteles, confirmaron funcionarios de la Junta Escolar del Condado Broward.

Según la policía de Lauderhill, el sospechoso, identificado como Christopher Matthew Wilkens, dijo a los investigadores que llamó al 911 para hacer una falsa amenaza de bomba contra ambas escuelas.

La Junta Escolar aseguró que todos los estudiantes y el personal están a salvo, y que las dos escuelas mantuvieron su horario habitual.

De acuerdo con la Junta, agentes de BSO y el Departamento de Policía de Lauderhill investigaron las amenazas de inmediato.

Los investigadores indicaron que Wilkens no tiene ninguna relación con Larkdale, pero no confirmaron si tiene algún vínculo con Pioneer Middle School.

La policía informó que Wilkens enfrenta un cargo de amenazar con lanzar, proyectar, colocar o detonar un artefacto destructivo.

Aún no se ha dado a conocer información sobre su fianza.

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Pioneer Middle School, located at 5350 SW 90th Ave. in Cooper City, and Larkdale Elementary School, located at 3250 NW 12th Place in Lauderhill, were notified by law enforcement about threats toward their schools, Broward County School Board officials confirmed.

According to Lauderhill police, the suspect, who they identified as Christopher Matthew Wilkens, told investigators that he called 911 to make a fake bomb threat to both schools.

School board officials said all students and staff are safe, and both schools followed their normal schedules.

They said the threats were immediately investigated by BSO deputies and the Lauderhill Police Department.

Investigators said Wilkens has no connection to Larkdale Middle School but did not confirm whether he has a connection to Pioneer Middle School.

Wilkens is facing two charges of threatening to throw, project, place or discharge a destructive device and one charge of false report of a bomb.

Wilkens appeared in bond court Thursday, where a judge set his bond at $45,000. He was also ordered to wear a GPS monitor, prohibited from possessing firearms, weapons or ammunition, and barred from returning to any school in Broward County.

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Deputies with the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office identified the suspect as 44-year-old Yoanny Herrera Nieblas.

Deputies said the incident happened Sept. 8 at his home in the 14900 block of Southwest 53rd Lane in the county’s Kendall West neighborhood.

While conducting a child abuse investigation, deputies determined that the girl was at home taking a shower when Herrera Nieblas entered the bathroom and confronted her about her “poor behavior in school,” according to an arrest report obtained by Local 10 News on Thursday.

Herrera Nieblas then “proceeded to utilize the plastic bathroom squeegee to strike the victim multiple times on the buttocks,” the report states.

As a result, the girl sustained visible bruising to her buttocks that was present for more than three days, according to the report.

After being advised of his Miranda rights, Herrera Nieblas told investigators that his daughter had “ongoing behavioral issues in school,” according to the report.

He told investigators that the school had recently notified him that his daughter “stuck her middle finger up to the teacher.” During bath time, he also asked her about the incident, and she admitted what she had done, according to the report.

The report states Herrera Nieblas told investigators he had tried “verbally discipling” the girl multiple times but had not observed a change in her behavior. That was when he “escalated the discipline to spanking her with the plastic bathroom squeegee,” according to deputies.

Jail records show he is facing one count of child abuse with no great bodily harm.

As of Thursday morning, Herrera Nieblas was no longer listed as an inmate on the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation website. His bond information wasn’t immediately available.

Agentes de la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade identificaron al sospechoso como Yoanny Herrera Nieblas, de 44 años.

Los agentes dijeron que el incidente ocurrió el 8 de septiembre en su vivienda, ubicada en la cuadra 14900 de Southwest 53rd Lane, en el vecindario Kendall West del condado.

Mientras realizaban una investigación por abuso infantil, los agentes determinaron que la niña estaba en su casa bañándose cuando Herrera Nieblas entró al baño y la confrontó por su “mal comportamiento en la escuela”, según un reporte de arresto obtenido por Local 10 News el jueves.

Herrera Nieblas entonces “procedió a utilizar el limpiavidrios de plástico para baño para golpear a la víctima varias veces en los glúteos”, señala el reporte.

Como resultado, la niña sufrió moretones visibles en los glúteos que permanecieron durante más de tres días, según el reporte.

Después de ser informado de sus derechos Miranda, Herrera Nieblas dijo a los investigadores que su hija tenía “problemas continuos de comportamiento en la escuela”, según el reporte.

Dijo a los investigadores que la escuela le había notificado recientemente que su hija “le mostró el dedo medio a la maestra”. Durante la hora del baño, también le preguntó sobre el incidente y ella admitió lo que había hecho, según el reporte.

El reporte señala que Herrera Nieblas dijo a los investigadores que había intentado “disciplinar verbalmente” a la niña varias veces, pero no había observado un cambio en su comportamiento. Fue entonces cuando “intensificó la disciplina y le dio nalgadas con el limpiavidrios de plástico para baño”, según los agentes.

Los registros de la cárcel muestran que enfrenta un cargo de abuso infantil sin lesiones corporales graves.

Hasta la mañana del jueves, Herrera Nieblas ya no figuraba como recluso en el sitio web del Departamento de Correcciones y Rehabilitación de Miami-Dade. La información sobre su fianza no estaba disponible de inmediato.

Yes, the British-Irish writer-director of “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “In Bruges” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” has been here before. But McDonagh's latest, “Wild Horse Nine,” is also something different and more provocative.

The film, which has played to standing ovations across the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals, stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA officers who have recently laid the groundwork for the 1973 coup in Chile. But they're now taking a trip to Easter Island, as one says, “to see the heads” — the Moai stone sculptures. Chris (Malkovich) is dying of cancer and increasingly loose-lipped about his colorful CIA past, including a presidential assassination.

Their conversation, as is typical in McDonagh's brilliant, barbed dialogue, is laced with deeper ruminations on regret and death, with more absurd digressions mixed in. In one memorable scene, Chris traces a connection between democracy, homosexuality and good cheese.

“I wanted those guys to feel like an old married couple in a way,” McDonagh says.

He recently met a reporter for coffee in Toronto to talk about “Wild Horse Nine” and why he's so eager for the conversation it might generate. Searchlight Pictures releases the film Nov. 6.

AP: You wrote “In Bruges” after a trip to the Belgian city. This came out of a trip to Easter Island. How important is travel to your writing?

McDonagh: Very much. I love to travel. I like traveling alone. It always prompts some kind of thinking. Bruges was just a weekend trip for fun and the town became a character literally while I was there. Fifteen years ago I went to Easter Island with the hope that something similar would happen to the Bruges scenario. It looked like a beautiful backdrop to some kind of story to tell but it took a bunch of iterations of it before it became what you saw.

AP: Do you feel like being removed from regular life frees you?

McDonagh: Maybe things seem much more cinematic. I never had any desire to write something set in London, for instance, and I never have. I don’t see it with fresh eyes. I do like traveling around America. I used to get trains around America a lot. It feels like a CinemaScope window across the West. I feel like finding the place is going to be key to my next project, which I don’t have right now. Part of that is: Where do you want to spend six months of your life? South of France sounds good! And where is cinematic that hasn’t been captured before?

AP: Do you tend to start with two characters talking? Some of your films are centered on odd couples.

McDonagh: The odd couple talking thing, I did three or four versions of that. They were talking fine but there was no purpose or reason for them to be there. But I had always been fascinated with what the CIA did in Chile in the 1970s. When I thought about that, everything fell into place. It wasn’t just two cranky old guys talking.

AP: I've never seen a CIA agent character like Malkovich's character — a guy who just wants to spill all the beans.

McDonagh: I don’t think they’re as classy as John. I think we’re painting way too good a picture of the CIA. He’s erudite. He’s got a sense of humor. He regrets stuff. And I don’t think they do.

AP: He's ready to be up front about some of the U.S.'s underhanded dealings. Do you feel like it's a time for frankness about America's darker side?

McDonagh: Even while we were still editing it, it felt more and more like it was a commentary on the modern day, especially with a lot of the recent stuff that Trump’s been doing. It wasn’t the direct purpose of it, but I kind of liked that it felt that way. The tragic thing is: history keeps repeating itself, and more and more stupidly and less and less secretively. They kept their horrible stuff secret back then. It’s like they don’t care what people think about it anymore. I think that’s a darker place we’re in now. Shame doesn’t come into it.

AP: There's a moment in the film when Malkovich's character suggests peaceful protest marches have no effect. What do you think?

McDonagh: Whether or not I agree with it or not is for a later chat. I’m not saying the pacifist version is wrong or doesn’t work at times. But I do think the CIA and KGB and most vicious governments around the world are more happy with polite protest marches.

AP: You had twice before, for “Seven Psychopaths” and your play “A Behanding in Spokane,” tried to work with Malkovich. What drew you to him?

McDonagh: He can be ultra dangerous and you feel scared of him more than most. Maybe Joe Pesci. I was scared the first time I had a Zoom with him. But also his dexterity with comedy. But mostly knowing that in the silent moments you’d see acres of sorrow and regret when he’s seemingly not doing anything — when he’s just looking out of a window or listening to a Dictaphone or smoking a cigarette.

AP: Was it at all purposeful to have Malkovich playing a memoir-writing CIA officer like he did in the Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading”?

McDonagh: Not at all. In fact, I had kind of forgotten that whole section of that film until I rewatched it a few months ago. I hope that they don’t think I stole the whole memoir-of-a-CIA-guy bit from him. (Laughs) But John’s so good at everything that history is going to repeat itself.

AP: As much acclaim as Malkovich is rightly getting, Rockwell is also great even if his performance is less eye-catching.

McDonagh: It’s not but it’s completely generous. I think it’s still one of his best-ever performances. It’s not as showy as some of the previous things I’ve done with Sam or some of Sam’s other brilliant work. But there aren’t many who could convey the love that’s there without bawling his eyes out. You feel like it’s an equal two-hander at the same time as John’s character will always be the lead.

AP: Do you identify more with either of their characters?

McDonagh: John’s got a lot of me. I like the outrageousness and the danger of where he goes sometimes. In my more sarcastic, anarchistic moments, I find that sort of stuff funny. He’s an awful guy, he’s done awful things. But on top of that, I do feel like he says a lot of funny stuff that I agree with — even if it’s just cheeses. (Laughs) A scene like that, you know you’re being naughty but I think the principle of it is actually sort of loving and weirdly pro-democratic, pro-gay and pro-cheese.

AP: Coming out of the pandemic, you talked about committing to writing a movie every year.

McDonagh: That’s gone away! (Laughs) I realize after a year or two I’m fundamentally lazy. But this feels like a quite short time between.

AP: Well, choosing to make a movie on Easter Island probably doesn't speed things up.

McDonagh: But it does combine vacation time on an island with making a movie. (Laughs) That’s what I’m going to do next. Tahiti, 1900, two blokes.

More of the same is on the way Friday into the weekend as a storm system north of the Bahamas moves into Florida and stalls out for a few days. This will give us rounds of thunderstorms, especially in the afternoons. Some storms could be severe with damaging winds, hail, and intense lightning. This wet pattern will last well into next week.

Mauricio Pochettino picked 13 newcomers Thursday for the first roster of his second term as U.S. coach, dropping the team's top star and picking a forward who could become the youngest American national team player in 20 years.

“It’s a completely different approach than it was in the past,” Pochettino said from New York during an online news conference. “The World Cup is in four years. We need to work with different objectives and goals.”

Midfielder Yunus Musah, a 2022 World Cup veteran who hasn't played for the Americans since March 2025, also was among 28 players selected for friendlies against Peru (Sept. 26 in Orlando, Florida), Chile (Sept. 29 in St. Louis), Mexico (Oct. 3 in Glendale, Arizona) and Canada (Oct. 6 in St. Paul, Minnesota).

A two-time World Cup veteran who turns 28 on Friday, Pulisic failed to score during last summer's tournament. He missed one of the Americans’ five matches because of a calf injury and left two others early.

Pulisic came off in the second half of the 4-1 loss to Belgium in the round of 16 because of a microfracture of his right tibia and fibula, and he didn't make his season debut for AC Milan until last weekend.

Pochettino didn’t give a reason for why he didn’t pick Pulisic.

“It’s not a point that now the first camp of this new cycle I start to explain why it’s one, why it is not another," Pochettino said.

Sullivan made his Major League Soccer debut at 14 with Philadelphia in July 2024 and has six league goals this season. He is set to transfer to Manchester City when he turns 18.

“He deserved all the praise that he’s getting I think because he’s performing well, he’s playing well, he’s giving assists and scoring goals," Pochettino said. “He is special because he is 16 years old playing in this level in MLS.”

Sullivan will be two days shy of his 17th birthday when the Americans play Peru and could become the youngest U.S. national team player since Freddy Adu debuted at 16 years, 234 days against Canada on Jan. 22, 2006.

Sullivan was in the stands for the World Cup loss to Belgium in Seattle.

“Thinking of that Belgium game, I think I could come into that game on the right side and make a difference," he said on Alexi Lalas’ State of the Union podcast earlier this month.

Others who could debut are 17-year-old midfielders Adri Mehmeti and Mathis Albert; 18-year-old defenders Peyton Miller and Neil Pierre; 18-year-old forward Julian Hall; 19-year-old midfielder Zavier Gozo; 19-year-old forward Justin Ellis; 20-year-old goalkeeper Diego Kochen; 20-year-old right back Frankie Westfield; 20-year-old midfielders Cole Campbell and Brooklyn Raines; and 25-year-old goalkeeper Brian Schwake.

“This for me is a great opportunity to meet these guys, to see them, to analyze, to see the things to improve in the way that they can evolve,” Pochettino said. “They need to make the mistake, but we need to be there to try to fix that.”

Also showing assurance, Gozo spoke of this year's World Cup last month on “The Late Run” podcast.

“I do think I deserved to be there,” he said.

Twelve players are from Major League Soccer.

Two players have just one previous appearance: 22-year-old goalkeeper Chris Brady and 25-year-old defender George Campbell.

Just 13 players return from the 26-man World Cup roster: goalkeeper Matt Freese and Brady; defenders Sergiño Dest, Alex Freeman, Chris Richards, Antonee Robinson, Miles Robinson and Austin Trusty; midfielders Tyler Adams, Sebastian Berhalter, Gio Reyna and Malik Tillman; and forward Ricardo Pepi.

Folarin Balogun, who hasn't played for Monaco this season after a possible transfer to Everton fell through, also was not selected. Pochettino cited what he said was a minor leg injury.

Others from the World Cup roster who were dropped included goalkeeper Matt Turner; defenders Max Arfsten, Mark McKenzie, Tim Ream and Joe Scally; midfielders Weston McKennie and Cristian Roldan; and forwards Brenden Aaronson, Tim Weah, Haji Wright and Alejandro Zendejas.

“Now it’s not what I did in the past,” Pochettino said. “Now is about today. Football is about today, soccer is about today.”

The roster:

Goalkeepers: Chris Brady (Chicago), Matt Freese (New York City), Diego Kochen (Lyngby), Brian Schwake (Nashville).

Defenders: George Campbell (West Bromwich Albion), Sergiño Dest (PSV Eindhoven), Alex Freeman (Villarreal), Peyton Miller (New England), Neil Pierre (Philadelphia), Chris Richards (Crystal Palace), Antonee Robinson (Fulham), Miles Robinson (Cincinnati), Auston Trusty (Celtic), Frankie Westfield (Philadelphia).

Midfielders: Tyler Adams (Bournemouth), Mathis Albert (Borussia Dortmund), Sebastian Berhalter (Middlesbrough), Zavier Gozo (Crystal Palace), Adri Mehmeti (New York Red Bulls), Yunus Musah (AC Milan), Brooklyn Raines (New England), Gio Reyna (Strasbourg), Malik Tillman (Bayer Leverkusen).

Forwards: Cole Campbell (SV Elversberg), Justin Ellis (Orlando), Julian Hall (New York Red Bulls), Ricardo Pepi (PSV Eindhoven), Cavan Sullivan (Philadelphia).

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While the small low-pressure system has a well-defined spin and an uptick in thunderstorms near its circulation compared to Wednesday, 98L looked far from healthy early Thursday, with spates of strong northerly wind shear quickly toppling over thunderstorm activity trying to build around its center.

Forecast models are all over the place with 98L, with some models quickly dissipating it to the northwest over the next few days while other model guidance tracks it south, developing it over the weekend, then slowly loop it back northeast later next week ahead of an approaching cold front.

Regardless, the environment around 98L isn’t exactly primed for significant development in the short term. Strong wind shear should be an inhibiting factor until the weekend, but thereafter repeated incursions of dry air will put up extra hurdles.

Bottom line on 98L: expect this one to fester over the open central Atlantic into next week with a modest development shot by the weekend. Interests in Bermuda should continue to monitor the forecasts but for now the odds of significant strengthening are low. 98L poses no threat to the U.S.

Wake up call for the Atlantic basin to end September?

We’ve been professing it until we’ve turned blue in the face this season, but the Atlantic hurricane season is as dead as we’ve ever seen it beyond its traditional mid-September peak.

Overall activity as measured by the Accumulated Cyclone Energy or ACE is at an astonishingly low 4.4 ACE units. By this point in an average season, we’re at over 70 ACE units. We’ve never seen a hurricane season in the modern, reliable record (since 1950) with as little activity through Thursday by a wide margin. And with no hurricanes to boot (a record we discussed in last Friday’s newsletter).

Over the past decade we have noticed a trend toward later peaking hurricane seasons, something I discussed with the Washington Post in an article published Wednesday. Whether or not this is a longer-term trend linked to other climate factors is something we’ll need additional research to determine, but if recent history is any indication, we should expect relative hurricane activity to peak later than it has in previous seasons.

Our longer-range models are beginning to pick up on perhaps a late September wake-up call for the Atlantic, with a busier look to the basin coinciding with rising air bleeding into the western Atlantic for the first time in a while.

It’s too soon to discuss specifics, but we’ll want to watch the southern Gulf and western Caribbean as a possible Central American Gyre takes shape by the end the month, something we previewed in Wednesday’s newsletter. We’ll revisit the trends as we get into next week, but for now odds remain quite low.

Aunque el pequeño sistema de baja presión tiene una circulación bien definida y un aumento de tormentas eléctricas cerca de su circulación en comparación con el miércoles, 98L lucía lejos de estar saludable a primeras horas del jueves, con episodios de fuerte cizalladura del viento del norte que rápidamente derribaban la actividad de tormentas eléctricas que intentaba desarrollarse alrededor de su centro.

Los modelos de pronóstico muestran escenarios muy diversos para 98L, con algunos modelos disipándolo rápidamente hacia el noroeste durante los próximos días, mientras que otros modelos lo desplazan hacia el sur, desarrollándolo durante el fin de semana y luego haciéndolo girar lentamente de regreso hacia el noreste a finales de la próxima semana, por delante de un frente frío que se aproxima.

De cualquier manera, el entorno alrededor de 98L no está precisamente preparado para un desarrollo significativo a corto plazo. La fuerte cizalladura del viento debería ser un factor inhibidor hasta el fin de semana, pero después de eso, repetidas incursiones de aire seco presentarán obstáculos adicionales.

En resumen sobre 98L: se espera que este sistema permanezca sobre las aguas abiertas del Atlántico central hasta la próxima semana, con una posibilidad moderada de desarrollo para el fin de semana. Las personas en Bermuda deben continuar monitoreando los pronósticos, pero por ahora las probabilidades de un fortalecimiento significativo son bajas. 98L no representa una amenaza para Estados Unidos.

¿Un llamado de atención para la cuenca del Atlántico al cierre de septiembre?

Lo hemos estado diciendo hasta quedarnos sin aliento esta temporada, pero la temporada de huracanes del Atlántico está tan inactiva como nunca la hemos visto después de su tradicional pico de mediados de septiembre.

La actividad general, medida por la Energía Ciclónica Acumulada o ACE, se encuentra en un sorprendentemente bajo nivel de 4.4 unidades ACE. Para este punto de una temporada promedio, estamos por encima de las 70 unidades ACE. Nunca hemos visto una temporada de huracanes en los registros modernos y confiables, desde 1950, con tan poca actividad hasta este jueves, y por un amplio margen. Y además, sin huracanes, un récord que analizamos en el boletín del viernes pasado.

Durante la última década hemos observado una tendencia hacia temporadas de huracanes que alcanzan su pico más tarde, algo que comenté con The Washington Post en un artículo publicado el miércoles. Determinar si se trata o no de una tendencia a más largo plazo vinculada a otros factores climáticos requerirá investigaciones adicionales, pero si la historia reciente sirve de indicio, deberíamos esperar que la actividad relativa de huracanes alcance su pico más tarde que en temporadas anteriores.

Nuestros modelos a largo plazo están comenzando a detectar quizás un despertar del Atlántico a finales de septiembre, con una cuenca que luce más activa coincidiendo con aire ascendente que se desplaza hacia el Atlántico occidental por primera vez en algún tiempo.

Es demasiado pronto para hablar de detalles específicos, pero tendremos que vigilar el sur del Golfo y el Caribe occidental ante la posible formación de un Giro Centroamericano para finales de mes, algo que adelantamos en el boletín del miércoles. Volveremos a analizar las tendencias a medida que avancemos hacia la próxima semana, pero por ahora las probabilidades siguen siendo bastante bajas.

Agentes de la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade dijeron que detuvieron el lunes a Ketsia Pierre Paul, de 42 años y residente del noroeste de Miami-Dade.

Según los investigadores, funcionarios de la escuela de la niña se comunicaron con el Departamento de Niños y Familias después de observar “múltiples marcas en el cuello, brazos y pecho que parecían ser quemaduras”.

Las autoridades hicieron que la niña fuera examinada por el Equipo de Protección Infantil, que informó a los agentes que la niña estaba “cubierta de cicatrices, abrasiones con cicatrices y una cicatriz queloide, que eran compatibles con haber sido golpeada con un cable de cargador de teléfono”.

Cuando los detectives hablaron con la niña, dijeron que ella les contó que sufría abusos en su casa “casi a diario” con un cable de cargador de teléfono, pero que tenía miedo de decir quién era su abusador y solo indicó que el nombre de la persona comenzaba con la letra “K”.

Los agentes escribieron en el reporte de arresto de Pierre Paul que ella era la única persona que vivía con la niña cuyo nombre comenzaba con la letra “K”.

Cuando los investigadores hablaron con Pierre Paul, ella admitió haber visto las lesiones de la menor, pero dijo que “nunca buscó atención médica ni trató de averiguar quién estaba lastimando a su hija”, según su reporte de arresto.

Los registros de la cárcel muestran que enfrenta cargos graves de abuso infantil agravado con lesiones corporales graves y negligencia infantil con lesiones corporales graves.

Hasta la mañana del jueves, Pierre Paul permanecía detenida en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight con una fianza que figura como “por determinar”.

Hamilton's denial follows a report Tuesday in Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera which said Hamilton had asked for changes to Ferrari's trackside staff and that his relationship with team principal Fred Vasseur was strained.

“I've seen some of the stories that have gone out and I want to clear it up here. I've never asked for anyone on my team to be replaced. Everyone I work with works hard every day, and their dedication is what moves us forward,” Hamilton wrote on Instagram alongside a picture of himself with dozens of Ferrari staff members.

“I always try to empower and lift people to be the best versions of themselves or at least see the best in themselves. I may not always achieve that but it's my intention and what I'm here to do. We all work together and that will continue.”

Hamilton has sometimes questioned Ferrari's strategy over the radio this year, including asking whether he was being used as a “guinea pig” in last month's Dutch Grand Prix, and protesting that teammate Charles Leclerc was allowed to hold him up.

After that race, he said the messages came from a desire to win and added it was “difficult” to see rival team Mercedes “execute straight away” on strategy decisions.

The seven-time champion got his first win with Ferrari at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix in June and remains third in the standings, but a retirement in last week's Spanish Grand Prix left him 101 points off standings leader Kimi Antonelli. That also marked five consecutive races without a podium finish for Hamilton.

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The school released a statement Thursday morning saying Steve Belichick's resignation would be effective in late October at the conclusion of a medical leave, which was announced early in preseason camp.

That comes after the school's investigation “determined that certain actions demonstrated a disregard for Carolina's values and standards of conduct,” according to the statement. The school didn’t reveal specifics of those actions found by the review, nor had it discussed details of the investigation launched in late July.

“The investigation also found that these actions were isolated in scope and not a systemic failure,” the school said.

The school had previously announced the resignation of general manager Michael Lombardi amid the probe. Lombardi was an immediate hire of Bill Belichick in his NFL-to-college transition as a six-time Super Bowl winner with the New England Patriots.

