Republicans hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress. Montana has not been at the top of the list of seats Democrats hope to flip to regain control of either body, but the retirements do creak open the door for a candidate to possibly take advantage of the state’s independent streak.

Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines is not seeking a third term. He has endorsed former U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme to replace him. Daines’ late withdrawal from the race in March and the launch of Alme’s candidacy, both timed to occur just before the filing deadline, appeared to be carefully choreographed. President Donald Trump seemed to confirm as much in his endorsement of Alme.

“In fact, if Kurt didn’t have the highest level of aptitude and talent, Steve would have remained exactly where he is….” Trump said in a social media post.

Alme also has endorsements from the state’s other top Republicans, U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy and Gov. Greg Gianforte. He faces Republicans Lee Calhoun and Charles Walking Child for the nomination.

The Democratic field includes former state Rep. Reilly Neill, whose fundraising is five times the combined haul of her four primary rivals.

The winners of both primaries will face former University of Montana president Seth Bodnar, who is running as an independent. As of mid-May, Bodnar had outraised the entire field of candidates, regardless of party. Bodnar is one of a handful of independent candidates who have opted to bypass the party primary process and could complicate the general election for some Republican incumbents.

In the 1st Congressional District, Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke is not seeking a fourth full term, citing health concerns. He, Trump, Sheehy and Gianforte have endorsed talk radio host and former Zinke congressional staffer Aaron Flint over Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, former state Sen. Al Olszewski and former high school government teacher Ray Curtis. The Democratic field includes former gubernatorial candidate Ryan Busse and union organizer Sam Forstag.

In the state Legislature, several primaries expose an ongoing rift within the ranks of Montana Republicans.

At the start of the 2025 legislative session, nine Republican state senators bucked the party on a variety of key floor measures, essentially handing control of the chamber to Democrats.

State Sen. Shelley Vance of District 34 is the only one of the maverick lawmakers, dubbed the “Nasty Nine” by the Montana GOP, up for reelection in 2026. Two others, state Sens. Jason Ellsworth and Bruce Gillespie, opted instead to run for the state House in Districts 34 and 18, respectively. The other six are either term-limited, retiring or not up this cycle.

In response to the revolt within the Republican caucus, the Montana Republican Party released a list of state legislative candidates it supports, including some who are challenging Republican incumbents in the state House. But some of the state party’s picks put the committee at odds with Gianforte, who has released a series of social media videos appearing with four state House incumbents targeted by the party.

The governor offered words of support for state House Speaker Brandon Ler and state Reps. Valerie Moore and Ken Walsh, who are all running for reelection, and for state Rep. Eric Albus, who is running in state Senate District 14. Gianforte does not explicitly endorse the lawmakers in the videos, but he called one a “great partner” and said he was “proud of the work” he’d done with another.

Half of the state’s 50 state Senate seats and all 100 state House seats are up for election in 2026.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 8 p.m. MT, which is 10 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The AP will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, Public Service Commission, state Senate and state House.

Who gets to vote?

Any eligible voter may participate in any party’s primary.

How many voters are there?

As of May 25, there were about 791,000 registered voters in Montana. Voters do not register by party.

How many people actually vote?

About 190,000 Republican primary votes and about 108,000 Democratic primary votes were cast in the 2024 U.S. Senate primaries.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 68% of the 2024 primary vote was cast before primary day.

As of Friday, about 166,000 ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election.

When are early and absentee votes released?

Counties vary in how they release votes. In previous elections, results from absentee voting mostly were released along with in-person Election Day voting throughout the night. About two-thirds of Montana’s 56 counties tend to release all or almost all of their mail and in-person early voting results in the first vote update of the night, often along with results from in-person Election Day voting. About half the counties tend to release all or almost all their in-person Election Day results in the first vote report.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the 2024 U.S. Senate primary, the AP first reported results at 10:26 p.m. ET, or 26 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 4:06 a.m. ET with about 84% of total votes counted.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

Montana requires an automatic recount only in the event of a tie vote. A candidate may request a recount if the margin is less than 0.5% of the total vote, but the state will only pay for it if the margin is 0.25% or less. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 154 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

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

Runways fill with internationally acclaimed designers, celebrities, influencers, and models — all showcasing the season’s latest looks against the backdrop of South Beach.

Behind many of those polished runway appearances this year was celebrity hairstylist Sean Donaldson, whose decades-long career has taken him from Scotland to some of America’s most stylish cities before ultimately finding a home in South Florida.

Donaldson’s passion for beauty and fashion began early.

“I think my passion for hair came from magazines and what I was seeing in fashion in the mid-to-late ’80s,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of that.”

He launched his career in Scotland, where he trained under some of the industry’s most respected names, including the late Vidal Sassoon. The experience laid the foundation for what would become a successful international beauty career.

Eventually, however, warmer weather — and new opportunities — called.

After working in cities including Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Donaldson relocated to South Florida, where he has spent decades building a reputation as one of the region’s premier hair and makeup artists. Today, he owns two salons, one in Miami Beach and another in Brickell.

Donaldson says Miami’s beauty scene stands apart from anywhere else in the country.

“What I love about Miami and style and beauty is that it is somewhat unique,” he explained. “We have great style, we have great stores. We have everything that everyone else has. We stand alone because we have this more relaxed look, this relaxed vision, this relaxed aesthetic.”

That effortless aesthetic was front and center during Swim Week, where Donaldson and his team created looks inspired by both glamour and the beach lifestyle synonymous with Miami.

“This year, it’s going to be more glassy looks,” Donaldson said. “The skin’s very radiant, slightly sun-kissed, pastel hues.”

For hair, the trend focused less on heavily textured “just out of the ocean” styles and more on softness and shine.

“It’s going to be relaxed, it’s going to be soft, wavy, but well-conditioned,” he said. “In the past there would be a lot of salt-spray looks where the hair would look like it had just stepped out of the ocean.”

Technology also played a role in bringing those visions to life before models even sat in the styling chair. Donaldson highlighted a new app called “Look Beauty,” which allows users to preview different beauty transformations digitally.

“You’ll be able to change your hair color, your texture, your style — everything about your aesthetic,” he said. “(It) even includes your makeup.”

For Donaldson, the real reward comes once hair, makeup, and fashion come together to help clients feel confident and empowered.

“When you couple hair with makeup and then fashion, you create an image for someone that they want to be,” he said. “That to me is exciting, it’s rewarding, it’s empowering. And it’s great to be on that journey with someone.”

The fate of the embattled immigration detention center is in flux.

Vendors have confirmed to Local 10 that they’ve been told operations at the facility will end by Monday, nearly one year after President Donald Trump’s famed visit on the day gates opened.

The facility was built in less than two weeks, but a new chapter for the detention center is taking shape.

Sky 10 was above Alligator Alcatraz in recent days as a growing number of detainees inside the facility are calling Local 10, claiming they’re seeing operations shutting down.

Multiple sources said the number of detainees is dropping drastically.

“It’s supposed to be to effectuate the removal, not to have them there indefinitely,” immigration attorney Sammy Aliferis said.

The high cost to run the facility could be a factor in the decision to shut it down as the money comes from Florida’s emergency fund.

U.S. Democratic Congressman Maxwell Frost, who represents District 10 in Florida, weighed in.

“They spent nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer dollars on this failed project of human suffering,” he said.

More than $600 million is supposed to be reimbursed by the federal government, but the timeline for complete repayment is unclear.

“It’s irrelevant whether the state’s being reimbursed or not – they’re being reimbursed with our taxpayer money regardless," Frost said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis defended his actions to support the controversial detention center, but he does not deny the recent New York Times report that the federal government is closing it for good.

Also on the ballot is a long list of state and local contests, including a Los Angeles mayoral race where the Democratic incumbent mayor faces more than a dozen challengers. Among them is a former reality TV personality whose candidacy has caught the eye of another former reality TV personality, President Donald Trump.

California’s top-two primary format, where all candidates run on the same ballot regardless of party, has complicated the campaign calculus in several high-profile races, including the one to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. While Democratic candidates often welcome the opportunity to run head-to-head against a Republican in the dark blue state, the number of well-known Democrats in the race threatens to split the vote and inadvertently clear the path for two Republicans to advance to the general election, which would guarantee a Republican governor.

The Democratic field includes former U.S. health secretary Xavier Becerra, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, billionaire 2020 presidential candidate Tom Steyer and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Republicans vying for the seat include Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, who has Trump’s endorsement.

Democrats Eric Swalwell and former state Controller Betty Yee will also appear on the ballot, although both have withdrawn from the race. Swalwell was a top contender in the campaign but withdrew on April 12 following sexual assault allegations he has denied. He resigned from Congress two days later.

In the race for control of the narrowly divided U.S. House, a new congressional map favorable to Democrats has complicated the reelection bids of several Republican House incumbents. Voters approved the new district boundaries in a Nov. 2025 referendum, which was a response to Trump’s initiative in Texas and other states to maximize the number of GOP seats heading into the fall midterm election.

In the 6th Congressional District, U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley considered his limited options and left the Republican Party in March to run for reelection as an independent.

Republican U.S. Reps. Ken Calvert and Young Kim are competing against each other in the 40th Congressional District. Democrat Esther Kim Varet is one of several challengers hoping to snag one of two spots in the general election.

Also on the ballot is a special election in the 1st Congressional District to complete the term of the late Republican U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who died in January. The five-person field pits the Democratic state Senate President against the Republican state Assembly Minority Leader. If no candidate receives a vote majority, the top two finishers will compete one-on-one on Aug. 4. The winner will serve under the current district boundaries, not the new map going into effect in the next Congress.

A special election to fill Swalwell's vacant 14th Congressional District seat will be held June 16, also under the current boundaries.

In the race for Los Angeles mayor, Democrat Karen Bass seeks a second term in the nonpartisan office against tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, former MTV reality show cast member Spencer Pratt, City Councilmember Nithya Raman and others. Trump recently said of Pratt, “I’d like to see him do well.”

Democrats have a significant advantage over Republicans in statewide races based on their overwhelming support in the populous areas surrounding Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego. Republicans tend to perform best in the more sparsely populated areas of northern California and the Central Valley, while running competitively in Southern California suburbs outside of Los Angeles and San Diego. A Republican has not won statewide office in California since 2006.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 8 p.m. PT, which is 11 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The AP will provide vote results and declare winners in contested races for U.S. House, governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, controller, treasurer, attorney general, insurance commissioner, state school superintendent, Board of Equalization, state Senate, State House, mayor of Long Beach, mayor of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County sheriff.

Who gets to vote?

Any registered voter in California may participate in the state primary.

How many voters are there?

As of April 3, there were about 23.1 million registered voters in California, including about 10.4 million Democrats, about 5.8 million Republicans and about 5.3 million not registered with any party.

How many people actually vote?

About 7.3 million votes were cast in the U.S. Senate primary in 2024, roughly a third of registered voters.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 89% of vote in the 2024 U.S. Senate primary was cast before primary day.

As of Thursday, about 2.6 million ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election.

When are early and absentee votes released?

About four out of every five California counties release some or most of their results from mail voting in the first vote report of the night, usually before any in-person Election Day results are released. Almost half the counties release most or all of their in-person early voting results in the first vote report.

Since mail voting tends to favor Democrats and in-person Election Day voting tends to favor Republicans, the release of mail voting results at the start of the night could result in an early lead for Democratic candidates, while Republican candidates may narrow the gap as more Election Day results are counted.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the 2024 primaries, the AP first reported results at 11:08 p.m. ET, or eight minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 6:01 a.m. ET with about 52% of total votes counted. The count reached 99% of total votes about two weeks later on March 20 at 7:47 p.m. ET.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The Associated Press does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

There are no automatic recounts in California. Any registered voter may request and pay for a recount. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 14 days until the June 16 special primary in Congressional District 14, 63 days until the Aug. 4 special general election in Congressional District 1, 77 days until the Aug. 18 special general election in Congressional District 14 and 154 days until the Nov. 3 general election.

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

The winners will compete in November’s critical midterm elections, in which Iowa’s U.S. Senate and House seats could determine control of the narrowly divided chambers. The next governor could also play a pivotal role in the 2028 election, given the state’s long history of making or breaking presidential hopefuls.

Two Republicans and two Democrats are competing in primaries to replace Ernst, who announced in 2025 that she would not seek a third term. U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson faces former state Sen. Jim Carlin in the Republican primary, while state Rep. Josh Turek and state Sen. Zach Wahls compete for the Democratic nomination. Carlin ran for Iowa’s other U.S. Senate seat in 2022, receiving about 27% of the primary vote against U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Reynolds also announced in 2025 that she would not seek a third term. Vying for the GOP nomination are state Rep. Eddie Andrews, U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, entrepreneur and private school co-founder Zach Lahn, former state Rep. Brad Sherman and former state administrative services director Adam Steen.

The winner will face Democratic state Auditor Rob Sand, who is unopposed in his primary. Sand is Iowa’s only Democrat in elected statewide office.

Hinson’s and Feenstra’s statewide campaigns have created open seat contests in the state’s 2nd and 4th Congressional Districts, respectively. Feenstra’s district is heavily Republican and is unlikely to play a major role in determining control of the chamber. Hinson’s district is more competitive, although she won reelection in 2024 with 57% of the vote.

In Iowa’s most competitive congressional seats, Republican U.S. Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of the 1st District and Zach Nunn of the 3rd District are both seeking reelection. Miller-Meeks faces a rematch with her 2024 primary opponent, advertising executive David Pautsch, who received about 44% of the vote. The Democratic field includes former state Rep. Christina Bohannan, who came within 800 votes of defeating Miller-Meeks in 2024.

In the 3rd Congressional District, both Nunn and his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, are unopposed in their primaries.

Republican Donald Trump received roughly 54% of the 2024 presidential vote in both the 1st and 2nd Congressional Districts and about 52% of the 3rd District vote.

Polk, Linn and Scott counties are Iowa’s most populous, and all three play major roles in both Republican and Democratic statewide primaries. Johnson County is the fourth largest, but as home to Iowa City and the University of Iowa it is an overwhelming Democratic stronghold and tends to exert much less influence in Republican primaries.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 8 p.m. CT, which is 9 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor, auditor, state Senate and state House.

Who gets to vote?

Only voters registered with a political party may participate in that party’s primary. However, voters may change their party affiliations at the polls on the day of the primary.

How many voters are there?

As of May 4, there were about 2.1 million registered voters in Iowa, including about 692,000 registered Republicans, about 496,000 registered Democrats and about 589,000 voters not registered with any party.

How many people actually vote?

About 196,000 Republican primary votes and about 157,000 Democratic primary votes were cast in the 2022 U.S. Senate primaries.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 16% of the Republican primary vote and about 25% of the Democratic primary vote in the 2022 U.S. Senate primaries was cast before primary day.

As of Thursday, about 41,000 ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election, roughly 26,000 in the Democratic primary and more than 15,000 in the Republican primary.

When are early and absentee votes released?

Nearly all counties release the results of absentee-by-mail voting at the start of the night. However, counties vary in terms of when they release in-person absentee voting results.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the last contested state primary in 2022, the AP first reported results at 9:12 p.m. ET, or 12 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 2:29 a.m. ET, with more than 99% of total votes counted.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

Iowa does not have an automatic recount law, but candidates may request and pay for a recount. Candidates do not have to pay for recounts when the margin is less than 1% of the total vote or fewer than 50 votes, whichever is larger. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 154 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

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

Miami’s football team just played for the national championship earlier this year. The men’s basketball program went to a Final Four, then rebuilt, then returned to the NCAA tournament. The women’s basketball program isn’t far removed from an Elite Eight run. Baseball was a win away from the College World Series last year. The diving, track and tennis programs have all delivered national championships on his watch.

But the story that Radakovich might enjoy telling most as he enters retirement Monday is about the rowing team.

“That sport, wow, that might have been as dysfunctional a program as a lot of people have ever been around 4 1/2 years ago,” Radakovich said. “I mean, it was just not really good because it was an afterthought here. It had to be.”

This is what Radakovich did as an athletic director for more than two decades at American, Georgia Tech, Clemson and Miami. He solved problems, big and small. He got stadiums built, he got others refurbished, he invested in the things that get on national television — like football and basketball.

And, quietly, he did things like find a home for Miami’s rowing team. He helped arrange for the university to turn a church that it owns — yes, a church — into the training facility. The team was so moved that it gave Radakovich probably its highest honor, putting his name on one of its boats. It might be fitting that the last result to celebrate in the Radakovich era at Miami came Sunday, when the rowing team finished 13th in its first trip to the NCAA championship.

“We gave them their own place,” Radakovich said. “And they’ve just flourished from there.”

It’s not just rowing, obviously. Miami — like all schools with big-time college athletics — has had to find ways to not just be competitive in the NIL era, but flourish. Radakovich has dealt with change after change after change in recent years, though insisted it wasn’t the roller coaster of college athletics that made him decide to retire. He enjoyed the challenges, constant as they were.

“Everybody who you would listen to while growing up in this business says, ‘The only constant is change.’ They would waggle the finger at you say it,” Radakovich said. ”And you just sit there and say you’ll be ready. Well, I don’t think any of the people who stood up on those podiums and talked to us have gone through the last five years. From COVID, to NIL, it hasn’t just been change. It’s been upheaval.”

Dealing with all that, and more, will fall to someone else now. Radakovich’s retirement is set to become official, although it seems likely he will remain linked to the university in some capacity moving forward.

Miami is searching for its next athletic director, someone who’ll be tasked with working alongside not just coaches and student-athletes but also the university’s leadership. President Joe Echevarria is regularly in attendance at all sorts of Miami games and contests, and many other top school officials and Board of Trustees members are hands-on as well.

“We’re extremely blessed to have someone like Joe heading up the university, and of course Dan Radakovich has done a great job,” football coach Mario Cristobal said. “We grind. Very appreciative of them and all they do.”

For Radakovich, though, the time to grind is slowing.

He began thinking about retirement earlier this year. His sons and a grandchild live in Atlanta, he and his wife, Marcie, have been snowbirds — keeping a residence in South Carolina while he was at Miami. Radakovich would go back and forth, in Miami for the bulk of the time and then going back to South Carolina when his schedule allowed.

So, for the last few days, there were moving boxes on the floor of Radakovich’s soon-to-be former office. A few photos were wrapped up, a few items of sports memorabilia were placed near the door, his desk and shelves were largely cleared off.

It’s fitting: Radakovich got his start in athletics in 1983 as Miami’s athletic business manager, and his last official act was with the Hurricanes as well.

“You know when it’s time,” Radakovich said. “It’s time.”

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State lawmakers are returning to Tallahassee for a special session to consider proposals that could lower or even eliminate property taxes for homeowners.

DeSantis’ proposal would ask voters to begin phasing out property taxes on homesteaded properties. The plan would raise the homestead exemption to $150,000 and then to $250,000 by 2028. It would also allow lawmakers to eventually eliminate property taxes for homeowners altogether.

“I’m very concerned about the non-ad valorem, which I think will end up with some people paying more,” Jeff Brandes, president of the Florida Policy Project, said on “This Week in South Florida” with Local 10’s Glenna Milberg.

Brandes said many questions remain unanswered about the governor’s proposal.

“Is this a tax cut or tax shift? If it is a tax shift, who is it being shifted onto?” Brandes said.

He added that any shift in tax revenue could result in higher costs for renters or increases in sales taxes, water bills or electric bills.

Property appraisers across South Florida are also raising concerns about the potential impact on local governments that rely on property tax revenue.

“The Broward County Commission will lose about $200 million, the School Board will lose about $300 million and all the cities will lose revenue based on the amount of homestead they have,” Broward County Property Appraiser Marty Kiar said on “This Week in South Florida” Sunday.

Miami-Dade Property Appraiser Tomas Regalado said the financial impact would be significant but manageable for larger municipalities.

“The hit to Miami-Dade County as a whole will be big but not the last straw,” Regalado said on TWISF. “There will be small municipalities that will have hardship dealing with this, but not Miami, Hialeah.”

The proposal marks what could be DeSantis’ final major initiative before the end of his last term in office.

The next step rests with state lawmakers, who must decide whether to place the measure before voters in November.

“There’s so much that goes into this, and I’m hoping if something is put on the ballot, which is so important, I really hope they do their research. This will be the most consequential vote they’ll ever take,” Kiar said.

The proposal would need approval from 60% of both the House and Senate to make it onto the ballot. If approved, voters would have the final say in November.

But the second-place finisher, progressive Sen. Iván Cepeda, and his ally, President Gustavo Petro, questioned the results of the election Sunday night, without providing evidence.

De la Espriella rapidly gained traction in the lead-up to Sunday’s election, winning nearly 44% of the vote, and surpassing Cepeda, who had consistently led polling throughout the campaign and won less than 41% of the vote.

The two are slated to continue to a runoff election on June 21, where de la Espriella is expected to scoop up additional votes from Colombians who supported other conservative candidates in the first round.

Cepeda will face an uphill battle in the runoff, said Sergio Guzmán, a political analyst. “Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round. In other words, that’s a shift in public opinion that is very difficult to overcome. So now Abelardo is emerging as the likely favorite to win.”

Joining a political shift in the Americas

De la Espriella, known as “El Tigre” or “The Tiger,” has never held office in Colombia and prided himself on living a luxurious life in Italy before deciding to run for president. He pitched himself as an outsider who would cozy up to President Donald Trump and follow El Salvador President Nayib Bukele's war on gangs, which has driven down homicide rates but fueled accusations of human rights abuses.

“I will wipe out narcoterrorism and those who I've declared a military target like cockroaches, like rats. I will unleash upon them the wrath of God never seen before,” De la Espriella said in an interview with The Associated Press in the final stretch of the campaign, where he promised to open 10 mega-prisons to fight crime.

He joins a growing number of leaders across Latin America — from Chile to Honduras — seeking to latch onto the “Bukele model” as voters across Latin America are increasingly ditching leaders that pitched progressive policies aimed at addressing the root issues of conflict, such as lack of opportunities for young people and corruption.

De la Espriella's supporters come from a wide range of backgrounds. Yolanda Peréz, a 64-year-old woman serving coffee in the downtown of Colombia's capital of Bogotá, said with a wink the day before the election: “I'm thinking of voting for El Tigre.”

Miguel Maheca, a 20-year-old first-time voter, flashed a paper showing that he voted to his mom while he strolled out of the polling station on Sunday, saying with a grin, “Love isn't what's going to make us safe in Colombia."

But experts say El Salvador's security successes will be nearly impossible to replicate in a place like Colombia, which is more than 50 times larger than the Central American nation and has many more armed groups warring for territory.

The polarized vote comes as the Trump administration is playing a more aggressive role in Latin America than any U.S. government in decades, placing mounting pressure on countries like Colombia, Mexico, and Ecuador to crack down on crime.

De la Espriella, 47, made a name for himself as a lawyer defending high-profile clients such as former President Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010), as well as controversial figures like Alex Saab, a close ally of Venezuela’s ousted president Nicolás Maduro who faces legal issues in the U.S. and whom he stopped representing about seven years ago.

A blow to Cepeda

De la Espriella's rise as a presidential candidate spells trouble for progressive Cepeda, who consistently led polls in the lead up to Sunday's election, though his competitor quickly gained speed in the weeks ahead of the vote.

Cepeda is a progressive senator who has promised to carry on his ally Petro's fraught plan to achieve “total peace” by negotiating peace pacts with guerrillas and criminal gangs.

Their political movement was born from a fierce rejection by many Colombians of a militarized offensive by Uribe in decades past used to beat back the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which ended in thousands of civilians being killed by Colombian forces in a scandal known as “false positives.”

De la Espriella “represents a return to the paramilitary politics and drug-trafficking — a mafia-run, plutocratic and corrupt past that the country experienced during Álvaro Uribe’s two administrations,” Cepeda said on Sunday.

Petro, a former rebel, won Colombia's presidency in 2022 in a historic election that ended decades of right-wing domination by leaders from Uribe's political movement. He gained massive support from rural-dwelling, Indigenous and poorer Colombians who felt they had never been directly spoken to by Colombian leaders.

Now, that movement is backed into a corner.

“This is De la Espriella’s election to lose,” wrote Renata Segura, director of International Crisis Group's Latin America and the Caribbean Program. “Cepeda thought he could win appealing squarely to the left, and that proved to be a massive mistake. How he pivots in the next month will determine if he has any chance to win.”

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

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This version corrects the spelling of the first name of the leading candidate to Abelardo.

Republicans hold a narrow House majority but face a tough midterm environment in which the party holding the White House typically loses congressional seats. Although Republicans may see gains from mid-decade redistricting in several states and from a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling threatening Democratic-held majority-Black districts across the South, winning competitive seats like New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District remains central to both parties’ strategies to hold or retake the chamber.

U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. is running for a third term in the 7th District and is unopposed for the Republican nomination. His father, Thomas Kean Sr., served two terms as New Jersey’s Republican governor in the 1980s.

He will face the winner of a competitive Democratic primary featuring former healthcare executive Rebecca Bennett, former Small Business Administration official Michael Roth, physician Tina Shah and entrepreneur and business owner Brian Varela. Bennett leads the Democratic field in fundraising and had the most campaign funds available heading into the final stretch of the campaign.

Kean’s whereabouts have been a question on the campaign trail and in the halls of Congress. On April 27, he released a statement saying that he was addressing “a personal medical issue” and that he expected to return “very soon.” As of Monday, he had not voted on any legislation since March 5, missing more than 100 consecutive votes.