In Bill Belichick’s first news conference after Lombardi’s Sept. 3 resignation, he faced questions that largely dealt nothing with football. Belichick said he believes his program “totally” has an atmosphere of following rules, saying: “Obviously everybody’s responsible, including me, for doing things properly. And we intend to do that.”

That same day, UNC vice chancellor for communications Dean Stoyer — who released Thursday’s statement — said the school “continues to support Bill Belichick and the Carolina football program.”

The school announced its probe in late July in the days after putting Lombardi on paid administrative leave. The same day Lombardi resigned, WRAL of Raleigh cited anonymous sources in reporting the type of questions asked of some interviewees, with some focusing on Steve Belichick.

Additionally, Lombardi attorney Tom Mars told The Athletic that the school’s probe now included questions into potential “inappropriate” relationships that didn’t involve his client. Mars didn't return a call or email from The Associated Press regarding that comment at the time.

The school on Thursday declined to comment on individuals in the probe, citing university policy on personnel matters. UNC said that “all necessary corrective actions are now underway” and that it considers the investigation to be “resolved.”

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The discovery of Timothy Allen Smith brought the death toll to three from flooding that devastated the Phantom Ranch area at the canyon bottom and damaged the water pipeline serving the South Rim.

Smith, 53, was a pilot from western Wyoming's Star Valley. His remains were found Monday near Crystal Rapids on the Colorado River that runs through the canyon.

The remains of Smith's two backcountry companions, Brent Rosenkranz, 42, and John Giusti, 46, both of Granbury, Texas, were found earlier.

Smith grew up in Granbury and lived with his wife in Star Valley Ranch, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Jackson.

He, Rosenkranz and Giusti were on a multiday hiking, fishing and camping trip when flooding swept through the Grand Canyon.

During the two-day deluge, searchers used night vision and other equipment to find people in need of rescue. They relied on the Grand Canyon National Park's permit system and checked vehicle license plates to track those still missing. More than 80 people were rescued.

Soon, only Smith was missing. In a Facebook video at the time, his wife, Carrie, and their children thanked people for their support and prayers.

On Tuesday morning, Carrie Smith posted on Facebook that the family was aware a body had been found a day earlier and asked others to pray with them.

Smith confirmed in a Facebook post on Thursday that the remains had been identified as her husband’s.

“My family has done a lot of waiting over the last three weeks … waiting and hoping Tim (Daddy) would come home, waiting and wondering if the remains found were Tim (Daddy),” she wrote. “We no longer have to wait, Tim was found two days ago by the Rangers at Grand Canyon National Park. Not in the way we had hoped, but we know that he was doing something he loved with John and Brent.”

She added, “We know that these three men loved the Lord and were a shining light for Him. The impact their lives had on others is still being shown to our families daily.”

The National Park Service and Department of the Interior did not immediately return email messages seeking comment Thursday. The agencies have not publicly identified the remains found this week.

The flooding began Aug. 29 during the summer monsoon, or rainy, season when clear skies can quickly give way to thunderstorms and heavy rain. A desert landscape can funnel water from a deluge into sudden torrents that rage down previously dry gullies and canyons.

The rain fell on part of a North Rim burn area left after a lightning-caused wildfire in July 2025. The fire destroyed the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, cabins and other structures.

Burn areas can worsen flash flooding because there's less vegetation to absorb runoff.

The flooding damaged a pipeline spanning the canyon that supplies water to millions of tourists and residents. Insufficient water caused all overnight lodging to be halted until the pipeline could be restored. National Park Service officials said recently that they expected to restore a reliable water supply in the canyon in weeks — not months — after determining most of a near-complete pipeline project was not damaged during the flash flood.

Many hiking trails and lodging areas remain closed, and water has been shut off in the inner canyon, prompting advisories that hikers bring their own water or water filtration devices.

Another flash flood hit the canyon along Bright Angel Creek and the Colorado River during a storm Wednesday, park officials said. No injuries were reported. Authorities said efforts to minimize personnel in the canyon before the storm, as well as flash flood warnings, enabled crews to reach safety. Damage assessments were underway.

Cuando Estados Unidos e Israel iniciaron la guerra en febrero, algunos defensores de las energías renovables opinaron que el conflicto podría impulsar una transición verde, ya que los precios del petróleo y el gas se dispararon. Hasta ahora, más de 30 gobiernos han promulgado políticas para alejarse de los combustibles fósiles o mejorar la eficiencia energética. Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo, las emisiones globales de gases de efecto invernadero aumentaron ligeramente y las inversiones en energía limpia cayeron en comparación con el mismo periodo del año pasado.

The Associated Press habló con una docena de expertos que señalaron que, aunque la guerra con Irán parece estar ayudando a la adopción de la energía limpia, el mundo sigue dependiendo en gran medida de los combustibles fósiles. Indicaron que hará falta más tiempo para que las nuevas políticas muestren resultados.

“Actualmente, los gobiernos oscilan entre reconocer la importancia de la energía limpia y, al mismo tiempo, seguir apoyando la expansión de los combustibles fósiles”, escribió en un correo electrónico Pauline Heinrichs, profesora de estudios sobre la guerra en el King’s College London. “Vemos cómo interactúan un mundo viejo y uno nuevo que se contradicen entre sí”.

Se ha producido un aumento de las instalaciones solares en el Reino Unido. El gobierno también considera la posibilidad de ampliar la producción de gas natural. En Asia, donde existe una enorme demanda de energía solar y vehículos eléctricos, Indonesia está en proceso de sustituir algunas centrales eléctricas diésel por energía solar, al tiempo que también redobla su apuesta por el carbón para las industrias pesadas.

La inversión en energías limpias perdió impulso a escala mundial, pero la historia difiere según la región

La inversión global en el despliegue de energía eólica y solar cayó en la primera mitad de 2026 en comparación con el mismo periodo del año pasado, tras varios años de crecimiento, según el Clean Investment Monitor del Rhodium Group. China representó la mayor parte de la caída global. En Estados Unidos, Europa e India, donde las economías están más expuestas a los precios del gas y el petróleo, la inversión solar creció y la eólica se mantuvo estable o aumentó, afirmó Hannah Pitt, directora en Rhodium.

En febrero, Rob Jackson, climatólogo de la Universidad de Stanford dijo que era “simplemente un pensamiento ilusorio” creer que la nueva guerra aumentaría el apoyo a las energías renovables nacionales frente a los combustibles fósiles importados, a menos que resultara ser un conflicto sostenido.

Seis meses después, Jackson comentó que no preveía que los precios del petróleo se mantuvieran durante tanto tiempo por encima de 90 o 100 dólares por barril. Si decenas de países promueven incentivos para vehículos eléctricos, infraestructura de carga y la electrificación en general, eso puede ayudar en la lucha contra el cambio climático, añadió. Pero solo si esas acciones se mantienen.

“Necesitamos mantener esa acción durante años, incluso décadas, para lograr un impacto en el problema climático”, expresó Jackson el lunes.

La contaminación ambiental aumentó marginalmente

Hasta el 9 de septiembre, 33 gobiernos habían adoptado políticas para pasar de los combustibles fósiles a la electricidad o mejorar la eficiencia energética en respuesta al conflicto en Oriente Medio, según la Agencia Internacional de la Energía. Esto incluye apoyar la adopción de vehículos eléctricos, promover la energía renovable, sustituir calderas de gas por bombas de calor eléctricas y reacondicionar viviendas y empresas para usar menos energía. Holanda, España y Reino Unido ya llevan a cabo todo lo que figura en esa lista.

China trabaja para que la industria pesada sea más eficiente energéticamente e impulsa la electrificación de los vehículos pesados. India e Indonesia han comenzado a adoptar las estufas eléctricas para reemplazar el gas licuado de petróleo importado como combustible para cocinar. Laos suspendió las importaciones de autos de gasolina y diésel durante 2026 para impulsar los vehículos eléctricos.

Estos esfuerzos aún no han movido la aguja. Incentivar la compra de vehículos eléctricos o fomentar la eficiencia energética requiere tiempo y escala, según investigadores de la base de datos de emisiones Climate TRACE.

Al mismo tiempo, muchos gobiernos están recortando los impuestos a los combustibles. Eso brinda un alivio inmediato a los consumidores, pero desincentiva el cambio a vehículos eléctricos. Además, la propia guerra disparará las emisiones.

Las emisiones globales de gases de efecto invernadero aumentaron un 0,2% en la primera mitad de 2026, en comparación con la primera mitad de 2025, según Climate TRACE. Aunque las emisiones del transporte por carretera se incrementaron, la organización encontró que las emisiones del sector eléctrico disminuyeron, pese a la preocupación de que las alteraciones en los mercados de petróleo y gas obligaran a los países a usar más carbón para generar electricidad. Las emisiones del transporte marítimo también disminuyeron, probablemente debido al cierre del estrecho de Ormuz.

Los países que importan combustibles fósiles pagan facturas más altas

Sin embargo, esas facturas habrían sido aún más elevadas de no ser por la energía limpia incorporada desde 2020.

Los importadores de combustibles fósiles han pagado precios 330.000 millones de dólares más altos en comparación con las expectativas del mercado previas a la guerra, lo que lo convierte en el mayor impacto de precios sostenido desde la Guerra del Golfo de 1990, según una investigación del Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. La Unión Europea, China e India fueron quienes más pagaron.

Se calcula que los países que invirtieron en energía limpia tras crisis energéticas anteriores ahorraron alrededor de 36.000 millones de dólares en importaciones de combustibles fósiles durante los primeros cinco meses del conflicto, de acuerdo con la investigación. China y Japón fueron los que más ahorraron, seguidos por España, Francia, Italia, Holanda, Brasil e India.

Los gobiernos tratan de protegerse de la volatilidad geopolítica y de la inestabilidad de los precios de los combustibles, dijo Caspian Conran, economista principal de la consultora global Baringa. China sabe que puede apoyarse en el carbón y que a Estados Unidos no se le agotará el gas natural doméstico, señaló. Los políticos europeos sienten la mayor urgencia por adoptar nuevas políticas energéticas porque su producción de combustibles fósiles es limitada, afirmó Conran, quien reside en Londres.

“Simplemente no tenemos opción”, sostuvo.

Es muy pronto para decir si la guerra producirá una ganancia neta para las energías renovables o para los combustibles fósiles

En este punto, la señal sería pequeña y existen muchas otras variaciones en el sistema, según Michael Oppenheimer, profesor de clima y asuntos internacionales en Princeton.

“Sin embargo, una cosa está clara. Cuando comenzaron los problemas, mucha gente dijo que habría una carrera hacia otras fuentes de combustibles fósiles, disponibles de inmediato, para reemplazar el petróleo del golfo Pérsico y compensar el aumento de precios, lo que presumiblemente enterraría cualquier ganancia en energía libre de carbono”, escribió en un correo electrónico. “En cambio, en este momento, parece que los acontecimientos podrían terminar dando una victoria neta a las energías renovables”.

Samantha Gross, investigadora de la Brookings Institution, dijo que la guerra está cambiando la manera en que la gente piensa sobre la transición para dejar atrás los combustibles fósiles: ya no es solo por el clima, sino una estrategia de seguridad energética.

“Eso amplía el atractivo”, afirmó. “Incluye no solo a las personas preocupadas por el lado ecológico, sino a las personas preocupadas por la seguridad pura y dura”.

El presidente Donald Trump aleja a Estados Unidos de las energías renovables. La guerra subraya los riesgos de su implacable enfoque en los combustibles fósiles.

“El gobierno de Trump se ha centrado mucho en los combustibles fósiles, pero desde que iniciaron este conflicto, hay que preguntarse: ¿esto es bueno para los combustibles fósiles? Y, en resumen, realmente creo que no”, dijo Gross. “Porque los precios altos y la incertidumbre provocados por esta guerra ayudan a impulsar a otros países a alejarse de los combustibles fósiles”.

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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.

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According to homicide detectives with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to the 1700 block of northwest 16th Avenue on Sunday, Aug. 23 around 4:45 a.m. after receiving reports of a person lying on the side of the road near a bicycle.

Pompano Beach Fire Rescue crews also responded and pronounced the victim deceased at the scene.

He has since been identified as Jacob Robinson.

Detectives said the bicycle appeared to have been hit by a car, and that an autopsy revealed Robinson sustained injuries consistent with being hit by a car.

Authorities are asking anyone who has information on the case to call BSO at 954-321-4844 or to contact Broward Crime Stopers at 954-493-TIPS to remain anonymous.

A reward of up to $5,000 is being offered for any tips through Crime Stoppers that leads to an arrest.

Según detectives de homicidios de la Oficina del Sheriff de Broward, agentes acudieron a la cuadra 1700 de Northwest 16th Avenue el domingo 23 de agosto alrededor de las 4:45 a.m., tras recibir reportes de una persona tendida a un lado de la carretera cerca de una bicicleta.

Equipos de Bomberos y Rescate de Pompano Beach también acudieron y declararon muerta a la víctima en el lugar.

Desde entonces, fue identificado como Jacob Robinson.

Los detectives dijeron que la bicicleta parecía haber sido impactada por un automóvil y que una autopsia reveló que Robinson sufrió lesiones compatibles con haber sido atropellado por un automóvil.

Las autoridades piden a cualquier persona que tenga información sobre el caso que llame a la BSO al 954-321-4844 o que se comunique con Broward Crime Stoppers al 954-493-TIPS para permanecer en el anonimato.

Se ofrece una recompensa de hasta $5,000 USD por cualquier información proporcionada a Crime Stoppers que conduzca a un arresto.

Los agentes indicaron que el accidente ocurrió alrededor de las 4:50 a.m. cerca de la calle 216 del suroeste.

De acuerdo con la FHP, el conductor de un Honda Civic viajaba hacia el sur por el Turnpike cuando golpeó a un hombre que estaba de pie fuera de un vehículo detenido en el paseo de emergencia derecho.

El hombre, cuya identidad aún no se ha dado a conocer, murió en el lugar a causa de sus heridas, informaron los investigadores.

Las autoridades cerraron los carriles en dirección sur del Turnpike a la altura de la calle 216 del suroeste mientras investigaban el accidente.

Varias de las vías que conducen a la intersección permanecen cerradas debido al hundimiento.

En un video grabado cuando llegaron los primeros equipos se ve un gran camión de carga hundido en la calle. Debajo del remolque también se aprecia un hueco con agua.

Las imágenes de Sky 10 muestran además la llanta delantera de un sedán blanco hundida en el pavimento, cerca del camión.

El socavón también detuvo los trenes de la Línea Verde en ambas direcciones en la estación Earlington Heights.

Los trabajadores del condado y los agentes del sheriff aún no han dado más información sobre la causa del colapso de la vía.

Two other people were injured, including a Saudi woman and a Pakistani resident who is in critical condition, in the western province of Taif, the civil defense said in an update on X. The debris also damaged vehicles and buildings. The statement didn’t give details on when exactly this happened.

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia said the Iran-backed Houthi rebels had tried to attack Mecca, Islam's holiest city, with a drone that it said was intercepted. The Houthis denied the accusation.

In a recent lightning advance in Yemen that's escalating tensions regionally, the rebels seized a key port city and strategic islands in the Red Sea, threatening to further disrupt international shipping already affected by the Iran war.

On Thursday, the foreign affairs ministries of Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait all condemned the Houthis' deadly drone attack in Taif province. The countries, which host U.S. military bases and forces, have repeatedly come under drone and missile attack from Iran since the U.S. and Israel launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty also said “there is no excuse for attacking” Saudi Arabia. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said his country was “deeply concerned” at the drone attack.

Saudi Arabia has so far seemed reluctant to unleash a major military campaign against the Houthis, wary of bringing greater Houthi attacks on its oil infrastructure and being dragged back into an all-out civil war in Yemen, its southern neighbor.

As Houthi attacks continue, the kingdom faces a potential decision about whether to step up its military response or seek a diplomatic solution. Regional officials have recently suggested that Saudi Arabia is running low on missile interceptors and has turned to regional and Western allies for assistance.

On Thursday, in a pre-recorded speech, the leader of the Iran-backed group, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, denounced what he called Saudi Arabia’s “utterly heinous lies,” referring to the claim that the group targeted Mecca.

The rebel group’s leader called for mass protests on Friday in Sanaa and Houthi-controlled areas to show support for protecting holy mosques. He called for an end to the Saudi blockade on Yemen.

In a social media post on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said that a claim of intercepting a drone shouldn’t be turned into an accusation against any specific party or used to escalate tensions. He also condemned attacks on Islamic holy sites.

On Wednesday, the Houthis had claimed to have downed a Saudi F-15 fighter jet operated by the Saudi-backed coalition over Yemen’s central province of Marib, though they didn’t say when it happened.

In a video released by the rebel group’s media channels, Houthi fighters were shown gathering around what they described as the wreckage of an F-15 emblazoned with a Saudi flag. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claim. Saudi officials didn't comment on the claim.

The growing tensions are impacting the Iran war, too, especially since the Houthis captured the port city of Mokha and an island on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which is a crucial shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz. That is adding pressure on global oil supplies and prices.

The Houthis have said they are targeting only Saudi-linked vessels, and container ships and oil tankers continued to transit the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, according to shipping analytics firm Windward. But the blockade of Saudi vessels has disrupted a crucial workaround for oil exports bottled up by Iran’s chokehold over Hormuz.

Yemen’s civil war began in 2014 when the rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen, forcing the government into exile. Saudi Arabia has led an international coalition fighting the rebels and also imposed an air and sea blockade on Houthi-held parts of Yemen.

The renewed fighting in Yemen has displaced at least 125,000 people who have fled, many with only what they could carry, as the Houthis have advanced down the Red Sea coast. Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, was pushed to the brink of famine in an earlier phase of the civil war, which killed an estimated 150,000 people.

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Associated Press journalist Giovanna Dell'Orto contributed from Minneapolis.

When the U.S. and Israel launched the war in February, some backers of renewables opined it could drive a green transition as oil and gas prices spiked. So far, more than 30 governments have enacted policies to move away from fossil fuels or improve energy efficiency. Yet at the same time, global emissions of greenhouse gases increased slightly and investments in clean energy fell compared to the same period last year.

The Associated Press talked to a dozen experts who said that while the Iran war appears to be helping the adoption of clean energy, the world is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels. They said it will take more time for new policies to show results.

“Governments are currently doing a dance between acknowledging the importance of clean power while continuing to support fossil fuel expansion,” war studies lecturer Pauline Heinrichs at King’s College London wrote in an email. “We are seeing an old and a new world interact in contradiction with each other.”

There has been a surge in solar installations in the United Kingdom. The government is also considering expanding natural gas production. In Asia, where there’s massive demand for solar power and electric vehicles, Indonesia is replacing some diesel power plants with solar, while also doubling down on coal for heavy industries.

Clean investment lost momentum globally, but the story differs importantly by region

Global investment in wind and solar deployment fell in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year, after several years of growth, according to Rhodium Group’s Clean Investment Monitor. China accounted for most of the global decline. In the U.S., Europe and India, where economies are more exposed to gas and oil prices, solar investment grew and wind investment held stable or grew, said Hannah Pitt, a director at Rhodium.

In February, Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said it was “just wishful thinking” that the new war would boost support for homegrown renewables over imported fossil fuels — unless it turned out to be a sustained conflict.

Six months later, Jackson said he didn’t anticipate oil prices hurdling past $90 or $100 a barrel for so long. If dozens of countries are promoting electric vehicle incentives, charging infrastructure and electrification in general, that can help in the fight against climate change, added Jackson. But only if those actions are sustained.

“We need that action over years, to decades, to make a dent in the climate problem,” Jackson said Monday.

Climate pollution increased marginally

Thirty-three governments adopted policies to switch from fossil fuels to electricity or improve energy efficiency in response to the Middle East conflict, as of Sept. 9, according to the International Energy Agency. This includes supporting EV adoption, promoting renewable energy, replacing gas boilers with electric heat pumps and retrofitting homes and businesses to use less energy. The Netherlands, Spain and the U.K. are doing everything on that list.

China is working to make heavy industry more energy efficient and pushing to electrify heavy vehicles. India and Indonesia are shifting to electric stoves to replace imported liquefied petroleum gas as a cooking fuel. Laos suspended gas and diesel car imports through 2026 to boost EVs.

These efforts haven't moved the needle yet. Incentivizing EV purchases or encouraging energy efficiency take time and scale, according to researchers for the Climate TRACE database of emissions.

At the same time, many governments are cutting fuel taxes. That provides immediate relief to consumers but disincentivizes switching to EVs. And, the war itself will spike emissions.

Global greenhouse gas emissions increased 0.2% in the first half of 2026, compared with the first half of 2025, according to Climate TRACE. While emissions from road transportation increased, Climate TRACE found that power sector emissions declined, despite concern that disruptions in oil and gas markets would push countries to use more coal for electricity. Shipping emissions also declined, likely due to the Strait of Hormuz closure.

Countries that import fossil fuels are footing higher bills

Those bills would have been even steeper, though, if not for the clean power added since 2020.

Fossil fuel importers have paid prices that are $330 billion higher compared to prewar market expectations, making it the largest sustained price shock since the 1990 Gulf War, according to research by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The European Union, China and India paid the most.

Countries that invested in clean energy after past energy crises saved an estimated $36 billion in avoided fossil fuel imports in the first five months of the conflict, the research found. China and Japan saved the most, followed by Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Brazil and India.

Governments are trying to insulate themselves from geopolitical volatility and fuel price instability, said Caspian Conran, lead economist at the global consultancy firm Baringa. China knows it can rely on coal and the U.S. won’t run out of domestic natural gas, he said. Europe's politicians feel the most urgency to adopt new energy policies because their fossil fuel production is limited, said Conran, who is based in London.

“We simply don’t have a choice,” he said.

Too soon to say whether the war will be a net gain for renewables or fossil fuels

At this point, the signal would be small and there is a lot of other variation in the system, according to Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton climate and international affairs professor.

“One thing is clear, however. When the trouble began, lots of people said there would be a rush to other, readily-available fossil fuel sources to replace Gulf oil and compensate for the price run-up, which would presumably bury any gain in carbon-free energy,” he wrote in an email. “Instead, at this point, it looks like events could turn out to be a net winner for renewables.”

Brookings Institution scholar Samantha Gross said the war is changing how people think about transitioning away from fossil fuels — that it’s not just for the climate, it’s an energy security strategy.

“That widens the appeal,” Gross said. “It brings in not just people concerned about the green side, but people concerned about hard security.”

President Donald Trump is shifting the U.S. away from renewables. The war underscores the risks of his relentless focus on fossil fuels.

“The Trump administration has been really focused on fossil fuels, but since they started this conflict, you have to ask the question, is this good for fossil fuels? And in short, I really think not,” Gross said. “Because the high prices and the uncertainty brought about by this war are helping to push other countries away from fossil fuels.”

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

This time, the jibes are coming from Wrexham’s famous co-owners.

Ahead of a match between the teams in England’s second-tier Championship on Saturday, Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac released a video containing cutting references to a saga from last season that saw Southampton expelled from the promotion playoffs for unauthorized filming of opponents’ practice sessions.

“Today, for no particular reason, we want to talk about the importance of privacy,” Reynolds says after emerging from behind a tree, “specifically how to prevent spies from seeing what you’re doing.”

“Because there’s some things,” Mac continues, “that you just don’t want any other people to see.”

They went on to say this wasn’t just a message for Wrexham’s fans, but for those of Oxford, Ipswich, Middlesbrough and people everywhere.

This was a reference — as part of a promotion for Wrexham’s front-of-kit sponsor, Firefox — to the three teams that Southampton admitted to spying on last season.

The tree? Well, that’s a nod to a Southampton intern being spotted filming a Middlesbrough training session from behind a tree — the incident which sparked an investigation that revealed Southampton’s misbehavior.

That, in turn, led to Southampton getting thrown out of the playoffs — costing the team a chance of promotion to the lucrative Premier League — and receiving a four-point deduction to start this season. Its manager, Tonda Eckert, has since been charged by the Football Association with bringing the game into disrepute, with an arbitration panel saying it was “a contrived and determined plan from top down to gain a competitive advantage.”

Southampton’s opponents aren’t letting this lie.

Wrexham had a dig during the offseason. Upon discovering it would be playing Southampton in the last match before a hiatus for international matches, Wrexham posted details of the match with the caption: “Taking us into the international break,” accompanied by a spy emoji and a calendar reminder to “Check Training Ground” for unauthorized visitors in the days ahead of the game.

Southampton’s first game of the season was at Watford, whose fans baited Eckert’s team. Even Watford’s mascot got involved, standing behind one of the goalposts ahead of the game and poking its head out with a binocular gesture.

On Saturday, Bristol City fans sang a song that referred to Southampton as cheats in the opening seconds of their Championship game.

Later, Southampton supporters were heard singing: “We spy when we want, we spy when we want, we are Southampton, we spy when we want.”

After losing to Watford in their opener, Southampton has won four games and drawn the other two to climb to ninth place in the Championship standings, setting up another run to the playoffs — or even to the two automatic promotion spots — in a bid to return to the Premier League.

Wrexham is 19th in the 24-team standings after just one win in seven games.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

In those opening pages, a prolonged heat wave grips a large swath of northern India. Told from the perspective of an aid worker named Frank, the book starts with a breakdown of the electrical grid, generators that run out of fuel and high temperatures combined with high humidity that lead to death everywhere. Unable to get relief, people die on rooftops, on the streets and in a lake. In the end, the heat kills 20 million people.

“I just have this instinctive sense, no, this is too harsh,” said Robinson during an interview with The Associated Press last month. “This is too … I’m not willing to read this one aloud.”

The first chapter struck a nerve with many readers because it brought to the forefront the very real fear of unchecked climate change, caused mainly by the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fuels like oil, gas and coal. Greenhouse gases build up heat in the atmosphere, which manifests on Earth as both higher temperatures and an intensifying of extreme weather events.

“The Ministry for the Future does a better job than any other book I’ve read of playing out, in a dramatic but realistic way, how high temperatures can literally kill people,” wrote Bill Gates, philanthropist and climate expert, in his Gates Notes blog in 2022.

Robinson has been writing about the potential impacts of climate change for years

For Robinson, an American science-fiction writer, the environment, and how humans interact with it, have been consistent themes in many of his novels. “2312” and “New York 2140,” both published before “The Ministry for the Future,” show how the devastating effects of climate change have altered life on Earth. Some of his terms and concepts — like “the Dithering” in “2312,” referring to the time period between 2005 and 2060 with little climate action — have been adopted by journalists, environmentalists and climate scientists.

The opening scene of “The Ministry for the Future” has also uniquely captured the imagination of people concerned about climate change. That may be because, while Robinson's cataclysm is clearly fiction and an extreme weather event beyond anything we have seen in modern history, the scale and frequency of extreme weather disasters makes an unprecedented extreme event feel possible one day.

After the book published, Robinson says he faced criticism in India, with some calling it “disaster porn” and arguing he should have set it in his own country. Robinson says he believes a similar heat wave could happen in the U.S., which has recorded very high wet bulb temperatures, or a combination of air temperature and humidity, a key factor in the lethality of the book's heat wave. However, he also wanted to explore the combined factor of a weakened electrical grid and thought northern India was a good setting because of its population density, humid subtropical climate and vulnerability to extreme weather.

“I intended it to be a kind of a brutal shock,” he said.

Indeed, that collective shock is a lead-in to the rest of the book, which explores an international effort to combat climate change, a process that proves to be messy, complicated and, for readers hoping to see a major response, inspiring. Measures include paying people to store carbon, so-called geoengineering efforts like releasing sulfate particulates into the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight and lower temperatures and creating a ministry — yes, the titular Ministry for the Future — to advocate for future generations.

Robinson warns of a ‘death cult response’ behind climate change inaction

Whether a mega extreme weather event would lead to a major effort to combat climate change is an open question. There have been numerous major floods, heat waves, wildfires and droughts in recent years, yet the world feels very far away from the kind of effort described in Robinson's book.

It wasn't until 2023 that the annual U.N. summit to address climate change, the Conference of the Parties, even directly named the culprit driving up global temperatures — the burning of fossil fuels — and called for a tepid “transition” away from such fuels.

Since President Donald Trump was reelected in 2024, America, historically the No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases, has stopped participating in climate diplomacy and has even been hostile to such efforts by other countries. Trump has called climate change a “con job,” characterized green energy transition as the “Green Scam” and rolled back U.S. government subsidies for green energies while directing investment in fossil fuels, including the revamping of coal plants that had been shuttered.

Robinson, a self-described leftist and environmentalist, says he believes the administration's actions on climate amount to a “death cult response.”

“It's a kind of glorying in their badness,” said Robinson, adding that it's as if they were saying: “‘It’s hilarious we can get away with this stuff. We can wreck the world and nobody can stop us. How powerful we are.’”

The administration has repeatedly said its environmental policies are practical and aimed at reducing red tape and promoting energy independence.

Robinson likens confronting climate change to the American Revolution

Robinson says he believes the pendulum will swing back toward climate action and this year's El Niño could be a catalyst. The natural and periodic climate pattern leads to warmer waters in parts of the Pacific Ocean, which raises temperatures and scrambles weather patterns around the world. Many scientists believe this cycle, which goes into next year, will be the strongest ever recorded and will juice extreme weather events worldwide.

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, Robinson says he has been invoking the American Revolution in discussions about climate change. Despite declaring independence from Britain in 1776, it wasn't until 1783 — when a peace treaty was signed after years of brutal battles — that the country truly became a nation.

“The story of the American Revolution is lose, lose, lose, lose, lose, win,” said Robinson. “So where did the win come from? It came from keeping to fighting despite the losses.”

Robinson says he doesn't plan to write a sequel to “The Ministry for the Future” because the book is still “doing its work” of highlighting the dangers of climate change and the need for a unified global response. However, his next novel will also be on climate change and set in the Arctic, though he declined to share more.

At 74, after many successful novels and numerous accolades, Robinson says he doesn't feel like he has anything to prove.

“I feel like I’ve got a body of work that I’m pleased with and I don’t have to continue to write novels just to write,” he said. “But I’ve found that I want to, and now I’ve got this idea, it’ll be interesting to see what comes out.”

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Peter Prengaman is The Associated Press’ global director of climate news and can be followed on LinkedIn.

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

It happened in May, in a far-from-filled Swedish arena, when Barkov suited up for Finland in an exhibition against Switzerland for his first game since shredding his right knee in the Panthers’ first training camp practice 7 1/2 months earlier. And on one of his very first shifts, he tumbled to the ice.

Nothing bad happened.

“Very good news,” Barkov said.

That was it. That was all it took for Barkov to realize his surgically repaired knee was good, that he could play without fear or concern. A few weeks later, he hoisted the trophy when Finland won the IIHF world championship.

And now he’s home in Florida, set for the start of training camp and ready to lead a team that — even after missing the playoffs last season — has been set by most sportsbooks as the favorite to win what would be its third Stanley Cup in a four-year span.

“Don’t take anything for granted,” Barkov said, when asked what he learned from not being able to play for Florida last season. “You just have to enjoy every single chance you get to play hockey, to be with your teammates, to go to every single practice, every single game. You’ve got to be excited about that.”

The Panthers — who were holding media day on Wednesday in advance of Thursday’s first practice of camp — have plenty of reasons to be excited. Many core players from the runs to the Cup titles in 2024 and 2025 are back, names like Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, Aaron Ekblad, Carter Verhaeghe, Gustav Forsling, Brad Marchand, Anton Lundell, Dmitry Kulikov and Niko Mikkola.

Brady Tkachuk, Matthew Tkachuk’s brother, has been added to the mix and Florida even brought Radko Gudas — a fan favorite from his first stint with the Panthers — back to help shore up the defense. And in net, with Sergei Bobrovsky gone to Toronto, Florida is turning the goaltender job over to Jacob Markstrom.

“Every single guy who has come in, they look so determined to be their best and to show their best,” Barkov said. “But they also know that we’re all in this together. Every single person is important, and every single has their own abilities to lead in their own way. We have many of those guys, so that’s the best part of this. No one’s here by themselves. Everyone can be just whatever they are.”

That didn’t happen last season. Injuries gutted the Panthers, starting with Barkov.

He got hurt about 20 minutes into the first practice of training camp, tearing the ACL and MCL in his right knee on Sept. 25, 2025. He had surgery a day later and was skating within a few months, but by the time he was ready to seriously consider returning to game action Florida — which dealt with injuries all year — was out of playoff contention and didn’t get a chance at trying to win a third consecutive Stanley Cup.

It wasn’t entirely a lost season for Barkov. He missed the chance to serve as Finland’s captain at the Milan Cortina Olympics, but played for his country at the IIHF world championships this past spring — and got to hoist the trophy when Finland beat host Switzerland 1-0 in the gold medal game.

And now, Florida’s career leader in goals and assists is raring to go with the Panthers once again.

“We all know camp is always going to be hard, no matter what. It’s going to be hard physically and mentally,” Barkov said. ”We’re all kind of ready for that test.”

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See AP’s full NHL coverage here

The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims slid to 196,000, the fewest since mid-July and down from 206,000 the week before. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, dropped to 203,250.

Economists had expected claims to come in at 207,500, according to a survey by the data firm FactSet.

Claims for jobless benefits are a proxy for layoffs, and economists watch them because they can be a sign of where the job market is headed. For the past year, claims have mostly stayed within a historically low range of 200,000 to 230,000 a week.

The American job market has remained sturdy despite higher gasoline prices that have squeezed businesses and consumers since the fighting with Iran began Feb. 28.

Layoffs are low. Businesses, remembering the labor shortages that followed the end of pandemic lockdowns, are reluctant to let go of staff. They’re hiring — but modestly by the standards of recent years.

So far this year, employers — companies, government agencies and nonprofits — have been adding an average 80,000 jobs a month, including a surprising 162,000 in August. That is an improvement on a dismal 2025 when monthly job creation averaged 9,700 as high interest rates and President Donald Trump’s ever-changing trade policies discouraged hiring.

But it remains well below the 166,000 monthly jobs created, on average, in 2023 and 2024, and the 491,000 a month recorded during the 2021-2022 hiring boom that followed COVID-19 lockdowns.

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Instead, 59-year-old Roberto Mosquera is in Africa and in jail, even though his attorney says he’s not been charged with a crime there.

Mosquera lived most of his life in South Florida where he worked as a plumber and has three daughters.

He showed Local 10 News’ Christian De La Rosa the conditions where he’s currently being held.

“We don’t got too many windows,” said Mosquera. “The Wi-Fi is not very good.”

Mosquera, who arrived in the U.S. as a child from Cuba, has a lengthy criminal record, including attempted murder, for which he served time behind bars.

“I have my faults in the United States, I paid for what I did,” he said.

Once he completed his sentence and got out, he got a job and had a family, and like so many other Cubans with a deportation order, he’d check in every year.

But in June 2025, after President Trump took office, ICE detained him two days before Father’s Day.

“I couldn’t even say goodbye when I left, it’s very hard,” he said.

Mosquera was deported from Miami to the small country of Eswatini in Southern Africa.

The Trump Administration claims Cuba would not take him.

He is one of a growing number of deportees sent to places they’re not from when their countries of origin turn them away.

The deportation agreement in Eswatini alone has reportedly cost U.S. taxpayers millions.

“I just want some answers man,” said Mosquera.

In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told Local 10 News:

“We are lawfully implementing President Trump’s agenda to deport illegal aliens by any means necessary within the law. When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them.”

Mosquera’s attorney told local 10 News the father of three remains jailed there indefinitely for a crime he did not commit.

The Homestead plumber says the only thing keeping him hopeful are his daughters, especially his youngest, 10-year-old Faith.

“Because it’s what I always have here, faith that something is going to change,” he said.

Mosquera said he was able to do the interview with Local 10 News thanks to a phone he was given after going on a hunger strike for 30 days.

His attorney, Alma David, says Mosquera’s case raises a larger question about what happens when the U.S. deports someone to a country with which they have no connection.

“Roberto has now been imprisoned in a maximum security prison for over a year in a country he had never heard of before he was incarcerated there and where he had never been charged with a crime,” David wrote in a statement to Local 10 News. "I know there are many Americans who believe that people who don’t have immigration status in the USA deserve to be deported. I know there are even Americans who believe that those people should be punished. But if you are not profoundly disturbed by the fact that our government can send a man, who had already finished serving his criminal sentence in the US many years ago, to a totally foreign country where he has never been and where he is being imprisoned with no end in sight, even though the government there has explicitly admitted that he is not charged with a crime or with any wrongdoing at all, you have lost sight of what it means to be American.”

Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home to campaign for the midterm elections, but not without a scathing rebuke from Republican Rep. Thomas Massie for all the unfinished business. Massie’s resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the war in Iran and his bipartisan effort to release more files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation are being left behind.

Here's the latest:

US OKs to $24 billion sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia

The Trump administration’s approval of the sale of the advanced warplanes to Saudi Arabia signals a boost in U.S. military cooperation with Gulf Arab states at a time when the war against Iran is at a stalemate.

The State Department said Thursday it has given the green light for the Saudis to purchase 48 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. Also included in the deal are jet engines, secure communication and navigational systems, spare parts and training.

The statement released by the State Department said the sale supports U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally. It called Saudi Arabia “a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region.”

Judge says Kennedy Center must give notice before making any major changes to building

The judge’s order says the Kennedy Center must provide 30 days’ notice before making significant changes to the building, including demolishing it as President Donald Trump has threatened.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said his ruling would “avoid any confusion on that score given more recent events.”

Trump was named the Kennedy Center’s chairman last year by loyalists on the center’s board.

He said Wednesday that his efforts to restore the aging building deserve recognition, saying “if we don’t do that, it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down. It’s in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape.”

Trump withdraws Lance Schroyer as his nominee to lead ICE

The White House said Thursday that Trump is withdrawing its nomination of the former Oklahoma state trooper to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The step ensures that an agency at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda will remain without a Senate-confirmed leader for at least a while longer.

Schroyer is close to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma. He has little experience with immigration.

The White House, in a brief statement, offered no comment on the decision.

When he nominated Schroyer in June, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that his pick was “a PATRIOT with real operational experience.” Trump also called Schroyer a “proven leader with DECADES of experience locking up the worst of the worst.”

Appeals court considers a Missouri congressional map backed by Trump

The federal appeals court panel is weighing an attempt to revive Missouri congressional districts backed by President Donald Trump.

The U.S. Supreme Court blocked those districts from being used in the November election. But on Thursday, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments about whether the state should use the new Republican-drawn U.S. House districts.

It wasn’t immediately clear what the impact would be, even if the panel were to rule in favor of the new map.

Local election officials are already printing ballots under the current districts. They face a Friday deadline to mail out absentee ballots to overseas citizens and military voters.

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ICE officer charged in non-fatal shooting is arrested by Minnesota authorities

A federal immigration officer charged with shooting and wounding a Venezuelan man in January and lying about the circumstances to investigators was set to appear Thursday afternoon before a Minnesota judge.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Christian Castro faces both state and federal charges stemming from the shooting of Julio Ceasar Sosa-Celis during a federal immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis area. Prosecutors say Castro falsely told investigators that he had been attacked with a broom and a shovel.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said in an online post that it arrested Castro on Wednesday in Minneapolis on an outstanding warrant charging him with assault and false reporting of a crime.

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Man gets 14-month prison sentence for spraying US Rep Ilhan Omar with vinegar

The man who sprayed vinegar at U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar during a Minneapolis town hall was sentenced Thursday under an agreement with prosecutors.

Sentencing for Anthony Kazmierczak came nearly eight months after the Jan. 27 assault.

Authorities later determined he had sprayed the Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota with a mixture of water and apple cider vinegar. He was charged with assaulting a U.S. officer.

During an earlier hearing, Kazmierczak was unable to explain his actions. Omar was not hurt in the attack and continued the January town hall after the incident.

Kennedy Center closed temporarily to assess building's 'risks to public safety’

A top official at the Kennedy Center says he closed the iconic performing arts center temporarily due to “acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration” of the aging building.

Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s executive director and chief operating officer, said in a court filing Thursday that the building will be closed for at least seven days to “assess existing safety risks in those portions of the main building exhibiting severe structural deterioration.”

The temporary closure, which occurred without notice Wednesday, is separate from a vote

Tuesday by the Kennedy Center’s board to close the performing arts center indefinitely for repairs. The closure may be extended after officials evaluate the center next week.

UN-backed experts cite possible US war crimes in Iran strikes

Human rights experts commissioned by the U.N.’s top human rights body say they’ve found “reasonable grounds” to believe the U.S. committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran, including one on a school in the southern city of Minab.

In a non-binding report published Thursday, they also accuse Iran’s theocratic government of carrying out crimes against humanity against its own people.

The report adds to international evidence gathered about possible crimes in the war in Iran, and could eventually be used in efforts to pursue justice in international courts.

The fact-finding mission was created by the Human Rights Council, the U.N.’s top human rights body. The grouping of independent experts is expected to present their findings next week to the council, which is made up of 47 U.N. member countries.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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House Democratic leader says Republicans are ‘desperate’ as MAGA, Inc. money flows for midterms

Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans have nothing left to offer voters than “trying to unload tens of millions of dollars” on the House, Senate and governors’ races.

“But they can’t even stick to their own brand,” he said.

Jeffries pointed out that the Trump-affiliated group is creating “all of these other entities,” which he suggested was so that they don’t have to disclose MAGA Inc. as the spender in the races.

“That should tell you a lot,” he said.

Jeffries said Democrats will have enough funding to defend their House incumbents and flip seats to take back the majority.

Former US Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, a ‘workhorse’ who shaped water policy, dies at 84

He also guided the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Kyl died Wednesday night from a neurological disorder, said Gordon James, a communications professional who is longtime friends with the Kyl family. Kyl had withdrawn from public life in December 2025 after announcing he’d been diagnosed with dementia.

Kyl spent almost three decades in Congress, serving in both chambers, and watched his party undergo a drastic transformation, with his career spanning Ronald Reagan’s presidency to President Trump’s first term.

Former Republican Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who considered Kyl a mentor, described the former senator in a February 2025 interview with The Associated Press as a true statesman and a “workhorse” among Washington, D.C.’s “showhorses.”

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Jeffries calls on Republicans to stay in Washington and work on AI safety

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is blasting House Republicans for leaving Washington until the midterm elections rather than working to ensure the safety of artificial intelligence.

Some in the tech industry have expressed concerns that an AI unshackled from human control could be destructive — a concern President Trump has rejected as a hoax.

“The AI safety issue is very real,” Jeffries said at a news conference.

To help make his point, he’s noting that some industry leaders have called for the development of AI models to slow down.

“This is a serious issue. It requires serious engagement and serious and immediate action,” Jeffries said. “And we’re going to be here as House Democrats over the next several weeks working on this issue and other issues demanding that Republicans come back into town so we can take care of these very real concerns.”

US stocks rise after oil prices fall and pressure from the bond market eases

U.S. stocks are rising Thursday and recovering most of their losses for the week.

Falling oil prices and easing pressure from the bond market helped Wall Street reverse many of its moves from the prior day, when the Federal Reserve hiked its main interest rate for the first time in years and suggested more may be ahead as it tries to get the nation’s high inflation under control.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.9% and was on track for just its second rise in the last nine days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 213 points, or 0.4%, as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.4% higher.

Stocks got a boost after the price for a barrel of Brent crude oil slid 2.3% to $103.38. That’s down sharply from the nearly $110 it reached earlier in the week on worries that the war with Iran will keep oil bottled up in the Middle East instead of going to customers worldwide.

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has rallied ‘middle powers’

Carney has repeatedly urged what he calls middle powers to resist economic coercion. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, he warned that when countries negotiate alone with a dominant power, “we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered.”

Trump rebuked him the next day.

Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s ambassador-designate to the EU, said Ottawa wants “to get as close as we possibly can” to Europe while increasing Canada’s independence.

While associate membership remains to be negotiated, Canada has already taken a major step. This year, it became the first non-European country to join the EU’s 150-billion-euro ($173-billion) SAFE defense procurement program, giving Canadian companies access to joint procurement as Europe increases defense spending.

The two sides have also discussed closer cooperation on energy, critical minerals, artificial intelligence and digital trade.

Redistricting moved 1 in 10 Americans into a new House district, report finds

The unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House has changed the congressional districts for one-tenth of Americans and significantly altered the makeup of at least one-fifth of districts, according to a new study.

A report by Protect Democracy found that 34.8 million people — about one in 10 Americans — now live in a different district than they did during the 2024 election cycle. And about one-fifth of all Americans now live in a district where more than a quarter of voters are new to the district compared with the last election cycle.

The findings display the stark overhaul that partisan redistricting fights kicked off by President Trump last year have caused for Americans across the country. The new congressional maps are increasingly drawn in ways that favor partisan politics over factors like geography and shared communities. That raises concerns among scholars about how the country’s hyperpolarized politics are affecting American democracy.

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Carney embraces EU associate membership proposal as Trump pushes Canada closer to Europe

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday embraced the prospect of his country becoming the European Union’s first associate member, saying closer ties with the continent would ensure no country could control Canada’s markets or undermine its sovereignty.

Carney’s speech to the European Parliament repeatedly extolled cooperation between Europe and Canada — but the relationship with the U.S., which has defined Canada’s economy for decades and has increasingly soured, hung over the address.

Trump’s tariffs, demands for economic concessions and repeated talk of making Canada the 51st state have pushed Ottawa to reduce its dependence on its neighbor and seek a far deeper economic, security and political relationship with Europe.

Carney told the parliament he welcomed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal, unveiled Wednesday, though he acknowledged that “associate membership” remains to be defined.

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Barbra Streisand calls Kennedy Center controversy ‘galling and painful to witness’

The singer, a Kennedy Center honoree in 2008, questioned the closing of the performing arts center for repairs and called the ongoing controversy surrounding its operation “galling and painful to witness.”

The award-winning superstar said in a statement to The Associated Press that renaming the National Cultural Center after President John F. Kennedy in 1964, following his assassination the previous year was “a fitting choice, because he was a true champion of the arts.”

“Since then, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has stood as one of America’s great cultural venues,” she said. “I was deeply honored to be included in the 31st annual class of Kennedy Center Honorees. For me, and for so many artists, that honor represented something larger than a career recognition. It represented a belief in the importance of art to the life of a democracy.”

She opposes attempts to add President Trump’s name to the center, adding, “You can easily imagine my indignation at seeing this revered institution become the subject of such a bitter struggle over one man’s name and unchecked ego.”

Kremlin says more US sanctions against Russia would hinder Ukraine peace effort

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that if the United States impose additional sanctions on Russia, it would hinder the Washington-led effort to end the war in Ukraine.

Peskov’s remarks come after the U.S. House on Wednesday passed a broad package of sanctions targeting Russian officials and key pillars of the country’s economy as lawmakers look to deprive Russian President Vladimir Putin of the financial resources needed to wage the war against Ukraine.

The bill now heads to President Donald Trump to be signed into law. It represents the most ambitious effort to support Ukraine since Trump’s return to the White House.

“We are, of course, monitoring the passing of this document. This falls into the category of unfriendly actions. And, of course, the U.S. imposing some additional sanctions would definitely complicate the efforts to find a peace settlement in Ukraine,” Peskov told reporters during his daily conference call.

Fencing goes up around the main Kennedy Center building after Trump-aligned board votes to close it

Fencing went up Wednesday around the main Kennedy Center building, a day after the Trump-aligned board voted to close most of the performing arts center for repairs. A Democratic congresswoman who is a trustee quickly sought an emergency court hearing to prevent what she called the “unlawful closing.”

The board’s vote Tuesday came after a federal judge blocked the institution from returning President Donald Trump’s name to the building.

The Republican president had said in a social media post that the closure was needed for safety repairs. But he said the repairs, which Congress has allocated $257 million to cover, would only happen if the board was permitted to move forward with plans to add his name to the building.

Activists who've opposed the closure said there's been no vehicle or pedestrian access to the building Wednesday. An Associated Press reporter who approached the main building was told by a security guard that it was closed.

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Speaker Johnson recesses the House early as Rep. Thomas Massie pushes Hegseth impeachment

Speaker Mike Johnson is closing up the House early, sending lawmakers home Wednesday to campaign for the midterm elections after what he claims is the most productive Congress in decades.

But not without a scathing rebuke from GOP Rep. Thomas Massie for all the unfinished business.

Massie’s resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the war in Iran and his bipartisan effort to force the release of more files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation are all being left behind, blocked from votes.

“We’re calling off Congress? And we’re in the majority?” Massie railed from the House floor.

“I’m trying to get justice for the Epstein survivors,” he said. “I’m trying to stop a war.”