The 7th Congressional District in northern New Jersey stretches from Staten Island to the Pennsylvania border. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump narrowly carried the district in 2024, edging Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, 49.6% to 48.5%.

Also on the ballot is U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, who faces no primary opposition in his bid for a third full term. The Republicans hoping to challenge him in November are physician Robert Lebovics, former Tabernacle Deputy Mayor Justin Murphy, Army veteran and former state trooper Richard Tabor and former local TV news reporter Alex Zdan.

Bergen and Middlesex counties in the greater New York City area are among the most populous in the state and are important battlegrounds in both Democratic and Republican statewide primaries. Essex County, which is home to Newark, is also a major population center, but its heavily Democratic electorate makes it less influential in Republican primaries. The counties that contribute the most votes in statewide Republican primaries tend to be Ocean, Monmouth and Morris.

Union County comprises the largest share of the 7th Congressional District vote, followed by Somerset and Hunterdon counties.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 8 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for U.S. Senate and U.S. House.

Who gets to vote?

Registered party members may vote only in their own party’s primary. In other words, Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters may participate in either primary, but voting in a party’s primary will enroll them in that party.

How many voters are there?

As of May 1, there were about 6.7 million registered voters in New Jersey, including about 2.5 million registered Democrats, about 1.7 million registered Republicans and about 2.4 million voters not affiliated with any party.

How many people actually vote?

About 841,000 Democratic primary votes and about 466,000 Republican primary votes were cast in the 2025 gubernatorial primary. That was higher than the turnout for the 2024 U.S. Senate primaries, when about 525,000 and 318,000 votes were cast in the Democratic and Republican primaries, respectively.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 46% of the Democratic primary vote and about 31% of the Republican primary vote in the 2025 gubernatorial primaries was cast before primary day.

As of Wednesday, about 285,000 ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election, about 79% from Democrats and about 20% from Republicans.

When are early and absentee votes released?

Counties in New Jersey typically release results from mail and in-person early voting before releasing results from in-person Election Day voting. Counties tend to release all or almost all of their mail and early voting results in the first vote report of the night, before any in-person Election Day results are released.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the 2025 gubernatorial primaries, the AP first reported results at 8:03 p.m. ET, or three minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 11:43 p.m. ET, with about 93% of total votes counted.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

Recounts are rare in New Jersey. The state does not have automatic recounts, but candidates and voters may request and pay for them, with the cost refunded if the outcome changes. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 154 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

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

“Food has the ability to bring us to places that nothing else can,” said Mutra owner and chef Raz Shabtai.

Within seconds of stepping into Mutra, you can see the unique culinary passion Shabtai has for crafting meals.

“It’s like to win an Oscar,” he said of being awarded a Michelin Star. “It’s like to win an Emmy. It’s like to get a Grammy.”

Shabtai said his passion for cooking started in Jerusalem with his grandmother, who he named the restaurant after.

“She taught me how to cook, she taught me how to be a person, how to be a human,” he said.

Shabtai carefully created meals, providing more than just nourishment to those he served.

“When I used to eat the food, I felt something that says more than I just love you,” he said. “I felt something hugging me in a way that nobody physically could give.”

It’s that love that he carried when introducing South Floridians to his take on Middle Eastern cuisine.

“First of all, I feel extremely honored and blessed that God gave me the ability to do something that I can combine cultures together,” said Shabtai. “It doesn’t matter your political views or your religion or something. Food is holy.”

Shabtai says his success is also thanks to his dedicated team, with his secret ingredient coming from a woman he says is looking down on him.

“Bragging and saying that’s my grandchild,” he said.

The menu at Mutra is rotated every three months, and after receiving the Michelin Star, they’re already working on a new menu that is coming out on Monday.

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Soccer fans from across the globe are expected in town as the world’s biggest soccer tournament kicks off in just a couple short weeks.

For those who are planning to attend games at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, it’s important to have your parking plans in place well before heading to the match.

According to FIFA, all parking must be purchased using their official parking platform, and parking passes can only be purchased up to 24 hours before each match begins.

FIFA stressed that there will be no parking for sale on the day of games.

Additionally, those purchasing parking passes must use the email address associated with their ticket purchase made on FIFA’s official website.

Fans parking at games will be required to present their game ticket and parking pass before being granted access to stadium grounds, and at Hard Rock Stadium, fans are required to print their parking pass and place it on their windshield to access the roads around the venue.

For more information on attending World Cup games, check out FIFA’s official matchday guide for South Florida.

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Local 10 News cameras captured a crew flipping over the Blue Sky Aviation aircraft after the crash.

“Shortly after it took off, it experienced engine failure,” said Pembroke Pines Mayor Angelo Castillo.

Around 11:30 a.m. Friday, the Cessna 172 plunged from the sky moments after departing North Perry Airport.

“Didn’t have the altitude, hit a tree, went into a ditch here and flipped over,” Castillo said. “It’s a good thing for that because it was headed right for a building where patients receiving mental health and medical care live.”

Sky 10 flew above the crash site, showing the downed aircraft mangled and appearing to be in pieces. The pilot and passenger both survived.

“These kind of occurrences are happening over and over and over and I’ve had it,” Castillo said.

The aircraft nearly crashed into a South Florida state hospital.

The incident is far from the first crash connected to North Perry Airport, which is home to a handful of flight schools.

“In the last five years, we’ve had over 35 accidents with aircraft taking off from North Perry Airport,” attorney Zach Gorwitz said.

The seemingly growing number of incidents has many questioning the safety of the flight schools.

“We’re calling on Broward County to do what they have to do to make this place safe. If they can’t make it safe then they need to close it the hell down and go put it somewhere else where those planes don’t threaten people,” Castillo said.

The crash remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

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It went down behind a home located along the 12000 block of Cyprus Road in North Miami.

According to authorities, the people who were aboard the boat were able to get to safety before it went under water.

No injuries were reported.

An investigation is ongoing into what caused the boat to sink.

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It happened around 3:30 p.m. in the area of Northwest 79th Street and 22nd Avenue.

According to authorities, deputies responded to the scene and found two vehicles that had been involved in the crash.

There were several people in both vehicles, deputies said.

Two people were taken by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue to nearby hospitals with injuries that deputies described as ranging from minor to serious.

An investigation remains open into the cause of the crash.

French rapper Ferapth is speaking out about conditions on the island through a new bilingual hip-hop song dedicated to the struggle for freedom in Cuba.

“Libertad, libertad,” the song declares.

Ferapth said his connection to Cuba began through boxing.

“So, I went to Cuba for the first time because of boxing,” he said in French.

What he experienced there surprised him and led him to explore beyond Havana.

He visited places including Campo Florido and Guanabo, where he saw poverty and challenges that many tourists do not encounter.

“When you see the situation they live in and the way they welcome foreigners, I found it to be something very, very profound on their part,” he said.

The experience inspired him to write music.

The result is a bilingual music video that takes a direct look at shortages, closures and the country’s broader struggles while calling for freedom.

“Gritamos libertad! No mas mentira,” the song says, which translates to “We shout, Freedom! No more lies!”

Ferapth said he felt the crisis was receiving little attention in his home country.

“I said to myself, in France, no one is talking about this. And it would be good if I used my art to alert France to the situation in Cuba,” he said.

The song combines Spanish and French lyrics while highlighting the hardships many Cubans face.

“As for the current situation now, it’s true that it’s a bit complicated,” he said.

Despite the challenges, Ferapth said he hopes conditions improve for Cubans both on and off the island.

“I simply hope that the exiled Cuban people and those on the island will be able to live better in the very near future,” he said.

Deputies are searching for 17-year-old Brisa Velasco.

She was last seen at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday along the 8700 block of Northwest 57th Street in Tamarac, authorities said.

Detectives said Velasco is 5-foot-8, weighing around 140 pounds with black hair and brown eyes, and she was last seen wearing all black clothes.

Anyone with information on her whereabouts or who thinks they may have seen her is urged to contact the Broward Sheriff’s Office at 954-764-HELP.

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It happened around 3:56 a.m. Sunday near an IHOP restaurant located at 18860 block of S. Dixie Highway.

According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, responding deputies arrived to the scene to find a man and woman who had been shot.

Both were taken by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue to Jackson South Medical Center in critical condition.

Following an investigation, deputies said the man was involved in a verbal altercation with an unknown subject, who ultimately shot both victims.

MDSO has not said whether they are seeking any suspects or persons of interest.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.

“Not everyone will be happy with the result,” voter Gabriel Villaroel said. “The violence is something that the country has not agreed on how to manage.”

Sen. Iván Cepeda, 63, cast his vote just before noon. Cepeda has pushed for more negotiations with armed groups as a solution to the country’s surging violence.

Cepeda leads the polls. A former member of the Communist Party, he is seen as even more left-wing than his predecessor, current President Gustavo Petro.

Asked for a message to the hundreds of thousands of Colombians living in South Florida, Cepeda spoke directly to the community.

“With all my affection and appreciation for the community over in Miami, may they vote in a manner that respects democracy,” he said in Spanish.

Outsider Abelardo de la Espriella, meanwhile, has called for a heavy-handed crackdown on crime, including building new prisons in the jungle to house criminals.

He has portrayed himself as a far-right, Trumpian figure who is not affiliated with the political elite.

“I think there is a change, and God is giving us an opportunity to move forward,” voter Leonel Sánchez said in Spanish.

Another voter said she is worried about violence and sees de la Espriella as an opportunity sent by God.

With more than 25% of Colombians still undecided going into Election Day, Sen. Paloma Valencia hoped those voters would break in her favor.

The center-right establishment candidate has portrayed herself as a more moderate and safer choice than de la Espriella.

A thriving economy has helped boost the Cepeda campaign.

With his party in power, poverty has dropped and living standards have improved.

“Colombia’s economy is better than ever. If anyone has benefited, it’s the guilds, businesspeople and trade associations,” said Camilo Romero in Spanish, a leader of the Historic Pact coalition.

Romero said Colombia’s economy is better than ever, arguing that unions and businesses are thriving and that ordinary people are also feeling the improvement.

But overspending has led to a growing deficit that many fear could create economic troubles in the future.

“A subsidy only lasts for a moment, and paying people for their vote only lasts for a moment,” voter Sandra Silva said in Spanish.

Silva argued that a subsidy only lasts a moment and encouraged Colombians to think about the future.

The first round of voting was expected to narrow the field, with two polar opposites likely to advance.

“This division doesn’t benefit anyone,” voter Daniel Felipe Ramírez said. “One way or another I hope we will discover that it’s better if we work together than divided.”

Polls have closed and results are beginning to come in. A final result could come at any moment. If no candidate reaches 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will advance to a second round in two weeks.

Deputies responded to the crash around 7 p.m. in the 13000 block of Monroe Street.

A preliminary investigation found that two vehicles were involved in the collision. One of the vehicles was redirected into a nearby residence, causing damage to the property.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue crews responded to the scene and transported multiple people to local hospitals. Authorities said the injuries ranged from stable to critical.

No additional information was immediately available.

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South Florida is home to some of the largest voting centers for Colombians living abroad.

Hundreds were seen at Miami Dade College’s Kendall campus, which was one of many polling locations that included Hialeah, Weston, Coral Springs and Coral Gables, where some people lined up as early as 5 a.m.

Sunday could be the day Colombian voters decide who will become their next president, but this election is also about the future direction of the country.

Voters are weighing major issues including security, economic policy, and how the government should handle negotiations with guerrilla and other armed groups.

There are 14 different candidates offering different platforms for the country.

According to recent polls in Colombia, there is a strong possibility the election could head to a second-round runoff later this month.

That would happen if no candidate receives more than 50% of the ballots cast.

Polls in South Florida closed at 4 p.m.

Preliminary results indicated the race will advance to a runoff between right-wing outsider Abelardo de la Espriella, a supporter of President Donald Trump, and progressive Sen. Iván Cepeda.

Supporters of Cepeda gathered outside the Coral Gables consulate Sunday evening, expressing disappointment with the first-round results but saying they were not entirely unexpected.

“We saw that coming. We had to be more realistic, but we couldn’t help being optimistic at some point,” said Jeison, a Cepeda supporter.

Videos shared by voters showed large crowds at polling locations across South Florida, including a voting center in Weston.

Carlos Naranjo, co-director of Semillas Colombia, said the region’s sizable Colombian population makes participation in the election particularly significant.

“It’s important because there are many Colombian Americans in this country,” Naranjo said. “There’s about a million Colombian Americans just in the state of Florida. It’s super important for that. It’s also important because of the region.”

ELECTION DAY PRECINCTS

There are three precincts in Miami-Dade County: The Colombian consulate at 280 Aragon Ave., in Coral Gables, Miami Dade College Kendall Campus’s gymnasium at 11011 SW 104 St., and the Milander Center for Arts and Entertainment, at 4800 Palm Ave. in Hialeah.

There are two precincts in Broward County: Cypress Bay High School’s gymnasium at 18600 Vista Park Blvd., in Weston, and Coral Springs High School at 7201 West Sample Road.

There are also precincts at Palm Beach State College’s Public Safety Conference Center at 4200 S Congress Ave., in Lake Worth Beach.

For information about a voter’s assigned precinct in Florida, Colombia has a national database online.

Here's a virtual tour of author-owned bookstores across the U.S.

Judy Blume: Books & Books, Florida

Judy Blume and her husband, George Cooper, are longtime residents of Key West, Florida, and have become fixtures in the local culture. Cooper helped restore an old movie theater into a multiplex venue and Blume and Cooper helped found the nonprofit Books & Books — an outpost of the Miami-based sellers that opened in 2016 — located just off the town’s main road. Blume may be known worldwide for such novels as “Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret,” but on a given day you can find her ringing up a sale at the register, or helping a customer choose a book. Or you can see her greet the many fans who have traveled far to meet the author they say changed their lives.

Louise Erdrich: Birchbark Books & Native Arts, Minnesota

Founded by Louise Erdrich in 2001, Birchbark is based in Minneapolis and has a mission tied closely to the author’s Ojibwe background (she’s an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians). Her store specializes in Indigenous literature and bills itself as a meeting point for “literate Indigenous people who have survived over half a millennium on this continent.” Birchbark even served as a muse for Erdrich’s 2021 novel, “The Sentence,” narrated by a bookstore employee whose boss just happens to be a woman named Louise. “I guess I have some things in common with her,” the author confided to GMToday.com.

Lauren Groff: The Lynx Books, Florida

Lauren Groff’s store in Gainesville, Florida, isn’t just a member of the author-owned circle but part of a wave of stores opened in recent years that have a larger social mission. Based in a state that ranks among the country’s leading book banners, The Lynx is a general-interest bookstore that Groff and husband/co-owner Clay Kallman opened in 2024 and emphasizes books forbidden in schools and libraries. “One of the purposes is to create a lighthouse, sort of showing that the rest of the country and world that Florida is not an intolerant backwater,” Groff, author of National Book Award finalist “Fates and Furies,” told the Southern Literary Review in 2025. “It is full of good people who work very hard to allow for the freedom of expression, tolerance, and love of all people.”

Jeff Kinney: An Unlikely Story, Ma

ssachusetts

Local stores are expected to be modest in scale, but the blockbuster sales for the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series expanded the ambitions of author-owner Jeff Kinney to superstore heights. He didn’t simply reconfigure an existing building, but had a new one built from scratch, with all the trimmings. An Unlikely Story is a bookstore housed in a colonial-influenced, 3-story building in downtown Plainville, Massachusetts that also includes a cafe, event space and writing-drawing quarters for the author. Kinney, who opened his store in 2015, recently said he is planning to add a restaurant, beer garden and park to the downtown area.

George R.R. Martin: Beastly Books, New Mexico

Like the stores run by Groff and Erdrich, the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Beastly Books is very much an extension of the worldview of its owner, “A Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin. It is a “cozy den” for speculative fiction, according to the store’s homepage, and a haven for banned books, locally written works and rare first editions. Founded in 2019, Beastly Books is located close to another Martin outpost, the Jean Cocteau Cinema, and is named in part for Cocteau’s classic film adaptation of “Beauty and the Beast.”

Ann Patchett: Parnassus Books, Tennessee

Not every bookstore opening leads to a guest appearance with Stephen Colbert, but a year after the launch of Parnassus, Ann Patchett found herself on “The Colbert Report,” whose host likened her venture to the Nora Ephron comedy “You've Got Mail,” in which Meg Ryan plays an independent store owner driven out of business by a nearby chain. The Nashville-based Parnassus has since become one of the country's signature independent sellers, visited by “You've Got Mail” co-star Tom Hanks among others, and a platform for Patchett to champion fellow authors.

Emma Straub: Books Are Magic, New York

Like Patchett, Emma Straub became a bookstore owner in the aftermath of a local absence: BookCourt, where the author once worked, had closed. She and her husband, Michael Fusco-Straub, opened Books Are Magic in 2017 in Brooklyn. The store with the pink murals in front became a local hit and gained national recognition, cited as a personal favorite by Jenna Bush Hager of the “Today” show. Straub and her husband have since opened a second Books Are Magic location in the borough.

Senate Republicans who are returning to Washington on Monday say they won’t have the votes to pass the Homeland Security spending bill until the White House works with them to place parameters on a new $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate Trump’s allies. But Trump has shown little interest in doing so, even after a judge temporarily halted any payouts.

It’s unclear how they will settle the dispute.

The Trump administration is “going to have to come up with some suggestions and ideas,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said before the Senate left town on May 21. Thune, of South Dakota, said that the settlement money — some of which could potentially go to Trump supporters who beat police and attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — “just makes everything way harder than it should be.”

The impasse over the “anti-weaponization” fund could be an inflection point as Republicans try to keep their majority in this year’s elections and advance their agenda. Trump’s campaign year push to defeat GOP lawmakers who he sees as disloyal, including some of Thune’s most reliable Republican votes in the narrow 53-47 Senate, has only added to the tension.

Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas both lost reelection in May after Trump endorsed their primary opponents, and it is unclear how supportive they will be of the president’s agenda going forward. And a growing number of GOP senators have become frustrated with the president as he ignores what they see as their political needs.

“I think it’s hard to divorce anything that happens here from what’s happening in the political atmosphere around us,” Thune said.

Democrats have said they plan to offer several amendments to the immigration bill to scale back or eliminate the settlement. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said in a letter to colleagues Monday morning that Democrats will launch “a coordinated effort to kill the slush fund before one cent goes out the door.”

“No matter what Republicans do, we will force them to vote on it,” he wrote.

As anger among Senate Republicans swelled, Trump made clear that he wasn’t highly concerned.

“I don’t care about the midterms,” Trump said last week in a discussion about the Iran war.

Senate Republicans draw lines on settlement fund

At a closed-door meeting with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche before they left town, Republican senators gave an ultimatum of sorts — put some limits on the settlement or we will do it for you.

GOP senators had been discussing several ways that they could curb the fund, including limiting who can receive payouts, changing the makeup of the commission in charge of settlement decisions, adding some sort of judicial review for applicants or scrapping the fund altogether. Republicans have discussed adding parameters on the settlement to the unrelated immigration enforcement measure but would prefer that the White House make changes on its own.

There were few sings of progress over the Memorial Day recess.

Sen. Todd Young of Indiana told The Associated Press last week that he hadn’t seen any indications “that would suggest they sent us a plan that our leadership thought was acceptable.”

“It’s in their court,” Young said of the White House.

Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee said on Fox New Channel's “Fox News Sunday” that there are discussions underway “to get to something that’s going to work.”

“I think there were just more details and more questions last week that needed to be resolved,” Hagerty said, adding that “I’m looking forward to seeing the details this coming week.”

Acting attorney general spars with the Senate

Blanche told the AP in an interview Thursday that “a lot of the questions will be answered in the short term.” But he would not elaborate, saying that “talking in hypotheticals is something that I don’t think is fair to the process.”

The acting attorney general’s meeting with senators before they left town was “angry,” according to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who described it on his podcast. Cruz said that of around 45 Senate Republicans who attended, “at least half of them were blasting the attorney general.”

The Senate had planned to stay in session late that night to vote on the immigration spending bill, but leaders canceled votes and sent everyone home. Cruz said Republican senators were “yelling” and told Blanche that the fund, which was part of a settlement that resolves Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns, “feels like self-dealing" and "feels like Trump cut a deal with himself.”

Cruz, who said he supports the fund, noted that Democrats had said they would offer amendments to kill it. Republicans "would have lost every vote” if they had stayed in session, he said.

He predicted that “we will see the administration announcing at a minimum a modification of this, because if they don’t, they’ve got a full-on revolt in the Senate.”

Jan. 6 defendants could get settlements

Cruz said that there were a lot of questions from senators about the Jan. 6 defendants and that Blanche reassured them that no one who committed an act of violence or assaulted law enforcement would get a payout. But Blanche has repeatedly declined to say that publicly, telling the AP that “there is no limit to who can apply.”

Asked about people who were violent on Jan. 6, Blanche suggested that might be too hard to define.

“Who is it? I mean, you tell me, right?” Blanche said. “You have to define something and then stick to it. So that’s something I’ve been hesitant to try to do because it’s very fact intensive.”

Trump has pardoned more than 1,500 defendants who were charged and prosecuted in the 2021 attack, including hundreds who were convicted for violently beating and injuring police as they broke into the Capitol.

Unity on immigration enforcement derailed by other issues

The divide over the fund comes after Republicans already abandoned $1 billion in security funding for the White House, including for Trump’s new ballroom, as Democrats and some Republicans questioned using taxpayer money for the massive project at a time of economic hardship. Besides the settlement, Democrats had planned to force Republican senators to vote for or against the ballroom money.

Left in the legislation is funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, which Democrats have blocked for months in protest of the administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.

Republicans are using a complicated budget maneuver called reconciliation to fund the agencies through the end of Trump’s term without Democratic support. Still, success requires GOP unity and Trump’s eventual signature.

Democrats say they hope that their Republican colleagues continue to stand up to the White House. Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan said last week that he thinks the settlement fund is ”probably one of the most corrupt things that we’ve ever seen an American president do.”

It is “a bridge too far for some of my Republican Senate colleagues,” Peters said. "I hope they realize that what was done is simply unacceptable and that they’ll stand firm.”

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Associated Press writers Steven Sloan and Joey Cappelletti in Washington and Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed to this report.

“The new Liz Strout book is the best,” she says of Elizabeth Strout's “The Things We Never Say.” “You know, every single book she publishes, you just think, ‘Oh, well, she can’t possibly do that again.’ And then she comes out with another book and it’s even better.”

At 62, Patchett is the rare and fortunate writer whose words resonate among friends and strangers alike. She owns one of the country's signature independent bookstores, Parnassus Books, with customers ranging from Nashville's book lovers to Tom Hanks. She's also a popular and prize-winning novelist whose new books are inevitably among the year's most anticipated, and whose older ones, including the acclaimed “Bel Canto,” continue to sell. In 2021, she received a National Humanities Medal for “putting into words the beauty, pain, and complexity of human nature.”

Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages, but her home is in Nashville, where she spent part of her childhood and now lives with her husband, physician Karl VanDevender. Patchett spoke at Parnassus with The Associated Press on a sunny weekday morning, shortly before opening time. She also met with staff members gathered at the center of the 4,800-square-foot store to discuss upcoming events, and indulged the occasional interruption by one of the employee-owned “shop dogs” who hurry about like bargain-seeking customers.

The new book is called ‘Whistler’

Patchett is here early to talk about “Whistler,” which comes out Tuesday. Like “Bel Canto,” “State of Wonder” and other Patchett novels, it's a story of improbable meetings and deepening bonds. In this case, 53-year-old Daphne Fuller and her husband encounter an elderly man, Eddie Triplett, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and realize he was briefly her stepfather when she was a girl. Daphne and Eddie form a close friendship as they recall their times together, including a serious car accident followed by the breakup of Eddie's marriage to her mother.

Patchett doesn't write with any message in mind, but “Whistler” can be read as an ode to decency and benevolence. The title refers to a story-fable about a horse that runs away, only to turn up at a time of crisis. In the aftermath of the crash, as Daphne wonders if it's safe to leave and seek help, Eddie assures her, “I swear to you, it's mostly good people out there, with a few bad people around the edges.”

“The people that I interact with every single day are good people,” Patchett says. “It is vanishingly rare when I meet someone who’s not nice. Now, if you watch the news and read the news, it seems like everyone’s terrible and murderous. But it’s the difference between primary and secondary sources. So if I’m just operating off primary sources, what I see is goodness. I completely understand that there is incredible horror and cruelty in the world, but I also feel like incredible horror and cruelty is very well represented (in art). And what I actually experience in my daily life is not as well represented in art.”

“I don’t set out to write books about nice people,” she adds, “but I like people.”

Honored by PEN America

Patchett's sense of citizenship was recognized recently by PEN America, which at its annual May gala in Manhattan presented her with its Literary Service Award. In introducing her to a gathering of hundreds at the American Museum of Natural History, author Patrick Ryan cited her wide range of contributions, whether working “to get books into the hands of children in underserved communities,” supporting emerging writers or inspiring readers “who recognize themselves in her novels.”

Patchett has a well-lived appreciation of connections, and how they can be broken by discord or ended by death.

A native of Los Angeles, she was in early childhood when her parents divorced and she moved east with her mother, events drawn upon for her novel “Commonwealth." She has also written memorials for departed loved ones. In the memoir “Truth & Beauty,” she remembered her close friend Lucy Grealy, a poet and memoir writer who suffered from a rare form of cancer and endured multiple surgeries before dying at 39. In the title essay from her 2004 collection “These Precious Days,” Patchett honors the late Sooki Raphael, a Hanks assistant with whom the author became close while Raphael battled terminal cancer.