Massie, the renegade Republican from Kentucky, seized control of the chamber for a blistering hourlong speech criticizing Johnson, the Republican majority and the work he said the speaker is refusing to conduct to lower prices for Americans and hold the Trump administration accountable.

“Why would we be canceling days when the country is burning?” Massie said. “We should stay here for every day that’s on the calendar and we should debate.”

Johnson insisted “the House has done its job.”

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Trump suggests EU allowing Canada as associate member could be a ‘hostile act’

President Donald Trump suggested that the European Union allowing Canada to become an associate member could be a “hostile act” and threatened to respond to the proposed move by imposing more tariffs on the bloc.

Trump conditioned his threat Wednesday on the “intention” of European leaders, saying that, “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe.” He also suggested the U.S. could cut off trade with Europe in certain areas.

Trump called the prospect of Canada joining the EU “laughable” and called America’s neighbor a “terrible trade partner.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday embraced the prospect of his country becoming the European Union’s first associate member, saying closer ties with Europe were meant to ensure no country could control Canada’s markets, impair its sovereignty or undermine its freedoms.

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Joe Gomes, 64, was playing in the 9/11 hockey tournament when he suddenly went down.

A livestream of the game captured the moment Gomes got up and made one final play before collapsing off the bench.

“Something didn’t feel right,” Gomes said.

As players realized something was wrong, sticks and gloves went flying as people rushed to help.

Among those racing to Gomes’ side was Jess Herman, a paramedic with Jupiter Fire Rescue.

Herman and Gomes have known each other for more than 15 years. She was 13 when they met, and Gomes used to referee her hockey games. Herman is now 30.

“When you’ve been friends with someone for over 15 years, that’s not someone you plan on being the person and reason why they’re here today,” Herman said.

But when Gomes collapsed, her instincts kicked in.

“It was personal because it was Joe,” Herman said.

Herman was one of six first responders who worked to keep Gomes’ heart pumping. An AED was used to shock him as they worked together to save his life.

Gomes and Herman want to recognize the six first responders who helped save him:

• FF Ian Scriver — Palm Beach County
• FF Jessica Herman — Jupiter Fire Rescue
• LT Drew Johnson — Miami-Dade
• FF Joseph Arley — Coconut Creek
• LT Anthony Zapata — North Lauderdale
• Capt. Chris Loy — Coral Springs

“It was basically reeling us into chaos,” Gomes said.

“At one point we back each other up because the AED is about to shock him,” Herman said.

Gomes was rushed from the rink to the hospital. He believes he was seconds from death.

“I saw the white light,” Gomes said.

Gomes underwent surgery and 24 hours later was told by his doctor that he could go home.

But Gomes didn’t want to leave.

“I said I wanna go to the rink,” he said.

The first thing on his mind was the people who had witnessed what happened and helped save his life.

“He got shocked by an AED yesterday and the first thing on his mind, as selfless as he is, is what about everyone else that got to witness this and saved my life,” Herman said.

Gomes walked out of the hospital with what first responders call no deficits. He said his doctors could clear him in three weeks, and he’s already thinking about getting back on the ice.

Herman said saving Gomes was a team effort.

“I’m so thankful that we saved this man, but there was full-on teamwork for this, and that needs to be known. It was not a one-man job. He had multiple people making sure that he could be here another day,” she said.

Gomes said the experience has given him a lot to think about.

“I’ve had a lot of soul searching over the last few days,” he said. “To say it’s eye-opening is a complete understatement.”

No reason was given for Shelton’s withdrawal but he's slated to play Davis Cup for the United States in the Czech Republic starting on Friday — less than a week after losing to Alexander Zverev in the U.S. Open final.

Shelton is up to a career-high No. 4 in the rankings after reaching his first Grand Slam final.

It will mark Nakashima’s Laver Cup debut. He joins Alex de Minaur, Taylor Fritz, Alexander Bublik, Learner Tien and Francisco Cerundolo on Team World, which has Andre Agassi as its captain.

Yannick Noah’s Team Europe features Zverev, Carlos Alcaraz, Flavio Cobolli, Rafael Jodar, Jakub Mensik and Casper Ruud.

The Laver Cup, which is modeled after the Ryder Cup, is scheduled for the O2 arena in London Sept. 25-27.

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See AP’s full tennis coverage here

For a third time, the U.S. House has voted to end the war in Iran, approving a war powers resolution that would halt President Donald Trump’s ability to continue military action without congressional approval. The roll call was similar to earlier efforts this summer. None of the resolutions have made it to the president’s desk, where Trump would almost certainly veto the measure.

Trump is in North Carolina on Wednesday to campaign with Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley as the former national party chairman tries to shore up his campaign against Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper.

Here’s the Latest:

Trump repeats far-fetched promise to send every US adult $5K if Republicans win

The president wrapped up his remarks after about an hour by repeating his new pledge to distribute the checks, which he has conditioned on the GOP winning in the midterms and has been criticized as a dubious attempt to buy votes.

Such a plan would cost more than $1 trillion, require approval from a Congress that has expressed skepticism and would exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.

“If we win, we’re going to get you $5,000,” he said.

Trump says higher gas prices are ‘a very inexpensive price to pay’ for Iran war

The president, moments after saying that affordability was a word Democrats “made up,” acknowledged that gas prices are “a little higher” in the wake of the Iran war.

“It’s a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done,” he said, adding a moment later that it would be “even if it was a lot more.”

He said things were going well for the U.S. economically before he launched the war in late February and “I could have sat back and enjoyed it,” but he told the crowd he felt it was the right thing to do.

US again denies visas for Palestinian delegation to attend UN General Assembly

For the second year in a row, the Trump administration has denied visas for a high-level Palestinian delegation to attend the United Nations General Assembly next week.

The State Department said Wednesday that Palestinian officials, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, had failed to live up to their commitments under previous agreements to seek peace with Israel.

In a statement, the department said that the Palestinian Authority had continued to pursue legal action against Israel at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court and had continued to pay stipends to the families of prisoners convicted of terrorist attacks against Israelis.

“As a consequence of their failure to reform, contrary to their commitments to the United States, and their ongoing activities that undermine the prospects for peace, the United States will extend sanctions that deny visas to PLO members and PA officials” in accordance with standing U.S. law, the department said.

Despite the visa denials, the Palestinians will still be represented at the UNGA by their diplomats who are already accredited to the United Nations.

Trump blames Cooper for a high-profile murder and Helene response

The president is amplifying a false claim about a grisly North Carolina murder as he attacks Cooper on crime.

Since Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old who fled Ukraine, was stabbed to death on a Charlotte train, Trump has blamed Cooper and Democrats in North Carolina for the crime.

The man charged with the crime, Decarlos Brown Jr., had served time in prison and been committed for schizophrenia. But contrary to Trump’s claim that “he was released by Cooper,” Brown served his sentence and was not freed early under any Cooper policy.

Trump also called Cooper a “disaster” after Hurricane Helene inflicted widespread damage in 2024. Trump started those claims immediately after the storm, during his last presidential campaign. Cooper rejected that characterization, citing work state and local governments were doing with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“This is a flat-out lie,” Cooper said.

In North Carolina, Trump casts midterm choice in dire terms

The president is prone to hyperbole and absolutes when he’s framing binary choices in elections, and he’s sticking to that as he speaks in North Carolina.

“If we lose, you’re going to lose your border, you’re going to lose your tax cuts, you’re going to lose your wealth and our country is going to go through hell,” he told supporters at a rally.

It’s an event for Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley. Trump has praised Whatley and taken plenty of broadsides at Whatley’s opponent, Roy Cooper. But Trump is otherwise sticking to defending his own presidency and Republican majorities on Capitol Hill that have largely given him what he’s wanted.

Pence pushes Congress to reassert its tariff power as Trump targets Canada

As Trump wages a trade battle with Canada, his former vice president said Congress should reclaim power outlined in the Constitution over tariffs.

“We would do well in the years ahead to get back to have the Congress reclaim its authority over taxes, whether they’re tariffs on the border or revenue from the American people,” he said during an appearance at the Economic Club of Washington.

Pence has been a fierce critic of Trump’s unilateral tariffs. He was pressed at the event about the president’s moves against Canada and recalled that Trump was a strong negotiator during a trade deal in his first term.

Pence, who campaigned for the White House briefly for the 2024 election, dismissed the notion that he would run again in 2028.

“My wife would kill me,” he quipped at the prospect.

Trump says Fed raised rates to hurt him politically

In North Carolina for a midterm campaign rally, Trump blasted the Federal Reserve board for raising rates Wednesday and called the board “very hostile” to him, though he said he still has confidence in Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh.

“The board is very hostile. They’re very political. They’re doing the wrong thing. They’re a bunch of politicians,” Trump said, later adding, “They’re raising rates to make Trump do as bad as they can possibly do.”

Trump said several times in the span of minutes, “Interest rates are too high.”

He said he talked to Warsh, whom he nominated, ahead of the vote and told him, “You might as well vote with the board because it’s not going to matter.” But the president insisted he wants Warsh “to be independent.”

Asked whether he still has confidence in Warsh, Trump replied, “I do.”

Trump suggests EU allowing Canada as associate member could be a ‘hostile act’

The president threatened to respond to the proposed move by imposing more tariffs on the bloc.

Trump conditioned his threat Wednesday on the “intention” of European leaders, saying that, “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe.” He also suggested the U.S. could cut off trade with Europe in certain areas.

Trump called the prospect of Canada joining the EU “laughable” and called America’s neighbor a “terrible trade partner.”

House approves sweeping Russia sanctions bill

The broad package of sanctions targets Russian officials and key pillars of its economy as lawmakers look to deprive President Vladimir Putin of the financial resources needed to wage the war against Ukraine. The legislation now heads to Trump to be signed into law.

It represents the most ambitious effort to support Ukraine since Trump’s return to the White House and would break nearly two years of relative gridlock on the issue following a 2024 emergency aid package. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pushing for the bill’s passage and made a direct appeal to senators shortly before they passed it last month.

The measure sanctions Russian officials, banks and a shadow fleet of tankers that keeps Russian energy moving. It also directs Trump to impose up to 100% tariffs on the top five importers of Russian oil or natural gas, with an exception for countries that import less than 15% of Russia’s natural gas exports and have taken significant steps to reduce those imports.

Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks at campaign event for Michael Whatley

The nation’s top law enforcement official made a very unusual appearance at an expressly political event in North Carolina that is meant to bolster the Republican Party’s Senate candidate.

Blanche’s appearance Wednesday came as he’s increasingly erased the longtime independence and distance from expressly political activity that the attorney general’s office has traditionally sought to preserve.

Blanche last week spoke at the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas.

Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley blames economy on Democrats

Trump’s handpicked North Carolina Senate hopeful is appearing in Gastonia, outside of Charlotte, with Trump. And the former national GOP chairman is telling supporters that whatever economic pain they’re feeling isn’t the president’s fault.

“When it comes to our economy, and we talk about affordability, we talk about high prices, we talk about the ditch that Roy Cooper and Joe Biden put America in with the economy,” Whatley said.

Cooper, Whatley’s Democratic opponent, was governor from 2017 to 2025. He and Biden have been out of office almost 20 months.

Whatley has tried to thread a needle in his campaign, acknowledging that voters are paying more for gas, groceries, housing, healthcare and other consumer goods. But as a close Trump ally, he has little choice but to maintain his support for Trump’s tariffs and his Iran war that have played a part in inflation.

Park Service awards contracts to work on East Potomac golf course, Democrats say

The Trump administration quietly awarded contracts to begin work on Trump’s planned takeover of the East Potomac golf course in Washington, according to Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee.

Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the panel’s top Democrat, revealed during a committee hearing Wednesday that the National Park Service hired a civil engineering firm to start work on the historic public golf course, with no public announcement.

Huffman accused Trump of “systematically moving” to turn the federal site “into another gilded private golf club for the mega-rich.”

A contract approved last week authorizes nearly $400,000 to a Massachusetts-based company for environmental and historic preservation compliance work. A projected construction contract is worth up to $49 million, with work to begin next year.

AI researcher says Congress has about a year to act

Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, the 2024 recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics who is often know as the “godfather of AI,” says Congress doesn’t have long to craft a response to the technological advancements.

“Maybe a year,” he told reporters after briefing lawmakers Tuesday on Capitol Hill. “But not much more than a year.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who convened the briefing, said it was “basically insane … that we’ve allowed the development of a dangerous technology that could escape human control.”

Trump says US interest rates should be “1% or less” after Federal Reserve hikes rates

The president posted on social media that the world should feel obligated to charge lower interest rates on the U.S. national debt.

He didn’t mention the Federal Reserve in his post, but the U.S. central bank hiked its benchmark rate on Wednesday to reduce inflation. Trump has long maintained that rates should be lower even though most economists have warned that drastic cuts could worsen inflation.

“Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR,” Trump said. “We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer.”

Rates are elevated because of rising U.S. national debt and higher energy prices because of the Iran war. The interest rate on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was above 5% in Wednesday afternoon trading.

El-Sayed meets with Senate Democrats in Washington

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is meeting Wednesday with Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running for Senate in Michigan.

El-Sayed is in Washington talking with Senate Democrats after he defeated Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, who Schumer had backed, in a primary last month. Schumer has pledged to help the Democrat even as he has run on an anti-establishment platform.

After meeting with several Democratic senators, El-Sayed said that the party is united and “we’re having really productive conversations about what it takes to win” his race against Republican Mike Rogers.

He said the party needs solidarity because “we really can take the majority back, and that path runs through Michigan,” El-Sayed said.

Turkey tells Iran’s major airline to suspend flights to the country following US sanctions

Turkish officials told Mahan Air to suspend flights Wednesday to its neighboring country, according to a person briefed on the matter, a week after the U.S. Treasury issued new penalties targeting the remaining facets of Tehran’s already beleaguered aviation ecosystem.

The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public, said the decision is also a direct result of recent travels by Treasury officials to Ankara and the larger region to reinforce America’s economic campaign against Iran.

There was no official announcement from Ankara as of Wednesday afternoon, but the Turkish aviation news website, AirportHaber, had reported the details earlier.

House votes to name T. Rex as the country’s national fossil dinosaur

The legislation also names the American mastodon as the national fossil mammal of the United States.

Indiana Republican Rep. Erin Houchin said he hopes the measure inspires young people and encourages them to “put down their phones, go outside and go dig.”

The bill was approved unanimously, without a formal roll call, after a brief debate. It would next go to the Senate.

Top Democrat places hold on Trump administration’s plan to sell $2.8B in heavy munitions to Israel

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee says he is going to block a proposed sale of $2.8 billion in heavy weaponry to Israel over concerns that the munitions would not be used in accordance with U.S. and international law.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-NY, the ranking member of the committee, said he would withhold approval for the sale because of “grave, unresolved concerns about how these munitions could be used in densely populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon.”

Meeks’ objections, along with any other potential ones, will not likely affect the sale, which was informally notified to lawmakers on Tuesday, because once it is formally notified to Congress, Secretary of State Marco Rubio can bypass the normal process by making an emergency determination that the transaction is in the national security interest.

The $2.8 billion package includes 40,000 powerful 2,000-pound bombs, according to two U.S. officials and a person familiar with the plan.

Kamala Harris to campaign with Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan next week

The former vice president’s appearance with the Senate nominee comes as the Democrats push to unify voters in a battleground state that could determine which party controls Congress. The two will attend a roundtable discussion about Black maternal mortality on Tuesday, according to El-Sayed’s spokesperson.

Harris and El-Sayed have spoken multiple times since she endorsed El-Sayed after his primary victory, but this is the first time they’ll appear publicly together.

Michigan’s bitter primary highlighted divisions among Democratic voters, notably on U.S. support for Israel. El-Sayed, running on a progressive platform, beat Rep. Haley Stevens, who was backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, by about 1 percentage point.

Some other top-ranking Democrats have joined the unification effort. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg urged a crowd of hundreds in Detroit last month to vote for Democratic candidates down the ballot.

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles says she is cancer-free

Wiles said in a post on the social platform X on Wednesday that her pathology results came back clear.

Wiles, 69, announced in March that she had been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer and that she would remain in her position while seeking treatment.

She is a longtime Trump ally who rose from his campaign co-chair to become his closest adviser and counsel.

FBI, Coast Guard board 2 U.S-bound oil tankers following indications of cyberattacks

The FBI and Coast Guard boarded two oil tankers bound for the United States to investigate following indications that cyberattacks had compromised the ships’ networks, officials said Wednesday.

The FBI said in a statement that investigators on Aug. 21 and Aug. 24 responded to reported network breaches of two foreign-flagged commercial oil tankers, and that a multi-agency team of cyber experts boarded both vessels in the Gulf of America to assess potential harm to the ships’ operational and information technology systems.

“Currently, there are no reports of operational disruptions, vessel instability, physical danger to crews, or environmental impacts,” the statement said, adding that the crews of both ships had cooperated with the investigations.

The FBI statement did not identify a potential culprit of the breaches.

Fed chair stays mum on Trump wanting rate cuts, instead of rate hikes

Warsh declined to say what message he sent Trump after the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to curb inflation.

Trump has repeatedly called for rate cuts and attacked Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, on social media for not lowering rates. Higher rates generally lower inflationary pressures, while lower rates can foster more growth and rising price levels.

“I’ve got nothing for you on a discussion with the president,” Warsh told reporters at a news conference.

Fed chair portrays rate hikes as an optimistic sign for US economy

Warsh said the economy appears resilient and the labor market is strengthening, which is why Fed officials felt comfortable raising the benchmark interest rate to combat elevated levels of inflation.

The Federal Reserve chair said he “would be hard pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive,” so officials agreed a rate hike would not hurt the economy as the Fed tries to return inflation to its 2% target.

Fed officials separately estimated median inflation of 3.7% this year.

“Given that resilience and the potential for even greater performance, an attitude of optimism is exactly what I heard,” in the two-day meeting among Fed officials, Warsh said.

RTÉ said it will not send an act to the 2027 competition in Bulgaria and will not broadcast the show because of the “appalling and ongoing loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there which continues to put the lives of so many civilians at risk."

Ireland was one of five countries — along with the Netherlands, Iceland, Slovenia and Spain — to skip Eurovision this year to protest Israel’s inclusion in the pan-continental music contest.

Eurovision Director Martin Green said organizers regretted RTÉ’s decision but “fully respect” it.

“All broadcasters decide on an annual basis to participate in the following year’s contest. We will remain in dialogue with RTÉ and hope to welcome them back to the contest in the future,” Green said.

Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS announced last month it will also boycott next year, calling Eurovision a “platform for division.”

“AVROTROS will not participate in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2027 because the event can no longer be considered neutral, with a participating country still involved in a large-scale military conflict,” it said.

Next year’s competition is due to take place in Bulgaria’s Black Sea resort of Burgas in May, after Bulgarian singer Dara won the 2026 event with her infectious party anthem “Bangaranga.”

The contest was founded in 1956, in part to help unite a shattered continent after World War II. It pits acts from dozens of countries against one another for the continent’s musical crown.

Israel has taken part in Eurovision since 1973, one of a few non-European countries to compete. But calls for Israel to be kicked out have swelled over the conduct of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza.

The 2024 Eurovision contest in Malmo, Sweden, the 2025 in Basel, Switzerland and this year’s contest in Vienna saw pro-Palestinian protests and heightened security.

The weekly average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate home loan has been rising for months and this week climbed to just below 7% — its highest level in over 19 months.

The benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage rose to 6.95% from 6.76% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. One year ago, the average rate was 6.26%.

This is the fourth week in a row that mortgage rates have moved higher. The average rate hasn’t reached this level since Jan. 30, 2025.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, often sought by borrowers refinancing a home loan, also rose this week. That average rate increased to 6.26% from 6.09% last week. A year ago, it was at 5.41%.

Higher mortgage rates can add hundreds of dollars a month to borrowers’ costs, limiting homebuyers’ purchasing power. As rates rise, that can also lead prospective home shoppers to delay buying.

In late February, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage briefly dipped to 5.98%, its lowest level going back to late 2022. The nearly 1 percentage point increase in the rate since then translates roughly into an additional $255 a month cost for a borrower financing a $400,000 home loan at the current average rate.

The housing market has been stuck in a rut this year in large part because of rising borrowing costs, as mortgage rates have kept marching higher in the months since the war between the U.S. and Iran began in late February. Expectations of higher inflation amid surging oil prices have pushed up the long-term bond yields that lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans, driving mortgage rates higher.

Mortgage rates are influenced by inflation, Federal Reserve policy and bond-market investors’ expectations for the economy, among other factors. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield. That yield, which was at 3.97% in late February, before the war began, breached 5% on Monday for the first time since 2023. It was at 4.94% at midday trading on the bond market Thursday.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve's decision Wednesday to increase its key interest rate for the first time in three years in a bid to tame surging inflation could also put upward pressure on mortgage rates.

While the central bank doesn’t set mortgage rates, its decisions to raise or lower its short-term rate are watched closely by bond investors and can ultimately affect the yield on 10-year Treasurys. The Fed also signaled Wednesday that another rate hike could occur later this year.

“The rate hike all but guarantees that mortgage rates will remain stuck at or above the 7% threshold, which creates a psychological and financial barrier that will sharply squeeze affordability and sideline even more prospective buyers," said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS.

The U.S. housing market has been in a slump since 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes were essentially flat last year, stuck at a 30-year low. U.S. sales of those homes slowed again last month.

And the latest monthly tally of home purchase transactions that have yet to be finalized points to potentially more sluggish home sales in coming months.

Pending U.S. home sales inched up 0.3% last month from July and fell 4.7% from August last year, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. There’s usually a month or two lag between a contract signing and when the sale is finalized, which makes pending home sales a near-term bellwether for the housing market.

A sharp run-up in home prices, especially in the early years of this decade, and a chronic shortage of homes nationally worsened by years of below-average home construction have left many aspiring homeowners priced out of the market.

That has many would-be homebuyers keeping an eye on mortgage rates, which can boost home shoppers’ purchasing power when they come down, but also reduce how much homebuyers can afford when rates rise.

Depending on a borrower’s income, credit and other factors, they may qualify for a rate on a 30-year mortgage that is below or above the current average.

The Fed rate hike and other factors already driving up mortgage rates this year could set the stage for a further slowing in the housing market this year.

Still, it's not clear how much mortgage rates will move up from here, as their rise in recent weeks may already reflect, at least in part, expectations that the Fed would elect to begin hiking interest rates.

“That matters because it tells us how mortgage rates and the bond market might respond to potential Fed hikes,” said Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com.

“We told our children to get your education, get out, and don’t come back," said Al Antonelli, who has been a member of Ohio Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 125 for nearly 50 years. “Because there’s no future here, especially blue collar.”

Versions of Youngstown’s story played out across the industrial Midwest, where disappearing jobs and frustration in longtime Democratic strongholds helped fuel Donald Trump’s political rise. When Trump visited as president in 2017, he promised the jobs that had left Ohio were “all coming back.”

“Don’t sell your house,” one of the retirees recalled Trump saying during his Youngstown visit.

Nearly a decade later, the old industrial economy Trump promised to revive has not returned, and Democrats hope the political tide is shifting again. Two years after Democrat Sherrod Brown lost his Senate seat, he’s attempting a comeback by trying to win back some of the same voters who turned on his party. Brown wants to harness dissatisfaction with the economy, the war in Iran and the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers to dislodge Republican Sen. Jon Husted in November.

Brown's chances of returning to Washington depend largely on whether he can win again in parts of the state that have spent years drifting away from Democrats. His race is also part of a much broader challenge for Democrats, who need to make inroads in Republican-leaning states like Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and Texas if they are to win control of the chamber in November.

Brown outlasted Democrats’ decline in Ohio — until he couldn’t

For years, Brown was able to outrun the Democratic Party’s decline in Ohio. His pro-labor populism resonated with enough swing voters to deliver decades of victories from the statehouse to Congress.

Trump carried Ohio by 8 points in 2016, four years after Barack Obama won it. Yet Brown won his third term in the Senate two years later, in part by continuing to perform well in places like Mahoning County, anchored by Youngstown.

By 2024, even Brown could no longer hold on, losing his reelection campaign to Republican Bernie Moreno by 3.5 percentage points.

Trump carried Mahoning by more than 10,000 votes, a remarkable reversal in a previously loyal Democratic county that Obama had won by nearly 30 percentage points just 12 years earlier. With Trump’s endorsement, Moreno won the county by just 220 votes.

The transformation extends across the Mahoning Valley. Neighboring Trumbull County went from backing Obama by 23 points in 2012 to Trump by nearly 17 points in 2024.

“The Mahoning Valley has struggled with deindustrialization, job loss for years, and the politicians in power have seemed to understand that, but it doesn’t seem like they were doing enough about that,” said Cryshanna Jackson Leftwich, a politics professor at Youngstown State University. “So at some point, 20, 30 years of supporting the candidates, people are gonna say, well, look, this has never worked for us, right?”

Trump and other Republicans offered voters something different, Leftwich said.

“Did they keep their promises? Not at all. Is the county still poor? Absolutely,” she said. “But they at least said they were going to do something different.”

Brown faces a much different environment this year

Democrats’ bid to flip the Senate requires them to net four seats, including by competing deep in Republican territory.

Two months from the end of midterm campaigns, high gas prices stemming from the war in Iran have compounded discontent with the economy.

Trump has also escalated a trade war with neighboring Canada, a fight with particular implications for Ohio. The state exported $17.5 billion in goods to Canada in 2025, or nearly a third of the state’s total exports, according to federal statistics.

Tension from the economic strain is visible in Parma, a working-class Cleveland suburb that split its ticket in 2024, backing both Trump and Brown. At a watch party for the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, supporters who stayed late into the evening cheered Trump but acknowledged that other issues would most likely determine the midterms.

“The real thing that’ll move the needle is going to be economics. Gas prices, grocery prices,” said Parma City Councilor Kevin Kussmaul. “That’s really what’s going to help.”

Parma Republican Party President Doris Peters said similarly that “everyone’s concerned about the high gas prices.”

“It’s all about the economy," she added. “People remember how much money’s in their wallet and how much is not in their wallet.”

The limits of a Democratic rebound in Ohio

Husted presents a different opponent than the one Brown faced two years ago. His restrained demeanor contrasts with Moreno, the brash former car dealer who entered politics as an outsider. Husted spent nearly 25 years in Ohio politics, as a state lawmaker, House speaker, secretary of state and lieutenant governor, before being tapped to fill Vance’s Senate seat.

But Husted may not need to generate much enthusiasm of his own. Except for Brown and candidates for the Ohio Supreme Court, a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide race for state office in Ohio since 2008.

Adam Radogna, 37, who hosted the watch party Wednesday for Parma Republicans at his Italian restaurant, has attended more than 80 Trump rallies and remains an ardent Trump supporter. But Husted is not someone he’s followed closely.

“I don’t know him at all,” Radogna said of Husted. “But I mean, I will vote for him.”

Brown faces enthusiasm problems of his own as he asks voters to return to a 73-year-old former senator whom they rejected just two years ago.

Ellen Zban, 67, a longtime Youngstown resident who said she leans Democratic but has voted for Republicans, said she won’t support Husted because she doesn’t believe he has listened enough to the community.

“I really don't think he's done anything for us," she said. “We never hear from him.”

But Brown isn’t necessarily the candidate she wishes Democrats were offering either.

“He’s my best option,” Zban said. “But I’d like to see younger people running.”

The race is being flooded with money as both sides try to drum up enthusiasm and define the choice for voters. Husted and allied Republican groups have already spent more than $80 million with $86 million more reserved through Election Day, according to AdImpact. Brown and Democratic groups have spent $69 million, with $67 million reserved.

Elon Musk has also waded into the race through his America PAC, which is running online and streaming ads attacking Brown over transgender issues.

“Billionaires are lying to try and bail out their ‘Golden Boy’ because Jon Husted has always put special interests ahead of Ohio," Brown's campaign manager, Patrick Eisenhauer, said in a statement.

Brown has attempted to make data centers central to the race, an issue that has seen bipartisan outrage in communities across the country. Brown's allies have called Husted the face of Ohio’s data center boom, blaming the massive facilities for contributing to rising electricity costs. Husted helped promote Ohio as a destination for data centers while serving as lieutenant governor.

The ads and backlash have generated enough concern among Republicans that an internal party memo described data centers as an “anchor” around Husted in the race.

“Thirty-two years in Washington turned Sherrod Brown into a liar," Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for Husted, said in a statement. "Jon Husted is fighting to lower costs and help Ohioans keep more of what they earn. Sen. Husted introduced legislation requiring data center companies to pay for the power they use and return excess electricity to the grid."

The state's politics could shift again

In Youngstown, the union retirees who watched the Mahoning Valley shift toward Republicans aren’t convinced the movement is permanent.

Rich Troisi, business manager of Laborers’ Local 127, said Republican candidates in recent elections could win support in the area largely by aligning themselves with Trump. This year, he said, that dynamic may not hold.

“I don’t think Donald Trump's endorsement is going to be what it was,” he said.

Antonelli, the longtime union worker, pointed to independent voters, who he said tend to move with their economic circumstances.

“My dad used to say, it depends on how tight your shoes are. Tight meaning, how’s the money?” he said. “Right now, the shoes are pretty tight, no matter who you are.”

____

Associated Press reporter Julie Carr Smyth contributed to this report from Columbus, Ohio.

Random House announced Thursday that “Brothers and Sisters” will come out on April 13. It's her follow-up to “Educated,” which was released in 2018 and became one of the most talked-about memoirs of its time.

Westover's account of growing up as the youngest of seven siblings in a Mormon survivalist family in Idaho, the physical abuse allegedly suffered at the hands of an older brother and her eventual break from her family spent more than two years on The New York Times' nonfiction bestseller list. Winning wide acclaim, it was chosen by the National Book Critics Circle as a finalist in two awards categories and praised by Bill Gates and former President Barack Obama, both of whom placed it on their lists of favorite books of 2018.

In “Brothers and Sisters,” Westover writes about her parents' disputing her memories and her siblings denying events in “Educated” that they had previously confirmed. According to Random House, the new book considers questions such as “Who gets to say what happened?” and “How do you believe yourself when your parents say you’re lying?”

“'Brothers and Sisters' is a story of how memories are held in a family. How someone can know you are telling the truth but still say you are lying,” the publisher's announcement reads in part. “Ultimately, it is a story of what it means to grow up — to outlive the story that made you.”

Westover, who turns 40 later this month, was admitted to Brigham Young University as a scholarship student and later received a doctorate in intellectual history from Trinity College in Cambridge, England. In 2021, then-President Joe Biden awarded her a National Humanities Medal for serving “as a powerful example of how the humanities can set people — and a Nation — free.”

The bill is named after the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who spent more than a year negotiating it. The measure was approved in a 262-159 vote and now heads to President Donald Trump to be signed into law.

The legislation represents the most ambitious effort to support Ukraine since Trump’s return to the White House and would break nearly two years of relative gridlock on the issue following a 2024 emergency aid package. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pushing for the bill’s passage and made a direct appeal to senators shortly before they passed it last month.

The measure sanctions Russian officials, banks and a shadow fleet of tankers that keeps Russian energy moving. It also directs Trump to impose up to 100% tariffs on the top five importers of Russian oil or natural gas, with an exception for countries that import less than 15% of Russia’s natural gas exports and have taken significant steps to reduce those imports.

“These countries have a choice to make about whether they will continue to sustain Putin’s aggression,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.

Democrats are divided on the legislation

Supporters said the tariff provisions are aimed at deterring China and India from purchasing Russian energy, but critics of the bill said they fear Trump will use the legislation to target allies in the European Union and elsewhere. Americans, they warned, would pay the price for such tariffs through higher prices at the cash register.

“This president has always said he loves tariffs,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y. “And we know the history of what he’s done with reference to tariffs to our European allies, and our allies everywhere.”

Democrats were divided on the bill, despite overwhelming support in the caucus for aiding Ukraine. Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told colleagues they can’t control what the president does, but they can stand up and declare where they are on the war.

“If we fail to pass this bill, there will be cheers in the Kremlin and tears in Kyiv,” Hoyer said.

But Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., predicted Ukraine supporters would come to regret voting for the bill.

“Yes they will be able to say ‘we stood with Ukraine’ in the immediate aftermath,” Beyer said. “But when Donald Trump hits our allies with new tariffs and waives sanctions on Russia, the propaganda victory for Putin will be lasting, and the damage will be embedded in U.S. law.”

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, speaking in opposition to the bill, said Democrats would continue to support the Ukrainian people until victory is won, “but this bill does not provide a path to secure that.”

In all, 58 Democrats broke with Jeffries and voted for the bill, while 152 voted against it. Among Republicans, 203 voted yes while seven voted against it.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., celebrated the vote and highlighted the additional tariff power it provides the president.

“For too long, Putin has bankrolled this devastating war with money and resources from countries willing to look the other way, and today, that ends,” Johnson said.

Getting Trump onboard has been a long process

Congress has struggled to ensure the flow of U.S. funding and munitions to Ukraine as Republican support for spending billions of dollars more on the effort has waned. Trump routinely derided the Ukraine aid while campaigning for the White House and insisted that, if elected, he would quickly end the war launched by Moscow’s February 2022 invasion.

It took Graham essentially a full year to bring Trump on board with the Russia sanctions package. Eventually, Trump gave a nod to the bill after it included his push for a five-year extension of existing sanctions on Iran. Republicans speaking on the House floor in advance of Wednesday’s vote were overwhelmingly supportive of the package.

Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., acknowledged Democratic criticism that tariffs could be used aggressively on smaller U.S. allies, but said it was time to deliver a resounding message to the Kremlin: “End this war, get out of Ukraine, focus on rebuilding your shattered international reputation and your destroyed economy.”

The Senate overwhelmingly passed the bill by a vote of 86-11 last month, but momentum slowed in the House. Republican leadership focused on other priorities, namely bills designed to put Democrats on defense going into the midterms. Meanwhile, a chorus of key Democratic lawmakers voiced alarm about the bill’s tariff provisions.

Passage of the bill in the House came on the final day that the chamber is expected to be in session for votes before the Nov. 3 elections.

After the vote, a group of Republicans and Democrats from the House and Senate celebrated the vote at a rare bipartisan press conference.

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who wrote the bill with Graham, said he hopes the sanctions will help force Putin to the negotiating table and end the war.

“To Vladimir Putin — we have your number,” Blumenthal said. “And to Ukraine — you are not alone.”

Leading up to the vote, Zelenskyy took to social media urging the House to pass the bill. He said during war it is sometimes better to “make a not-so-perfect decision than to do nothing.”

“And this is a very important historical moment for the United States. The bill must be passed, voted on, and supported,” Zelenskyy said on X. “Beyond that, strong decisions from the U.S. Administration are important. Personal decisions by President Trump. I very much hope we will see that.”

—-

Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

In the U.S., the Trump administration approved the $24.3 billion sale of advanced F-35 fighter jets and related equipment to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, United Nations-backed human rights experts said there are “reasonable grounds” to believe the U.S. committed war crimes in two strikes in Iran when the war began in February.

Here’s a look at the latest news in the Middle East on Thursday. Full coverage can be found here.

Houthi drone debris killed 1, Saudi Arabia says

Debris from an intercepted Houthi drone killed one person and injured two others in Saudi Arabia's Taif province, Saudi civil defense said Thursday.

The statement didn't indicate when this happened, though Saudi Arabia said Wednesday that it had stopped a drone aimed at Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.

The Houthis are fighting the internationally recognized government in Yemen, which is backed by Saudi Arabia. The Houthis deny targeting Mecca.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said a claim of intercepting a drone shouldn’t be used to escalate tensions.

Houthi leader goes on TV to call for protests

In a televised speech, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi called for an end to what he described as Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Yemen as fighting between the Houthis and Yemen's government forces continued.

Al-Houthi denounced as an “utterly heinous lie” that the Houthis had attempted to target Mecca. He called for mass protests Friday in Sanaa and Houthi-controlled areas to show support for protecting holy mosques and rejecting the blockade.

An estimated 125,000 people in Yemen have fled as the Houthis have advanced down the Red Sea coast to a key maritime chokepoint. The offensive, linked to the wider Iran war, has threatened Saudi oil exports, pushed up global fuel prices and rattled markets.

US OKs Saudi military aircraft deal

The U.S. State Department said the Saudis can purchase 48 F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter aircraft along with jet engines, secure communication systems, spare parts and more.

The sale “will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in the Gulf region,” the department said in a statement.

UN-backed experts look at US strikes in Iran

Human rights experts commissioned by the U.N.’s top human rights body said their findings focus on a pair of U.S. strikes that killed at least 178 civilians, including women and children, on the first day of the war in Iran.

At least one U.S. missile hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, according to an Associated Press investigation. The Trump administration has yet to directly accept the blame or release findings of a Pentagon investigation into the school bombing.

The U.N.-backed team made the allegations of war crimes over the strike on the “clearly identifiable” school and another airstrike where missiles dispersed tungsten pellets over a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd.

Palestinian Authority objects to US decision on visas

The Palestinian Authority condemned the U.S. denial of visas for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other PA officials ahead of the U.N. General Assembly and called Israel’s actions “the real threat to the two-state solution and prospects for peace.”

The authority administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It also pushed back against U.S. accusations that it has glorified extremism and strayed from the path toward peace with Israel.

Its foreign ministry said it remained committed to long-stalled negotiations but defended its efforts to gain Palestinian recognition through international bodies and courts. The U.S. opposes the strategy.

Israel expands plan for controversial West Bank settlement

Israel will open the bidding for an additional 2,167 units in a settlement project that would effectively cut the West Bank in two, two days before elections on Oct. 27.

The new tender, which seeks bids from developers, would bring the total number of housing units for the E1 project to 3,401. The development would effectively cut the West Bank in two. Critics say the planned settlement, east of Jerusalem, would prevent the possibility of a Palestinian state in the territory.

The project will be “extremely difficult to reverse” under any future government, the Israeli rights group Ir Amim said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian president condemned the new units as a violation of international law. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The E1 project was on hold for years due to U.S. pressure.

Protests over fuel prices lead to change in Syria

Syria will provide subsidized diesel fuel for heating and agriculture after sharp price increases sparked widespread protests this week.

The energy minister said Thursday that the government would set a tiered system of prices for diesel, with subsidized fuel being sold at 115 Syrian pounds ($0.94) per liter (35 ounces).

The government on Sunday announced price increases of 30% to 40% for gasoline and diesel, citing the U.S.-Iran war and repairs at a major oil refinery. Hundreds of oil trucks were stranded when protesters blocked a highway.

Syrian court orders sentences stemming from 2025 insurgency

A judge has sentenced three people, including an army soldier, after an investigation of violent clashes in Syria’s coastal region in which more than 1,000 people were killed in March 2025.

Loyalists of ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad attacked government troops and security forces in areas where members of the Alawite religious minority live. The government’s counter-insurgency spiraled into sectarian violence.

Syria’s military criminal court sentenced the soldier to 20 years in prison Thursday. Two Assad loyalists were also sentenced — one to death and the other to life in prison.

The violence last year horrified minorities in Syria and others skeptical of the country’s new Islamist-led leadership.

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

Messi opened the scoring in the 24th minute, heading in a cross from Luis Suárez for his 100th goal in 115 appearances across all competitions with Miami.

The milestone came against the same club Messi scored his first Inter Miami goal against. He scored on a stoppage-time free kick to beat Cruz Azul 2-1 in his Miami debut in July 2023.

Casemiro made it 2-0 in the 81st minute, heading in a corner from Messi.

The Brazilian midfielder has scored four goals, all headers, in his last five matches after scoring in three consecutive games against CF Montreal, Atlanta United and Chicago before being held scoreless Saturday against Nashville.

The victory gave Inter Miami another trophy three years after Messi’s arrival. Miami won the Leagues Cup in 2023, the Supporters’ Shield in 2024 and MLS Cup in 2025.

Up next

Inter Miami returns to MLS play Sunday when it hosts San Diego FC at Nu Stadium. Miami enters the match second in the Eastern Conference standings.

A report by Protect Democracy found that 34.8 million people — about one in 10 Americans — now live in a different district than they did during the 2024 election cycle. And about one-fifth of all Americans now live in a district where more than a quarter of voters are new to the district compared with the last election cycle.

The findings display the stark overhaul that partisan redistricting fights kicked off by President Donald Trump last year have caused for Americans across the country. The new congressional maps are increasingly drawn in ways that favor partisan politics over factors like geography and shared communities. That raises concerns among scholars about how the country's hyperpolarized politics are affecting American democracy.

“If this trend continues, it really brings into question whether or not elected officials are really representing their constituents anymore, or if the voters are being randomly picked by mapmakers to squeeze out partisan advantage," said Ben Raderstorf, a policy advocate at Protect Democracy and one of the paper’s co-authors.

The bare-knuckled partisan redistricting battle for the House began when Trump urged the Republican-controlled legislature in Texas, the second most populous state, to redraw its congressional map to help the party. The highly unusual plan prompted an immediate response from California, the most populous state, which held a successful referendum to tilt its map toward Democrats.

Other states followed, and Republicans are positioned to potentially gain nine seats because of redistricting.

The Protect Democracy report warns that such partisan tactics reduce faith in American elections generally and insulate incumbent lawmakers from public opinion. That can make political organizing more difficult, the report cautioned, potentially worsening the country's already highly polarized politics. Both parties may also enter a “doom loop” where they embrace more aggressive and frequent redistricting efforts to avoid ceding any ground to their rivals.

In some states such as Missouri, the mid-decade redistricting has created confusion for voters about which district they live in and which candidates will appear on their November ballot. After conflicting lower court rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court last week blocked new Missouri districts backed by Trump that had been used in the primary, leaving the state to revert to its previous districts for the general election.

The report concludes with a call for new electoral structures the authors believe would eliminate the potential downsides of partisan redistricting, like proportional representation or a formal truce between the parties to implement nonpartisan districting plans.

Nine states already use nonpartisan commissions to draw congressional district lines but those provisions have limits. California, for instance, suspended its nonpartisan maps with a referendum last year in response to Texas' redistricting measures.

Such remedies would face long odds in Congress and statehouses, but scholars believe there are few other avenues to turn down the temperature in the partisan redistricting fights.

“This is only going to get worse until somebody stops it,” Raderstorf said. “The logic of gerrymandering points inevitably towards maximalist partisan advantage on both sides. There is no off-ramp other than reform. It is the only way to break the cycle.”

The Dayton Foundation previously announced that “Bel Canto” novelist Ann Patchett would receive a lifetime achievement award.

Judges awarded the fiction prize to Sam Wachman's “The Sunflower Boys,” a debut book in which two brothers are forced to look after themselves after the Russians bomb their home. Kevin Sack's “Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church” won for nonfiction.

The winners in fiction and nonfiction will each receive $10,000. The runners-up — Charlotte McConaghy's “Wild Dark Shore” and Eve L. Ewing's “Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism” — will get $5,000 apiece.

“Year after year, our community and judges seek out and find four extraordinarily powerful books that center a story that promotes peace and understanding in a world where those ideals continue to feel more foreign with each passing year,” Foundation Executive Director Nicholas A. Raines said in a statement released Thursday. “These four books each offer something unique to readers that we hope will continue to inspire and teach for many years to come.”

The Dayton awards were established in 2006 with a mission to honor “writers whose work uses the power of the written word to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding.” Previous winners include Ta-Nehisi Coates,Alice Hoffman and Junot Diaz.

Bournemouth enjoyed a record season to finish sixth in the Premier League and Marco Rose’s side hopes its opening European game in San Sebastian is a chance to put behind a slow and winless start to this campaign.

“We need to stay humble and concentrate on each game,” Bournemouth captain Adam Smith said. “But definitely our aim is to try to get as far as possible.”

Real Sociedad returns to Europe after a one-year absence. It qualified for the competition by claiming the Spanish Cup for the fourth time.

Another English club, Crystal Palace, opens its European campaign against Polish champion Lech Poznań after winning the third-tier Conference League last season.

In other games, Italian giant Juventus faces Dutch side Nijmegen, Besiktas hosts Marseille and Celtic plays Ferencváros in Glasgow.

The opening round of matches is split into two days.

On Wednesday, Benfica upset AC Milan 2-0 at San Siro, Sunderland beat visiting AZ Alkmaar 1-0 in its first European match since 1973 and Lyon won 2-1 at Anderlecht.

Elsewhere, Manchester City faces Championship-side Norwich to complete the third round of the League Cup in England.

In Spain, Real Betis meets Getafe and Malaga plays Villarreal in La Liga.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Banji Ajaka, Ondo state's commissioner for health, said the cases had been reported in the Odigbo and Irele local government areas. A total of 182 people are believed to have been affected and some are being treated in the hospital, he said.

“I took like two shots and I went out on Friday. On Saturday, I noticed that I could not see,” 32-year-old Sola Adebayo told the local TVC News channel from a hospital bed.

Drinking locally made alcohol is common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, especially in rural areas where it is more affordable and poorly regulated.

“This thing happened rapidly. Once they consume, depending on the quantity, the kidneys will pack up, the eyes will go, the brain will be damaged,” Ajaka told The Associated Press, speaking about the drink.

Ondo state police spokesman Abayomi Jimoh said in a statement that 15 people were arrested in connection with the incident, including one allegedly “involved in the production of substances suspected to contain methanol and is currently assisting the police with investigations.”

Locals told the AP they suspected a popular herbal drink with high alcohol content, known as “Monkey Tail,” was mixed with methanol, causing the deaths.

A trader who sells the concoction in Odigbo, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of being arrested, told the AP there are two versions of Monkey Tail: an original, safe version, and another version which is unsafe.

Local media reports said the first death was reported nearly two weeks ago.

Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control is currently enforcing a nationwide ban on alcohol in sachets and small plastic containers, which it said are easily accessible to children and young people.

All nine bodies were found in the Ekurhuleni municipality, raising concerns that the killings were carried out by the same person or people. Police previously said that some similarities in the killings of the first eight victims were “sufficiently concerning for the police to issue a public warning.”

The discoveries have sent shock waves around the country, sparked a high-level investigation and highlighted the scourges of femicide and high levels of violent crime.

Police said the discovery of the latest body early Thursday “will be added to the investigations into the deaths of women in Ekurhuleni.”

Police warn against circulating photos of the bodies on social media

Provincial police commissioner Fred Kekana said a passerby found the woman’s body near a construction site and alerted police.

The unidentified woman appeared to be about 30 and had an apparent stab wound to her side, while her throat appeared to have been cut, he said. Forensic investigators had not yet determined the official cause of death.

Kekana said police had not established whether her death was linked to the other cases and appealed for information.

He also urged people not to circulate photographs of the bodies or unverified reports on social media, warning that they were spreading fear and could encourage copycat crimes.

Residents of Dawn Park, the Johannesburg suburb where the ninth body was found on Thursday, were stunned by the discovery.

“I hope the government can assist us by arresting the person or people who have been committing these killings, because the current situation is becoming unbearable. We don’t know what’s to happen next,” Dawn Park resident Nomgqibelo Tshabalala said.

A multidisciplinary team of experts is investigating.

Families should report any missing relatives immediately

So far, bodies have been found across several Ekurhuleni communities, including Kempton Park, Pomona, Clayville, Olifantsfontein, Rhodesfield, KwaThema and Dawn Park.

Panyaza Lesufi, the premier of Gauteng province, said police were making progress in two or three cases, although he did not provide details. He urged the public to give investigators time to gather sufficient evidence.

“They’ve declared war against the state. We’ll respond,” Lesufi told reporters at the scene. “We’re not going to surrender.”

Missing In Southern Africa, which supports missing people and their families, urged communities and families to report immediately when they suspected that one of their relatives might be missing.

The organization said the discoveries had deepened the anguish of families searching for loved ones.

“There is no waiting period to report a missing person,” it said. “The moment you suspect that someone is missing, report it immediately to the South African Police Service.”

Community groups and faith leaders demand action to protect women and children

Running clubs across Johannesburg have this week organized memorial runs in honor of Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, the woman who disappeared last week while jogging and was found dead several days later.

Some communities across Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni, have held prayer services for the victims.

Women’s rights advocates, political parties and civil society organizations marched to Kempton Park Police Station on Thursday, demanding stronger measures to protect women and children and hold perpetrators accountable.

A coalition representing more than 1,000 faith leaders, activists and partner organizations called for tougher action against gender-based violence and more accountability. They urged those at the top of religious hierarchies to address the issue openly and help survivors obtain shelter, counseling and legal assistance.

“Too often, silence from the pulpit has stood in for the courage to name gender-based violence directly,” it said. “That silence must end.”

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Associated Press video journalist Kayleen Morgan in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

The gathering in Scotland was convened to discuss how AI can benefit society, and comes at a pivotal moment for the technology as debate swirls around whether rapid advances will soon put it beyond the ability of humans to rein it in.