“Whistler” is dedicated to her friend Jim Fox, a former head legal counsel at HarperCollins who died in 2024 and is the inspiration for Eddie (and the namesake for a character in “State of Wonder”).

“He was brilliant, and a great reader,” she says. “Jim isn’t Eddie and I’m not Daphne, and certainly the circumstances aren’t the same, but the huge love that Eddie and Daphne shared is the huge love Jim and I shared.”

A bookseller who inspires

Patchett, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, remembers telling stories even before she could read, a gap she says only intensified her appreciation of the printed word. Raised before the rise of “young adult” books, she started out reading such children's favorites as “Charlotte's Web” and “The Little House on the Prairie” series, and ascended directly to the literary giants who became her formative influences: Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and John Updike.

By her early 20s, Patchett was accomplished enough to have a story published in The Paris Review. Patchett's debut novel, “The Patron Saint of Liars,” came out before she had turned 30. She has since published nine other works of fiction, including “Whistler,” along with four nonfiction books and three picture books, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser.

“I was at my cousins' house a few months ago and they had boxes of old papers of mine,” Patchett says. “And they were from grade school, middle school, high school — notebook after notebook, poetry and stories. I was shocked by the extent I was practicing my craft at age 10.”

Patchett's life as a bookseller began around 2010, when the closing of two Nashville stores seemed to mirror a nationwide decline brought about in part by Amazon's rise. Patchett and business partner Karen Hayes came up with a seemingly wild plan: open a new store — a decision met with some skepticism at the time, but now a sign of the changing fortunes of independent sellers.

Membership in the American Booksellers Association has more than doubled over the past decade — including such author-run stores as Straub's Books Are Magic in New York City and Jeff Kinney's An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Massachusetts. Straub says that when she was thinking of opening her store, she spoke with various friends who owned small businesses.

“They all told me not to do it, but when I talked to Ann, she said ‘Do it,’” Straub says. “She's my hero. I think the friends who were telling me not to do it were speaking practically. But I didn't want to hear practical advice. I wanted to hear inspiration.”

In Florida, the average price for regular gas is $4.47. With summer travel on the horizon, Local 10 and Tropical Financial Credit Union are teaming up to bring drivers some relief.

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All you have to do to sign up is complete the contest form below to be eligible to win a $100 fuel gift card. The deadline to enter is Sunday, May 31, at 11:59 p.m.

From June 1 through June 5, we will give away $2,500 in fuel gift cards to 25 Local 10 viewers. The winners will be chosen at random and five will be announced each day during our 6 a.m. newscast.

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“Even a little relief can make a difference, and we want people to know we’re here for them,” added Shaw.

June 1 winners:

• Bernard Hardge
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The deal, struck in 2022 by Starmer’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak, involved sending migrants who arrive in the U.K. as stowaways or in boats to the East African country. It included arrangements for payments to Rwanda to help cover costs. Starmer’s home secretary at the time the deal was scrapped, Yvette Cooper, called it the “most shocking waste of taxpayer money I have ever seen.”

The Permanent Court of Arbitration rejected two Rwandan claims, each for 50 million pounds ($67 million), linked to funding for the canceled deal. The decision was dated May 15, but formally announced by the Hague-based panel on Monday. It also rejected two other Rwandan claims linked to alleged breaches by the U.K. of the pact.

In a 76-page ruling, the panel said that written diplomatic exchanges between the two countries after Starmer scrapped the deal amounted to an agreement that the U.K. would not make the two 50 million-pound payments, due in April of 2025 and 2026, to cover costs of migrant relocations.

Under the deal, migrants were to be sent to Rwanda, where their asylum claims would be processed and, if successful, they would stay. Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that the policy was unlawful because Rwanda is not a safe third country for migrants sent there.

The British government said in a statement: “The U.K. robustly defended its position, and the tribunal has now ruled in favor of the U.K. on all grounds."

It added that Starmer's under-fire government is "now focused on delivering vital reforms to restore order and control to our borders, including removing the incentives drawing illegal migrants to Britain and scaling up removals of those with no right to be here.”

There was no immediate response from Rwanda.

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Associated Press writer Jill Lawless contributed from London.

While Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia has already been massively successful in supplying high-end chips for data centers riding the worldwide AI demand boom, it is plotting different plans to expand its presence across AI systems and products.

Jensen Huang, the Taiwanese-American founder and CEO of Nvidia, made the announcement in Taipei at the annual Nvidia GTC event. Microsoft and Nvidia “are going to reinvent the PC (personal computer),” he said in his keynote speech.

“This is going to be the new PC,” Huang said as he unveiled Nvidia’s RTX Spark superchip — which combines CPU, or central processing unit, and GPU, or graphics processing unit, capabilities — that would power new Windows laptop and desktop computer models in what the company called “AI personal computers,” expected to debut in the fall of this year.

Nvidia is already the world’s most valuable company, ahead of Apple, Google’s parent Alphabet and Microsoft.

The company said it will be “reinventing the personal computer” for creating and gaming. “When it has an autonomous (AI) agent, an agent that’s helping you, that understands you, you could talk to it. It could look at you. You could ask it to read files, go help you do some research. It could do a lot more,” Huang said.

Microsoft said in a separate statement that the personal computers running on Nvidia’s RTX superchips would be able to support “highly capable AI models” and complex workloads. With the new superchips, these personal computers can run AI agents locally, Nvidia said.

Nvidia’s move is significant at a time when demand is growing for the use of personal AI agents, said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at the technology research and advisory group Omdia.

“For consumers, it means more choices, which is always a good thing,” Su said.

Neil Shah, analyst and co-founder of Counterpoint Research, described Nvidia’s announcement as a move that’s “revolutionizing how PCs would look like in the next 10 years.”

The new laptops and desktop computers “will drive agentic AI applications in every home,” Shah said, with an aim of having an “AI supercomputer” in each household.

Also during Monday’s speech, Nvidia’s Huang said its new Vera CPUs for data centers are in full production and are “going to be our new major growth driver” on the boom of AI agents, with early customers expected to include Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceXAI. He also revealed a humanoid robot reference design that could act as a blueprint for future research, especially within the higher education sector.

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Chan reported from Hong Kong.

The outbreak remains focused in Congo's eastern Ituri province, where 264 of the cases have been recorded, Congo’s Ministry of Health said. Congo has reported over 1,000 suspected cases with the Bundibugyo virus, the current species of Ebola, which has no approved treatment or vaccine.

According to the health ministry, the main challenges in containing the outbreak include early detection and rapid isolation of cases, rigorous contact tracing, safe and dignified burials and strengthening infection prevention and control in health facilities.

The contact tracing coverage rate so far is 45% with 220 suspected cases under investigation, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, some of the five people who have so far recovered from the disease spoke of their relief in interviews with The Associated Press.

Baraka Bulambulu, a nurse, said he was overjoyed after the last two Ebola tests on him returned negative.

Bulambulu was among those presented certificates of recovery by the World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as he opened a new Ebola treatment center in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, on Sunday.

“The first one came back positive, but the second and third were negative for me,” Bulambulu said with a wide grin. “Coming out of this illness alive is an indescribable joy."

Ezo Étienne, another nurse who recovered from the disease, said he first started feeling dizzy during ward rounds at the hospital as he checked on patients.

“That was how it started,” he recalled. “I called the team and told them, ‘Something’s wrong here.’ I checked my blood pressure and saw that I was immediately experiencing hypotension (low blood pressure). I decided to rest for a bit, and a few minutes later I started vomiting.”

The WHO has said all five survivors are health workers — four nurses and a laboratory worker — a group most affected in the outbreak.

Treatments so far have mostly targeted patients' symptoms, the organization has said.

“Your courage gives hope and your living story, that this outbreak can be stopped,” Tedros told the health workers on Sunday.

Neighboring Uganda has also reported nine cases of Ebola and closed its border with Congo seeking to limit its spread.

Although more than 20 Ebola outbreaks have taken place in Congo and Uganda, the Bundibugyo virus has been rare. The lack of approved vaccines and treatments, as well as the remote locations and armed violence in hot spots, have made the current response challenging.

Despite the challenges, the recoveries are “a victory worth celebrating,” said Dr. Dieudonne Mwamba Kazadi, the director-general of Congo's National Institute of Public Health.

"It’s a strong message that it is possible to recover from Ebola when seeking care early in a dedicated health facility,” he added.

A joint statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said that following what they called repeated violations of the ceasefire by Hezbollah and the “attacks against our cities and citizens,” they have ordered the Israeli military to attack targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs known in Arabic as Dahiyeh.

Hezbollah agreed to halt attacks on Israel when the ceasefire was signed in mid-April, but resumed following Israeli strikes in Lebanon that Israel characterized as self-defense.

After Monday's warning, large numbers of people were seen fleeing Dahiyeh, jamming roads leading out of the suburb, where Hezbollah enjoys wide support.

Israel and Hezbollah exchange fire overnight

Israeli airstrikes overnight on southern Lebanon left six people dead, including a Syrian citizen in a village near the city of Nabatiyeh, the state-run National News Agency said. Israel struck other towns and villages near the major city, close to the strategic Beaufort Castle and other towns the Israeli military captured in recent days.

The Israeli military, meanwhile, said its air force had intercepted two projectiles launched from Lebanon toward Israeli territory, as well as a suspicious aerial target in the area where Israeli soldiers operate in southern Lebanon. No injuries were reported, the military said.

Hezbollah said it carried out rocket and missile attacks on northern Israel on Sunday. It said early Monday it attacked Israeli troops in Zawtar al-Sharqieh, just north of the Litani River, and struck what they said was Israeli military infrastructure in Tiberius, a few dozen miles south of the border.

Israel and Lebanon set to hold talks in Washington

The latest attacks came despite a nominal ceasefire that has been in place since April 17 and just before Lebanon and Israel hold their next round of direct talks in Washington starting Tuesday. Hezbollah has rejected direct talks, counting on pressure from Iran, which has demanded an end to the war in Lebanon in its talks with Washington.

The talks between officials from Israel and Lebanon, which began in April in Washington, were the first in more than three decades between the countries, which have no formal diplomatic relations.

Lebanese officials have been scrambling in diplomatic calls, including with Washington, in a desperate bid to push back Israel’s military escalation after Netanyahu’s announcement, a Lebanese diplomatic official said. Beirut is still committed to holding talks to end the conflict despite the boiling tensions, the official said, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi asserted Monday that any ceasefire agreement between Washington and Tehran is a “ceasefire on all fronts, including Lebanon."

“Its violation on one front is a violation of the ceasefire on all fronts," Iran's top diplomat said in a post on X.

Beirut has been mostly spared from airstrikes since the ceasefire went into effect, apart from two targeted attacks on the city's southern suburbs in May.

A U.S. official said late Sunday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to propose a fresh path to continue ongoing negotiations, as President Donald Trump weighs a tentative ceasefire extension with Iran.

Under the proposal, Hezbollah would halt all attacks on Israel and Israel would refrain from escalating military operations in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic conversations.

The official said Aoun was open to the idea but that Lebanese parliament chief Nabih Berri had responded by demanding that Israel first stop all military action.

The official said the Trump administration does not expect Israel to give up retaliating for Hezbollah strikes on its territory.

Berri, a key Hezbollah ally, said in a statement Sunday that he can guarantee the militant group’s “full, comprehensive and immediate commitment to a ceasefire.” Berri added: “But who will force Israel to stop its aggression?”

Aoun on Monday said in comments released by his office that “Lebanon is facing a fierce and condemned Israeli aggression.” Aoun added that his government is continuing work to end “the suffering of the Lebanese in general and the southerners in particular.”

Later, the president issued a statement reiterating Beirut's commitment to negotiations, saying it is “safer” than war."

“It will not solve the problem within moments, but it is a process that needs time," he said. “And we have no other choice.”

The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has killed 3,412 people in Lebanon and displaced more than 1 million people.

Israel’s military said a soldier was killed in southern Lebanon overnight in a drone attack by Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s use of hard-to-detect fiber-optic drones has been deadly for the Israeli military, which is struggling to respond.

According to Netanyahu’s office, at least 26 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon. Two civilians have also been killed in northern Israel.

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Melzer reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.

The protests come two days after Kenya’s High Court suspended the establishment of the facility and the arrival of any foreign patients pending the hearing of a case filed by the Law Society of Kenya and a constitutional watchdog.

The two organizations cited Kenya’s fragile health system as the reason why foreign Ebola patients should not be quarantined in the country.

U.S. officials said Thursday that the United States was planning to send Americans exposed to Ebola while abroad to a new facility in Kenya instead of flying them home. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s plans. They said the facility would be at Laikipia Air Base and would be operational with 50 quarantine beds by Friday.

On Monday, hundreds of youths marched to the gates of the air base, chanting anti-Ebola slogans.

Health Minister Aden Duale on Sunday said the quarantine center was for “everyone” and not exclusively for U.S. nationals.

The U.S. government intends to commit $13.5 million toward Kenya’s Ebola preparedness efforts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

Local leaders, including Laikipia Governor Joshua Irungu, had told journalists that they were opposed to the establishment of an Ebola quarantine center.

“This will expose our people to Ebola,” he said, adding that many locals work inside the air base and could be exposed.

A resident, Malin Ndegwa, said Kenya should not be exposed to the virus by hosting foreigners when it is not the epicenter of the outbreak.

“Why are they not doing it in the DRC (Congo)? Why are they not doing it in Uganda? Why must they bring it here? So we are saying, we categorically, no negotiations, no public participation, we want nothing. We want that facility taken out of our town, we want it taken out of Kenya,” he said.

Kenya has not recorded Ebola cases, but neighboring Uganda has reported nine and closed its border with Congo.

At least 282 confirmed cases have been reported in Congo with over 1,000 suspected cases of the Bundibugyo virus, the current species of Ebola, which has no approved treatment or vaccine.

Jóvenes y mayores, dirigentes del partido gobernante y propagandistas lo gritan por igual en actos oficiales, manifestaciones callejeras y en la televisión estatal, levantando el puño para mostrar lealtad al gobierno autoproclamado socialista y su tradicional antipatía hacia Estados Unidos. Incluso cuando se enfrentan a verdades abrumadoras que desmienten esa fanfarronería, la diversa coalición de militares, ideólogos y oportunistas que se han acercado a las esferas de poder ha actuado al unísono.

Pero han surgido grietas en esa unidad tras la impactante operación militar de Estados Unidos que capturó al entonces presidente Nicolás Maduro en enero. Personas que fueron leales durante mucho tiempo están ventilando desacuerdos con el gobierno de la presidenta encargada, Delcy Rodríguez, e incluso comentan públicamente rumores de que una traición desde dentro ayudó a Estados Unidos a deponer a Maduro.

Una relación más cordial con EEUU despierta críticas

Rodríguez ha eliminado algunas de las políticas de Chávez, ha cumplido exigencias de Estados Unidos y ha reordenado el gobierno a su gusto, destituyendo ministros, impulsando leyes en la Asamblea Nacional para reformar la industria petrolera del país y liberando a presos políticos.

Los partidarios del chavismo hacen notar su desaprobación. Muchos critican el acercamiento entre el gobierno de Rodríguez y la Casa Blanca, a cuyo ocupante, sin importar el partido, el chavismo ha visto históricamente como su principal adversario.

La deportación en mayo de un exministro para enfrentar investigaciones penales en Estados Unidos y la reciente autorización de Rodríguez para que el ejército de Estados Unidos realizara un ejercicio de entrenamiento en la capital de Venezuela dejaron al descubierto divisiones internas.

Mario Silva pasó años difundiendo propaganda progubernamental como presentador de un programa en la televisión estatal antes de ser sacado del aire tras la captura de Maduro. Silva cuestionó la legalidad de la deportación de Alex Saab, un aliado cercano de Maduro, al sostener que violó una prohibición constitucional.

Afirmó que Rodríguez no gobierna con libertad, ya que algunas decisiones “Se están tomando en la embajada norteamericana”.

“El imperialismo no negocia. El imperialismo conquista, busca, hurga, hasta que revienta nuestro país”, dijo Silva en una transmisión en vivo. “Nadie en este momento está a salvo. Y eso es un hecho concreto, terriblemente peligroso”.

Unas pocas decenas de personas protestaron en Caracas el 23 de mayo contra las maniobras, durante la cual dos aeronaves Osprey del Cuerpo de Marines aterrizaron en la embajada de Estados Unidos. Sostuvieron una bandera venezolana con el mensaje “No al simulacro yanki” escrito encima. La participación fue mínima, algo que llamó la atención en una ciudad acostumbrada a manifestaciones frecuentes con asistencia de miles de personas.

Elías Jaua, quien fue vicepresidente de Chávez y formó parte del gabinete de Maduro en sus primeros años en el cargo, repudió el ejercicio en redes sociales. Más tarde dijo a The Associated Press que alzaba la voz para concienciar a los venezolanos sobre la situación “humillante” que enfrenta el país.

“En esta etapa lo más importante es evitar que se naturalice esta ocupación y esta administración colonial a la que está siendo sometida una nación como Venezuela”, expresó Jaua.

Chávez y Maduro —así como Rodríguez, en sus anteriores funciones como vicepresidenta y ministra de Comunicación y de Relaciones Exteriores— habían vaticinado durante mucho tiempo que Washington usaría la fuerza para tomar el control de la industria petrolera de Venezuela, que se ha abierto al capital privado tras la captura de Maduro. El gobierno del presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, supervisa las ventas de petróleo y administra los ingresos como parte de su plan por etapas para encarrilar al atribulado país sudamericano.

La salida de Maduro desata una lucha de poder

La crisis social, política y económica que se afianzó cuando Maduro se convirtió en presidente en 2013 llevó a más de 7,7 millones de personas a abandonar Venezuela y empujó a millones más a la pobreza. También derivó en rondas de protestas antigubernamentales y sanciones económicas de Estados Unidos, dos cosas que el partido gobernante logró resistir.

Los incondicionales del partido celebraron una victoria de Maduro en unas elecciones de 2024 pese a pruebas abrumadoras de que había perdido. También repitieron la negación de la dirigencia partidaria sobre un aumento de la migración. Su lealtad a menudo era recompensada, ya fuera con alimentos y bienes básicos para los pobres o con contratos multimillonarios y escoltas para los más acomodados.

Andrés Izarra, ministro de Comunicación con Chávez y ministro de Turismo con Maduro, dijo que las fracturas no se basan en la ideología ni en una defensa del chavismo, que, a su juicio, terminó cuando su fundador murió en 2013. El interés de Maduro, sostuvo, era enriquecerse y mantenerse en el poder a toda costa.

El interés personal, señaló, está creando división.

“Como no hay sustrato ideológico, es simplemente una pugna por poder y por dinero y por posiciones y por supervivencia. ¿Tú crees que él estuviera protestando si a él le hubieran dejado los escoltas o le hubieran dejado el sueldito o la cuota de poder?", dijo Izarra, quien vive en el exilio desde que se convirtió en blanco del gobierno la década pasada, en alusión a un crítico de los cambios bajo Delcy. "Si tuvieran interés ideológico, hubieran tenido la discusión mucho antes”.

Los leales hablan de una posible traición a Maduro

Las críticas incluso se emitieron en la televisión estatal el mes pasado, cuando un dirigente izquierdista colombiano sentado entre el público del programa del ministro del Interior, Diosdado Cabello, se puso de pie y cuestionó los esfuerzos de Venezuela por liberar a Maduro y a la primera dama, Cilia Flores, de la custodia de Estados Unidos.

“Hemos visto muy débil la campaña por la libertad de Cilia y Nicolas.”, dijo Manuel Caicedo ante un Cabello visiblemente atónito.

Otra chavista devota, la diputada Iris Varela, le dijo a un podcaster que creía que alguien dentro del gobierno había ayudado a Estados Unidos a sacar a Maduro del poder. La idea ha circulado ampliamente desde que el presidente Trump anunció que el líder autoritario había sido capturado el 3 de enero, pero no han surgido pruebas.

“Por supuesto que hay una traición”, dijo Varela. “Yo digo que todo Cristo tiene un Judas. Si nuestro Señor Jesucristo sabía que lo iban a traicionar y aun así dejó que Judas lo besara en la mejilla (...), ¿no va a surgir un traidor para Maduro?”.

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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.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced the interception in a post Monday on X, saying the Tagor was boarded on Sunday in the Atlantic. The post included a video showing a person rappelling from a helicopter onto a ship. It is the latest in a series of French naval interceptions of tankers suspected of links to Russia.

“It is unacceptable that boats skirt international sanctions, violate the law of the sea and finance the war that Russia has been waging for more than 4 years against Ukraine,” Macron wrote. “These ships, that don’t respect the most elementary rules of maritime navigation, are also a threat to the environment and everyone’s security.”

Oil revenue is a key part of Russia’s economy, allowing Putin to pour money into the war effort against Ukraine without worsening inflation for everyday people and avoiding a currency collapse.

Russia is believed to be using a fleet of hundreds of ships to evade international sanctions imposed over the war. France and other countries have vowed to crack down on the sanction-busting so-called “shadow fleet.”

Responding to the latest French interception, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Russia “considers such actions illegal.”

“They border on piracy,” he said Monday. “We absolutely disagree that they are being carried out in full compliance with international law.”

French maritime authorities said the tanker was intercepted more than 400 nautical miles west of France, in international waters in the Atlantic. It was traveling from the northwestern Russian port of Murmansk, according to the authorities’ statement.

It said the tanker is suspected of operating under a false flag and that the French navy is now escorting it to an anchorage for more checks.

Tankers previously intercepted by France include the Deyna, boarded in the Mediterranean Sea in March. Another tanker, the Grinch, intercepted in the Mediterranean in January, was released in February after paying a multimillion-euro penalty.

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Associated Press writer Elise Morton in London contributed.

The young, the old, ruling party leaders and propagandists alike shout it at official events, street demonstrations and on state television, pumping their fists to show loyalty to the self-described socialist government — and its traditional antipathy toward the United States. Even when confronted with overwhelming truths that defy such bravado, the diverse coalition of military, ideological and opportunistic hangers-on has acted in lockstep.

But cracks in that unity have emerged after the stunning U.S. military operation that captured then- President Nicolás Maduro in January. Longtime loyalists are airing disagreements with the government of acting President Delcy Rodríguez and even discussing publicly rumors that an insider’s betrayal helped the U.S. depose Maduro.

A warming relationship with the US draws criticism

Rodríguez, has done away with some of Chávez’s policies, complied with U.S. demands and shuffled the government to her liking, removing ministers, pushing legislation through the National Assembly to overhaul the nation's oil industry and releasing political prisoners.

Supporters of Chavismo are making their disapproval known. Many criticize the warming relationship between Rodríguez’s government and the White House, whose occupant, regardless of party, Chavismo has historically seen as its main adversary.

May’s deportation of a former minister to face criminal investigations in the U.S. and Rodríguez’s recent authorization for the U.S. military to conduct a training exercise in Venezuela’s capital laid bare internal divisions.

Mario Silva spent years spreading pro-government propaganda as the host of a program on state TV before being removed from the airwaves after Maduro’s capture. Silva questioned the legality of the deportation of Alex Saab, a close ally of Maduro's, arguing that it violated a constitutional ban.

He contended that Rodríguez is not governing freely, as some decisions “are being made in the U.S. Embassy.”

“The imperialists don’t negotiate. They conquer, test and probe — until our country shatters,” Silva said in a livestream. “Nobody is safe right now. And that is a concrete, terribly dangerous fact.”

On May 23, a few dozen people in Caracas protested the training that saw two Marine Corps Osprey aircraft land at the U.S. Embassy. They held a Venezuelan flag with the message, “No to the Yankee drill” written over it. Participation was minimal, which stood out in a city used to frequent demonstrations with attendance in the thousands.

Elías Jaua, who served as Chávez’s vice president and in Maduro’s cabinet in his first years in office, repudiated the exercise on social media. He later told The Associated Press he was speaking up to raise awareness among Venezuelans of the “humiliating” situation facing the country.

“At this stage, the most important thing is to prevent this occupation and this colonial administration to which a nation like Venezuela is being subjected from becoming normalized,” Jaua said.

Chávez and Maduro — as well as Rodríguez, in her previous roles as vice president and communications and foreign affairs minister — had long prophesied that the U.S. would use force to take control of Venezuela’s oil industry, which has opened up to private capital after Maduro's capture. The Trump administration oversees oil sales and administers revenues as part of its phased plan to turn the troubled South American country around.

Maduro's ouster prompts power struggle

The social, political and economic crisis that took hold when Maduro became president in 2013 drove more than 7.7 million people to leave Venezuela and pushed millions of others into poverty. It also led to rounds of anti-government protests and U.S. economic sanctions, both of which the ruling party survived.

Party stalwarts celebrated a Maduro victory in a 2024 election despite overwhelming evidence showing he had lost. They also echoed the party leadership's denial of a surge of migration. Their loyalty was often rewarded, be it with food and basic goods for the poor or multimillion-dollar contracts and bodyguards for the better-off.

Andrés Izarra, a communications minister under Chávez and tourism minister under Maduro, said the fractures are not based in ideology or a defense of Chavismo, which he believes ended when its founder died in 2013. Maduro's interest, he said, was in enriching himself and remaining in power at all costs..

Self-interest, he said, is creating division.