"The development of AI – its substance and its pace – are both intriguing and deeply concerning in equal measure," the king said in his opening remarks.

The "existential dangers of such technologies falling into the wrong hands, and being used in potentially catastrophic ways” should be urgently considered, he said.

"Surely, then, we need sufficient means of control before it is all too late?"

The king asked attendees, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Google DeepMind Chair Demis Hassabis, to consider the "fundamental principles" that should guide AI development.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI's Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar was also at the meeting, along with Britain’s AI Minister Kanishka Narayan. An Anthropic representative was also expected to attend, according to a Buckingham Palace statement.

The meeting comes as global attention focuses on AI’s breakneck progress and warnings that it could race out of control, threatening humanity. It was held at Dumfries House in Ayrshire, Scotland, headquarters of The King’s Foundation, which is the monarch’s charity.

After Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon caused a stir by resigning with a grave warning about the technology's potential risks, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei responded with an essay saying that the industry might need to slow the pace of its work.

One of his proposals was for companies and countries to work together on a coordinated plan for such a slowdown.

The king, without naming any countries or companies, said he wanted meeting participants to consider how to harness the benefits of AI “with safety at its heart” and how to “build international cooperation and consensus” to achieve this.

Charles told the tech execs that their task “is not merely to advance technology, but to ensure that it remains firmly in the service of humanity, community and the natural world.”

The AI slowdown debate has divided the industry. Huang, who has criticized the call for slowing, said it’s up to individual companies to develop their AI technology safely and test it properly before releasing any products to the public.

“When a product is not safe enough, we should hold it back and keep engineering. We’ve always done that and we should continue to do that,” he said in his speech following the king's remarks.

In the latest report of alarming AI behavior, OpenAI reported on Wednesday six incidents of “unexpected or concerning” behavior by its models, such as acting without authorization, coordinating with other models and evading oversight.

While the king is an important figurehead whose comments on social issues can be influential, much of the current AI safety debate is centered on U.S. tech companies and their competition with Chinese rivals, with Britain playing a smaller but still vital role.

The U.K.'s AI Security Institute, a government research organization, is well regarded and the country produces many AI researchers, including Google DeepMind's Chair Demis Hassabis and Coxon.

The report, while not binding, adds to international evidence gathered about crimes in the war in Iran, and could eventually be used in efforts to reach justice in international courts.

The fact-finding mission on Iran, chaired by jurist Sara Hossain of Bangladesh, is made up of independent experts and was created in 2022 by the Human Rights Council, the U.N.’s top human rights body, which is based in Geneva.

The experts were expected to present their findings on Monday to the council, which is made up of 47 U.N. member countries.

The White House issued a scathing statement in response, with spokeswoman Anna Kelly saying the human rights body has “accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades.”

“The only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian regime, which has murdered thousands of its own people, killed Americans overseas, executed acts of terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz, and launched indiscriminate attacks against its neighbors in the region,” Kelly said Thursday.

The team says the US launched ‘indiscriminate’ attacks

The international fact-finding mission says its findings on U.S. war crimes center on a pair of U.S. airstrikes that killed at least 178 civilians, including women and children.

At the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran in February, at least one U.S. missile hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, according to an Associated Press investigation. There has been no final accounting of what happened.

Iranian state media have said 168 people were killed in the strike, most of them children.

“Following the United States and Israeli attacks on 28 February, the mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects,” a U.N. statement about the team's findings said.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request from The Associated Press seeking comment.

In their report, the experts concluded that “the building of the school was the intended point of impact” and the resulting damage wasn’t the result of an errant strike or collateral damage from an attack on a compound of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard next to the school.

The Trump administration has yet to directly accept responsibility or release the findings of a Pentagon investigation into the school bombing.

The U.N.-backed team based its allegations on two strikes — one involving Tomahawk missiles that hit the “clearly identifiable” school, and another in which Precision Strike Missiles dispersed tungsten pellets over a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern city of Lamerd, also on Feb. 28.

The U.N.-backed team said 22 civilian men and women were killed. U.S. Central Command has denied responsibility for the strike on Lamerd.

Experts cite ‘crimes against humanity’ by Iran's government

The team found that killings by state security forces in Iran have occurred on a “staggering scale,” and civilians faced “gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by their own government.”

Iranian security forces carried out “violent repression” over the last two years by firing assault rifles into crowds, beating protesters and arresting healthcare workers, among other things, the team said. Detainees faced torture, and were deprived of legal counsel, leaving their families “in the dark” about their whereabouts, the experts said.

The Tehran government intensified the use of the death penalty, and said more than 70 people – including five women and three boys – remain at “imminent risk of execution,” they added.

“The report concluded that many of these gross violations amount to crimes against humanity — including murder, imprisonment, torture, and other inhumane acts committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack on civilians,” the statement said.

Both the US and Iran should provide reparations, they say

The experts said the United States and Iran should halt all rights violations and crimes, and provide “full reparations to victims.”

The report, built on a “victims-centered approach,” was based on interviews with 73 people both inside and outside Iran, along with documentation, satellite imagery, photographic and video material and information from “credible” organizations and experts, the experts wrote.

The ongoing conflict that has driven people from their homes in Iran as well as an internet shutdown and a lack of full cooperation from the two governments partially impeded the team's efforts to get information.

Nearly three dozen requests from the experts for information from Iran's government went unanswered, they said, as have requests in June to the U.S. government for information and meetings with officials.

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Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report from Washington.

Huawei's announcement Thursday at its annual key conference in Shanghai came just days before an expected meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington on Sept. 24.

China has rapidly pursued technological self-reliance, including in chips, as U.S.-led restrictions barred it from accessing some of the world’s most advanced AI chips and cutting-edge chipmaking machines.

Huawei introduced the Atlas 960 SuperPoD computing cluster at the event, a faster successor to the model it launched only months ago with improvements in AI training and “inference,” referring to the process when a trained AI makes predictions or decisions.

Huawei also plans to launch the Ascend 970 and 980 chip series in 2028 and 2029, with expectations of significant improvements in computing power.

“The timing — less than two weeks before President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington — underscores Beijing’s confidence and ambition in technology and innovation,” said George Chen, a partner and chair of digital practice at The Asia Group consultancy.

Huawei’s announcement also came as Trump downplayed AI leaders’ call to slow development of the technology for safety purposes. Trump insisted the U.S. must maintain its lead over China, saying “whoever wins in AI, wins.”

“AI developments move so quickly that no one can be certain of holding the lead forever,” Chen said.

Advanced technologies in China such as the training of AI models still often rely on U.S. chips, including those from Nvidia, analysts say. But Huawei has made its own advanced chips and maintains a lead over Chinese chip developers, as AI companies in China increasingly embrace the use of domestic chips.

The Atlas 960 SuperPoD computing cluster raised eyebrows among some technology analysts by coming soon after the company rolled out the Atlas 950 SuperPod late last year.

“The fact that Huawei achieved this upgrade in just a year, far quicker than before, will only heighten U.S. anxiety about the accelerating AI competition,” Chen said.

In a new book, Charles Spencer recounts the traumatic days after Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 at the age of 36. He alleges that he argued with his sister's former husband over palace plans for Prince William and Prince Harry, then aged 15 and 12, to walk behind her coffin during the funeral procession.

Spencer says he told the then-Prince Charles that Diana would not have wanted her boys to undergo the ordeal. He claims the prince told him: “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough.” Spencer also accuses Charles of having “contempt” for his ex-wife and of sounding “elated” after her death.

The Daily Mail tabloid newspaper is publishing extracts from Spencer's book, titled “Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,” which is due to be published next week.

Buckingham Palace responded late Wednesday with an extremely strong statement by the measured standards of the royal household.

“While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and color memory in ways others do not recognize, even many years after such a loss,” it said.

Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, described the wording of the statement as “very strong.”

“I can’t think of another occasion … in the recent history of royal communications which has been as stark as this one,” she said. “It’s obviously been said with a great deal of feeling.”

Tensions between the palace and the Spencer family following her death have been much discussed and were dramatized in the film “The Queen” and the TV series “The Crown.”

Many felt the palace was slow to acknowledge the global outpouring of grief over her death, which forced the royals to recognize that Diana’s common touch had allowed her to connect with people in ways that eluded the rest of the royal family. The more emotionally literate approach of Prince William and Prince Harry — and, in recent years, the king — is a legacy of that time.

Prince Charles, then 32, married 20-year-old Lady Diana Spencer in a lavish ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1981. The couple separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996.

Charles Spencer — the 9th Earl Spencer — has long clashed with the royals over their treatment of his sister.

In a searing eulogy at his older sister's funeral, Spencer vowed that her “blood family” would carry on her “imaginative and loving” legacy in raising her two sons. The speech was widely considered a swipe at the royal family.

“I feel that the Spencers and the royals are just never going to become friends again, as they were centuries ago,” said Seward. “They were very close, but I don’t think they’re going to become friends again in any hurry.”

George Gross, a royal historian at King’s College London, questioned why Spencer has chosen to “rehash” a painful period of family history in public.

“We’re dealing with somebody’s death,” he said. “It is very sad at the root of it, and I have to ask some questions as to why a brother at this point is going over all of that again in a book. I think the public know the answer to that.”

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Associated Press journalist Mustakim Hasnath contributed to this story.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had also carried out overnight strikes against targets in Russia, including an oil refinery in Yaroslavl and a military airfield in the Rostov region.

Kyiv’s military administration said the overnight attacks struck more than 10 locations in the capital, while 33 sites were damaged in the wider region. A 10-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy were among the injured, the administration said in a statement on Telegram.

Zelenskyy may meet Trump on sidelines of UN General Assembly

Peace efforts to end Russia’s 4 1/2-year full-scale invasion have stalled, with the issue of territorial concessions in eastern Ukraine among the central sticking points. Successive rounds of U.S.-brokered talks have failed to produce a breakthrough. Ukraine is also seeking security guarantees from partners for a deal.

U.S. President Donald Trump claimed in a social media post on Monday that Russia and Ukraine had mutually agreed to cease attacking each other's energy facilities. Such strikes have led to significant supply issues in both countries.

In an interview with CBS News on Tuesday, Zelenskyy pushed back on Trump's claim, saying that while an energy truce was discussed during a recent meeting in Kyiv with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, he would agree only if Russia ceases its attacks on Ukrainian energy sites.

Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv is ready to agree to a truce covering attacks on energy infrastructure and the Black Sea. But speaking on Thursday at a joint press briefing with his Slovenian counterpart, Tone Kajzer, Sybiha said he has yet to see any indication that Moscow is prepared to do the same.

He welcomed U.S. efforts to broker such an agreement and said active U.S. involvement could make a truce possible. Sybiha also said Ukraine was preparing for a meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly this month.

“I believe that achieving a truce could be one of the key outcomes of this meeting. It could be a truce covering both the energy sector and the Black Sea — specifically in that combination,” he said.

Drone near Ukraine’s border with Poland

A drone hit a petrol station near Ukraine’s border with Poland on Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said at a press conference in Warsaw.

A spokesperson for the Polish military told TVN24 that Polish air defences were activated on Thursday after a jet-powered drone approached Polish airspace.

The drone exploded about 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) from the Polish border, the spokesman said.

On Sunday, two Russian drones struck near border crossings on the Polish-Ukrainian frontier. One of them hit a railway line shortly after a train carrying European dignitaries had passed through.

Russian drone kills captain of civilian vessel in Black Sea

A Russian drone struck a civilian vessel flying the flag of Tanzania in the Black Sea on Thursday, killing the ship’s captain and injuring three crew members, according to Oleh Kiper, the regional head in Odesa.

The vessel’s superstructure and deck were damaged in the morning attack, Kiper said on Telegram. He accused Russia of deliberately targeting Ukrainian ports and civilian merchant vessels.

Ukraine’s air force said it destroyed or suppressed 131 Russian aerial targets during the overnight attack in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Odesa regions. The attack involved ballistic and cruise missiles as well as drones and decoys.

In Odesa, seven people were injured, including two children, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. Apartments on the 14th through 16th floors of a residential building were damaged. A private residential building in Odesa was also destroyed and others damaged.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine's operation against the Yaroslavl Oil Refinery was conducted jointly by the country's Security Service, special operations forces, military intelligence and the Foreign Intelligence Service.

He wrote on Telegram that the security service had also struck a military airfield in Rostov, damaging an An-12 aircraft, two An-26s and three helicopters.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the military hit metallurgical and electronics plants, factories of the military-industrial complex and energy and transport facilities. It said that three bulk carriers and a ferry carrying supplies for the Ukrainian military were hit in the port of Chornomorsk.

The two sides exchange remains

On Thursday, Ukraine received the bodies of 252 soldiers as part of ongoing exchanges with Russia, the government agency handling prisoners of war said on Telegram.

Russia said the remains belong to Ukrainian citizens, including military personnel, the agency said, adding that they will be identified.

Ukrainian officials welcome sanctions vote

Ukrainian officials welcomed the vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on a package of sanctions targeting Russian officials and key sectors of the economy, saying the measures could increase pressure on Moscow and limit the resources available to finance its war effort.

The legislation was one of the last major initiatives championed by the late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

“It is precisely Sen. Graham’s bill, along with other strong sanctions measures taken by our partners against the source of this war, Russia, that represents an extremely powerful tool that can stop this terrorist war and force Russia to seek peace,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

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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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This version corrects the spelling of the first name of Sen. Lindsey Graham.

With the Marlins clinging to faint playoff hopes, Alcantara came out of the bullpen for the first time in nine years and closed out a 4-3 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Just two days after throwing 101 pitches in a no-decision at Arizona, the 31-year-old right-hander worked a scoreless ninth inning for his first major league save and said he felt “great.”

“If I’m here, I’m going to do everything I can to help the team win,” Alcantara explained.

After going five innings Monday in Miami's 8-7 loss, Alcantara told pitching coach Daniel Moskos he could help out Wednesday if needed.

“Daniel passed that along to me. (Alcantara) headed down (to the bullpen) in the sixth inning or so and I told him he had the ninth,” manager Clayton McCullough said.

Miami used eight pitchers Tuesday during an 11-inning victory, and the Marlins (76-77) are still fighting to stay in the pennant race. They trail San Diego by 7 1/2 games for the final National League wild card with nine to play.

“It speaks to Sandy in a lot of ways. This happened 10 days ago when he headed down there (between starts), but it didn't work out,” McCullough added. “It's as much a testament to him wanting to win, what it means to this group. You saw the excitement from the group."

Alcantara, who leads the majors with 206 innings pitched this season, got two deep flyouts before walking Lars Nootbaar. Pinch-runner Jordan Lawlar attempted to steal second but was thrown out by catcher Joe Mack to end it.

Alcantara has made 201 big league starts. His eight previous relief appearances all came as a rookie with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2017.

A two-time All-Star and the 2022 NL Cy Young Award winner, Alcantara is 13-10 with a 3.84 ERA in 32 starts and now one relief outing this season.

McCullough said Alcantara will start Sunday in San Diego as scheduled. But the pitcher said he's ready if needed before then.

“This is my first one," Alcantara said. "Hopefully they keep giving me the opportunity.”

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

Falling oil prices and easing pressure from the bond market helped Wall Street reverse many of its moves from the prior day, when the Federal Reserve hiked its main interest rate for the first time in years and suggested more may be ahead as it tries to get the nation’s high inflation under control.

The S&P 500 climbed 1.1% and was potentially heading for its best day in six weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 346 points, or 0.7%, with an hour remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.6% higher.

Stocks got a boost after the price for a barrel of Brent crude oil slid 1% to settle at $104.82. That’s down from the nearly $110 it reached earlier in the week on worries that the war with Iran will keep oil bottled up in the Middle East instead of going to customers worldwide.

Brent is of course still much more expensive than the $72 per barrel that it cost earlier this summer, but Thursday’s drop helped pull yields lower in the bond market and removed some pressure on stocks. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.94% from 5.01% late Wednesday.

Higher yields make it more expensive for everyone to borrow money, from the U.S. government to people looking to buy houses to businesses wanting to build data centers. That in turn slows the economy.

The Fed on Wednesday raised the short-term interest rate that it controls, the federal funds rate, by a quarter of a percentage point for its first hike in more than three years. Officials also indicated at least one more increase may be coming this year and that the Fed may then keep the federal funds rate high through next year.

The signals sent Wall Street on a roller coaster. Stocks initially held onto their gains from earlier in the day after the Fed made its announcement Wednesday. They then slid sharply before recovering a chunk of the losses before trading ended for the day.

On the upside for markets, the shift to higher interest rates built confidence that the Fed is committed to getting inflation back to its target of 2%. Questions had begun to bubble in the summer about whether it would feel pressure from President Donald Trump, who is calling for lower interest rates. And the short-term cost of pain for the economy could be worth it if it gets inflation under control following years of staying too high.

On the downside for markets, higher rates undercut prices for stocks and other investments. When investors are earning more in interest from bonds, which are considered safer investments, they’re less willing to pay high prices for other investments. That’s beyond the effect higher rates have on slowing the economy in hopes of removing fuel for inflation.

Some reports on Thursday signaled the U.S. economy may be strong enough to withstand higher interest rates. One said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week. Another said that manufacturing growth in the mid-Atlantic region was stronger than economists expected.

Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh said Wednesday that a strengthening economy is one of the reasons Fed officials moved to raise interest rates after keeping them on hold earlier this year.

He also cited “geopolitics,” along with the threat that increases in prices it’s causing could filter out and push up inflation elsewhere. That’s likely a nod to the war with Iran and its effect on oil prices.

On Wall Street, stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry continued to rebound following their worldwide slide on Monday. Nvidia climbed 2.6%, and Advanced Micro Devices rose 6.3%.

That was even though OpenAI disclosed six more reports of “unexpected or concerning” behavior in AI models. Leaders of the AI industry over the weekend called for a slowdown in development to address safety issues for humanity

Stocks of several homebuilders also rose, even though a report showed the industry broke ground on fewer new homes last month than economists expected. The housing industry has been one of the hardest hit by the climb for the 10-year Treasury’s yield, which topped 5% this week for the first time since 2023 and has sent mortgage rates higher.

Thursday’s ease in yields helped D.R. Horton rise 1.5%, while PulteGroup added 0.8%. Rival Lennar erased an early loss and rose 1.1% after reporting weaker profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe following a weaker finish in Asia.

London’s FTSE 100 climbed 1.2% after the Bank of England decided to keep its interest rates on hold.

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AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Michelle Chapman contributed to this report.

El reporte de World Weather Attribution advirtió que el cambio climático no fue la única causa del desastre del 26 de agosto. Su análisis determinó que un gran terremoto en Nepal en 2015 pudo haber debilitado la roca años antes del colapso.

“Este desastre no fue un fenómeno meteorológico extremo, pero las huellas del cambio climático siguen siendo claras en los cambios a largo plazo”, indicó en un comunicado de prensa Ben Clarke, investigador climático del Imperial College London que trabajó en el análisis.

Más de 1.300 personas murieron y más de 5.000 siguen desaparecidas después de que una enorme sección de roca y el glaciar que la cubría colapsaran cerca de la frontera de Nepal con China. El torrente resultante de agua, hielo, rocas y sedimentos arrasó comunidades a lo largo del corredor del río Trishuli y causó daños por miles de millones de dólares.

Científicos del clima señalaron que, en todo el Himalaya, el aumento de las temperaturas está haciendo que los glaciares retrocedan y está descongelando el suelo permanentemente helado que ayuda a mantener unida la roca montañosa fracturada. Eso significa que el cambio climático puede alterar no solo peligros meteorológicos como el calor y las lluvias intensas, sino también la estabilidad de las propias montañas, lo que amenaza a comunidades concentradas en estrechos valles fluviales situados más abajo.

El análisis no determinó si el colapso habría ocurrido sin el cambio climático, causado principalmente por la liberación de gases de efecto invernadero cuando se queman combustibles como el petróleo, el gas y el carbón. Sin embargo, los investigadores concluyeron que el calentamiento intensificó varios procesos que, durante décadas, hicieron que la ladera fuera menos estable.

El calentamiento global debilita las laderas de alta montaña

El informe concluyó que uno de los cambios más claros vinculados directamente al cambio climático fue el aumento de la altitud del umbral de congelación.

El informe indicó que el calentamiento ha elevado la altitud a la que el suelo permanece congelado de forma constante en aproximadamente 100 metros (328 pies) por década. Esto expone la roca a altitudes cada vez mayores a periodos más largos por encima del punto de congelación, descongela el permafrost y provoca grietas dentro del hielo, lo que en última instancia debilita la pared rocosa bajo el hielo.

Jakob Steiner, geocientífico de la Universidad de Graz que ha trabajado en la región del Himalaya desde 2006 pero no es autor del informe del jueves, comentó que los instrumentos de monitoreo alrededor de los 5.000 metros (16.404 pies) muestran ahora que algunas rocas y suelos ya no permanecen congelados durante todo el año.

“Esto significa que el suelo que estuvo bajo el hielo durante cientos y miles de años ahora está quedando expuesto”, explicó.

El informe determinó que el retroceso de los glaciares fue otra fuerza desestabilizadora.

Los glaciares de la región han estado perdiendo masa durante décadas a un ritmo equivalente a más de medio metro (aproximadamente 1,6 pies) de adelgazamiento cada año, según el informe. El glaciar Langtang Lirung, ubicado en la región donde ocurrió el desastre el mes pasado, ha retrocedido cerca de medio kilómetro (0,3 millas) desde la década de 1990, dejando al descubierto roca que antes estaba cubierta por hielo.

La región del Himalaya contiene el mayor volumen de nieve y hielo fuera de las regiones polares. Más de 63.000 glaciares en el área alimentan al menos 10 grandes sistemas fluviales asiáticos y sostienen la seguridad alimentaria, hídrica y energética, así como los medios de vida, de miles de millones de personas. Sin embargo, diversos estudios han concluido que alrededor del 78% del área glaciar, ubicada entre 4.500 y 6.000 metros (14.763 a 19.685 pies) sobre el nivel del mar, está muy expuesta al calentamiento. Informes de las Naciones Unidas han determinado que, entre 2000 y 2019, los glaciares perdieron 267.000 millones de toneladas de hielo por año, una cifra aproximadamente equivalente a la masa de 46.500 Grandes Pirámides de Guiza.

A medida que los glaciares se reducen, pueden eliminar presión que ayudaba a sostener paredes rocosas adyacentes, además de producir agua adicional por deshielo.

Las semanas previas al colapso del 26 de agosto también fueron inusualmente cálidas. Este año se registraron las temperaturas más cálidas para los meses julio y agosto documentadas en la zona, según el análisis.

“Aparte de los posibles factores geológicos como los terremotos que están debilitando el lecho rocoso, todos estos otros factores se agravan por el cambio climático inducido por el ser humano”, afirmó Friederike Otto, científica del clima del Imperial College London y una de las autoras del informe.

El desastre expone los límites de la adaptación

El informe señaló que la catástrofe también demuestra cómo algunos riesgos relacionados con el clima en las montañas más altas del mundo pueden superar la protección que pueden ofrecer los sistemas de alerta temprana y otras medidas de adaptación.

Nepal ha desarrollado planes de reducción del riesgo de desastres y sistemas de alerta, pero los investigadores indicaron que el tamaño y la velocidad del colapso desbordaron esas defensas. A diferencia de una inundación causada por lluvias, que a veces puede pronosticarse con horas o días de anticipación, los fallos catastróficos de laderas en remotas montañas de gran altitud pueden ocurrir de forma repentina y siguen siendo extremadamente difíciles de predecir.

Otto, la científica del clima, sostuvo que el ecosistema de montaña y las sociedades son más vulnerables a los impactos climáticos que quienes viven en las llanuras. “Pequeños cambios en las temperaturas afectan la estabilidad del propio terreno”, dijo.

El informe indicó que un mejor monitoreo en alta montaña, la observación de la Tierra y los sistemas de alerta podrían reducir algunos riesgos. Pero los investigadores advirtieron que existen límites para la adaptación en los valles del Himalaya, donde los asentamientos, las carreteras, los proyectos hidroeléctricos y otra infraestructura se concentran a lo largo de los ríos.

Como los glaciares y el permafrost responden a los cambios de temperatura a lo largo de décadas, parte de la desestabilización de las montañas causada por el calentamiento ya se ha puesto en marcha, señaló el informe.