“Since there is no ideological foundation, it is simply a struggle for power, money, positions, and survival. Do you think (he) would be protesting if he’d kept his bodyguards, or if they’d kept his little salary, or his share of power?” Izarra, who lives in exile since becoming a government target last decade, said of one critic of change under Delcy. “If they had an ideological interest, they would have spoken much earlier.”

Loyalists discuss possible betrayal of Maduro

Criticism even aired on state television last month, when a Colombian leftist leader sitting in the audience of Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello's show stood up and questioned Venezuela's efforts to free Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores from U.S. custody.

“We’ve seen a very weak campaign for Cilia and Nicolás’s freedom,” Manuel Caicedo said before a visibly stunned Cabello.

Another devout Chavista, lawmaker Iris Varela, told a podcaster she believed a government insider had helped the U.S. oust Maduro. The idea has widely rumored since President Donald Trump announced that the authoritarian leader had been captured on Jan. 3, but no evidence has emerged.

Of course there’s a betrayal,” Varela said. "I say that every Christ has a Judas. If our Lord Jesus Christ knew he was going to be betrayed and yet he let Judas kiss him on the cheek, ... won’t a traitor emerge for Maduro?”

The special Sandiganbayan anti-graft court had initially issued a warrant for Sen. Jinggoy Estrada’s arrest Friday on a graft charge that was bailable. He then surrendered and was released on bail and again denied any wrongdoing.

Estrada, 63, has strongly denied allegations mainly by a former government public works engineer that he received more than 570 million pesos ($9.3 million) in kickbacks from flood control projects.

Before leaving the Senate to surrender, Estrada suggested that the corruption cases he was facing and his arrest were a result of his being aligned with the camp of former President Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter, incumbent Vice President Sara Duterte, a former ally but now an arch political rival of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

“I will not yield to threats. I will not be intimidated,” Estrada said at the Senate.

“I will not be pressured into surrendering my independence of judgement,” he said.

The senator was an actor like his father, former President Joseph Estrada. Both have been previously detained on other corruption-related charges.

Several other senators and members of the House of Representatives have been implicated in the flood control anomalies in a poverty-stricken Asian archipelago that is among the most vulnerable to deadly floods and typhoons.

With Jinggoy Estrada’s looming arrest, two senators in the 24-member chamber would now be effectively sidelined by legal troubles.

Another senator, Ronald dela Rosa, has gone into hiding after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest for an alleged crime against humanity.

Dela Rosa was a former national police chief who enforced a brutal anti-drugs crackdown under then-President Rodrigo Duterte that left thousands of mostly low-level suspects dead. The unprecedentedly large numbers of killings alarmed Western governments.

Duterte, who stepped down in 2022 after his stormy six-year term, was arrested last year on orders of the ICC and flown to the Netherlands, where he was detained and will face trial for alleged crimes against humanity starting in November over some of the killings.

Duterte and dela Rosa have denied any wrongdoing but Duterte had repeatedly threatened drug suspects with death.

The two people remain unaccounted for since a search and rescue operation began last month in a rugged area of Xaisomboun province, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of the capital, Vientiane. Five of the seven people initially trapped inside the cave have been rescued.

Malaysian diver Lee Kian Lie, who is involved in the operation, said workers were pumping water out of the cave.

“We will go into the suspected area to continue the search if the water level is lowered,” he told The Associated Press.

Another team of rescuers is also looking around the other side of the cave in hopes of finding a dry passage that could provide access to the area where the missing people are believed to be trapped, he said.

Rescue teams from Laos and neighboring Thailand have been working together for more than a week. They were joined by divers from countries including Finland, Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia, France and Australia.

Several of the rescuers previously took part in the complicated 2018 cave rescue in northern Thailand that saved 12 schoolboys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave.

Laos's Rescue Volunteer for People group posted on its Facebook page that heavy rain caused “massive amounts of water” to flow down into the area, forcing them to suspend operations on Sunday night.

Kengkaj Bongkawong, head of the Thai group Metta Tham Rescue Kalasin, said workers are also looking for air shafts from above that may provide access into the cave.

“The team and I have used a radar scanner and satellite images and many other things as a basis for our navigation of the mountain,” he said.

In remarks on his Facebook page, Kengkaj warned that even if a suitable alternative entrance is found, “it's going to be a very tough job,” with access difficult and the constant problem of continuing rain flooding the cave.

It would require not only pumping water out, but also installing equipment to keep ventilating the cave's air supply, he said.

Rescuers believe the two missing people are trapped deeper inside the cave than the location where the five survivors were originally found on Wednesday. But the passage into that area is said to be very narrow and heavily flooded.

The villagers reportedly entered the cave nearly two weeks ago to look for valuable minerals such as gold before being trapped by a flash flood that blocked their way out. One other villager escaped and alerted the authorities.

The first man was safely extracted on Friday, guided through a narrow flooded passage by an expert diver. The remaining four left the cave on Saturday after the water receded enough for them to walk out on their own, rescuers said.

El 7 de junio, los peruanos concurrirán nuevamente a las urnas para definir quién gobernará los próximos cinco años un país que ha visto desfilar ocho gobernantes en casi una década.

Fujimori, candidata de Fuerza Popular, se impuso en la primera vuelta con un 17,19% de votos válidos, seguida de Sánchez, de Juntos por el Perú, con el 12,03%, según los resultados oficiales.

Durante dos horas desde un centro de convenciones en Lima, los postulantes intercambiaron posiciones y propuestas sobre cuatro ejes: seguridad, democracia y derechos humanos, educación y salud; y economía, empleo y reducción de la pobreza.

En el arranque, el nacionalista Sánchez aseguró conocer “los problemas y las necesidades” del pueblo peruano al que ofreció no defraudar. “Hay que acabar con la dictadura congresal del gobierno que dirige Keiko Fujimori para recuperar la democracia y la justica”, fustigó.

En respuesta, la conservadora Fujimori aseveró que Perú enfrenta “un momento crítico” que, dijo, solo admite dos caminos: “O hacemos algo ahora para arreglar nuestro país o repetimos la misma receta que ya fracasó en 2021”, en alusión al gobierno del expresidente Pedro Castillo, de quien su rival fue ministro.

Seguridad

En un país agobiado por la criminalidad, con 2.400 homicidios al cierre de 2025, un promedio de siete asesinatos por día, según cifras oficiales, y extorsiones que superaron las 25.000, Fujimori ratificó que aplicará desde el primer día una política de “mano dura”.

La candidata de Fuerza Popular ofreció implementar plataformas para rastreo de extorsiones, militarizar las fronteras y presencia de policías y militares en zonas de riesgo para transportistas y pasajeros. Los presos deberán trabajar y “reparar a la sociedad”. También se reforzará el sistema de inteligencia y equipará la policía, añadió.

Sánchez enfatizó que luchar contra la criminalidad e inseguridad requiere “recuperar la democracia” y encaró su contrincante y excongresista sobre leyes que calificó de “procrimen”. Ofreció combatir la corrupción dentro de la policía y promover reformas que viabilicen el apoyo de fuerza militares en seguridad ciudadana.

Fortalecimiento del estado democrático y derechos humanos

Para fortalecer la democracia, Sánchez dijo que se debe “plantear un estado que restablezca el equilibrio de poderes”, un estado inclusivo y consolidar el sistema interamericano de derechos humanos para dar justicia a las “víctimas” del poder estatal.

“Los derechos humanos no se defienden sólo mirando al pasado”, respondió Fujimori, quien llamó a mirar al presente y al futuro impulsando, según su propuesta, proyectos de acceso a “obras que nos permitan vivir con dignidad”.

Educación y salud

Para solucionar las deficiencias de la salud púbica, la aspirante de derecha prometió implementar la telemedicina y fortalecer un fondo para asistir enfermedades de alto costo. En educación, propiciará la construcción y repotenciación de 5.000 colegios y un programa de kits escolares con participación de pequeños emprendimientos.

El postulante de Juntos por Perú aseguró que el acceso a la universidad debe ser libre y será un derecho universal, también ofreció la transferencia de recursos para la alimentación escolar y atender la salud mental.

Economía, empleo y reducción de la pobreza

Para Sánchez la pobreza “ya no sólo está en las zonas rurales, se ha movido a la ciudad” y propuso elevar la remuneración vital de 1.130 soles (332 dólares) a 1.814 soles (533 dólares) en su eventual gobierno. Alentará el empleo, “crédito barato” y asistencia para negocios y emprendedores.

“La pobreza no se reduce con discurso, se reduce con empleo”, reprochó Fujimori. La candidata dijo que en su gobierno la economía crecerá del 3% en la actualidad al 6% al cierre de su gestión. También prometió un fondo para la estabilización del precio de los combustibles.

La hija del fallecido exmandatario Alberto Fujimori llega por cuarta vez a un balotaje presidencial en Perú. Fue la primera dama durante el gobierno de su padre (1990-2000) y excongresista.

Sánchez fue ministro de Comercio Exterior del sentenciado expresidente Pedro Castillo (2021-2022) a quien ha prometido lealtad.

Then she listened to a song from a faith youth group that felt as if God were speaking to her. She joined the group, and now in addition to its weekly adoration with music sessions, Cabral is excitedly preparing to attend Pope Leo XIV ’s Mass in Gran Canaria with her friends.

“You get a restlessness about an emptiness that you don’t know how to fill,” Cabral, 26, says of her embrace of Catholicism. “God is the one looking for you first, but you need to go meet him.”

On trips to Spain this month and France in September, Leo will find thousands of young people like her in these traditionally Catholic but now staunchly secular countries, where historic churches are abundant and Mass attendance is sparse.

Church leaders and some experts see the success of youth movements and the surge in adult baptisms as signs that some young people are showing new interest in the church, while also challenging it to embrace a more inclusive message.

“They are drawing near with a look of surprise,” said the Rev. Josetxo Vera, spokesperson for Spain’s Catholic Bishops Conference. “It’s an excellent opportunity that bursts forth from heaven, not from the church.”

A drop in faith practice creates a blank slate

Vera has seen many teens “scare” their atheist parents by asking to be baptized after becoming aware of, and attracted to, Christian messages spread in popular culture — like Catalan pop star Rosalía and her recent, spirituality-infused album Lux.

They’re approaching faith in a drastically different environment than their parents and grandparents.

Until 1975, Spain was ruled by dictator Gen. Francisco Franco, who aligned with a deeply traditional Catholic Church still reeling from the anticlerical violence of Spain’s civil war. Becoming a democracy, the country saw “a kind of divorce between popular piety and the church’s religious culture,” said Mónica Cornejo Valle, a religion professor at Complutense University in Madrid.

Wildly popular religious processions and feasts have continued to be held in most Spanish regions and it’s hard to find a neighborhood or hamlet without some visible vestige of Spain’s outsized importance in the global history of the spread of Catholicism.

There are nearly 23,000 active Catholic parishes — but new priestly ordinations haven't started to bounce back. Most Spanish adults, 80%, were raised Catholic but only 47% currently identify as such, including a meager 2% who joined the faith from non-Catholic upbringings, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2024.

Only about 16% of Spanish Catholics go to Mass at least weekly, according to the 2024 Pew survey, even though it’s an obligation for those practicing the faith.

One of Cabral’s friends in Gran Canaria, José María Marrero, remembers attending Mass with his mother as a child, “and all you met were the old folks.” His wife, a teacher who was baptized in her early 20s, told him some of her students on a recent trip saw a picture of Jesus and asked, “Miss, that’s the Catholic one, right?”

In this overall environment, scholars like Cornejo Valle warn that a supposed revival in religiosity might amount to a “publicity effect” driven by a savvy use of media and popular culture.

But youth movement and church leaders see opportunity in this blank slate — especially if they “transmit Jesus’ message with happiness, a message that’s easy to understand,” as Cabral puts it.

Youth movements grow with appeals to belonging, solidarity

That’s the case for the group Cabral and some 35,000 other youth belong to, Hakuna, which started in the early 2010s in a Madrid parish when a group of college students set up a weekly hour of Eucharistic adoration, preceded by a short lecture and followed by a meetup at a local bar.

The movement became an official lay organization of the Spanish church in 2017, and has grown into volunteer trips and concerts, with seven records launched of Christian music, said its spokeswoman, Maca Torres.

“It’s the Holy Spirit, we’re the first to be surprised” by the success, Torres said, adding that most members are people who had stopped practicing, though there are a few converts.

In Catholicism, infants are baptized — but more than 13,300 baptisms of people older than 7 were counted in the latest annual report from Spain’s Catholic bishops conference.

And in France, a country whose approach to secularism is increasingly contested because of its strict regulation of religion in public life, some 13,000 adults were baptized at the Easter Vigil this year — 42% of them ages 18 to 25. That's according to the country's Conference of Catholic Bishops, which said that amounts to a tripling of such baptisms compared to 10 years ago.

Last summer at the Vatican, Leo encouraged a gathering of baptism candidates and newly baptized from France to share their experience of faith with others and let it guide their daily life.

“What a joy to see young people who are engaging with faith and want to give a sense to their life, by letting themselves by guided by Christ and his Gospel,” Leo told them.

The appeal for young people, experts say, seems to be twofold — a disenchantment with other institutions and with the growing loneliness of life lived on social media, together with a church that, starting with Pope Francis, has focused less on doctrine and more on social justice.

On June 6, the first day of his trip to Spain, Leo will hold a prayer vigil with youth in a vast Madrid public square — but he’s also later visiting a migrant center in the Canary Islands and a prison near Barcelona, outreach initiatives that tend to appeal to progressive youth.

“We don’t think that the number of Catholic young people has grown by a lot, but we do see that in general the profile of the Catholic youth is more committed than before,” Cornejo Valle said.

A quest for meaning that leads to the pews

María Salazar, 23, leads a Barcelona outpost of the global Catholic youth movement Effetá. She says many of her peers are looking for different forms of spirituality, within and outside the church.

“More than looking for faith, we look for a feeling of peace,” Salazar said. “We live in a microwave society — everything has to be immediate — but the Lord doesn’t work this way.”

She said there’s been “a boom of youth” in her parish, which also happens to be one of the most visited monuments in Europe — the Sagrada Familia, modernist architect Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece.

About 120 of them engage in adoration and weekend-long spiritual retreats, the first of which saw organizers and the basilica’s rector stay up to prepare the church until well past midnight.

They also volunteer to help with the elderly going to Mass in the crypt and the international tourists flocking to worship services in the grand temple above it, where the pope will celebrate Mass on June 10 and inaugurate the new tower of Jesus Christ.

“We’re going to have him here at home,” Salazar gushed. “I see the tower from afar and I see the home that God gave us.”

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Associated Press journalist Nicole Winfield at the Vatican contributed to this report.

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

Seattle has been under .500 for most of the season, but now the Mariners (31-29) lead the division after six straight victories. They've made this run without slugger Cal Raleigh, who was hitting .161 when he went on the injured list over two weeks ago.

It doesn't take much to shake up the standings in the AL West. The Mariners' streak included a three-game sweep this past week over the Athletics. The A's were in first place, but have lost seven of their last nine. Houston has won eight of its last 12 to pull back into contention, just 4 1/2 games out of first place. The whole division is separated by 8 games, the top three teams by 2 1/2.

Despite Raleigh's absence, the Mariners are fourth in the American League in home runs, but pitching is what has driven this recent run. Seattle has held opponents to two runs or fewer in five of its last six games.

The same five starters have made 57 of Seattle's 60 starts. Bryan Woo (3.44), Logan Gilbert (3.69), George Kirby (3.77) and Emerson Hancock (2.78) all have ERAs among the top 25 in the AL. Luis Castillo (5.53) lags behind the other four starters, but lately Seattle has been using him in sort of a tag team with Bryce Miller, with one starting and the other coming out of the bullpen.

In a 9-2 win over the Athletics, Castillo pitched four scoreless innings and then Miller threw the last five. On Sunday against Arizona, Miller started and went five innings, then Castillo worked the last five and Seattle won 3-2 in 10.

Trivia time

The New York Yankees scored 13 runs in the third inning Sunday in their 13-8 victory over the Athletics. The Yankees actually went hitless in the other eight innings.

Anthony Volpe became the third player in the last 50 years to have two hits, two runs and two steals in an inning. Who were the other two?

Bonus question: Volpe nearly got to bat three times in the inning, but he was on deck when the third out came. Who was the last player with three plate appearances in an inning.

Performance of the week

Jacob Misiorowski struck out 12 in seven two-hit innings — throwing 57 pitches of at least 100 mph — as the Milwaukee Brewers beat St. Louis 5-1 last Monday. Milwaukee went on to sweep three straight from the Cardinals, and the Brewers now lead the NL Central by 4 1/2 games over St. Louis.

Comeback of the week

The Orioles trailed by four with one out and nobody on in the bottom of the ninth Saturday. Toronto never got another out, with Jeff Hoffman allowing the next six hitters to reach base before Connor Seabold issued a bases-loaded walk to Adley Rutschman that tied the game. Pete Alonso followed with a single to give Baltimore a 6-5 win.

Toronto's win probability was 99.3%, according to Baseball Savant, before Hoffman hit a batter and allowed a triple, a single, a double and two walks.

The Orioles went 7-3 on their homestand against Detroit, Tampa Bay and Toronto. That included a walk-off win over each of those teams and a three-game sweep of the AL East-leading Rays.

Trivia answer

Detroit's Alan Trammell had two hits, two runs and two steals in the bottom of the first on Sept. 20, 1983, against Baltimore. Seattle's Mike Cameron pulled it off in the top of the seventh on May 16, 2002, against Toronto.

Bonus answer: Boston's Johnny Damon had three plate appearances in the bottom of the first on June 27, 2003, against Florida. He had a single, a double and a triple as the Red Sox scored 14 runs in the first.

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

Tyler Robinson’s defense has asked Judge Tony Graf to restrict access to the preliminary hearing on July 6-10, when prosecutors must show they have enough evidence to warrant a trial. It will mark the most significant presentation of evidence to date in a case that has so far focused on matters of media access.

Defense attorneys also have requested to seal dozens of exhibits that prosecutors plan to introduce at the July hearing, arguing they could taint the jury pool before a possible trial.

Robinson's lawyers have tried to guard against media coverage that they say sometimes misrepresents their client as his case has drawn tremendous public attention. The 23-year-old from southwestern Utah is charged with crimes including aggravated murder in the Sept. 10 assassination of Kirk on the Utah Valley University campus.

Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if Robinson is convicted. He has not yet entered a plea.

Prosecutors have argued that the preliminary hearing should remain open, but they agreed that media should be restricted from viewing or copying some exhibits that could be used in a future trial. They plan to introduce forensic analyses, surveillance video, recordings of witness statements, autopsy findings and alleged messages from Robinson admitting to the crime.

Authorities have said DNA consistent with Robinson’s was found on the trigger of the rifle used to kill Kirk, the fired cartridge casing, two unfired cartridges and a towel used to wrap the rifle. Prosecutors also have said Robinson left a note for his romantic partner that read, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it.”

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.5% before the opening bell, while futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.3% and Nasdaq futures added 0.2%.

Oil prices rose around 3% after the Pentagon said the United States bombed Iranian military sites, retaliation for Tehran's shooting down of an American drone.

Even amid the strikes, U.S.-Iran negotiations continued, including on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for global oil and natural gas transit.

Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose $2.52 early Monday to $93.64 per barrel. It was approximately $70 a barrel in late February, before the start of the war.

Benchmark U.S. crude was $2.93 higher at $90.29 a barrel.

“In spite of another round of tit-for-tat attacks, market participants continue to operate on the assumption that, sooner rather than later, the Strait of Hormuz will re-open,” wrote Jonas Goltermann, chief markets economist at Capital Economics.

In equities trading, IBM surged 10% after analysts raised expectations for the tech giant's stock price. Shares of IBM also closed up 12% on Friday, giving it a nearly 30% gain in May, when the New York company announced a $1 billion government grant to help it build a quantum chip foundry.

FedEx Freight, a spinoff of the package delivery giant, rose more than 2% during premarket on its first day of trading.

Nvidia also gained more than 2% early Monday after the chipmaker unveiled powerful new chips to bring AI functions into laptops and desktop computers, including those made by Microsoft and Dell set to roll out later this year.

Elsewhere, at midday in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 was down 0.2%, France's CAC 40 edged up 0.2% and Germany's DAX gained 0.5%.

Asian shares mostly gained and Japan’s and South Korea’s benchmarks hit records, led by technology-related stocks, as investors continued to see growth in AI and other advanced technologies.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 ended 0.9% higher at an all-time record of 66,934.33. It also crossed the 67,000 mark for the first time during Monday's trading, reaching 67,231.28. Shares of SoftBank Group, the investment company that focuses heavily on AI, soared 14% and became Japan's most valuable listed company, surpassing Toyota.

In South Korea, the Kospi index jumped 3.7% to 8,788.38, also closing at a record high, after hitting an intraday record of 8,874.16. Samsung Electronics, its biggest company, was up 10.1%. Official data on Monday showed that South Korea’s exports surged 53% year-on-year in May, buoyed by global demand for semiconductors.

The Nikkei 225 was up more than 12% over the past month, while the Kospi surged around 27% during the same period.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng traded 0.9% higher at 25,398.18. The Shanghai Composite index fell 0.3% to 4,057.74, after China reported over the weekend that factory activity in May softened with signs of slowing new exports demand.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged down less than 0.1% to 8,729.40.

Taiwan’s Taiex climbed 1.4%, while India's Sensex lost 0.7%.

Three months after the Iran war began, uncertainties over a permanent end to the war are still driving market movements and keeping oil prices swinging, even as optimism on robust AI demand and strong corporate earnings have fueled a stock market rally including on Wall Street.

On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump met with advisers in high-level talks but had not decided yet on a tentative plan to extend the Iran war ceasefire by 60 days, while Iran had said a deal was not finalized. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz was also still in limbo. The strait has been largely closed and the U.S. has imposed a sea blockade on Iranian ports.

The Israeli army was also advancing in Lebanon as Israel targets the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, further complicating developments of a deal on the Iran war.

Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, commuted Peters' sentence last month following pressure from President Donald Trump.

The Colorado Department of Corrections would not confirm the time of Peters’ release, and a representative for her attorney said Peters would not speak to the media when she is freed.

Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She snuck in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell — who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 — and the person copied the county's Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.

Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.

Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April, but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.

Trump had championed Peters' case, but because the 70-year-old was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.

Polis commuted Peters' sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time non-violent offender.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, called the move a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to ”selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”

In the governor's race, former Fox News TV host and British political adviser Steve Hilton is urging Republicans to unite behind him as he fights for one of two spots in the November election alongside two Democrats, billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer and former state attorney general Xavier Becerra.

In the Los Angeles race for mayor, reality TV personality Spencer Pratt is hoping to turn his insurgent campaign into a surprise upset of Democratic Mayor Karen Bass. The two are tightly clustered with Nithya Raman, a progressive city council member running to Bass' political left.

“We can't give up on LA,” Pratt told applauding supporters at a block party Sunday. “We've got to fight.”

Democrats once feared that the party’s large field of gubernatorial candidates could open a path for two Republicans to advance to November. But now, in the campaign’s closing days, Hilton is warning the opposite could happen — what he called a “doomsday scenario” in which only Democrats advance.

Hilton is pleading with his chief Republican rival, county Sheriff Chad Bianco, to pull out of the contest, fearing an all-Democratic ticket would dampen GOP turnout across the state and reorder races for Congress and the Legislature.

Becerra and Steyer locking out a Republican from the November ballot would be “a disaster for California, it means no change. It’s a disaster for everyone who’s running as a Republican up and down the ballot,” Hilton said on the social platform X.

Mail voting began in early May, but just 15% of voters had returned their ballots as of Sunday. That's left the candidates seeing room for a last-minute shake-up in the race's closing days.

A vulnerable mayor looks for second term in LA

In heavily Democratic Los Angeles, Bass' shaky first term has left her vulnerable. She points to a drop in homelessness, though encampments and rows of rusting RVs remain a common sight in many neighborhoods. Meanwhile, she's still trying to overcome lingering fallout from the 2025 Palisades Fire, the most destructive in Los Angeles history. Bass was in Ghana as part of a presidential delegation when the flames ignited. Pratt lost his home in the blaze and has made the fire and the city's recovery a foundation of his campaign.

At Pratt's block party, Vivian Escalante, a historian who lives in the heavily Hispanic Boyle Heights neighborhood adjacent to downtown, said the quality of life has been sliding for years — dirtier streets, more homeless encampments and a lack of pride in the neighborhood she's called home all her life.

“It's gotten completely worse,” Escalante said, with a Pratt cap perched on her head. The Democratic Party, she said, has “completely abandoned us.”

The LA race is officially nonpartisan, but Bass is a Democrat, as is Raman, who made a last-minute decision to challenge her one-time ally and is among the top group of contenders.

Pratt, who rose to fame alongside his wife, Heidi Montag, on “The Hills,” is a registered Republican who has received a nod of approval — if not an outright formal endorsement — from President Donald Trump. He has sought to distance himself from national politics, saying his concerns are strictly within city limits.

A University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Los Angeles Times, found Bass tightly clustered with Raman and Pratt, with other candidates trailing. The poll of 1,351 likely voters conducted between May 19 and May 24 gave no candidate a statistically significant edge.

The city is at a difficult juncture.

Hollywood jobs have been decamping for years for cheaper filming locations. A downtown renaissance was crushed by extended pandemic closures and many office buildings remain desperate for tenants. The city has long struggled to provide basic services, whether paving buckled streets and fixing sidewalks or keeping streetlights on.

A crowded governor's race with no clear leader

The governor's race has been the most wide open in a generation. More than 50 names are on the ballot.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is banned by law from seeking a third term. Other candidates seeking to replace him include former Democratic U.S. Rep. Katie Porter,Democrat Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, and Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff.

Rebecca Katz, a strategist with Steyer’s campaign, said Sunday that they are “feeling pretty good” but emphasized how close the race was with a sporting reference, “It’s three candidates for two spots, every possession counts.”

Steyer, a former hedge fund manager turned liberal activist, has set spending records hoping to advance to the November contest. Hilton, a former Fox News host who has been endorsed by Trump, has promised to bring down costs in a state with some of the nation's highest gas prices, utility costs and taxes. Becerra has been stressing his experience in arguing he's best prepared to lead the nation's second most populous state, having served as the Biden administration's health secretary, a former U.S. House member and state attorney general.

Broadly, Republicans in the race are promising drastic change after years of Democratic governance — Democrats haven't lost a statewide race in two decades and Republicans last elected a Los Angeles mayor in 1997. Democrats, though in charge for years, are promising to bring down costs and continue to fend off the Trump administration in its numerous conflicts with Democratic California.

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Associated Press writer Jesse Bedayn in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

The nominal ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. has been repeatedly tested with such back-and-forth attacks, even as officials from both countries try to negotiate an end to the war. It’s not clear how close they are to a deal — and there is always the risk that an attack could derail those talks.

In the meantime, Iran has maintained its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies and driving up the price of fuel around the world, with far-reaching consequences.

Fighting has also escalated between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, despite their nominal ceasefire. Israel has extended its occupation deep into Lebanon, and Hezbollah — which joined the war in support of its main backer, Iran — continues to launch drones into Israel.

US military attacks Iran

The U.S. military’s Central Command said it carried out the strikes in Iran on Saturday and Sunday around the city of Geruk and on Qeshm Island.

“The measured and deliberate strikes occurred ... in response to aggressive Iranian actions that included the shootdown of a U.S. MQ-1 drone that was operating over international waters,” Central Command said.

“U.S. fighter aircraft swiftly responded by eliminating Iranian air defenses, a ground control station, and two one-way attack drones that posed clear threats to ships transiting regional waters.”

Kuwait reports incoming fire

Kuwait said its air defenses opened fire early Monday morning to intercept incoming drone and missile fire.

Around the same time, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it responded to an American attack without saying where, likely referring to the attack on Kuwait. In a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, the Guard said that U.S. forces had targeted a telecommunications tower.

Kuwait is home to U.S. Army Central, the Mideast forward command for the Army. While the U.S. Air Force no longer flies the MQ-1 Predator, the U.S. Army still does.

Iranian state television later shared footage of the ballistic missile launch, including a close-up showing a sticker on its body depicting a bruised U.S. President Donald Trump overlaid on a “closed” Strait of Hormuz with the caption: “Until the last American soldier leaves the region.”

Central Command said U.S. forces shot down two ballistic missiles Iran launched toward bases home to American troops. No Americans were hurt, it added.

Attacks rattle ceasefire talks

The attacks represent the latest escalation between the U.S. and Iran. Over the weekend, the U.S. fired a missile into the engine room of a Gambia-flagged cargo ship trying to break its blockade of Iranian ports.

A trickle of ships has made it out of the strait, through which a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas once passed, but pressure continues on global energy supplies, as well as on chemical fertilizer. That has led to fears of food shortages. The Gulf region produces 30% of globally traded chemical fertilizers.

Trump met with advisers on Friday but has yet to decide on whether to move ahead with a deal to extend the ceasefire and reopen the strait. Iran has said the deal had not been finalized.

The U.S. and Israel launched the war with strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Trump has offered shifting goals for the conflict, although preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon is among them. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though it has enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance suggested last week that negotiators are trying to strike general terms on Iran’s nuclear program, with the specifics to be hammered out in the ensuing talks.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei on Monday again accused the U.S. of “constantly” changing its positions.

“From the beginning, we knew — and we continue to know — that we are negotiating in an atmosphere of mistrust," Baghaei told journalists.

Trump expressed optimism about the talks in a post on his Truth Social platform early Monday in Washington.

“Iran really wants to make a deal, and it will be a good one for the U.S.A. and those that are with us,” he wrote. “Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end — It always does!”

A heavy military presence was observed in the capital, Addis Ababa, as observers called for a peaceful election in the country that is Africa's second-most populous and hosts the headquarters of the African Union.

Long queues began forming before the 6 a.m. opening time, with voters eager to cast their ballots and make their voices heard.

Ethiopians are choosing more than 500 members of the House of Representatives, who will subsequently vote to select the prime minister.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party is expected to secure a majority of seats, paving the way for him to retain office for another term.

About 50 million people, out of Ethiopia’s estimated population of 130 million, are registered to vote. Voters are also electing members of local government councils. Results are expected later on Monday.

Opposition parties have raised concerns over what they describe as a shrinking political space, alleging that they were prevented from actively campaigning and persuading voters. Ethiopia has also faced criticism over reports of human rights abuses targeting government critics and journalists.

A human rights defender, Noah Yesuf, said the election was illegitimate "from the beginning."

“The fairness of an election is judged by whether there is a level playing field for the opposition and a conducive environment for citizens to freely participate,” he told The Associated Press.

There’s an element of voter apathy due to citizens feeling let down by politicians.

Senait Dereje, a 37-year-old shopkeeper, is certain her vote matters.

“I have registered to vote. I am not sure if my vote will bring the change that I want and that will help change my livelihood,” Dereje told the AP. “I know many friends refuse to vote as they have given up on the politicians but I have not and I see it as a referendum like vote on the mixed record of the government."

This year’s election themes include national reconciliation due to the fighting seen in regions such as Tigray, Oromia, and Amhara, and there is also a development theme as the government pledges to undertake major projects.

The energy price spike triggered by the Iran war has seeped into the price of bonds that help fund the U.S. government. Interest rates on a 10-year U.S. Treasury note are topping 4.44%, up from 3.95% before the war started at the end of February. Average mortgage rates have climbed to their highest levels in nine months, while auto sales are slumping.

The challenge is global in scale, as interest rates have risen for multiple countries as the world has been adjusting to the prospect of higher inflation, mounting questions about the sustainability of government debt and a dramatic surge in investment in artificial intelligence.

Trump has tried to assure Americans that he has a plan to trim the roughly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit. In the past, he has pointed to revenue from tariffs, payments from foreigners for his “Gold Card” visa, spending cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency, and faster economic growth. Last week, he said the fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance would be the key to unlocking massive savings.

“If he does really great, we’ll have a balanced budget without having to do anything,” Trump said.

Economists say this is probably unrealistic

Economists say Trump’s strategies to meaningfully curb the deficit are unlikely to deliver the promised results.

The cost of servicing the national debt has tripled since 2021 to more than $1 trillion annually, said Jessica Riedl, a budget and tax fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“President Trump signed a tax cut bill that will likely add $5 trillion to 10-year deficits — and tariffs are offsetting only a small fraction of those costs,” she said. “Budget deficits are still projected to soar past $4 trillion annually within a decade under current policies.”

Deficits are expected to grow over the next decade as the costs of Social Security and Medicare outstrip tax revenues.

The 10-year U.S. Treasury rate climbed as high as 4.67% in the middle of May and has since eased as negotiations over the Iran ceasefire continued — just as rates initially climbed in 2025 because of Trump's “Liberation Day” tariffs and then began to decline once Trump backed off the most extreme increases.

When Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, broke down the math tied to rising 30-year Treasury yields, he estimated that 60% of the increase had come from the expectation that America will continue its outsized borrowing and the other 40% was tied to the inflation driven by the Iran war and Trump’s tariffs.

Glenn Hubbard, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the George W. Bush administration, worries that the U.S. may no longer have the same borrowing capacity as before to effectively combat an economic crisis, such as the 2008 crash or the coronavirus pandemic.

“I don’t think we have the space that we had in 2008 or 2020 to deal with it,” said Hubbard, now a professor at Columbia University's Business School. “Washington doesn’t seem to be full of ideas — good or bad — to solve it.”

Interest rates are a concern for voters

Higher interest rates are giving Democratic candidates in the races to determine control of the House and Senate another line of attack at a time when voters are concerned about high costs for food and gasoline.

In Colorado’s fifth congressional district, Democrat Jessica Killin is leaning into the message that the persistent deficits and higher interest rates make it harder to buy or renovate a home, afford a new car or manage credit card debt.

“Things are already expensive,” said Killin, an Army veteran who was a top aide to Doug Emhoff, the former second gentleman. “We can already talk about gas, but the cost of borrowing only makes that worse.”

Joe Reagan, an Army veteran also seeking the Democratic nomination, said in an email that he is talking “a lot about fiscal stewardship” in his campaign. “Every dollar spent paying interest is a dollar that isn’t being invested in infrastructure, education, veterans’ services, or economic growth," he said.

They are challenging Republican Rep. Jeff Crank in a district that their party views as a potential pickup. Killin said the deficit is an example of how “Trump says one thing and does the opposite.”

In his March 2025 address to Congress, Trump declared that “in the near future, I want to do what has not been done in 24 years: balance the federal budget. We’re going to balance it.”

Crank, the Republican incumbent, did not reply to requests for comment.

Cutting fraud is the new deficit strategy

The administration maintains that it is going to steadily reduce budget deficits. As a share of the overall economy, the deficit last year was lower than it was in 2024, though that drop depended in part on tariff revenues that are subject to refunds after the Supreme Court ruled them to be illegal.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week cited a report showing that there was as much as $500 billion annually in fraudulent government spending that could be eliminated, “so that would reduce the deficit substantially.”

Bessent appeared to draw that conclusion from a 2024 report by the Government Accountability Office that estimated there had been between $233 billion to $521 billion each year in fraudulent spending. But those numbers were drawn in part from the pandemic era when the government borrowed heavily to stabilize the economy.

The White House and Treasury did not respond to questions about the source of Bessent’s claims.

On deficits, Bessent told reporters at the White House that the administration was essentially dealt a bad hand from former President Joe Biden, a Democrat. “We inherited the worst budget deficit in history — in history — when we were not in a recession or not at war,” Bessent said.

Bessent had previously announced that the administration would aim to reduce the annual deficit to 3% of overall U.S. gross domestic product. It’s roughly double that percentage currently and Bessent did not directly answer a question about the timeline for hitting his target.

As of now, investors continue to buy shares in U.S. companies, causing the stock market to increase in value in a sign of confidence in America’s economic potential. But the increase in interest rates also suggests that investors view the national debt as a vulnerability for the U.S.

The financial markets might be able to inflict enough pain with higher rates in order to compel political leaders to address the systemic imbalances. Multiple economists said they expected that markets would force the deficit issue before voters would.

Hubbard emphasized that the whole bond market system rests on the trust that the debt will be repaid. He noted that the word “credit” is linked to a Latin term that is also the root of the word creed about a system of beliefs.

“That is what debt is about: I believe you will pay me back,” Hubbard said. “That works until it doesn’t.”

A defense lawyer for Rayann El Houli said expert evidence would be produced in court that her views had changed.

“She renounces ISIS and violent jihad,” Peter Morrissey said, using an acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. “She wants nothing to do with it: not now directly or indirectly. Not in the future. Not for herself. Not for the people she loves and specifically not for the children."

El Houli, 34, applied for release on bail in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on charges that she joined a terrorist organization and entered and remained in Raqqa, Syria, more than a decade ago when it was the stronghold of the IS so-called caliphate.

Chief Magistrate Lisa Hannan outlined allegations within the prosecution’s summary of evidence that she wanted Morrissey to address in the bail hearing.

El Houli allegedly traveled to Syria between 2013 and 2014 with the intention of joining IS fighters.

“The accused expressed radicalized views while in Syria, including support for terrorist acts. She supported acts of martyrdom whilst in Syria. She repeatedly expressed views that supported the killing or serious injury of non-believers,” Hannan said.

She tried to indoctrinate her children and invited people living in Australia go to Syria for the “purposes of following a life and making decisions based on IS or other extremist ideology,” Hannan said.

El Houli left Raqqa in 2019 “when the caliphate was defeated and not as a result of her changing views,” the magistrate said.

The bail application was adjourned to a date that will be set later.

Each charge against El Houli carries a potential prison sentence of up to 10 years. People charged with terrorism offenses can only be released on bail in exceptional circumstances.

Hannan said she wanted to hear details of how El Houli escaped from the al-Hol camp for displaced people in eastern Syria and was smuggled into Lebanon.

She returned to Australia from Lebanon last year and was arrested in Melbourne last week.

Three other women also linked to IS who have returned to Australia recently were charged with slavery and terrorism offenses on arrival and remain in custody, and others remain under police investigation.

Un mes después de que se dieron a conocer las acusaciones contra el gobernador del estado de Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha, y otros nueve funcionarios, Sheinbaum asumió una postura más frontal y aprovechó un evento ante decenas de miles de seguidores en el centro de la capital mexicana para insinuar que el objetivo de ese proceso sería el de afectar los comicios regionales y legislativos del 2027.

“Cuando desde el exterior se dicta quién es culpable y quién no. Cuando se busca presionar a nuestras instituciones desde fuera. Cuando se normaliza la idea de que otro país puede intervenir en asuntos que sólo corresponden a los mexicanos, ya no estamos hablando de cooperación, estamos hablando de injerencia”, expresó la mandataria ante una multitud que se concentró en el emblemático Monumento a la Revolución para escuchar su mensaje al país a casi dos años de su victoria electoral del 2 de junio del 2024.

La fiscalía de Nueva York acusó en abril a Rocha Moya, al alcalde de la capital de Sinaloa, Juan de Dios Gámez, y a otros ocho funcionarios activos y retirados de cooperar con el Cártel de Sinaloa, solicitando su detención preventiva con fines de extradición.

La Fiscalía General de México supeditó las detenciones de los 10 funcionarios a que Estados Unidos entregue evidencias que respalden las acusaciones y abrió una investigación que no ha tenido mayores avances.

En medio de ese proceso, Rocha Moya y Gámez —ambos militantes del partido gobernante Morena— se separaron temporalmente de sus cargos para facilitar la investigación, mientras que los exsecretarios de Seguridad y de Finanzas del gobierno del estado, Gerardo Mérida y Enrique Díaz, se entregaron a las autoridades estadounidenses a mediados de este mes.

Dudas e injerencia

Al insistir en que no había pruebas contra Rocha Moya y los demás funcionarios, Sheinbaum señaló que era “legítimo dudar del verdadero interés de los juicios de extradición”, y añadió que este tipo de acciones no tenía precedentes en las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y México.

“Primero vienen por unos, luego por otros, hasta que las oficinas de justicia se vuelven el principal elector de México. Eso no lo podemos permitir”, comentó la mandataria, y dijo en tono desafiante: “México, que se oiga claro y que se oiga fuerte, no acepta injerencias”.

Al abundar sobre los intereses que podrían estar detrás de este proceso judicial, Sheinbaum le preguntó a los asistentes “¿es realmente interés legítimo, genuino, por ayudar a México?”, y agregó “¿o quizá estamos viendo como sectores de la derecha estadounidense utilizan a nuestro país para posicionarse rumbo a sus elecciones de 2026, o acaso pretenden influir en la elección de 2027 en nuestro país?".

Desde que el presidente Donald Trump inició su segundo mandato en 2025, las relaciones entre Washington y México han tenido varios momentos de tensión debido a las recurrentes críticas a las acciones de las autoridades mexicanas para enfrentar a los cárteles del narcotráfico y las políticas arancelarias que han afectado a sectores clave de México como la industria automotriz, el acero, el aluminio y el cobre.

A pesar de las fricciones, Sheinbaum ha logrado sortear la situación y mantener una relación cordial con su vecino y principal socio comercial.

Al presentar un balance de los 20 meses de su administración, Sheinbaum aseguró que su gobierno ha sido objeto de una “ofensiva mediática” y de “campañas en redes sociales” promovidas por “sectores conservadores nacionales e internacionales”.

Agregó que la campaña contra su gobierno se intensificó luego del incidente del pasado 19 de abril en el estado de Chihuahua, limítrofe con Texas, donde murieron dos agentes de la CIA junto a dos funcionarios de la fiscalía estatal en un accidente automovilístico. Los fallecimientos ocurrieron luego de un operativo donde se desmanteló un laboratorio clandestino de drogas sintéticas.

El caso de los dos estadounidenses generó tensiones entre Estados Unidos y México, que protestó la presencia de los agentes en territorio mexicano sin autorización.

With no candidate taking an outright majority of the vote, the election will head to a second round in June.

But Cepeda and Petro sowed doubt in the results of the first round, claiming without evidence that hundreds of thousands of votes were manipulated and that foreign actors manipulated the results of the election.

Cepeda said he was waiting for electoral authorities to scrutinize the results before accepting the election.

“Only when the vote-counting commissions have fully clarified what happened will we comment on tonight’s results,” Cepeda said, though he acknowledged the vote was likely going to a second round.

Cepeda won 41% of the vote, while de la Espriella won 44% of the votes, with 99.98% of the results counted by electoral authorities.

Cepeda is a progressive senator who has promised to carry on a fraught plan to achieve “total peace” by negotiating peace pacts with guerrillas and criminal gangs. He was consistently leading polls in the run up to the Sunday vote, but in the weeks leading up to the election de la Espriella rapidly gained support with a promise that he would crack down on armed groups.

The neck-and-neck results likely spell trouble for Cepeda in the run-off election, as de la Espriella is expected to scoop up support from voters who threw their support behind another conservative candidate in the first round.

De la Espriella — a newcomer known as El Tigre, or “The Tiger” — has sought to portray himself as a supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Let the United States of America and democratic parties monitor this runoff election. I will lead this battle; I will be Colombia’s best warrior,” de la Espriella said in an impassioned speech Sunday night, pounding his chest behind bullet-proof glass in front of supporters.

Colombian voters are weighing peace deals or a crackdown

Voters across Latin America are increasingly ditching leaders that pitched progressive policies aimed at addressing the root issues of conflict, such as lack of opportunities for young people and corruption. Instead, voters have increasingly turned to candidates promising heavy-handed security crackdowns.

The polarized vote comes as the Trump administration is playing a more aggressive role in Latin America than any U.S. government in decades, placing mounting pressure on countries like Colombia, Mexico, and Ecuador to crack down on crime.

The election has also underscored two sharply diverging visions for the future of peace in a country marked by years of conflict.

On one side, Cepeda has promised to continue Petro’s progressive agenda and a largely failed effort to negotiate peace pacts with armed groups, following a plan that’s likely to sharply contrast with Trump’s vision for Latin America.

On the other side, de la Espriella has promised to fiercely crack down on criminal groups and build 10 mega-prisons, echoing the war on gangs policy of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, which has driven down homicide rates but fueled accusations of human rights abuses.

“Today’s election isn’t just important for us, it’s important for all of Latin America,” said Juan Acevedo, a 62-year-old sociologist walking out of a voting station in Colombia’s capital on Sunday morning. “Whoever wins here will suggest to the region if progressive policies will continue or if things are going to return to the right.”

Vote is seen as a referendum on Petro

The election — 10 years after Colombia signed an historic peace pact with guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC — as seen as a referendum on Petro’s policies.

The deal a decade ago had offered hope to break the nation’s vicious cycle of fighting between rebel groups and the government. But violence has since roared back, in part because armed groups have taken advantage of peace negotiations with Petro’s government to make territorial gains.

That came to a head in the lead-up to the election. Criminal groups have increasingly launched drone strikes, armed attacks have plagued the race and last June, 39-year-old politician and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay was fatally shot at a political rally. Still, Cepeda and Petro have maintained strong support among many because of progressive policies pushed forward under Petro, such as boosting the minimum wage.

Both de la Espriella and Valencia have touted their affinity for Trump, though Valencia’s electoral loss dealt another blow to a once powerful political current known as Uribismo.

Colombians are divided on the way forward

Maria Eugenia, a 57-year-old seamstress on Friday in downtown Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, said she welcomed an all-out offensive on an expanding slate of criminal groups, regardless of the human cost.

While she approved of Petro’s pushes to improve the country’s medical infrastructure, she said she was voting for de la Espriella because violence in rural areas of the country has gotten out of hand. She said negotiating peace pacts was effectively rewarding armed groups.

“Of course, whenever you come down with a heavy hand, there’s always going to be debate,” she said. “But some people are going to have to fall to clean up what needs to be cleaned up.”

Others, like Acevedo, the sociologist, said a security crackdown such as the one promoted by de la Espriella meant a return to past military campaigns that he said only reinforced Colombia’s cycle of violence.

He said he supports Cepeda, adding that while the government hasn’t done a perfect job — failing to pass ambitious reforms and follow through on promises to reduce violence — it was better to continue pushing forward with their political coalition’s efforts to take a different approach in addressing the country’s violence.

He added that his main critique of Petro’s administration was the power grabs made by criminal groups as they negotiated with the government. He said he hoped that if Cepeda won, he would strike a better balance between negotiating peace and maintaining control over those groups.

“We’re a country that has lived through 60 years of conflict,” Acevedo said. “The danger here is that we return to the times where everyone is saying that the only way to solve our problems is with bullets and more war.”

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

Social media platforms with at least 8 million users in Malaysia, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, must implement age-verification systems and block users under 16 from creating accounts.

Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Commission said age verification for existing users will be rolled out over the next six months. Users identified as under 16 will have a month to download or transfer data, including photos and videos, before restrictions or other actions are applied.

Companies that fail to comply could face penalties of up to 10 million ringgit ($2.5 million). Parents whose children manage to bypass the law will not be penalized.

The government said the measures are aimed at protecting children from harmful content, cyberbullying and platform features designed to encourage excessive use.

Countries including Australia,Brazil and Indonesia have introduced or announced age-based restrictions or requirements for children’s access to social media. Others including Britain, France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are studying or developing similar approaches.

Malaysia's regulator said the rules are not intended to prevent children from accessing digital technology. Platforms are required to improve user safety, discourage excessive use and take action against underage accounts and harmful content.

Technology companies have yet to describe how they will comply.

Clara Koh, Meta’s director of public policy for Southeast Asia, has cautioned that Malaysia's under-16 ban could backfire by driving teenagers away from protected apps and into unregulated corners of the internet.

Governments around the world face pressure to address concerns about social media’s impact on children’s mental health and online safety. In March, a U.S. jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay millions of dollars in damages in a case alleging that platform design features contributed to harm suffered by a young user.

Malaysian families have varying views

In Kuala Lumpur, Saravanan Ganasan and Jayaradha Veerasamy, whose children are 12 and 15, said they approve of the changes. They already had banned their kids from using social media, believing minors lack the psychological capacity to cope with it.

Devices are kept out of bedrooms, screen time is limited to common areas and their son is not allowed to lock his phone with a password.

“Exposure is what we fear,” Saravanan said. “The wrong kind of exposure will do damage to the mind.”

Aadhavan Saravanan, 15, said he believes he would be addicted to social media if allowed full freedom. “Social media is, like, a luxury and it’s not a necessity,” he said.

The couple said the restrictions have forced their children to develop offline life skills. Aadhavan reads books in a backyard mango tree and repairs broken household appliances, while their daughter cooks and does crafts.

“A lot of parents are very scared that children get bored,” Jayaradha said. “But boredom is actually very good because they start thinking out of the box.”

But Shaun Hew, in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Cheras, said the new restrictions go too far.

Hew believes social media allow his kids to spend time productively, as long as there is proper adult oversight. His 11-year-old son uses platforms to learn cooking and his daughter, 14, uses YouTube for exam preparation.

He worries a sudden cutoff could cause teenagers to rebel and find unregulated ways to bypass internet blocks.

Some express concerns over privacy and safety

Some critics said Malaysia’s decision could increase the risks of data privacy breaches and expand state surveillance.

“It is very much following the trend, but in a way that is raising alarms due to requiring a government ID for age verification,” said Benjamin Loh, social science lecturer at Monash University in Malaysia. He said social media companies could end up storing sensitive personal data without sufficient safeguards.

Loh said the decision also could unintentionally affect stateless individuals, undocumented residents and members of marginalized communities including LGBTQ+ people who rely on anonymity online for safety.

Without penalties on parents, families can easily bypass the law by creating accounts for their children, he added.

“This is a major gap that, unless regulators are willing to fix, will result in the law having little effect in stopping children from using social media,” he said.

With no fanfare other than a social media post, the NBA announced Sunday that the image of the Larry O'Brien Trophy — the one given to the winner of the finals — will be painted at midcourt for games at both the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio and Madison Square Garden in New York for this season's title series.

Also back: the script logo for “The Finals" — to be on either side of the court. The series between the Spurs and Knicks starts Wednesday in San Antonio.

It's the first time since the 2009 finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Orlando Magic that the title series will feature the trophy logo at midcourt. The finals wordmark and logo last appeared on the court during the 2014 finals between the Spurs and the Miami Heat.

The league started using the finals wordmark on the court for the title round in 1989, went to a combined wordmark and trophy in 2004, then had the prominent trophy logo at midcourt from 2005 through 2009.

Fans had turned to social media in recent years to complain that the court lacked the finals flair. The league commissions alternate courts for events like NBA Cup games, and some fans wondered aloud about the lack of consistency — special courts for the in-season tournament, but no special markings for the finals.

This year's version comes with a new twist: the center court trophy logo will be integrated with the participating team's own branding.