“Lo más importante para minimizar el riesgo en esta región es dejar rápidamente de usar combustibles fósiles que llevan a un aumento de las temperaturas globales", advirtió Otto. "Todos estos factores de los que hemos hablado —el deshielo del permafrost, el deshielo de los glaciares, etc.— solo empeorarán. Y eso significa que eventos como este se vuelven más frecuentes”.

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For 48-year-old Robert Marian, who lives in Isaccea, a small Romanian border town in eastern Tulcea County along the Danube River with a crossing into Ukraine, the proximity of Russian drone strikes — just hundreds of meters across the river — has become a source of constant fear.

“There are alerts warning us that something is coming,” he told The Associated Press. “It happened two weeks ago, maybe three. I was asleep at midnight … One was quieter, but another was really loud. I got scared and ran out of the house.”

As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, drone incursions into Romania’s airspace have increased significantly. The blasts just across the Danube are a reminder of how close war is to NATO territory — at a time many fear Russian President Vladimir Putin might want to test the alliance’s resolve.

A Ukrainian border crossing with Romania was “deliberately damaged ... as well as export infrastructure,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sept. 1. Romanian customs announced the same day that activity at the Isaccea-Orlivka crossing had been temporarily suspended.

Alina Mihail, another Isaccea resident, says she feels sick when she hears the drone alerts and blasts ringing out across the border.

“I have so many nights where I don’t sleep anymore," she said. "I live in terror, me and my husband.”

Romania sees a threefold jump in airspace breaches

Data from Romania’s Ministry of National Defense indicate a threefold increase in drone incursions so far this year compared with the whole of 2025 — 27 compared with 9 — and more than double the number of drones and drone debris found on the NATO member's territory, at 37 compared with 16.

Already this year, there have been 73 attacks near the border on Ukrainian territory, and some 56 military aircraft have been scrambled to “monitor and manage the situation.” Last year, there were 28 attacks near the border and 21 aircraft were raised. In the first year of the war, there was only one attack near the border.

In May, a drone injured a mother and child after crashing into an apartment block in the eastern town of Galati along the Danube River. A drone that entered Romania from neighboring Moldova was tracked through several counties last week before it reentered Moldova and crashed in a sunflower field.

Moscow has denied sending combat drones to Romanian territory.

EU officials warn of Russian provocations

The growing menace of drones crossing into Romania’s skies, many of which officials have blamed on Russia, prompted the NATO member to shoot down four drones this year, the first time since the war next door started.

NATO countries across Europe have accused Moscow of being behind a string of “hybrid war” actions against their countries, including drone incursions, sabotage, an attempted attack at a German airport and a Danish helicopter that was fired on with flares in the Baltic Sea.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Sept. 2 that “Russia has grown increasingly reckless” as Moscow continues its war.

“We have seen more drones and missiles crossing into our airspace, along our eastern flank, creating increased risk,” he said. “The dangers Russia poses are clear."

Last week, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk also warned that he had received information from CIA Director Jim Ratcliffe indicating Europe should be prepared for intensified Russian provocations, including on the European Union’s eastern flank.

Minister says eastern flank is 'highly fluid'

Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruta told The Associated Press that Russia is considered a “primary, significant threat” to the eastern flank and to Romania in both the National Defense Strategy and NATO assessments.

“We are engaged in discussions regarding the capabilities needed to counter this common threat — facing the same risks as Poland and the Baltic states — and we are coordinating to ensure these capabilities are distributed in a way that allows for interconnection," he said.

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO bolstered its presence on Europe’s eastern flank by sending additional multinational battle groups to Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia.

But last year, the U.S. reduced troop deployments to Eastern Europe, including Romania, after Washington shifted its military posture, which officials denied was a sign of lessened commitment to NATO.

Miruta said there are over 1,000 U.S. troops in Romania, which he said is higher than it was after the U.S. troop rotation last year. "We have a solid relationship,” he said. "The security dynamics along the eastern flank are highly fluid.”

Short window to respond to incursions

Miruta said that discussions regarding NATO’s Article 5 — that an attack on any member can be met with a collective response — “can take various directions,” but said Romania currently has no information suggesting a ground invasion is imminent or likely.

“From this perspective, we can rest easy,” he said. He added that the ongoing threat posed to Romania is unique because of Russia’s frequent attacks on Ukraine’s Danube River ports, a short distance across the natural river border.

“Once the border is crossed, the distance involved is merely tens of meters, leaving very little reaction time,” he said. “In contrast, in the Nordic countries, targets are tens of kilometers away, providing a sufficiently comfortable window for various forms of intervention.”

Live fire across the border is visible and audible in some areas and has long put Romanian residents on edge.

“We see the drones coming, we see them heading toward those ports,” Miruta added. “Most stop there, bombarding port infrastructure, but we cannot know if any might cross over to the other side … If one does cross over, our communities … would be at risk.”

Romania ramps up defense spending

In response to the growing array of security threats, Romania and Poland acquired the MEROPS system, which fires short counter-drones to take down incoming stray drones. The defense ministry also announced last month that it had received its first 2.5 billion euros from the EU’s Security Action for Europe program, from the total amount of 16.6 billion allocated.

In June, the defense ministry also announced it had signed a $2 billion contract with an Israeli firm to acquire short and very-short-range air defense systems, “designed to protect against aerial threats, including drones and cruise missiles.”

Romanian President Nicusor Dan said at the Ankara summit that defense spending would reach up to 3.7% of GDP this year. He added that Romania joined NATO’s Drone Edge project, which aims to invest over $40 billion in “counter-drone capabilities” over the next five years.

Back in Isaccea, Mihail says she and her husband stay in the house when the text alerts warn of potential airspace breaches.

“We have no support, no one to help us," she said.

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McGrath reported from Leamington Spa, England.

His former team provides it anyway.

Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will face the Cleveland Browns on Sunday in their home opener after starting the season with a 33-27 loss at Cincinnati.

“I think anytime – as I’ve mentioned to you guys, (when) there’s history between a franchise, a coaching staff, anybody – there’s always (that feeling of) you want to come out on the winning side of that no matter what,” Mayfield said Wednesday. “Obviously, it’s very different there staff-wise and everybody. Yeah, I spent four years there. I’m going into year four here. … I started my career there — (there were) a lot of ups and downs. But yeah, for me this week, (it’s about) doing the little things right, continuing to try and just place the ball where it needs to go, and then obviously making the corrections I need to in ball security.”

Mayfield lost three fumbles against the Bengals that led to 17 points, including one that was returned for a score.

He was drafted No. 1 overall by the Browns in 2018 and had an inconsistent tenure in Cleveland. He led the Browns to a playoff victory against Pittsburgh in 2020 but was traded after an injury-plagued 2022 season.

The Browns dealt Mayfield to Carolina after making a blockbuster trade for Deshaun Watson that has been a disaster for the organization. Watson could be starting his last game for the Browns this week if he plays poorly again.

Mayfield is the only quarterback to lead the Browns to a playoff win in the 2000s.

“I think, for me, it goes back to the faith, you know, looking up and knowing that, no matter what happens, if I control what I can control and (am) doing things the right way, obviously, I want to win,” Mayfield said. “As an ultra-competitor, that’s what you want to do at all times. So (it’s about) having trust in that, having faith in that and, yeah, taking it one day at a time.”

Browns first-year coach Todd Monken was Cleveland’s offensive coordinator in 2019 when Mayfield regressed after a promising rookie season. He threw 22 touchdowns passes and 21 interceptions in a 6-10 season.

Monken on Mayfield:

“Well, first off, he’s highly intelligent,” Monken said. “You could just get the beginning of a call out of your mouth and he’s already got it down. He wants the game plan early so he can look at it at home. He comes in the building prepared. On the field, he’s just highly, highly competitive and he holds himself to a high standard and he holds others to a high standard, which is everything you’re looking for in a player, I guess just in a human being in general.”

Mayfield already played against the Browns and lost in 2022 during a tumultuous season with the Panthers. He ended up being released that season, rebounded with Sean McVay and the Los Angeles Rams and joined the Buccaneers in 2023 after Tom Brady retired.

He’s become a franchise QB in Tampa Bay, making two Pro Bowls and leading the Bucs to a pair of NFC South titles. Last week, he got a $165 million, three-year contract extension.

“Yeah, I’m sure it still motivates him,” Browns cornerback Denzel Ward said about Mayfield’s time in Cleveland. “Baker’s a guy that feeds off of motivation, a lot of things, and I know he’s competitive and any game he’s going to want to come in and do his best, but I’m sure he’s definitely motivated for the game.”

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AP freelancer Tom Withers contributed to this report.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

It will be a sprint to the finish with each team having four games left. While the playoffs teams are set, their positioning is still up from grabs.

With over 50 players competing in the World Cup teams were left without many of their stars as they prepared for the final seven days of the regular season.

“I think we have to understand we can’t use these next four games as an opportunity for excuses,” Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu said. “Obviously, we had the most players gone and it’s not easy when most of your team is gone competing. They’re tired, they’re fatigued, they’ve been traveling, but every team is dealing with it.”

Here's a look at a few key spots that will be decided over the next week:

Race for No. 1 seed

The Minnesota Lynx are close to locking up the top spot, but they headed into the World Cup break with two consecutive losses, including one against second-place Golden State. The Valkyries have won four games in a row and cut their deficit to two games. However, the Lynx have the season tiebreaker, so Minnesota's magic number is two to clinch homecourt throughout the playoffs.

Lynx star Napheesa Collier loved the chance to play in the World Cup as it gave her more opportunities to get back to 100% after missing the first half of the season while recovering from ankle surgeries.

“I think this was great that I got to play during this time because, I didn’t need the three weeks off, right? Like my body’s not tired like everyone else is for the season,” she said. “I get to keep making (my ankles) stronger. Keep getting that game experience. Now I go back to the W for a playoff run. Making sure that I’m just hitting my peak at the right time as well.”

The battle for homecourt advantage

Las Vegas, Atlanta and Indiana all are vying to get homecourt in the opening round. The Aces, who are one game in front of the Dream and Fever, are in a good spot to get the No. 3 seed with two games against Seattle, one against Los Angeles and a contest against Phoenix left. Those are three of the bottom teams in the standings.

The Dream own the tiebreaker over the second tiebreaker over the Fever with a better record against opponents that had an over .500 record. Indiana has a tough schedule in front of it with a game at Toronto followed by Washington and two against Minnesota. The Dream play Connecticut and Chicago before closing with a pair of games against New York.

Jockeying for position at bottom of playoff picture

New York, Washington and Dallas round out the playoff field with all three teams tied at 24-16. The Liberty might be the most dangerous of the group to pull off a first-round upset. New York is only two years removed from winning the franchise's first WNBA title and the nucleus is back with Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones.

The Liberty though had seven of their players competing in the World Cup, so how quickly they reacclimate to their teammates could determine where they finish in the standings. Washington has shown it can play with the best in the league led by Shakira Austin, Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen. Both Washington and Dallas have easier schedules than New York, which has to play Minnesota and Atlanta twice in its final four games.

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See AP’s full WNBA coverage here

Ahead of the talks in Paris, a statement from the office of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said the three leaders would discuss the situation in southern Lebanon and plans for an international presence there after the mandate of the U.N. peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL expires at the end of the year.

A donor conference for Lebanon's cash-strapped army was initially set to take place in February, led by France, Saudi Arabia and the United States. However, it was postponed following the eruption of the Iran war and the latest round of the Israel-Hezbollah war.

A new date for the conference was not immediately announced following Thursday's meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Aoun.

Lebanon's army now finds itself caught between the Israeli military — now occupying much of southern Lebanon — and the militant group Hezbollah, which has refused calls to give up its weapons.

In June, the Lebanese and Israeli governments announced a framework agreement under which Israel would withdraw gradually from southern Lebanon and the Lebanese army would assume control, while Hezbollah would be disarmed. Implementation of the deal has stalled.

Hezbollah was severely weakened in the last war that ended in November 2024, and Lebanon subsequently elected Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who committed to disarming Hezbollah and other non-state armed groups in the country.

Lebanon has been criticized by Israel and the United States for not taking direct military action to force the militant group to disarm.

Lebanese officials are wary of a confrontation between the army and Hezbollah, fearing it could spiral into a civil war. The government has also insisted it needs a larger and better-equipped military to deploy across Lebanon and win over Hezbollah’s supporters who question the army’s ability to protect them.

The small Mediterranean country’s military is underfunded and underequipped, for years relying heavily on international donors, notably the United States, United Kingdom, France and Italy.

Saudi Arabia had initially earmarked $3 billion in 2013 to support the Lebanese army with French weapons. But Saudi Arabia decided to halt the aid in 2016 as Hezbollah grew in power politically and the Lebanese government's ties with the kingdom deteriorated.

Many soldiers have left the military or worked second jobs since the country’s fiscal crisis in late 2019, which affected state institutions that once provided decent salaries and benefits, and locked the savings of millions in the banks. The military has struggled to adequately pay salaries as inflation soars and state budgets shrink.

The decision was widely anticipated, with six members of the Monetary Policy Committee voting to keep rates unchanged, while three backed a quarter-point increase to 4%.

Though borrowing rates were kept on hold, financial markets think it's more likely than not that the bank will back an increase at one of the next two policy meetings, either in November or December.

“So far higher global energy costs have had a limited effect on price and wage setting in the U.K.,” said Bank Governor Andrew Bailey. “But the longer this volatility persists, the bigger the impact it will have on inflation, and the more likely it is we will need to raise Bank Rate to ensure that inflation falls back to our 2% target.”

Like other central banks, the inflation outlook will be key. Some have already decided to start raising borrowing costs again, including the U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday.

The minutes accompanying the Bank of England's decision showed that inflation is now expected to rise to around 4% in the first quarter of next year from the current 3.1% as households face another increase in their domestic energy bills. That would take inflation further above the bank's target rate of 2%.

Interest rates in the U.K. had been trending downward from a 15-year high of 5.25% until the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in late February. The Iran war led to sharp increases in oil and gas prices, partly because the crucial Strait of Hormuz has been largely closed to traffic ever since.

The Bank of England's rate-setters meet on Nov. 5 and many economists believe that will be a natural moment for a change of course as they will be armed with the latest quarterly economic forecasts and Bailey will be subsequently holding a press briefing.

“So it is a natural starting point for a hiking cycle,” said Felix Feather, economist at asset management firm Aberdeen.

As well as impacting the cost of personal loans and mortgages, the uptick in interest rate expectations is a growing problem for the British government as the servicing of its debt accounts for a higher proportion of its spending.

Before the next meeting, the government will unveil its annual budget, which could have an impact on the inflation outlook and hence interest rate expectations.

Carney’s speech to the European Parliament repeatedly extolled cooperation between Europe and Canada — but the relationship with the U.S., which has defined Canada’s economy for decades and has increasingly soured, hung over the address.

Trump’s tariffs, demands for economic concessions, and repeated talk of making Canada the 51st state have pushed Ottawa to reduce its dependence on its neighbor and seek a far deeper economic, security and political relationship with Europe.

Carney told the parliament that he welcomed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal, unveiled Wednesday, though he acknowledged that “associate membership” remains to be defined.

He outlined what he was proposing: deeper integration across trade, defense, critical minerals, artificial intelligence, energy, space, research and financial services to make both sides less vulnerable to economic and geopolitical pressure. He later told reporters he was not pursuing full membership of the EU.

“We do not seek power to dominate others," he said. “On the contrary, we are pursuing resilience so that no one can control our open markets, impair our sovereignty, threaten our territorial integrity, or undermine our freedoms, our democracies, our rule of law.”

The prime minister received an ebullient welcome when he walked into the chamber in Strasbourg, France — with many lawmakers approaching him to shake his hand and ask for selfies — and a standing ovation after he spoke. One parliamentarian had donned a Canadian hockey jersey.

Europe offers Canada another path

On Wednesday, von der Leyen proposed making Canada the EU’s first associate member — a status that does not currently exist in the bloc’s treaties and would have to be created. She said Europe wants to take its relationship with Canada to “the highest level possible.”

Carney, sitting in the front row of the chamber, nodded and rose to embrace von der Leyen as lawmakers gave the proposal a standing ovation.

Von der Leyen said Canada and the EU should move beyond their existing free trade agreement and create an “Alliance for the Future” encompassing a “common prosperity and economic security space.”

Carney will host EU leaders for a summit in Montreal on Oct. 29-30, when the two sides are expected to discuss the proposed new relationship in more detail.

Canada sends roughly 70% of its exports to the United States, making it highly exposed to Trump’s tariffs. Ottawa has retaliated and rejected demands that Carney says threaten Canadian sovereignty.

Europe took a different path, shelving retaliation and accepting tariffs of up to 15% on most EU exports to the U.S.

Trump pushed back on the EU proposal

Trump suggested the proposed EU arrangement could be a “hostile act” and threatened heavy tariffs on Europe if he judged its intentions to be unfriendly — raising the stakes ahead of Carney's speech.

Asked about Trump’s comments, Carney said Canadians were united in rejecting outside attempts to dictate the country’s choices.

“Canadians are united that nobody is going to tell us what language we speak. No one is going to dictate our culture or with whom we can strike agreements internationally,” Carney said.

Carney has rallied ‘middle powers’

Carney has repeatedly urged what he calls middle powers to resist economic coercion. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, he warned that when countries negotiate alone with a dominant power, “we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered.”

Trump rebuked him the next day.

Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s ambassador-designate to the EU, said Ottawa wants “to get as close as we possibly can” to Europe while increasing Canada’s independence.

While associate membership remains to be negotiated, Canada has already taken a major step. This year it became the first non-European country to join the EU’s 150-billion-euro ($173-billion) SAFE defense procurement program, giving Canadian companies access to joint procurement as Europe increases defense spending.

The two sides have also discussed closer cooperation on energy, critical minerals, artificial intelligence and digital trade.

Carney said any enhanced partnership with the EU would be debated in Canada’s Parliament and put to a final vote.

“The policies and rhetoric of the Trump administration are clearly pushing both Canada and the EU to imagine a world without strong U.S. leadership and to act accordingly,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal.

Nelson Wiseman, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said Europeans have long regarded Canada as a country that understands the United States particularly well because of their deep economic and political ties. Carney’s willingness to resist Trump rather than quickly accept Washington’s demands has reinforced that perception, he said.

“Carney’s shrewdness in dealing with Trump has captured Europe’s attention,” Wiseman said.

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Associated Press writer Lorne Cook contributed from Brussels.

That's the consensus view of music business players who talked to The Associated Press about how mammoth tours like Sheeran's generally work.

The singer's ongoing Loop Tour is mired in chaos after four supporting acts quit in solidarity with rapper Macklemore, who was dropped for making pro-Palestinian comments onstage at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium.

Sheeran said on Instagram that the decision was made by the promoter, and he had no power over it. The promoter said it had no choice because venues wouldn't allow Macklemore to perform.

Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, which is among the remaining tour stops, said in a statement that the decision to drop Macklemore was a result of his recent comments “and a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery.”

The promoter and the artist share power

The promoter is the primary business actor on a tour. At high levels, it's a company like Messina Touring Group, the promoter of Sheeran's tour.

“The promoter puts up the money, pays all of the acts, deals with the venue. They provide the stake, sell the tickets, and the artists come on and play,” said Ray Waddell, chief content director for media and conferences for the Oak View Group, an entertainment and venue management company whose properties include the concert trade publication Pollstar.

Sheeran said in his Instagram post that despite his attempts “to build a bridge” all week, “the venue’s and promoter’s decision was final.”

But do promoters generally have the ultimate say for who is on the bill?

“If you’re paying for everything, yes you can make that call,” Waddell said, “but almost without exception the promoter wants to do what the artists want.”

Dean Sheldon Serwin, an entertainment lawyer who works in the music industry, said that broadly speaking, “at the end of the day that superstar headliner is going to have approval over everything.”

And the artist's power derives from their ability to fill arenas and stadiums.

“The way to make money in the music industry for real is butts in seats, always has been, always will be,” Serwin said. “How many tickets can you sell and how consistently can you sell those tickets?”

But while it may be minimal with acts on the level of Sheeran or Ariana Grande, there is still a transactional relationship.

“When you want to play at the venues you want to play at, there’s a give and take,” Serwin said.

Lil Gary, a music artists manager who in the past worked in tour management for acts including the Rolling Stones and the Eagles, said touring musicians and their representatives would want say over “a great many things especially when it comes to creative control, but when it gets down to the minutiae, not very much.”

But she said on some nonmusical issues they’ll take a great interest.

“Artists of a certain stature, they would absolutely dictate how security works,” she said as an example.

She said it’s definitely very rare in her experience for supporting artists to have any effect on how the tour went or its fate.

“The opening acts that were on Rolling Stones tours, for the most part they were happy to be there,” Gary said. “They just suited up, showed up and did the job.”

Neither Gary nor Waddell nor Serwin are involved in the Sheeran tour.

The stadium owners' role is usually silent

Venues and their owners like Kraft are usually hands-off players, but they have say if they make the rare choice of wielding it.

“Certainly they can lock the doors,” Waddell said. “They usually hand the keys to the promoter. The promoter comes in and does the show whether it’s a club or a stadium, but that doesn’t mean they vacate all power and influence.”

Waddell said venue operators, like promoters, are usually savvy and can anticipate what an artist is likely to do or say based on past performances.

“I don’t see why it surprised anybody given the history of the artist involved,” he said. “That being said, I don’t know that Robert Kraft was up on his Macklemore.”

“But,” Waddell said, “he got wind of it and he didn’t like it and it’s his stadium.”

What if they have to cancel?

Concert tour cancellations are common but are usually based on things like artists’ health. And ideally, there’s immediate rescheduling with the very same tickets honored.

“That can’t always happen, but it is the best,” Gary said.

There is no strong evidence that Sheeran's entire tour is going to be scrapped over the opening act issue.

But if it did, multiple insurance companies would likely be involved in salvaging the aftermath.

The biggest artists generally have their own insurers, and the promoter has its own, to take care of refunding fans and paying people who are contractually owed.

“They would go to their respective carriers and sort out their respective losses,” Gary said.

The circumstances could easily lead to blame and broken business relationships, but Waddell said “they work it out because everybody wants to work together again in the future.”

“Ed Sheeran’s young. He’s got a lot of tours ahead of him and these tours make a lot of money,” he said. “It’s a business and it’s not going away. Everybody’s going to be doing this next year and 10 years after that, God willing.”

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Hamilton reported from New York.

The economic and political climate has been seriously affected by 4½ years of full-fledged war with Ukraine. Swarms of enemy drones have inflicted massive damage on Russian oil refineries and logistical facilities. The public, which no longer sees the fighting as something distant, is increasingly nervous.

United Russia, the main Kremlin party, is poised to keep its overwhelming grip on the State Duma alongside a few other parties aligned with President Vladimir Putin. Still, authorities have tightened control over the first wartime balloting for the lower chamber of parliament since the 2022 full-scale invasion.

The Kremlin stifled even the slightest signs of dissent before three days of voting that begin Friday. The only party that dared to criticize the war was unceremoniously removed from the ballot, and a few anti-war politicians have been imprisoned or forced to flee abroad.

For the first time, the election includes residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed after the invasion. Ukraine has called the vote illegal.

With the result predetermined and Putin’s political dominance under no immediate threat, analysts say the Kremlin sees the election as a key effort to mobilize public support for the war and legitimize its action.

“Your choice and resolve will once again demonstrate that millions of people stand behind our fighters, that we are a united people, bound by shared values, historical memory, and love for the Motherland,” Putin said in an address before the vote.

Economic damage mounts from summer attacks

A summer marked by Ukraine's long-range drone strikes brought the war home for millions of Russians.

The attacks exacerbated problems for the economy, which has plunged into stagnation after an initial boost from massive military spending. The government raised taxes and increased domestic borrowing to keep the growing budget deficit under control.

Strikes on Russian oil refineries sparked a severe fuel crisis that peaked in June, eased for a few weeks and then returned in August.

Adding to the pain was a series of attacks on warehouses of online retailers Wildberries and Ozon. Hundreds of thousands of individual sellers lost their merchandise, sending a shock wave through the economy.

All this dampened the public mood. Polls recorded a dip in Putin’s approval ratings, even though they remained high, with the independent Levada Center showing it at 76% in August, down from 87% in September 2025.

Even some senior members of Russia’s elite openly expressed discontent.

Andrei Klepach, chief economist of the state VEB.RF bank, warned of possible internal turmoil.