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

Speaking at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library overlooking Boston Harbor, Powell called universities, courts, Congress and the central bank “the foundation and the embodiment of our democracy” and argued that the Fed’s independence was a “priceless asset” that must be protected.

It was one of his most direct defenses of Fed independence, warning that a single administration’s decision to remove bank officials over policy differences would open the way for future elected officials to follow suit, ultimately undermining the credibility that the Fed has spent decades building.

Powell, who frequently clashed with Trump during his eight years as chair, stepped down as his term expired in May. He was succeeded by Kevin Warsh, whom Trump selected to lead the central bank.

After stepping down as chair, Powell took the unusual step of keeping his seat on the Fed’s governing board, which he has until January 2028. By doing so, he has deprived the Trump administration of an opportunity to appoint another member of the board.

The Trump administration has also sought to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook, which would open an additional seat on the rate-setting committee the president could fill. Yet Cook sued and the courts have so far let her keep her seat.

While Powell never mentioned Trump by name Sunday, he repeatedly returned to the importance of protecting institutions from political pressure and preserving public trust in their independence.

“Like many other institutions, the Fed has been undergoing a stress test," he said. “Congress wisely chose to insulate monetary policy decisions from political pressure. All other advanced economy nations have done the same.”

Since 1989, the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award has recognized public servants who make what the foundation describes as courageous decisions of conscience despite personal or professional consequences.

Previous recipients include former Presidents Barack Obama and George H. W. Bush, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and former Vice President Mike Pence.

In March, the foundation said it was awarding Powell for protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve “despite years of personal attacks and threats from the highest levels of government.”

Trump harshly criticized Powell throughout his tenure as chair, frequently attacking the Fed’s interest-rate decisions and urging the central bank to cut borrowing costs more aggressively.

Beyond the Federal Reserve, Powell defended U.S. universities and research institutions, the Constitution, Congress and the court system.

“The United States has long been the leader of the world’s freedom-seeking people — the indispensable nation. Other countries know us as a nation built on integrity, and that integrity must be maintained,” he said.

In his remarks, Powell indirectly acknowledged mistakes as chair. The Fed is legally required to seek stable prices, but inflation surged amid the pandemic’s supply chain crunch. Many economists believe the central bank should have raised interest rates more quickly in response.

“At the Fed, we are, of course, human and thus imperfect,” Powell said. “When we make mistakes, we acknowledge them and change course.”

Powell was honored alongside residents of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, who received the award for what the Kennedy Foundation described as acts of courage during a federal immigration crackdown that led to thousands of arrests and the deaths of Minneapolis mother Renée Good and nurse Alex Pretti, both of whom were killed while observing or documenting enforcement activity.

“It’s wonderful just to be invited, honoring Renée,” Good’s father, Tim Granger, said as he entered the library with family members.

Kennedy’s only surviving child, Caroline Kennedy, and her son, Jack Schlossberg, said in a statement that without people like Powell and those in Minnesota “willing to put their lives on the line to hold America to its promises, our democracy can’t survive.”

Attendee U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor of Minnesota next year, reflected that the award was unusual because it recognized ordinary residents rather than elected officials.

“This didn’t go to an elected leader for a reason,” Klobuchar said. “It’s because the people stood up. They stood up by marching 50,000 strong. They stood by bringing kids they didn’t even know — strangers’ kids — to school, by bringing them groceries and they didn’t blink. And that’s what this award is about. It’s about courage.”

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AP journalist Christopher Rugaber contributed from Washington.

“It doesn’t matter which one wins,” Ossoff told an exuberant crowd at The Tabernacle, a downtown Atlanta concert venue. “They’re both Trump puppets.”

Ossoff campaigned with Democratic candidate for governor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former Atlanta mayor, in what their advisers described as the first of many joint rallies intended to showcase them as a team. The Democrats spoke behind a lectern decked with a placard that read “United for Georgia.”

It was a contrast to Republicans, who are still battling amongst themselves to determine their party's nominees for Senate and governor. Hours before Ossoff and Bottoms appeared together, Collins and Dooley spent the afternoon going after each other on the debate stage ahead of their June 16 runoff.

They pledged their fealty to the president while rarely mentioning Ossoff, who they describe as too liberal for a state that Trump carried in two out of his three campaigns.

The competing events, held miles apart in Atlanta, highlight the head start Ossoff and Georgia Democrats have in a midterm campaign that could reshape the final two years of Trump’s presidency and mold the statehouse of this critical battleground state.

Like Ossoff, Bottoms awaits the winner of a Republican runoff after she trounced her Democratic primary rivals on May 19. And much like Ossoff, she painted potential opponents Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and billionaire businessman Rick Jackson with the same brush.

“They don’t see Trump’s reckless policies as a problem, they see them as a playbook,” she said, emphasizing inflation, especially for gas and groceries. “We already know we’re running against Trump’s do-boys.”

Ossoff is the only Senate Democrat running for reelection in a state Trump carried in 2024, and holding his seat is critical to Democrats' chances to flip control of the chamber. Bottoms is trying to become the first Democrat since 1998 to be elected Georgia governor.

In the governor's race, Trump has endorsed Jones, who assisted the president's failed effort to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden with false claims of voter fraud. The president has not taken a side between Collins and Dooley.

Republicans spar over ethics and experience

With Trump’s firm grip on the Republican Party, Collins and Dooley showed only slight policy differences as each sought to carve out reasons they’d be the better option to defeat Ossoff and bolster the president’s agenda.

Dooley played up his status as a first-time candidate and, despite Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House, hit Collins as being part of a do-nothing government.

“Congress is out of control,” he said. “There’s too much careerism, corruption, nothing’s getting done, Congress is not working for the people the way it should.”

Yet even as he framed himself as an outsider, Dooley touted the endorsement from two-term Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and his own family roots. Dooley’s late father, Vince, was the legendary University of Georgia football coach and longtime athletics director.

“I grew up in a football family in Athens,” said Dooley, who was briefly a lawyer before following his father’s career path in college football and the NFL.

Dooley’s hardest hits on Collins centered on an ethics investigation into whether the congressman abused taxpayer funds by hiring the girlfriend of his former chief of staff for work that the woman allegedly did not perform.

Collins insisted the issue is simply a “complaint” with no merit, not an actual House ethics case. A “nothing burger,” the congressman called it.

The Office of Congressional Conduct, after an initial inquiry, has nonetheless referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee, and Dooley noted that Republicans were among those recommending the inquiry continue.

Collins, the son of a congressman, slapped back at Dooley’s characterization of Capitol Hill. He described himself as “a conservative workhorse” and blamed any gridlock specifically on “a broken Senate” — where Ossoff serves. He touted his sponsorship of the Laken Riley Act, a 2025 immigration law that, among other provisions, requires immigrants accused of certain crimes to be held without bond.

Dooley and Collins each offered support for Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran. While Collins has previously co-sponsored legislation that would effectively ban abortion nationwide, Dooley said states should determine abortion access.

Ossoff wraps Trump and both Republicans together

Ossoff dismissed Trump as “a failed president and a national disgrace.” He held up Trump as the worst offender of a corrupt political system, highlighting his family’s profits from cryptocurrency and foreign real estate deals. And he lumped Collins and Dooley in with him.

“They’re both corrupt political insiders, and they’re both pro-war, pro-tariff, and pro-cutting your health care,” he said.

Ossoff hit Collins for the same ethics case that Dooley mentioned. He accused Dooley of benefiting from his brother’s business dealings with government.

“The coach’s family got tens of millions of your tax dollars courtesy of Gov. Kemp, and then poured cash into the governor’s pack to prop up the coach’s campaign,” Ossoff insisted.

He was alluding to Daniel Dooley being the founder of CENTEGIX, a firm that manufacturers and installs school security hardware, including so-called “panic buttons” that contact law enforcement directly. As governor, Kemp authorized grants for local systems to bolster security and later signed a law requiring Georgia classrooms to have direct contact to police.

CENTEGIX has secured contracts with school systems throughout Georgia, and Daniel Dooley has donated more than $150,000 to Kemp’s federal PAC that is backing his brother's Senate campaign. But Dooley and Kemp advisers note that CENTEGIX has contracts in 47 states besides Georgia, and other firms compete for Georgia schools’ business.

Connor Whitney, a Dooley campaign spokesman, said Ossoff “is already lying about Derek Dooley” because he “knows Dooley is the candidate who will send him to the bench this fall."

We’re taking you inside Jamaica for a firsthand look at the devastation left behind by Hurricane Melissa, plus showing you how artificial intelligence is playing a role in forecasting this season, and -- 100 years later -- we look back at the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 -- the storm that changed South Florida forever.

Join hurricane specialist and storm surge expert Michael Lowry, Local 10 chief certified meteorologist Betty Davis and the entire Weather Authority team for “It Only Takes One,” airing at 8 p.m. Sunday.

Clouds will linger overnight, keeping temperatures warm. Lows will fall into the upper 70s. Monday will start dry, with afternoon thunderstorms developing once again. It will also be hot, with a high near 92 degrees, just shy of the record high of 93 degrees. Deep tropical moisture will make it feel like temperatures are in the triple digits.

He said nothing on his radio, instead paying the penalty by going to the back of the field. Then he drove his way back to the front where he outraced Christopher Bell over the last four thrilling laps off a final restart to win at the Nashville Superspeedway.

“Man, what an unbelievable day,” Hamlin said. “Starting first, going to last and back to first.”

This was Hamlin's second win this year and 62nd of his career, and he wound up leading a race-high 57 laps including the one that mattered most.

The 45-year-old Hamlin wound up racing side-by-side with his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Bell and Chase Briscoe making it three-wide before Hamlin took the lead down the backstretch to win by 0.115 seconds in his No. 11 Toyota.

“Well, that’s why on the last lap, I committed to just run the bottom," Hamlin said.

Team co-owner Heather Gibbs said watching the teammates race so hard was like kids on a family vacation swatting at each other in the backseat. But she said they raced cleanly.

“We want them to race for the win," Heather Gibbs said. "That’s what they do, and it makes us proud.”

Hamlin, who won at Las Vegas and also the All-Star race at Dover, pulled within 97 points of Tyler Reddick in the season standings. Reddick finished sixth.

The race started 80 minutes late after rain delayed NASCAR’s Cup Series for a second straight week. The wait was worth it with a record 31 lead changes among a record 15 leaders. The race also featured 12 cautions at the 1.33-mile, D-shaped oval that is NASCAR’s largest concrete track.

Bell finished second for a second straight race ahead of Briscoe. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was fourth, and Shane Van Gisbergen rounded out the top five.

“I had the best car on the race track ... and we had the lead on the restart,” Bell said. “I got a great push from Denny on the restart, and I didn’t win the race.”

One win closer to Busch

Hamlin now is one Cup victory away from matching his one-time teammate Kyle Busch, who died May 22 at 41. Busch is ninth all-time with his 63 Cup victories, and Hamlin said he certainly aspires to get there.

“It just shows how good he was for so long,” Hamlin said. “I saw the stats online where we ran together 500 and some races, and he finished ahead of me 10 more times than I beat him in the same equipment.”

Long time coming

Ryan Blaney, trying to repeat as champ at this track, led the restart trying to hold off AJ Allmendinger on a one-lap shootout for the first stage. Allmendinger took the lead on the backstretch, then held off Kyle Larson to take stage one for his first stage victory since 2024.

Stage 2 win

Suarez took the second stage after staying out during a caution and took the lead on the restart on lap 182. Then Corey Heim drove his No. 67 Toyota into the back of Todd Gilliland’s No. 34 Ford, sending him backward into the Turn 1 wall. That brought out the seventh caution with Cole Custer spinning out in the crash.

Lots of rotor woes

Rookie Connor Zilisch had the right rotor explode on his No. 88 Chevrolet sending him into the wall and smashing the right side on Turn 1 of lap 72. Zilisch got the Trackhouse Racing car into the garage with some flames coming out from under the right tire, which was stuck and nearly sideway.

He had been running 24th after starting 38th on the last row.

Trackhouse teammate Ross Chastain had his own rotor issue on lap 82 sending him into the wall between Turns 1 and 2. Michael McDowell spun trying to avoid Chastain’s No. 1 Chevrolet. Zilisch called the rotor problems a surprise when both he and Chastain had been moving up.

“Just unfortunate circumstances,” Zilisch said. “Yeah, we’ll learn from it.”

Van Gisbergen is the third member of Trackhouse Racing. His crew told him not to worry with his No. 97 Chevrolet running a completely different brake package. Ryan Preece went to the garage with no water in his No. 60 Ford, and his crew found a piece of rotor broken off into the radiator before he got back on the track.

Then Allmendinger, who was third, had the rotor spark and flame before his No. 16 Chevrolet hit the Turn 1 wall on lap 173 — with 12 laps left in Stage 2.

Chris Buescher was running 17th with 12 laps left when his right rotor went as he entered Turn 3.

Up next

The series will be at Michigan International Speedway next week where Hamlin will be trying to win for a second straight year and continue his winning streak.

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

Fueled by a fiery pep talk from captain Aaron Judge, the Yankees scored 13 runs in the third and beat the Athletics 13-8 — finishing one run shy of the largest inning in the storied history of the franchise.

“Remarkable,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Glad we were able to make it stand up. Obviously, a lot of really good things offensively. ... I don’t think the prettiest game on either side, necessarily. But we were able to make a really outstanding inning stand up.”

The game began well for A's starter Jacob Lopez, who retired all six New York batters in the first two innings. That led to a heated message from Judge to his teammates that they needed to wake up.

“I just felt like we were a little asleep there that first two innings. I expect more out of the guys and I know they expect more of themselves. A couple of choice words there just to get it going. The boys responded,” Judge said.

They sure did.

Lopez failed to retire any of the seven hitters he faced in the third, starting with a single by Anthony Volpe.

The totals in the inning were staggering as the Yankees had 11 hits, four walks and four stolen bases. They sent 18 batters to the plate and faced 75 pitches during their most productive inning since scoring 13 runs in the eighth against Tampa Bay on June 21, 2005. It was one off the franchise record for an inning set July 6, 1920, against the Washington Senators.

Lopez walked two batters after Volpe's hit and then failed to cover the bag on Paul Goldschmidt's bases-loaded grounder to first, allowing a run to score on an infield single. Ben Rice followed with a two-run double, Judge blooped a single to center and Cody Bellinger hit an RBI single to knock out Lopez.

The next five batters also reached safely against reliever Michael Kelly, marking the first time in 17 seasons that a team started an inning with 12 straight batters reaching safely, according to Sportradar. The Boston Red Sox were the previous team to do it on May 7, 2009, against Cleveland.

This marked the first time the Yankees had 12 consecutive batters reach safely in an inning since the first game of a doubleheader on Sept. 11, 1949, against Washington. It was just two batters off the record since 1920 that came when Detroit had 14 straight reach in the sixth inning against the Yankees on June 17, 1925, with Hall of Famer Ty Cobb hitting a home run in that inning.

The Yankees scored 10 runs before the first out was recorded when Goldschmidt struck out. Rice followed with a two-run triple, giving him two multi-run extra-base hits in one inning.

“To bat around with no outs, it’s incredible,” Judge said. “That’s what this team is capable of doing. We got our backs up against the wall, find a way to dig ourselves out of it and to continue to keep the pressure on them. We needed all 13 of those runs.”

Bellinger capped the scoring with an RBI single, marking the first time since 1950 that the A's allowed at least 13 runs in an inning. They gave up 14 in the first inning of the second game of a June 18 doubleheader that season.

“I really don’t know how to describe that inning,” manager Mark Kotsay said. “Obviosuly, the two walks became an issue right away. Hit after hit, really. At some point you figure the ball’s going to go at someone, and it never did.”

In all, eight of the nine Yankees batters had at least one hit and one RBI in the inning, with Austin Wells the lone exception with two walks. All nine batters scored a run, with Volpe becoming the third player in the last 50 years to have two hits, two runs and two steals in an inning.

It lasted so long that he was in the on-deck circle when the rally ended, hoping for a third at-bat in the inning.

“I was getting ready to go hit again,” Volpe said. “It was crazy. It felt like I would run the bases and then I’d get up and I’d have to put my stuff back on. It was a cool feeling.”

The inning took so long — 43 minutes — that Yankees starter Will Warren went to the bullpen to get loose. The right-hander said he threw about seven pitches in the bullpen late in the inning before returning to the mound.

“When they took the second mound visit, I ran to the bullpen,” Warren said. "Just staying loose. A lot of time sitting there. I just wanted to make sure I was sharp to get back out there after the boys put up 13."

The rest of the day wasn’t as productive at the plate for the Yankees. In the other eight innings, their only baserunner came when Bellinger walked leading off the sixth only to get erased on an inning-ending double play.

“I had a few gray hairs today, but obviously a great way to finish a really good road trip,” Boone said.

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

Pulisic set up Sergiño Dest’s opener in the seventh minute, then made it 2-0 off a Ricardo Pepi pass in the 20th. Pulisic took a touch, rounded goalkeeper Mory Diaw and slotted into an open net from a tight angle for his 33rd goal in 85 international appearances.

The top American player, Pulisic had finished his AC Milan season scoreless in a career-high 19 club games since Dec. 28 and was without a goal in eight straight U.S. matches. Pulisic ran to a corner flag, dropped to his knees and repeatedly pumped his fists.

Sadio Mané scored twice following American mistakes, extending his Senegal record with 54 international goals. He beat goalkeeper Matt Turner at the far post in the 44th off a Habib Diarra pass that followed Antonee Robinson’s giveaway, then tapped the ball into the net in the 52nd after Nicolas Jackson had lifted it over onrushing goalkeeper Chris Brady.

Brady entered among 10 U.S. changes at the start of the second half in his international debut.

Balogun, another second-half sub, had a goal disallowed for offside in the 49th, then got his ninth international goal in the 63rd after Tim Weah’s cross deflected off a foot of Moustapha Mbow.

The No. 16 U.S. plays 10th-ranked Germany on June 6, six days before the Americans open the tournament against Paraguay. No. 14 Senegal faces Saudi Arabia in a June 9 friendly and start against France on June 16.

The American starting lineup averaged 44 international appearances, the team’s highest since the October 2017 loss at Trinidad and Tobago that ended the U.S. streak of seven straight World Cup appearances, according to Opta.

Turner, the American starting goalkeeper at the 2022 World Cup, made just his second U.S. appearance since a 4-0 loss to Switzerland last June.

In the absence of Chris Richards, sidelined by an ankle injury, the U.S. started Alex Freeman, Mark McKenzie and captain Tim Ream in a three center back formation. Gio Reyna made his first start for club or country since Dec. 19.

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AP World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

Soo Bin Joo, the 22-year-old South Korean going for her first LPGA Tour title, lost her four-shot lead at the turn and then fell behind for good on the 13th hole, the same hole where earlier Boutier had taken the lead with a 30-foot birdie putt.

Joo missed another fairway to the right into a clumpy lie, pitched back to the fairway, sent her wedge over the green with a front pin, chipped 8 feet by the hole and missed the putt, taking a double bogey to fall three shots behind.

Boutier kept hitting solid shots, rarely getting in trouble. She missed a 4-foot birdie putt on the final hole to post at 9-under 204, and no one could catch her.

“To have a chance to win today is definitely something very special,” said Boutier, the 32-year-old French player who won the ShopRite LPGA five years ago. “I think it’s great tournament, very special for me, so really excited to be able to have another win here.”

Yubol, who was penalized one shot in the second round Saturday for going over her maximum time, birdied the last two holes for a 66. It was her second runner-up finish of the year, having finished four shots behind Nelly Korda in Mexico.

Lauren Walsh (67) finished third, followed by Joo among four players who tied for fourth.

“It was so fun. It was my first time leading the tournament, and I think I did my best out there as much as I can and I prepared well and I'm very proud of myself,” Joo said. “I was trying to do my best to stay mentally calm, and I think I still got to work on that a little more.”

Chizzy Iwai, who also started four shots behind, had two birdies in three holes, but then closed with 15 straight pars.

Boutier finished the front nine with two straight birdies to reach 7 under, and that gave her a share of the lead when Joo made bogey on the par-4 eighth. Boutier then hit her approach to 4 feet for birdie on 10th. Joo caught her with a birdie on the ninth but couldn't keep up the rest of the way.

The ShopRite LPGA is one of two 54-hole events on the schedule, and the field was particularly weak this year — one player from the top 10 — because of timing. The U.S. Women's Open is next week across the country in Los Angeles, held at Riviera for the first time.

Boutier now has seven career LPGA title and 12 worldwide. She has struggled to start this year, with a tie for ninth her best finish among 10 tournaments.

“I feel like my game has turned around the last few weeks. I could see it coming together, and I definitely did not expect it to come together this week and today,” she said. “But I’m super excited to be back in the winner’s circle.”

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

And the Oklahoma City Thunder spent Day 1 of the offseason making clear that they support him.

If the ballyhooed matchup in the West finals was Holmgren vs. San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama, then it was a one-sided one. Wembanyama had the superior numbers in the series and the Spurs wound up prevailing, while Holmgren was barely a factor offensively with the Thunder season on the line Saturday night.

"Every minute Chet Holmgren’s been on the team, we’ve been the 1 seed in the Western Conference," Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said Sunday, when the team gathered for end-of-season meetings. “And it wasn’t the case before Chet was healthy.”

Holmgren had likely his best season, with career-highs of 17.1 points and 8.9 rebounds per game. He made All-NBA for the first time, All-Defensive for the first time as well, got his first All-Star nod, plus was second in the Defensive Player of the Year balloting.

He finished second in that voting behind Wembanyama — just like he did for Rookie of the Year in 2024, and just like the Thunder did in these West finals.

“We need Chet. We need Chet Holmgren,” Thunder guard and back-to-back reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said. “Before Chet was here, we weren’t who we are today. We didn’t have the success we had today. When he’s the best version of himself, we’re the best version of ourselves and it’s no secret.”

It's easy to envision the West finals matchup — Thunder vs. Spurs — becoming a rivalry for years to come. Both teams have young, obviously highly talented corps, and now they have the ingredient that all rivalries truly need, that being a playoff matchup, to help provide fuel.

“I definitely think that they’re different in terms of I don’t think there’s another team that has their play style, their personnel,” Holmgren said. “They're unique in that way. You can’t just kind of play like a base normal, ‘this is what we kind of do on an average Tuesday night’ type of thing.”

And while the outside world might have looked at Holmgren as one of the reasons why Game 7 didn't go Oklahoma City's way, the rest of the Thunder disagreed.

Gilgeous-Alexander, for example, pointed to himself — and that was after he had a brilliant 35-point effort in the deciding game against San Antonio. He even went as far as to describe a second straight MVP season as “a failure.”

“I failed at my goal,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I didn’t achieve what I wanted to achieve, but through my experiences, I learned the most about myself and I make the greatest amount of increases I have in my career when I fail at my goal and don’t get what I want. And I look at this no different. I didn’t get where I wanted to go this season. There’s a reason for that. Now I have to look at that reason and try to make sure it never happens again.”

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

That wait is at 53 years and it can only end now by beating the Spurs again.

Nearly a week after clinching their first NBA Finals berth since 1999, the Knicks were at last able to practice Sunday while knowing who they were practicing for, after Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs knocked off Oklahoma City on Saturday night in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals.

“I mean, they’re a special team,” Knicks guard Deuce McBride said. “Obviously they have the Defensive Player of the Year, obviously a great organization and they’ve got a lot of great young guys, so we’re just excited for this matchup.”

It's the same one as the last time the Knicks were in the NBA Finals, when the Spurs beat them 27 years ago to leave New York without a title since 1973.

The Knicks believed they were going to have a good shot at ending the drought this year and got a test run at chasing a championship back in December, when they beat San Antonio in Las Vegas to win the NBA Cup.

The Knicks then passed on joining the Lakers and Milwaukee, the previous winners of the in-season tournament, in raising a banner at Madison Square Garden to acknowledge it. They aren't putting much stock in that victory six months later, knowing how different both teams are.

“Obviously there was good energy around that, but I don’t think that’s really going to be any equivalent to what the atmosphere or the energy is going to be like at their place, or obviously at the Garden," Knicks forward Josh Hart said.

"So technically that game didn’t happen, so I don’t think there’s anything that we can learn from,” Hart added, poking fun at the fact that the Cup final, an 83rd game for the two teams, doesn't count in the standings or statistics.

The teams split the two games that did matter, with San Antonio's victory on New Year's Eve starting a midseason spiral for a Knicks club that arrived with a 23-9 record. Then, after the Spurs went undefeated in February, New York snapped their 11-game winning streak with a 114-89 home victory on March 1.

Game 1 is Wednesday at San Antonio. More than Wembanyama and the Spurs, the Knicks' biggest problem might be their lack of playing rhythm.

Because they are rolling through the postseason with an 11-game winning streak, that will be just the 10th game in a 35-day span for the Knicks, starting with the April 30 clincher against Atlanta in Game 6 of the first round.

They then swept Philadelphia and had more than a week off before opening the Eastern Conference finals against Cleveland. Their inactivity clearly showed after that extended rest, as they were 4 for 23 on 3-pointers through three quarters and fell behind by 22 points early in the fourth before rallying to win in overtime.

“We understand what happened last time we had a layoff like this, so we’re just trying to be better than we were last time,” center Karl-Anthony Towns said.

That was the only trouble the Knicks had with the Cavaliers, easily taking the next three games and ending the series last Monday. They have outscored opponents by 262 points during the winning streak, the largest margin for any 11-game stretch in NBA history.