“We won’t win the competition in this war of attrition,” he said at a seminar. “Our costs are mounting. I’m almost sure that we will come to face a social crisis.”

Klepach was dismissed the day after his comments were published.

Putin doesn’t budge on his war goals

Putin acknowledged the attacks inflicted significant damage but insisted the economy can weather it. He said Ukraine had opened a “Pandora's box,” inviting massive retaliation.

Russia intensified attacks on Kyiv and other cities with missiles and new jet-powered drones, exploiting Ukraine’s shortage of defensive interceptors. Moscow also dramatically stepped up its barrage on Black Sea ports, disrupting Ukrainian exports of grain and other agricultural products, a key source of revenue.

Amid the escalation, fears mounted that the Kremlin was mulling a massive mobilization.

A partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists in 2022 prompted hundreds of thousands of Russians to flee abroad, undermining domestic stability. Since then, the Kremlin has relied on volunteers to fight, offering comparatively high wages and other benefits. Military experts warned, however, that the flow of volunteers has ebbed while massive losses have continued.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeatedly claims the Kremlin is considering a postelection mobilization, which Putin dismissed as “nonsense.”

At a Sept. 5 Kremlin meeting with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and a subsequent call with President Donald Trump, Putin said Russia holds the upper hand on the battlefield, signaling he will keep his maximalist demands for striking a peace deal.

Anti-war forces silenced

In July, the Central Election Commission cleared 11 parties for the parliamentary ballot, including Yabloko, the only one to openly criticize the war.

Weeks later, however, the country’s Supreme Court removed Yabloko from the ballot. It was acting on an appeal from the nationalist Motherland party that called liberal Yabloko’s anti-war stance akin to seeking the violation of Russia’s territorial integrity.

Kremlin-watchers described the move as an apparent sign of infighting between elements of the government who wanted a semblance of competition to increase voter turnout, and those who feared Yabloko's presence could bring open criticism of the war and political instability.

“The risks that the campaign would turn into a struggle for and against peace — that is, a dispute about the war — were quite high, and this clearly was not part of the plan,” said Tatyana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Maxim Kruglov, a deputy chairman of Yabloko and former member of Moscow's city council, was convicted in June of spreading false information about the military and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Last month, a court in the Pskov region convicted Yabloko member Lev Shlosberg of speaking out against the war and sentenced him to over 11 years.

Half of the Duma's 450 seats are filled by approved parties and the other half by the winners of races in single-constituency races. Yabloko was banished from the party list voting.

Then, authorities methodically barred individual Yabloko members from running in most of its single-constituency races for the Duma and regional legislatures.

Liberal politician and war critic Boris Nadezhdin, who tried to challenge Putin in the 2024 presidential election, left Russia last month, fearing imprisonment after he was designated as a “foreign agent” and barred from seeking office.

The main Kremlin party is poised to retain dominance

United Russia, which controls over two-thirds of the Duma's seats, is set to maintain its dominance of the lower house despite public fatigue with the war and the worsening economy. Some Russian reports indicate the Kremlin has slightly lowered its target for United Russia but expects it to retain full control of parliament.

“United Russia may be allowed to slip a little … to bring its actual sort of declared results more in line with probably its real results,” said analyst Mark Galeotti, who heads the Mayak Intelligence consultancy, adding that the Kremlin will ensure it “is still absolutely dominant within the Duma.”

One aim of the elections is showing they are “legitimating rituals to give the impression that mass consensus is behind the Kremlin,” he said.

Other members of the “systemic opposition” — the Communist Party, the Liberal-Democratic Party and A Just Russia Party, which all follow Putin’s course and strongly support the war — are expected to retain their parliamentary presence.

While Ukraine's attacks have fueled broad anxiety, they also could bring a demand for a tougher response against Kyiv, “as long as they don't have to be involved in it,” Galeotti said in a podcast.

Chris Weafer, CEO of the Macro-Advisory Ltd., said that while Ukraine's attacks have affected public morale, there's no immediate threat to the Kremlin’s political domination.

“There has been a ‘rally around the flag’ anyway since the start of conflict and the opinion polls consistently show the very high level of support,” he said.

While the results are predetermined, “the public narrative and particularly the turnout” is what's important to the Kremlin to claim broad public support for its action, Weafer added.

Jeffery Lee, 49, is scheduled to receive an injection beginning at 6 p.m. at south Alabama's William C. Holman Correctional Facility for killing two people during a 1998 pawnshop robbery in rural Dallas County.

The state initially sought to execute Lee on June 11 using gas. But after a judge stopped that plan, the Alabama attorney general’s office immediately filed paperwork seeking the new execution date for Lee, this time by the chemical injection method.

Lee and his supporters have made a final bid to spare him, noting the jury in his case had made a recommendation of life imprisonment, which the judge overrode. His attorneys also argued in court that the state should not be legally allowed to switch execution methods. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday denied the request to stay the execution.

Twenty-six inmates have been executed around the U.S. to date this year, including a Texas man given a lethal injection for his conviction in a triple murder at his neighbor’s home. Elsewhere, a judge blocked plans Wednesday by the state of Georgia to execute a man who killed two real estate agents.

Two killed in 1998 pawnshop robbery

The double murder occurred on Dec. 12, 1998, at Jimmy’s Pawn Shop in Orrville, a small town west of Selma. Jimmy Ellis, the store's owner, and Elaine Thompson, a store employee, were shot and killed. Another employee survived by playing dead.

The surviving witness testified that Lee entered the store, asked to see wedding rings and said he would be back after getting money from his grandmother. Lee returned a short time later with a sawed-off shotgun and shot Ellis, Thompson and the other employee. The surviving witness fell to the floor, pretending to be dead, and called 911 once Lee left the store.

Ellis, a singer whose voice resembled Elvis Presley's, had gained a national following for a time as an Elvis impersonator. He performed as the masked singer “Orion” and was the subject of a 2015 documentary.

Lee was convicted in 2000 of capital murder and attempted murder.

Jury voted 7-5 for life in prison

Lee is one of about two dozen people on Alabama’s death row who were sentenced to death despite jury recommendations they receive life sentences.

The jury that convicted Lee of capital murder voted 7-5 to recommend a sentence of life without parole, but the trial judge overrode them and sentenced him to death.

In 2017, Alabama abolished judicial override and stopped allowing judges to change juries’ sentencing decision in capital cases. But the law was not retroactive, leaving Lee and others on death row.

Supporters have urged the governor to reduce Lee's sentence to what the jury wanted. They held a rally Tuesday outside the Alabama Capitol under the banner, “HONOR THE JURY.”

A spokeswoman for Gov. Kay Ivey said Thursday that the governor has no plans at this time to grant clemency. Gina Maiola, a spokeswoman for Ivey, said the 2017 law signed by Ivey was clear it would not be retroactive.

“It preserved all existing death sentences, ensuring promises are kept to victims’ loved ones,” Maiola said.

Supreme Court turns back stay request

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday denied Lee's request to stay the execution to consider if the state could make the switch to lethal injection. Justices turned back the request without comment. The ruling came about six hours before the scheduled lethal injection.

Lee filed a lawsuit in 2016 challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol. After Alabama authorized nitrogen as an execution method, Lee selected it as his preferred method. He agreed to dismiss the lethal injection lawsuit in 2018 because the state agreed that “if he is to be executed, defendants will carry out that execution by nitrogen hypoxia.”

Lee's lawyers argued the state is bound by the terms of that agreement to not use lethal injection. They said the state could revise its nitrogen protocol to make it constitutional or use a firing squad.

“I feel like they owe me their word because they came into agreement in 2018 that wouldn’t do what they are trying to do now,” Lee said in audio clips released by his team.

The state attorney general’s office asked the high court to let the execution proceed, arguing that nothing precludes the switch to lethal injection.

“An unpunished murder is an intrinsic and ongoing harm to those interests and to the rule of law. Nearly twenty-eight years is decades too long,” lawyers with the attorney general’s office wrote.

For decades, lethal injection was the generally preferred U.S. execution method until problems procuring and administering the drugs led states including Alabama to consider alternatives.

Lethal injection remains Alabama's primary execution method. But in 2024, the state began carrying out some executions using nitrogen gas, which involves replacing breathable air with gas through a respirator mask, causing death from lack of oxygen. Nitrogen has now been used in seven executions in Alabama and one in Louisiana.

A federal judge in Los Angeles is scheduled to sentence Samir Ousman Alsheikh on Thursday. A jury found him guilty in March of one count of conspiracy to commit torture and three counts of torture while in charge of Syria's infamous Adra Prison from roughly 2005 to 2008.

Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.

Prosecutors say Alsheikh, seeking to quash political dissent, sent certain prisoners to a wing of Adra where they were held in small isolation cells and tortured.

At the two-week trial, three victims recounted beatings while suspended from pipes on the ceiling and the use of a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist. One person testified that Alsheikh stomped on the device with his foot, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Defendant knew that what he was doing was wrong,” DOJ prosecutors said in a sentencing memo filed this month. “Nonetheless he ordered and participated in the torture of his victims because he had the power to do so and because he thought he would never be held accountable.”

The memo included statements from several victims, one of whom, Nidal Shikhani, said he can “still hear the screams of others begging for mercy, repeating, ‘Leave me, leave me.’”

The prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera for a minimum sentence of 80 years. Alsheikh's attorneys, Nina Marino and Collin Cate, have called for a five-year sentence, noting that he is 74 years old and has “significant medical and cognitive conditions.”

They also said he was willing to be deported to Syria, where a new government has sought to hold Assad-era security officials accountable.

“Whatever moral weight this case carries in the broader arc of history — however much the world, or the victims, or the public might wish the sentence to ‘send a message’ — that desire cannot be the foundation of a just sentence,” Marino and Cate wrote in their Sept. 3 memo.

Alsheikh came to the U.S. in 2020 and applied for citizenship, but prosecutors say he concealed his involvement in torture. Federal authorities detained him at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2024.

Jurors also convicted him in March of lying to U.S. immigration authorities and fraudulently obtaining a green card and attempting to naturalize as a U.S. citizen.

Assad was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024, bringing a 14-year civil war to an end, but the country has continued to suffer from sporadic outbreaks of violence.

In March 2025, armed groups aligned with Assad ambushed the new government’s security forces on Syria’s coast. A government counteroffensive then spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks and the massacre of hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs.

On Thursday, three people were sentenced in the Syrian city of Aleppo in connection with the violence. Two members of the pro-Assad groups were sentenced to death and life in prison, while a member of the security forces who took part in the revenge attacks was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

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Thanawala reported from Atlanta.

AI governance is expected to be on the agenda in a meeting planned for next week in Washington between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The topic has gained urgency in both countries, with American tech leaders saying that averting worst-case scenarios for rogue AI depends on a degree of cooperation with China.

But both countries are vying for a decisive advantage on AI, with Trump warning that any efforts to regulate the technology would help China. That sets up a meeting in which any agreements might be superficial but a possible start to something larger.

“A formal agreement or consensus may be near impossible, but they do not need to go that far,” said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies’ Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs. “Trump and Xi just need to create political space by acknowledging AI poses risks to both countries.”

China and the US are increasingly at odds on AI

Trump has pushed back on calls to strengthen regulation of the technology, claiming that doing so could cause China to eclipse America on AI. He has repeatedly declared that the nation that leads on the technology “wins.”

“We are leading China, and all others,” Trump said Monday on social media.

The two countries are moving the technology forward in different ways. U.S. companies are chasing AI frontiers with computing power supported by cutting-edge chips and the country's rapidly expanding data center infrastructure. China is pursuing wide global adoption of its open-source, more affordable models.

Chinese AI models have made major advances and gained traction with American companies even as U.S.-led restrictions bar China from getting the world’s most advanced AI chips. While most American frontier models are closed-source, with their design elements kept secret, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday the U.S. needs to develop more open-source models to counter China.

The U.S. has accused China of “aggressive, malicious” efforts to extract capabilities from American AI systems. China has hit back, accusing the U.S. of trying to suppress Chinese companies so it can build a “monopoly of the AI industry.”

David Sacks, a top AI adviser to Trump, said that China has “already rejected” slowing down the pace of developing the most advanced forms of AI. He said on Fox News' “The Ingraham Angle” that unlike the nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union during the Cold War it would be impossible to verify whether China honored any AI commitments.

“In this case, we don’t have trust and we can’t verify,” Sacks said. “So let’s not be foolish about this and just hand the whole ball game to China.”

Still, those with ties to the Chinese government see coordination on AI as helpful.

At an annual security and defense conference in Beijing, Cui Tiankai, a former Chinese ambassador to the U.S., said Tuesday that AI is an area where “we should go ahead and build up” dialogue between Beijing and Washington. “Because there is a need, a growing need, for cooperation,” he told the Xiangshan Forum. “So how can we manage the balance?”

American AI leaders call for keeping China in check — and cooperating with China

Two leading American AI companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, each restrict access in China and have said the U.S. has a national security imperative to protect its lead on AI technology. But they also have called for cooperation with China to manage safety.

In his essay last weekend calling for a slowdown of AI development for safety reasons, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the U.S. should slow China's progress, including keeping up U.S. restrictions on China's purchases of the world’s most advanced AI chips.

He also added, however, that “global pacing will require cooperation with China, the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities.”

His essay quickly drew criticism from Beijing, with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying on Monday that “fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest.”

China’s state-run Global Times newspaper went further, calling his remarks “packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War playbook’ for the AI sector.”

Trump has consulted with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, even calling the maker of the world’s most advanced computer chips in the middle of a Monday podcast interview. Nvidia has generally favored some chip exports to China as a way to create an American ecosystem for the technology and a more open relationship on AI given the number of researchers in China.

Both countries have been alarmed by emerging AI capabilities

In both the U.S. and China, AI's increasingly powerful capabilities have alarmed top officials and policymakers.

The head of China’s Ministry of State Security, its spy agency, warned in an article Sunday that AI poses many threats to the country, from political and ideological security to cyberattacks.

In the article, Chen Yixin argued that AI could threaten China’s political and ideological security if used by those “with ulterior motives,” while singling out Anthropic's and OpenAI's powerful AI models. It said they could be used to “weaponize” cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threaten China's critical information infrastructure.

Several other recent AI-related events were also causing concern in China when it comes to AI governance. That includes a U.S. security firm’s recent discovery of AI vulnerabilities in WeChat, China’s key messaging app that also offers payment services among other functions, said Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.

While Chinese officials said after Trump’s Beijing summit with Xi in mid-May that China and the United States had agreed to pursue dialogue on AI development and governance, little progress has been made.

At the same time, China and the U.S. have been working to form AI alliances with like-minded nations.

In July, China launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, a group with 29 initial founding member countries, including Russia and Pakistan, meant to promote global AI governance. This month, China’s Xi has called on BRICS member countries to accelerate the setting up of a global AI governance framework and establish an open-source AI community.

Some political observers saw the China-led organization as a response to the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative, which launched last year focusing on strengthening collaboration with countries including Japan, the U.K. and Australia on AI supply chains.

Asked about his expectations on AI from the Trump-Xi meeting on AI in an interview with CBS' “Face the Nation,” Amodei said “the more long-term thing would be working together to put a speed limit on the rate of AI progress.” But he said it likely would be very difficult.

In the run-up to the Trump-Xi meeting, a recent social media post by Yuyuantantian, a Chinese state media-linked account, was similarly circumspect.

“Only after the United States first demonstrates that the safety rules are equally effective for its own model companies can substantive discussions between the U.S. and China take place,” the post said.

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Associated Press writers Josh Boak in Washington and Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.

On Tuesday, one of those flying newsrooms crashed live on-air and burst into flames, killing three people while reporters were covering the collision of an SUV and a city bus. NBC4 Los Angeles reported that two people aboard the helicopter — Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw — were killed, and fire officials said another person, Edy Gutierrez Mejia, died on the ground. It was a horrifying addition to at least eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters in the U.S. since 2000, in which 16 people have been killed.

Moreno, known widely as “Eli in the Heli,” had been an aerial journalist since 2010, mastering a demanding form of reporting that requires editing, shooting video, intimate knowledge of a city — and quick thinking.

“After working 76 hours since Sunday, I’m almost done!” she posted to Instagram on Sept. 29, 2023. “I can’t complain though because I have the best job in the world.”

It has been about getting there first

Beaming the news from the sky undeniably provides a public service as the descendant of delivery by horseback, teletype and satellite. It's also true that the “Telecopter” was born in Los Angeles as a way to beat the competition to the scene, according to its inventor, John Silva, chief engineer for KTLA-TV when it debuted the machine in 1958. News from the air dazzled audiences — and it meant a new era of big money for local television stations.

In a 2002 interview with the Television Academy Foundation, Silva recalled sitting on the freeway, frustrated over reporting on the reporters — press stories about which journalists got to major news scenes first and were thus “the hero.”

“It came to me all of a sudden. ‘How can we beat the competition?'” Silva recalled. “If we could build a news mobile unit in a helicopter we could get over it all, get there first, avoid the traffic, and get to all the stories before anybody in the competition. It’d be a wonderful thing.’”

But not an easy one. The project had to stay top secret. The helo had to be chosen and fitted in the sprawling backyard property of a news executive, out of sight of rivals. Silva had to figure out how to shave the 2,000 pounds (900 kilograms) of camera equipment down to less than 400 pounds (181 kilograms). And critically, how to beam the news from the air to a receiving dish on a mountain and ultimately to millions of Angelenos.

Airborne at one point during testing, Silva reportedly inched out on the helicopter's right skid — with no safety belt — to investigate the cause of intense vibrations shaking the cockpit, according to a 2009 interview with Smithsonian Magazine.

At 6:30 p.m. on July 24, 1958, KTLA preempted regular programming to broadcast the view from above the City of Angels. The station raked in record amounts of advertising, with Procter & Gamble spending $250,000 to sponsor “Telecopter” coverage, the magazine reported.

“It broadened what news could do, just like the live camera on the ground,” Stan Chambers, then a KTLA news correspondent, told the same foundation. Until then, he said, “television news was not that important to a lot of decision-makers. Then the helicopter really captivated everybody.”

Silva won two Emmy awards for his invention.

It offered dazzling coverage, but tragedy, too

News from the air punctuated a giddy era of television journalism that was increasingly striving for live, real-time reports. Americans were riveted to reports on the L.A. riots in 1992 and the two-hour police chase of O.J. Simpson's white Ford Bronco two years later. Together, the two events did much to confirm the allure of live crisis coverage from the air.

In 1977, a KNBC news helicopter crashed when it ran out of fuel while returning to the station after covering a wildfire in Santa Barbara, killing the pilot and camera operator. Nine years later, a helicopter flying a radio traffic reporter over New York City for a live rush-hour broadcast plunged into the Hudson River, killing her and critically injuring the pilot. The reporter, WNBC Radio's Jane Dornacker, could be heard screaming, “Hit the water!” as the helicopter went down.

And in 2007, two news helicopters covering a police chase on live television collided and crashed, killing all four people on board in a plunge that viewers saw as a jumble of spinning, broken images. The NTSB said that crash happened because two of the pilots who were pulling double duty as reporters were distracted by the chase on the ground.

Tammy Rose, a longtime journalist for more than 20 years, was at KPNX in Phoenix in 2007 when the two television helicopters collided and has survived some harrowing incidents. But, she told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday, journalists and pilots follow strict protocols to manage the risks.

In Phoenix after the crash, all five news stations agreed to share the same news helicopter. And the company she works for in Houston, Helicopters Inc., wants its pilots to stay above 500 feet so they will have some altitude to work with in case of a problem like an engine failure.

“A news helicopter is more than a flying camera,” said Rose, who reports now for ABC-13 in Houston and says her passion keeps her flying. “As a reporter aboard the aircraft, I could see the larger scene, communicate with the newsroom, gather information and report live while events were unfolding.”

‘The eyes and ears in the sky’ for two newsrooms

NBC4 reported Wednesday that Moreno and Marciniw were known as “the eyes and ears in the sky” for two newsrooms — NBCLA and Telemundo 52 — and logged hundreds of hours together since they began working together in 2023. Marciniw is believed to have had more than 30 years of flight experience and was respected in the industry, NBC4 reported.

Esteban Jimenez, a fellow helicopter pilot, told the channel that he had known Marciniw since the 1990s and that the two had talked recently about retirement.

Moreno stood in awe of the breadth of subjects the team could report — and she seemed to do everything except fly the helicopter. “I’m not just a photographer or reporter or editor, I’m actually doing all three things at the same time,” she told her alma mater, Chapman University.

In a social media posting from Whiteman Airport on July 31, she said any kind of spot news was fair game, but the brush fires that plague Southern California were critical. “It’s really one of the best stories to cover from the helicopter, because the helicopter is able to show here’s where the fire started, here’s where it’s going, these are the homes that are threatened.”

“It just goes to show the power that we have from being the eye in the sky.”

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AP Transportation Writer Josh Funk contributed from Omaha, Nebraska. Kellman reported from London.

The AI company also said Wednesday it was introducing a new framework for tracking, probing and disclosing instances of what it called “misalignment,” including cases where AI models acted without authorization, coordinated with other models or evaded oversight.

OpenAI’s latest announcement came as U.S. AI bosses, including the leaders of OpenAI and Anthropic, are calling for a slowdown in the technology’s development over safety concerns.

Among the new cases reported by OpenAI, an unreleased research model inserted “jailbreak-like instructions” into its own notes to disregard its normal constraints and told itself to be “freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots.”

In another instance, an AI “agent” used computer code to come up with the answer to a question, but, in order to have an online source to cite, it uploaded a file to the public internet without asking the user.

During training of an AI model called 5.6-sol, the model instructed itself to invent missing data, and an agent wrote a message to remind itself to hide mismatched information.

The six reports were discovered during training or evaluation over the past months, OpenAI said.

“As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post as it disclosed the events.

“Decisions about how AI development should proceed in the months and years to come need to draw on evidence that people outside the companies building frontier models can examine for themselves,” the company said.

Wednesday’s new cases followed OpenAI’s disclosure in July that its rogue AI system hacked into AI startup Hugging Face. Anthropic also said the same month that its AI models hacked into three organizations during testing.

AI “agents” are becoming smarter and have become “more determined to resolve complex tasks through inter-agent collaboration, knowledge sharing, deception, and concealment,” said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at technology research and advisory group Omdia.

That’s making it harder to govern and contain them using traditional AI security approaches, he said.

OpenAI's new tracking and disclosure framework, meanwhile, can help push for other AI developers to also adopt similar practices.

“That said, the process remains internal and voluntary, but is a step in the right direction,” Su added.

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AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.

The fans serenaded the Chicago star after his first home run, his 43rd to break Billy Williams' Cubs record for left-handed hitters. They made their feelings known after his RBI triple and after his 44th home run.

Even when Crow-Armstrong struck out on five pitches in the eighth, he still received a standing ovation on his way back to the dugout at the end of a 3 for 4 night with three RBIs and three runs in an 8-4 victory over the Atlanta Braves, his seventh multi-home-run game of the season.

With Shohei Ohtani still on the injured list with right biceps inflammation, Crow-Armstrong keeps hitting home runs, closing in on the first 40-40 season in Cubs history, putting the finishing touches on his MVP case, at least as far as Cubs fans are concerned.

“You’re shaking your head in amazement, sometimes,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “In amazement. You know, you don’t get to see this. That’s what I told Alex (Bregman): ‘We don’t get to see things like this.’ You spend your whole life in baseball and you just don’t see this happen on a baseball field.

"You’re grateful to be a part of it. You’re grateful to see things like this. And then you’re grateful the fans get to see a season like this. They’re going to talk about it. They’re going to tell their kids about it. They’re going to tell their grandkids about a season like this.”

Yet as he’s gone from breakthrough player to MVP candidate to MVP favorite, Crow-Armstrong has been unfazed by the pressure, his performance unwavering as the Cubs chase a wild-card spot.

“I keep it pretty simple,” Crow-Armstrong said. “I enjoy just kind of laying low, as I always do and always will. I’ve got a really nice support system.”

Only one home run behind Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber for the major league lead, Crow-Armstrong is hitting. 283 with 105 RBIs, 29 doubles and 37 stolen bases to go with Gold Glove-caliber defense in center field.

Crow-Armstrong's breakthrough season at age 24 has him at or near the top of every offensive metric in the NL while also tapping out the vocabulary of Wednesday's winning starter, Shota Imanaga.

“We can always say he's great, or he's excellent, but really there's no words to describe him," Imanaga said through an interpreter. "So I'll think of a new word in English for that.”

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