The Knicks don't expect anything so easy against the Spurs, whose victory in the 1999 matchup was their first of five NBA titles. New York coach Mike Brown was on the bench for one of them as an assistant to Gregg Popovich, and was the losing coach in another when the Spurs swept Cleveland in 2007.

“I got ties to San Antonio and you appreciate the people, you appreciate the journey and all that other stuff,” said Brown, who has family still living in San Antonio. “But at the end of the day, just like they want to beat you, you definitely want to beat them.”

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

El gobierno nicaragüense emitió el domingo un comunicado en el que informó que Rivera falleció por una infección bacteriana después de que su salud se deterioró tras un caso de COVID-19.

Activistas y organizaciones de derechos humanos de todo el mundo denunciaron su muerte y un comunicado que el gobierno difundió el sábado en el que lo llamaban “Hermano”, asegurando que estaban rezando por él.

“Se lo llevaron con vida y, después de negarse a decirle a su familia, a su abogado, al mundo, cualquier cosa sobre su paradero, entonces lo llaman hermano”, dijo Reed Brody, abogado estadounidense de derechos humanos y miembro de un grupo de expertos de la ONU sobre Nicaragua. “Un cinismo inconcebible por parte del gobierno para hacer parecer que estaban tratando de ayudarlo”, señaló.

Estados Unidos había pedido el viernes su liberación después de que el gobierno nicaragüense publicó fotos de Rivera mientras se encontraba hospitalizado en estado crítico.

El Centro Interamericano para la Asistencia Legal en Derechos Humanos, con sede en Argentina, también denunció la muerte de Rivera.

Los responsables de la muerte del legislador indígena “deberían rendir cuentas penalmente”, escribió en X.

Rivera lideraba al pueblo miskito, que vive a lo largo de la costa noreste de Nicaragua y lleva mucho tiempo peleando por conservar sus tierras.

Durante décadas, Rivera luchó contra el gobierno sandinista y ayudó a establecer la zona a lo largo de la costa noreste como una región autónoma. Es rica en oro, plata y otros recursos, y se considera una zona clave para la administración de los copresidentes Daniel Ortega y su esposa Rosario Murillo para atraer inversión extranjera.

La lucha de Rivera por la defensa de los pueblos indígenas de Nicaragua comenzó en la década de 1960. Después de oponerse al gobierno sandinista de Ortega a finales de la década de 1970, se exilió temporalmente en la vecina Costa Rica.

Más tarde regresó a Nicaragua, donde sobrevivió a un ataque de las fuerzas sandinistas que lo obligó nuevamente a buscar seguridad en otro país, esta vez en Colombia.

A finales de la década de 1980 fundó el grupo conocido como Yatama, la Organización de los Pueblos de la Madre Tierra. Desempeñó un papel clave para asegurar una autonomía limitada para los pueblos indígenas tras las negociaciones de paz con los sandinistas.

“Ha estado luchando de una forma u otra por sus derechos”, dijo Brody. “Luchó por la tierra, luchó por la autonomía”.

Los pueblos indígenas de Nicaragua operaron de manera autónoma hasta que fueron anexados en 1905.

“Desde entonces, han abogado por el reconocimiento de sus derechos y por el respeto de su identidad”, señaló un grupo de expertos de la ONU en un informe publicado en septiembre de 2024.

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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.

Also among the points of emphasis for referees and officials: a commitment to issuing red cards to any player who covers his mouth while talking to an opponent in a “confrontational situation," FIFA said.

“We are continuing on trying to achieve an objective, which is to eliminate from matches — as much as possible — the disruption of the tempo of the match," said Pierluigi Collina, FIFA chief refereeing officer and chair of the referees committee.

Other issues that referees will be mindful of during the tournament:

— If a player leaves the field of play after being angered by an official's decision, a red card can be issued.

— To speed up play, referees can institute a five-second visual countdown on goal kicks and throw-ins. If the goal kick is not taken before the end of that countdown, a corner kick will be awarded to the opposing team. If the throw-in is not executed by the end of the five-second count, a throw-in for the opponents will be the reward. It's along the same lines of the so-called eight-second goalkeeper rule that has been in place for some time to release the ball after making a save.

— Players getting subbed off must leave the field within 10 seconds, except for special situations such as ones involving injuries or a security issue.

— The protocol for Video Assistant Referee, or VAR, is being clarified in certain areas. VAR can be used to check when red cards are issued following a clearly incorrect second yellow card, or when cards are issued in the case of mistaken identity. Incorrectly awarded corner kicks can also be checked by VAR, FIFA said.

Players covering their mouth with a hand, arm or shirt will be given red cards if referees deem it not to be a friendly conversation, FIFA said. Conversations that are not confrontational but still have players shielding their mouths from public view will continue to be permitted without penalty.

“Confrontational ... a completely different story,” Collina said.

There has also been a clarification on VAR protocol “regarding clear offenses committed by the attacking team before the ball is in play at a corner kick or free kick” that directly impacts goals, penalty kicks or sanctions.

VAR can be used in those moments and “if the referee determines that an offense occurred before the ball was in play, the appropriate disciplinary action will be taken.”

But all the emphasis on speedy play won't necessarily mean quicker matches. There will be three-minute water breaks midway through each half of every match, FIFA said.

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AP World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

The Nicaraguan government issued a statement Sunday saying that Rivera died from a bacterial infection after his health had declined following a case of COVID-19, which led to his physical and neurological deterioration.

Human rights activists and groups worldwide denounced his death and an earlier statement by the government in which they referred to Rivera as “Brother” and said they were praying for him.

“They took him alive, and after refusing to tell his family, his lawyer, the world anything about his fate, then they call him brother,” said Reed Brody, an American human rights lawyer and member of a group of U.N. experts on Nicaragua. “Unconscionable cynicism on the part of the government to make it seem like they were trying to help him.”

The U.S. had called for his release on Friday after the Nicaraguan government published photos of him in the hospital in critical condition.

“This is just complete neglect,” said Manuel Orozco, director of the migration, remittances and development program at the Inter-American Dialogue. “His death represents the magnitude of repression."

The Argentina-based Inter-American Center for Legal Assistance in Human Rights also denounced Rivera’s death. Those responsible for the death of the Indigenous lawmaker "should be held criminally accountable,” it wrote on X.

Albert R. Ramdin, secretary general of the Organization of American States, said he was “deeply concerned” about reports of Rivera's death.

“His death demands an immediate, independent, and transparent investigation,” Ramdin wrote Sunday on X. “The rights to life, personal integrity, and due process must be guaranteed. My condolences to his family and the Miskito people. We continue to demand the unconditional release of all political prisoners unjustly detained by the Nicaraguan regime.”

A fight for land and autonomy

Rivera led the Miskito people, who live along Nicaragua’s northeast coast and have long fought to retain their lands.

For decades, he fought the ruling Sandinista government and helped establish the area along the northeast coast as an autonomous region. It is rich in gold, silver and other resources, and it is considered a key area for the administration of co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo to attract foreign investment.

Rivera’s fight for Nicaragua’s Indigenous people began in the 1960s. After opposing Ortega’s Sandinista’s government in the late 1970s, he temporarily went into exile in nearby Costa Rica in 1980.

He later returned to Nicaragua, where he survived an attack by Sandinista forces, forcing him once again to seek safety elsewhere, this time, in Colombia.

In the late 1980s, he founded the group known as Yatama, the Organization of the Peoples of Mother Earth. It played a key role in securing limited autonomy for Indigenous people following peace negotiations with the Sandinistas.

“He has been fighting in one way or another for their rights,” Brody said. “He fought for land, he fought for autonomy.”

Nicaragua’s Indigenous people operated autonomously until they were annexed into the country in 1905.

“Since then, they have advocated for the recognition of their rights and for respect for their identity,” stated a September 2024 report published by the group of U.N. experts.

First official sign of life since the 2023 arrest

In April 2023, Rivera traveled to Geneva to participate in a U.N. forum on Indigenous people, where he spoke out against the Nicaraguan government.

Shortly afterward, Ortega and Murillo banned him from returning to the country, but he slipped in anyway and lived in hiding until September 2023, when he was arrested and accused of terrorism.

“Nobody heard from him since then,” Brody said in a phone interview, adding that he and other U.N. experts wrote the government requesting that it provide some sign of life. “The government never gave any indication. He was a disappeared person.”

It wasn’t until late last week that the government published pictures of Rivera in the hospital.

Rivera was not only respected by his supporters, but by political opponents as well, Orozco said in a phone interview, noting he had known Rivera for decades.

“It’s disheartening how this dynasty is just getting rid of people, back and forth, left and right and getting away with it," he said.

Ever since his arrest and that of his second-in-command, Rivera’s party has gone into hiding, Orozco said.

“This is a big blow,” he said. “They have been basically dispersed, not organized. They keep a certain level of communication, of political engagement underground, but mostly with people in the exile.”

Condolences for Rivera poured in online, with one person writing on Facebook: "He was a father to our generation; he taught us, guided us, and led us with actions, not words."

Brody noted that the U.N. group of experts has documented 124 cases of arbitrary detention of Indigenous people in Nicaragua since 2018, and 46 deaths following violence incidents.

He noted that at least six political prisoners have died in custody since 2019, including two last August.

“Brooklyn Rivera spent 40 years fighting for his people,” he said, “and hopefully the international community will finally pay attention.”

The question, a few minutes after he and the San Antonio Spurs won the Western Conference title and earned the right to go to this year's NBA Finals to face the New York Knicks, was about his relationship with former coach Gregg Popovich and what this playoff run likely means to the winningest coach in league history.

And Wembanyama paused, clearly emotional, before starting his answer.

“I don’t know what it means for him,” Wembanyama said. “That’s a guy who’s got more experience as a coach than almost anybody and has been through so many things in his career and so many things right now as ‘El Jefe.’ He goes through some things we can’t even imagine. So, I need to call him. I need to see him. I need to talk to him because there’s no way I can understand right now how he feels.”

The official title for the 77-year-old Popovich is President of Spurs Basketball. Unofficially, the Basketball Hall of Famer may as well be coach emeritus — still regularly seen at practices in San Antonio, still seen at games, sometimes walking with the assistance of a cane. He's still in the ears of players and coaches, even visiting the locker room after the Spurs lost Game 3 of the West finals to Oklahoma City for a bit of a pep talk and bit of a chewing out, depending on perspective.

But really, he's El Jefe. The boss. It's what he announced himself as when he retired last year, speaking publicly for the first time since the November 2024 stroke that essentially ended his coaching career and led to Mitch Johnson getting the job on basically a couple hours' notice. He came out for that event in a jacket, then opened it to display the shirt with “El Jefe” on the front.

“You talk about the greatest coach pretty much of all time to be able to sit here and tell you the experiences that they went through or that he’s been through or that he sees," Spurs guard Devin Vassell said. “I mean, it’s second to none, honestly. He helps out. He helps out a lot. ... He just has so much wisdom and stuff that you can’t take for granted.”

Game 1 of the Knicks-Spurs series is Wednesday in San Antonio.

Knicks coach Mike Brown saw first-hand how Popovich operated the Spurs; he spent three years as an assistant coach under him in San Antonio.

Brown still has family members living in San Antonio — causing him to joke a few days ago that a Knicks-Spurs matchup in the NBA Finals would save him a little bit of money because he wouldn't have to fly as many people in to see games.

“He still has a huge presence. He will always have a presence," Brown said of Popovich. “The job that he’s done, not only on the court with that team or that organization but off the court too, is going to be imprinted for as long as the game of basketball exists. His presence is very, very much felt all the time and I’ve got a lot of respect for the organization for a lot of different reasons.”

And Popovich still commands that respect, even now.

Popovich met the Spurs at the airport after they flew home from Games 3 and 4 of their West semifinal series against Minnesota a couple weeks ago — for a purpose. Wembanyama was ejected from Game 4 for a flagrant elbow he threw at Timberwolves forward Naz Reid. When Wembanyama got off the plane, Popovich was waiting. Cameras caught the exchange and it was pretty clear that Popovich was doing the talking and Wembanyama was doing the listening.

“He gives feedback and talks to us regularly,” Wembanyama said, without disclosing what Popovich's message was that afternoon.

Popovich was also at the airport in the wee hours of Sunday morning, when the Spurs returned home from Oklahoma City — on a night in which thousands of fans, both there and in the city's streets, celebrated the win.

Popovich won five NBA championships as San Antonio's coach, the first of those coming in 1999 when the Spurs beat the Knicks. The next era of Spurs basketball is here, with Johnson coaching, and it's an interesting coincidence that his first finals as Spurs coach is against the Knicks.

“I’m fortunate my old boss is still around, and has been through this a few times,” Johnson said. “Coach Pop has been a resource.”

And in the immediate aftermath of his biggest win yet — the one that got him to his first of what he hopes is many NBA Finals — Wembanyama simply could not wait to talk to El Jefe.

When I talk to him, it’s going to be only stored in my head — except if I record it in secret," Wembanyama said. “But I need to talk to him, so quick.”

There are more lessons to learn. There are four more wins to get. And Wembanyama knows that if anyone truly knows the way to those wins, it's Popovich.

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AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney in Greenburgh, New York, contributed.

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

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Exclusive surveillance footage shows two people pulling up to a home, loading a large package into the trunk of a gray Ford F-150 and driving away.

“Why do you need to steal from somebody else in broad daylight in the middle of the week, when people are coming home especially. No fear at that point,” said Zoe Lazcano.

Lazcano has been a swimwear designer for more than a decade. Her brand, Zoe All Over, has tens of thousands of followers on Instagram. She sells bikinis and swim trunks with designs she creates herself.

“I only make 50 of everything and I don’t restock anything so it’s very exclusive and they’re all designed by me,” Lazcano said.

Lazcano said she had been waiting months for a bulk order that arrived around 2:30 p.m. Friday, just in time for summer.

About two hours later, surveillance video shows a gray Ford F-150 pulling up and backing into her driveway.

Two people got out, walked up to the porch and took a large box containing dozens of items.

“It’s a big blow, delay. This is gonna set me back for months,” Lazcano said.

The thieves also took another package.

“There was a small box which happened to be a case of Celsius. That they also took,” she said with a laugh.

The theft happened in a neighborhood near the intersection of Davie Boulevard and State Road 7.

One of the suspects is seen wearing a scarf around their head, while the other appears to have their face covered.

“Definitely dressed in a way that they do this often to kind of cover up and not show too much skin,” Lazcano said.

Fort Lauderdale police confirmed they are investigating.

Lazcano said she plans to monitor whether any of the stolen merchandise is resold online. She hopes someone recognizes the people seen in the video.

“That would be a miracle. But I also really wanna hold these people accountable cause now it’s like a safety concern, now I’m wondering, are they casing my neighborhood?” she said.

Anyone with information or who recognizes the people in the surveillance footage is asked to contact Fort Lauderdale police.

Para quienes planean asistir a los partidos en el Hard Rock Stadium en Miami Gardens, es importante tener el plan de estacionamiento listo con anticipación.

Según la FIFA, todo el estacionamiento debe adquirirse a través de su plataforma oficial, y los pases de estacionamiento solo pueden comprarse hasta 24 horas antes del inicio de cada partido.

La FIFA subrayó que no habrá estacionamiento disponible para la venta el día de los partidos.

Además, quienes compren pases de estacionamiento deben usar la dirección de correo electrónico asociada a la compra de sus boletos en el sitio web oficial de la FIFA.

Los aficionados que estacionen en los partidos deberán presentar su boleto del partido y su pase de estacionamiento antes de que se les permita el acceso a los terrenos del estadio. En el Hard Rock Stadium, los aficionados deben imprimir su pase de estacionamiento y colocarlo en el parabrisas para acceder a las vías alrededor del estadio.

Para más información sobre cómo asistir a los partidos de la Copa Mundial, consulte la guía oficial de día de partido de la FIFA para el sur de Florida.

Roland Garros organizers have been criticized for scheduling only men’s matches under the lights in recent years, with organizers saying they are under pressure from TV broadcasters and that women’s best-of-three set matches are too short compared to the best-of-five format for men.

It will be only the fifth women’s match in the five years since the night sessions were introduced in Paris.

The last women’s match at night also involved Sabalenka, when she beat Sloane Stephens in 2023.

“YOLO,” Osaka said when asked on Saturday if her match against Sabalenka deserved to be held at night, using the abbreviation for “You only live once.”

Osaka has been putting on a fashion show for her walk-ons before each match of the tournament.

Sabalenka leads 2-1 in career meetings with Osaka, who has reached the fourth round in Paris for the first time.

“I’m just ready for the fight,” Sabalenka said. “It’s great to see her back on her level. … I really enjoy our battles. It’s high-level matches, and I really enjoy when somebody push me to the limit.”

The match is scheduled to start at 8:15 p.m. local time.

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

El incidente ocurrió alrededor de las 3:56 a.m. del domingo cerca de un restaurante IHOP ubicado en el bloque 18860 de S. Dixie Highway.

Según la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade, los agentes que respondieron al lugar encontraron a un hombre y una mujer que habían sido baleados.

Ambos fueron trasladados por Miami-Dade Fire Rescue al Jackson South Medical Center en condición crítica.

Tras la investigación, los agentes dijeron que el hombre había tenido una discusión verbal con un sujeto desconocido, quien terminó disparándole a ambas víctimas.

El MDSO no ha indicado si busca a algún sospechoso o persona de interés.

Cualquier persona con información puede comunicarse con Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers al 305-471-TIPS.

The 11-hour flight covering more than 5,500 miles from Ezeiza International Airport touched down in Missouri just after 11 a.m. local time. The flight number for the Aerolineas Argentinas charter was 1978, an homage to the 1978 World Cup that Argentina won as the host nation over the Netherlands before more than 71,000 fans at River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires.

The plane itself, an Airbus A330, also celebrated the Argentine squad with special livery. The No. 10 of Lionel Messi was featured on the tail amid the national team's iconic blue and white stripes, while three gold stars represented its three World Cup titles.

Argentina is the first of four national teams making their World Cup home base in the Kansas City metro to arrive.

The Netherlands, England and Algeria — which will be at the University of Kansas in nearby Lawrence — are due to arrive this week.

Most of the Argentina squad arrived on its charter, though some players will arrive from clubs elsewhere in the world. After stepping off the plane, players and staff walked across the tarmac to waiting charter buses for the trip to the team hotel.

Messi and Co. will be staying at the Origin Hotel near downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Fences have been built around the property and extra security provided for the team, while inside the relatively new hotel, signage, posters and other nods to the team known as La Albiceleste are ever-present, including huge images of some of the team's biggest stars on the outside of the building.

The team planned to spend Sunday doing light training in the hotel gym while awaiting the arrival of the rest of its players. Its first full workout is set for Monday at the Compass Minerals National Performance Center, the home of MLS club Sporting Kansas City.

Argentina plays Honduras in a friendly on Saturday at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas, the home of Texas A&M. Its final tuneup is three days later against Iceland at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Alabama, the home of another SEC football team, Auburn.

Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni revealed his 26-man World Cup roster on Thursday. It is headlined by Messi, who turns 39 in less than a month, and features 17 players that were part of the team that triumphed four years ago against France in the final in Qatar.

Several players were in doubt because of injuries of varying severity ahead of the June 1 deadline set by FIFA for finalizing all World Cup squads. Among them was Messi, who is suffering from muscle fatigue and a mild strain in his left hamstring.

The club has said that his recovery time will depend on “his clinical and functional progress.” Messi will be playing in his sixth World Cup, having previously participated in Germany, South Africa, Brazil, Russia and Qatar.

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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup.

Vingegaard, who rides for Team Visma-Lease a Bike, ended the three-week race with an overall advantage of 5 minutes, 22 seconds over second-place Felix Gall. Jai Hindley finished third, 6:25 behind.

Vingegaard won the Tour de France in 2022 and ’23 and last year clinched his first Spanish Vuelta title. It was his first Giro.

“It’s amazing. It’s something I’ve dreamt of my whole life and to now be able to do it, it’s something special,” an emotional Vingegaard said in his first interview as Giro winner. "I’m lost for words.

“It was a really special day, with so many people on the side of the road, so many spectators, it was really incredible. To get the honor to wear the maglia rosa in the streets of Rome is something special. With these last three weeks, it’s just such a nice way to end this race.”

After crossing the line in Rome, the 29-year-old Vingegaard embraced his wife and two children, who were wearing replicas of his maglia rosa — the leader's pink jersey.

“Yeah, that’s even nicer, it also gives me tears in my eyes, they’re always there for me,” said Vingegaard, who has celebrated his five stage wins at the Giro by kissing the photo of his family that is on the handlebar of his bicycle, before kissing his wedding ring.

Vingegaard also carried his children with him to the podium, where he was presented with the Trofeo Senza Fine (Trophy With No End).

Having dominated his first Giro — living up to his billing as pre-race favorite — Vingegaard will turn his attention to the Tour de France as he attempts to become the ninth man to complete the Giro-Tour double in the same year.

However, there he will face cycling’s top talent Tadej Pogacar. The Slovenian, who skipped the Giro to focus on adding to his four Tour titles, became the first man in 26 years to do the Giro-Tour double when he achieved the feat in 2024.

Sunday's largely processional final Giro stage, that ended with eight laps through Rome, was won by sprint specialist Jonathan Milan.

The 131-kilometer route started in Rome and then went out the sea before returning to the Italian capital for the finishing circuit.

So relaxed were the riders that they were all seen sharing a box of sweets as they started the stage, before also being given glasses of Prosecco. They also all posed for team photos during the ride out to the sea.

Milan, who had seen other bids for stage wins end in disappointment earlier in the race, finally got his victory. The Italian edged out compatriot Giovanni Lonardi and French cyclist Paul Penhoët in a bunch sprint.

“I’m super happy to end this Giro in this way,” Milan said. “It’s beautiful. After three weeks that we were looking for this, winning the last stage in Rome means that we were keeping the head there, we never give up, we always keep fighting for the victory, we were always believing in it, we always believe in each other.”

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

The Buffalo Sabres' Konsta Helenius scored the gold-winning goal 10:42 into overtime. The 20-year-old Helenius netted from the right circle, beating Switzerland goaltender Leonardo Genoni with his team's 28th shot on goal.

Finland netminder Justus Annunen shut out Switzerland with 22 saves.

“We have a strong culture, you leave your ego outside the locker room, and that’s why it’s so awesome to come and play for Finland,” defenseman Olli Maatta said.

Finland also won in 1995, 2011, 2019 and 2022.

Switzerland wasted a two-minute, 5-on-3 advantage that started six seconds before the end of the opening period.

The final was a rematch of the two teams from their last group stage game, which the Swiss won 4-2.

That was the only loss for the Finns, who finished second in their preliminary group behind the Swiss. They went on to eliminate the Czechs 4-1 in the quarterfinals and upset tournament favorite Canada 4-2 in the semifinals.

Finland was led by captain Aleksander Barkov, who missed the entirety of the Florida Panthers’ season because of a major knee injury suffered 20 minutes into his first practice of training camp. The tournament was his first action in competitive games since the Panthers won their second consecutive Stanley Cup last June.

Barkov powered the Finns with three goals and eight assists from 10 games at the worlds.

Swiss disappointment

After finishing runner-up in the previous two years, host Switzerland hoped for more this time in front of its home crowd in Zurich.

Home fans clapped, chanted and cheered tirelessly throughout the tournament.

“It’s a huge disappointment, but, it’s hockey,” Switzerland forward Denis Malgin said. “It was a 0-0 game. We had our chances, and in OT it can go either way.”

Switzerland failed to score a single goal in the three finals.

The Swiss lost to the Czechs 2-0 in 2024, and were defeated by the U.S. 1-0 in overtime last year. They also finished second in 2018 and 2013 when they were defeated by rival Sweden.

Switzerland also finished second back in 1935.

No medal for Canada

Norway stunned Canada 3-2 in overtime of the bronze medal game to capture its first ice hockey world championship medal.

Noah Steen scored the winner 3:32 into overtime. The previous best result for Norway was a fourth-place finish in 1951.

In a wild ending, Canada was 2-0 down when it pulled netminder Jet Greaves. Robert Thomas then scored from the slot to reduce the deficit with 1:16 remaining in the final period with an unassisted goal.

With eight seconds to go, captain Macklin Celebrini and Ryan O’Reilly set up Thomas for his second to tie it at 2-2, forcing overtime.

Earlier, Emilio Pettersen gave Norway a 1-0 lead in the opening period and Stian Solberg added another with a deflected shot in the second. Goaltender Henrik Haukeland stopped 44 shots.

Greaves made 21 saves for Canada.

The Canadians have come up short at the worlds since they won their last and record 28th title in 2023.

They finished fourth in 2024 and were stunned 2-1 by Denmark in the quarterfinals last year.

The worlds ended in disappointment for Canada again this year despite a lineup that included teenage sensation Celebrini as captain and NHL great Sidney Crosby in addition to several established NHL stars, including O’Reilly, John Tavares and Mark Scheifele.

Canada managed to win all of its group games, including a 6-5 victory over Norway in overtime, and eliminated defending champion U.S. in the quarterfinals.

But Finland, led by Barkov, proved too good in the semifinals.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

The full episode can be seen at the top of this page.

He joined host Glenna Milberg on the latest episode of “This Week in South Florida”, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

Bengaluru reached 161-5 in 18 overs after winning the toss and restricting Gujarat to 155-8 in its 20 overs.

Kohli smashed nine fours and three sixes in his 42-ball 75 not out. It was his sixth 50-plus score of the season and, along with Venkatesh Iyer’s 32 runs off 16 balls, helped Bengaluru make quick work of an under-par target.

“It is the stuff you dream of. I have thought of this moment many times, to win the IPL and stand here (unbeaten in the chase)," Kohli said. "The kind of team we have, it gives you confidence to face any situation. There is enough depth in our side. We had clarity – Venkatesh (Iyer) and I wanted to finish off the chase in the powerplay itself.”

With its first title in 2025, Bengaluru became only the third side to win successive IPL titles. Chennai Super Kings (2010 and 2011) and Mumbai Indians (2019 and 2020) previously achieved this feat.

Kohli finished with 675 runs in 16 matches, while Bhuvneshwar Kumar picked up 28 wickets this season.

Kumar took 2-29 on Sunday, sharing four wickets with Josh Hazlewood (2-37), and restricted Gujarat at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

Washington Sundar finished on 50 not out, hitting five fours in his 37-ball innings. No other Gujarat batter topped 20. Medium pacer Rasikh Salam Dar took 3-27 in his four overs.

Gujarat’s Kagiso Rabada was the season’s highest wicket-taker – 29 in 17 matches.

Rajasthan Royals’ 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryanshi was the highest run-getter with 776 runs in 16 innings at a strike rate of 237.

Bengaluru pacers strike hard before Kohli’s chase

Gujarat never really gained any batting momentum and was down to 99-5 at the start of the 15th over. Openers Sai Sudharsan (12) and Shubman Gill (10) were out cheaply.

Krunal Pandya had Jos Buttler (19) stumped and, despite Sundar’s knock, the Titans didn't look comfortable.

Iyer hit two sixes and four fours in his rapid 32 for Bengaluru. Kohli and Iyer contributed 62 off 27 balls for the opening wicket.

Kohli got his half-century off 25 balls, his quickest in the IPL, and he finished the match in style with a six against Arshad Khan – a year after Bengaluru had won the title at the same venue.

The final was a rematch of the first playoff on Tuesday when Bengaluru beat Gujarat by 92 runs in Dharamsala. Gujarat won the IPL in 2022.

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

Jacob Daniel Baker was charged with counts of first- and second-degree murder Saturday, the Hawaii Police Department said in a news release.

Baker remained jailed without bond Sunday and police said his first court appearance was scheduled for Monday. It was not immediately known if Baker had an attorney who could speak for him.

Charges in the killings came two days after police apprehended Baker following a manhunt on Hawaii's Big Island, where the three victims were found in the rural Puna community known for its tropical landscape and free-spirited residents.

Robert Shine, 69, was found dead Monday partially submerged in a cement pond, according to police. The second victim, a 79-year-old man, was discovered Tuesday a few hundred feet away. Friends identified him as Chitta Morse.

Police found the third victim, 69-year-old John Carse, late Tuesday at a property 19 miles (31 kilometers) from where the other two bodies were located.

Police have not given a suspected motive for the killings. Hawaii Police Chief Reed Mahuna has said investigators found no connections among the victims other than that two of them lived near each other.

In addition to the murder charges, Baker also faces counts of burglary, auto theft and criminal damage to property.

The killings left residents on edge in Puna, a community set amid lush jungle and barren lava fields where people seeking to live off-grid commonly trade work for lodging.

Puna resident Stephen Shaffer said that Baker had worked for his ex-wife, climbing coconut trees on land where she grows fruit, in exchange for a place to live. After several months, Shaffer said, his ex-wife sought a restraining order against Baker, saying she felt threatened by him.

Donald Hyatt, a friend of Shaffer's ex-wife and of two of the men killed, said Baker left the cabin where he had been living months ago. Hyatt said that Baker recently returned claiming “squatter's rights” and threatened Shaffer's ex.

Just days before the killings, two women had requested temporary restraining orders against Baker, saying he had threatened and harassed them, according to court records. A judge denied both applications, saying there was not enough proof of harassment.

Court records showed Baker named in 20 other cases in the past two decades, many of them traffic infractions. In most of those cases, Baker had no attorney and represented himself.

He joined host Glenna Milberg on the latest episode of “This Week in South Florida”, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

The flight departed around 6 p.m. for Palma de Mallorca, Spain, but landed back at Newark at 9:37 p.m., according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The airline said there were 190 passengers and 12 crew members on board the Boeing 767 aircraft.

According to air traffic control audio, security came to inspect the aircraft after someone named their Bluetooth device a “certain four-letter word.” A passenger posting on social media said crew members repeatedly asked passengers to turn off all Bluetooth devices, but two devices remained on. The flight turned around after communicating with the airline’s headquarters in Chicago.

Passengers had to evacuate as the aircraft was swept by Port Authority police, and passengers were rescreened by TSA and Customs and Border Patrol before reboarding. The airline declined to provide specifics on the cause of the incident.

Passengers boarded a replacement flight with a new crew, which took off early Sunday morning and landed in Palma in the afternoon.

This was the latest incident with a United Airlines flight this month. On Friday, a domestic flight was diverted because of a security concern with an unruly passenger. Earlier this month, a United flight landing at Newark airport struck a semitrailer truck and a light pole, though no one was injured.

They joined host Glenna Milberg on the latest episode of “This Week in South Florida”, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

He joined host Glenna Milberg on the latest episode of “This Week in South Florida”, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

The curfew around Delaney Hall will be in place between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. until further notice, Mayor Ras Baraka said in a statement.

The move came after another night of standoffs between law enforcement and demonstrators at the facility, as protesters could be seen in photographs and videos fighting over barricades as police used riot shields to push them back. A video posted on social media showed police on horseback marching into crowds attempting to break up groups of protesters.

The high-profile demonstrations at Delaney Hall began earlier this month after advocates said detainees inside launched a hunger strike over poor living conditions at the 1,000-bed facility, the latest hotbed of opposition over the federal government's immigration crackdown.

New Jersey state police on Friday relieved federal immigration enforcement agents who had been facing off against protesters at the facility for days.

In a statement Sunday morning, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said masked individuals attacked a barrier in a designated protest area set up by state police and were “throwing projectiles, utilizing the barriers as weapons, and lighting tires on fire in the street.”

“These actions put both peaceful protestors and law enforcement in danger,” Sherrill said, urging calm to focus on advocating for “better conditions for the detainees, for their families, and ultimately, for the closure of Delaney Hall.”

Sherrill also said that the federal government has reopened family visits at Delaney Hall starting Sunday.

Asked about visitations resuming, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security provided a statement that said “To be clear: Visitation was only suspended because of violent riots. Now that we have a secure perimeter, visitation can resume.”

The ministry identified him as 26-year-old Imad Haroun Ishtayeh from the village of Salem, east of Nablus. It said Israeli forces shot him in a thigh in al-Ram town, and he was pronounced dead at the Palestinian Medical Complex in Ramallah.

Footage circulating online showed people carrying his body and climbing down a ladder that had been placed against the wire-topped barrier, while traffic continued to roll by and a horn blared.

Israeli police said the man tried to unlawfully enter Israel by crossing the barrier.

Ishtayeh was attempting to cross from the West Bank to Israel. Many people have been shot trying to cross the barrier, including a 44-year-old father who was killed earlier this month.

Ishtayeh previously ran a poultry slaughterhouse in his home village of Salem, financially supporting his ill father. But business deteriorated as an economic crisis hit the West Bank and he decided to cross into Israel in search of a job, a relative, Nasser Ishtayeh, told The Associated Press.

On his first attempt on Saturday, Israeli security was tight, the relative said. After spending the night with other Palestinians hoping to cross into Israel, Haroun Ishtayeh tried again on Sunday morning and was shot.

“He was directly shot with live bullets and died at the hospital,” Nasser Ishtayeh said.

An increasing number of Palestinians from the West Bank have tried to enter Israel illegally to work in recent years. Tens of thousands of Palestinians had held Israeli work permits, but access was sharply restricted after the attack by Hamas-led militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparked the war in Gaza.

Since then, unemployment in the West Bank has surged amid an economic slowdown. And around 50 workers have been killed by Israeli fire, with over 38,000 arrested though many were later released, the Palestinian official WAFA news agency reported Sunday, citing the General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions.

2 are killed in Gaza and 2 are hurt in a West Bank ramming

Two Palestinians were killed and at least 10 injured when a group of people was struck near the port in Gaza City, according to Shifa hospital, which received the casualties. There was no immediate comment from Israel's military.

A fragile ceasefire remains in place between Israel and the militant Palestinian Hamas group in Gaza.

And in the West Bank, emergency responders said a 17-year-old Israeli girl was in serious condition and a 15-year-old teen also was hurt in what police described as a ramming attack near a bus stop at Gush Etzion Junction.

Israel's military said a soldier “eliminated the terrorist on site.” It also said a third Israeli civilian was hurt.

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A previous version of this story corrected the spelling of the village of Salem.

Platner, an oyster farmer and combat veteran, posted a video taken by his wife, Amy Gertner, who reportedly told his campaign of the text messages last year. In the five-minute video, Gertner avoided speaking directly about her husband's reported texts, dubbing the broader coverage as “gossip" and saying that “being married is hard.”

“I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip,” she said in the informal, selfie-style video where she walked along a road. “No marriage is perfect, and I don't want a perfect marriage. I want my marriage.”

Platner is seeking the Democratic nomination for one of the most closely watched Senate races as Democrats hope to defeat longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the party's efforts to win control of the narrowly divided Senate. The Maine primary is June 9.

Genevieve McDonald, a then-campaign staffer for Platner, told the The Associated Press that the candidate was “sexting multiple women while married" and that “the campaign tried to assess that as an election vulnerability.”

Platner told reporters Sunday that what McDonald had said wasn’t true. Asked if he was confirming that the text messages didn’t exist, Platner replied, “I’m confirming that what Genevieve McDonald said in The New York Times is not true.” Platner didn't provide any specifics. He was referring to a Times story that names McDonald Saturday, after The Wall Street Journal first reported the story.

Gertner had told the campaign in August about the messages, which she had discovered on his phone last year, to make sure they weren't a liability to the campaign, according to the Wall Street Journal. Platner's campaign team reportedly decided that the texts were private and being handled by the couple, who were married in 2023. The two are in counseling, Gertner has said.

Platner told reporters that he and Gertner spoke with the campaign about their marriage, but reiterated that McDonald’s claims were false.

Platner's campaign on Sunday did not specifically confirm the text messages to the AP, but issued a statement from Gertner saying the disclosure of the conversations she had with a campaign aide was a betrayal that “deeply hurt.”

“I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind," she wrote.

It's not Platner's first controversy

Platner, who has never held public office, has a gruff, less buttoned-up approach on the campaign trail, fashioned a platform around economic equality and has already had to navigate statements that surfaced from his past.

The candidate had a tattoo recognized as a Nazi symbol, which he said he didn't realize until he was several weeks into the campaign. There's also been much attention on his former Reddit posts, which were dismissive of military sexual assaults and used homophobic slurs, for which he has apologized.

Platner's campaign weathered those earlier revelations in what had been considered one of the most competitive Democratic primaries before Gov. Janet Mills dropped out of the race in late April due to a lack of campaign funds. Mills, a two-term governor, had been seen as one of the Democrats' top 2026 recruits when she entered the Senate race before her campaign fizzled out.

Platner has still pulled support from big-name Democrats, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Ruben Gallego as well as U.S. House Rep. Ro Khanna. The latter is scheduled to rally with Platner on Friday, and so far, it appears he hasn't lost any endorsements with this latest texting revelation.

Two Democratic senators on Sunday declined to directly address the topic when pressed by reporters. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told CBS' “Face the Nation” that Platner had served his country and community, but “also made mistakes and he has admitted that.”

On CNN’s “State of the Union," New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim sidestepped, too. “With any campaign in the country, the character and the transparency about the different candidates is going to come out,” said Kim, “and the voters are going to decide what they ultimately think."

Barreling forward Sunday, Platner posted a video on X from an event “happening now” where he entered a room to a standing ovation from ecstatic supporters.

Questions over whether additional controversial information about Platner could still surface have added to some Democrats' anxiety over his chances in a general election against Collins, who has represented Maine in the Senate since 1997.

In October, after the revelation that he once had a Totenkopf tattoo on his chest and promptly had it covered, the AP asked him if other scandals were on the horizon.

Platner said he was expecting his opponents were “going to keep dragging things up.”

“They’re going to keep making things up,” he said. “I fully expect people to just lie about me at this point.”

Voters are familiar with the couple's struggles, including with infertility and traveling out of the country to afford IVF treatment, which they've discussed on the campaign trail.

In late April, Platner shared that Gertner had suffered a miscarriage, and he’s discussed his own mental health struggles and the role of his family and therapist in helping.

Former aide explains why she went public

McDonald initially worked on Platner’s campaign as his political director and resigned a few months later when his now-deleted Reddit posts began surfacing, saying she couldn’t stand behind him as a candidate. She later declined a severance offer from the campaign in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement.

On Saturday, McDonald wrote on Facebook that Platner’s campaign had “demanded” she retract her statements she had made to The Wall Street Journal or his team would accuse her of violating the couple's trust. McDonald wasn’t named in the newspaper's article, but after that exchange, she said she made the choice to be publicly named in a New York Times story.

“His consultants greatly overestimate how much I do not aspire to be them,” she wrote on Facebook.

After resigning from Platner’s campaign, McDonald moved to help Democrat Jordan Wood’s congressional campaign in Maine’s second district. McDonald submitted her resignation from Wood’s campaign Saturday morning, according to Wood’s campaign.

Wood endorsed Platner after Mills dropped out.

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Bedayn reported from Austin, Texas and Kruesi reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

“Backrooms,” released by A24 in 3,442 locations in the U.S. and Canada, made an astonishing $81.5 million in its first three days in theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday. That’s just a few hundred thousand dollars shy of what “The Mandalorian and Grogu” earned in its first three days last weekend; And “Backrooms,” which was directed and co-written by YouTube creator Kane Parsons, cost only $10 million to produce.

The wild success of “Backrooms” didn’t even hurt “Obsession,” which is also the directorial debut of a YouTuber, Curry Barker, who is only 26. Three weekends in, “Obsession,” a movie that cost less than $1 million to make, still hasn’t dropped below its opening weekend earnings. This weekend, it was up 10% with another $26.4 million for a second-place finish, leaving Star Wars, the legacy franchise movie from the veteran filmmaker and the Walt Disney Studios, in third with $25 million.

YouTube might not be the death of movie theaters after all. If this weekend is any indication, it could be the industry’s new great hope.

This is a weekend where theaters also hosted the debuts of “The Breadwinner,” a PG-rated family comedy starring the popular comedian Nate Bargatze, and “Pressure,” a solid World War II drama about the tense 72 hours before D-Day with Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser. But it was the 20-something YouTubers that drew the most crowds. And both “Backrooms” and “Obsession” were produced by Blumhouse-Atomic Monster.

Abhijay Prakash, the president of Blumhouse-Atomic Monster said that the weekend is both staggering and validation of their business, which has from the beginning championed original horror movies that appeal to younger audiences, and generated over $10 billion in box office to date.

He noted that they’ve made a point of looking for up and coming talent on YouTube and, knowing how Hollywood works, this weekend likely inspire a wave of copycats. But beyond that, he’s encouraged by the fact that the young creators who’ve already had enormous success online still value the cultural currency of theatrical movies.

“It’s a great sign of relevance for us,” Prakash said. “With some distance, we’ll probably look back at this as a real turning point.”

“Backrooms” started as a creepypasta — an internet-generated urban legend — before Parsons turned the concept, about a never-ending expanse of dull, depressing rooms and hallways, into a viral web series, which he made with the help of the open-source 3D graphics software Blender. It caught the attention of James Wan and Shawn Levy’s production companies who were interested in taking it to the next level; Soon a movie was in development with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve starring.

It wasn’t just a domestic hit either; Including international showings, “Backrooms” has already made $118 million globally. A24 said Parsons is now the youngest director to have a No. 1 film globally. It’s also a record opening for the studio, whose previous high-water mark was “Civil War,” which opened to $25.5 million in 2024.

The R-rated film was well-reviewed by critics and drew a young and diverse crowd to theaters. According to exit polls, 86% of the audience was under 35, more than half were under 25 and 44% were under 21. Many attended in groups and there were reports of sold-out shows, packed theaters and repeat viewings. Audiences gave it a less-than-stellar B- CinemaScore, however.

But the buzz is still creating a frenzy of all ages, even teenagers, wanting to see “Backrooms.” Some theaters have even posted employees outside of the screens to make sure that anyone under 21 is accompanied by an adult. The same is true for the R-rated “Obsession," which has now made $104.7 million in North America, and is now Focus Features' highest grossing domestic release.

Luis Olloqui, the CEO of Cinépolis USA, which operates 26 theaters across the country — most of which are dine-in — said they’ve seen sellouts at many of their locations for both movies.

“We were a little worried that they would be competing for the same audience. It’s not the case,” Olloqui said. “It shows that when we have the right content, people from all ages are willing to go to the theater.”

“The Mandalorian and Grogu,” meanwhile, fell around 69% from its opening last weekend. The movie has now made $246.6 million globally.

“Michael” landed in fourth place with $11.7 million in its sixth weekend — the musical biopic has made $339.9 million domestically to date. “The Breadwinner,” released by Sony, rounded out the top five with an estimated $7.5 million. ”Pressure" opened in seventh place with $5.8 million.

Outside of the top 10 was the heist-romance “Tuner,” which expanded to 452 theaters in its second weekend, earning a solid $1.7 million.

“Everyone’s asking what’s the next big thing in Hollywood for movies, and what can bring people back to the movie theater? And this may be it,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketplace trends for Comscore.

Top 10 movies by domestic box office

With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

1. “Backrooms,” $81.5 million.

2. “Obsession,” $26.4 million.

3. “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” $25 million.

4. “Michael,” $11.7 million.

5. “The Breadwinner,” $7.5 million.

6. “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” $5.9 million.

7. “Pressure,” $5.8 million.

8. “The Sheep Detectives,” $4.6 million.

9. “Passenger,” $2.6 million.

10. “Mortal Kombat II,” $2 million.

Imágenes exclusivas de vigilancia muestran a dos personas llegando a una vivienda, cargando un paquete grande en el maletero de una Ford F-150 gris y alejándose.

“¿Por qué necesitas robarle a alguien en pleno día, en medio de la semana, cuando la gente está llegando a casa? Sin ningún miedo en ese momento”, dijo Zoe Lazcano.

Lazcano lleva más de una década como diseñadora de trajes de baño. Su marca, Zoe All Over, tiene decenas de miles de seguidores en Instagram. Vende bikinis y trajes de baño con diseños propios.

“Solo hago 50 de cada cosa y no repongo nada, así que es muy exclusivo y todo está diseñado por mí”, dijo Lazcano.

Lazcano dijo que había estado esperando meses un pedido al por mayor que llegó alrededor de las 2:30 p.m. del viernes, justo a tiempo para el verano.

Aproximadamente dos horas después, el video de vigilancia muestra una Ford F-150 gris llegando y retrocediendo hasta su entrada.

Dos personas bajaron, caminaron hasta el porche y tomaron una caja grande que contenía decenas de artículos.

“Es un golpe grande, un retraso. Esto me va a atrasar por meses”, dijo Lazcano.

Los ladrones también se llevaron otro paquete.

“Había una caja pequeña que resultó ser una caja de Celsius. Esa también se la llevaron”, dijo entre risas.

El robo ocurrió en un vecindario cerca de la intersección de Davie Boulevard y State Road 7.

Uno de los sospechosos aparece con una bufanda en la cabeza, mientras el otro parece tener el rostro cubierto.

“Definitivamente vestidos de una manera que sugiere que hacen esto seguido, para cubrirse y no mostrar mucho”, dijo Lazcano.

La policía de Fort Lauderdale confirmó que está investigando.

Lazcano dijo que planea monitorear si alguna de la mercancía robada aparece a la venta en línea. Espera que alguien reconozca a las personas en el video.

“Sería un milagro. Pero también quiero hacer responsables a estas personas porque ahora es una preocupación de seguridad. Ahora me pregunto, ¿están estudiando mi vecindario?”, dijo.

Cualquier persona con información o que reconozca a las personas en el video de vigilancia puede comunicarse con la policía de Fort Lauderdale.

Las cámaras de Local 10 News captaron a un equipo volteando la aeronave de Blue Sky Aviation tras el accidente.

“Poco después de despegar, sufrió una falla en el motor”, dijo el alcalde de Pembroke Pines, Angelo Castillo.

Alrededor de las 11:30 a.m. del viernes, la aeronave Cessna 172 cayó del cielo momentos después de salir del Aeropuerto North Perry.

“No tenía suficiente altitud, golpeó un árbol, cayó en una zanja aquí y se volcó”, dijo Castillo. “Fue algo bueno que ocurriera así porque iba directamente hacia un edificio donde viven pacientes que reciben atención de salud mental y médica”.

Sky 10 sobrevoló el lugar del accidente, mostrando la aeronave siniestrada severamente dañada y aparentemente partida en varias secciones. Tanto la piloto como la pasajera sobrevivieron.

“Este tipo de incidentes están ocurriendo una y otra vez, y ya estoy harto”, dijo Castillo.

La aeronave estuvo a punto de impactar un hospital estatal del sur de Florida.

El incidente está lejos de ser el primer accidente relacionado con el Aeropuerto North Perry, donde operan varias escuelas de aviación.

“En los últimos cinco años, hemos tenido más de 35 accidentes de aeronaves que despegaron del Aeropuerto North Perry”, dijo el abogado Zach Gorwitz.

El aparente aumento en el número de incidentes ha llevado a muchas personas a cuestionar la seguridad de las escuelas de vuelo.

“Estamos pidiendo al Condado Broward que haga lo necesario para que este lugar sea seguro. Si no pueden hacerlo seguro, entonces deben cerrarlo de una vez y trasladarlo a otro lugar donde esos aviones no representen una amenaza para las personas”, dijo Castillo.

El accidente continúa bajo investigación de la Junta Nacional de Seguridad en el Transporte (NTSB).

El incidente ocurrió detrás de una vivienda ubicada en el bloque 12000 de Cyprus Road en North Miami.

Según las autoridades, las personas que estaban a bordo de la embarcación lograron ponerse a salvo antes de que se hundiera.

No se reportaron heridos.

La investigación sobre la causa del hundimiento continúa en curso.

El sur de Florida alberga algunos de los centros de votación más grandes para colombianos residentes en el exterior.

Cientos de personas se congregaron en el campus Kendall del Miami Dade College, uno de los muchos centros electorales que incluyeron Hialeah, Weston, Coral Springs y Coral Gables, donde algunos llegaron desde las 5 a.m.

El domingo podría ser el día en que los votantes colombianos decidan quién será su próximo presidente, pero estas elecciones también definen el rumbo futuro del país.

Los votantes evalúan temas importantes como la seguridad, la política económica y cómo el gobierno debe manejar las negociaciones con grupos guerrilleros y otros grupos armados.

Hay 14 candidatos con distintas propuestas para el país.

Según encuestas recientes en Colombia, existe una fuerte posibilidad de que la elección vaya a una segunda vuelta más adelante este mes.

Eso ocurriría si ningún candidato obtiene más del 50% de los votos emitidos.

Los centros de votación en el sur de Florida cerraron a las 4 p.m.

RECINTOS DEL DÍA DE ELECCIONES

Hay tres recintos en el Condado de Miami-Dade: el Consulado de Colombia en 280 Aragon Ave. en Coral Gables, el gimnasio del campus Kendall del Miami Dade College en 11011 SW 104 St., y el Milander Center for Arts and Entertainment en 4800 Palm Ave. en Hialeah.

Hay dos recintos en el Condado de Broward: el gimnasio de Cypress Bay High School en 18600 Vista Park Boulevard en Weston, y Coral Springs High School en 7201 West Sample Road.

También hay un recinto en el Public Safety Conference Center del Palm Beach State College en 4200 S Congress Ave. en Lake Worth Beach.

Para información sobre el recinto asignado a cada votante en Florida, Colombia dispone de una base de datos nacional en línea.

El incidente ocurrió alrededor de las 3:30 p.m. en el área de Northwest 79th Street y 22nd Avenue.

Según las autoridades, los agentes respondieron al lugar y encontraron dos vehículos involucrados en el choque.

Había varias personas en ambos vehículos, dijeron los agentes.

Dos personas fueron trasladadas por Miami-Dade Fire Rescue a hospitales cercanos con heridas que los agentes describieron como de leves a graves.

La investigación sobre la causa del accidente permanece abierta.

About 70 other people were injured in the explosion that took place around noon in the village of Kaungtup, in Namhkam township.

The area, located about 3 kilometers (2 miles) south of the Chinese border, is under the control of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, an ethnic armed group which has engaged in sporadic fighting against Myanmar’s central government.

A rescue worker who rushed to the site of the blast told The Associated Press that 46 bodies, including six children, had been recovered by Sunday evening and taken for cremation.

The rescuer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said 74 injured people had been transported to the township hospital and rescue operations were continuing.

Another rescuer in Namhkam, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said about 40 people were killed and more than 100 houses near the blast site were damaged.

Myanmar media outlets, including Shan State’s online Shwe Phee Myay news agency, reported death tolls ranging from 50 to 55. They published photos and videos showing smoke from the explosion and damaged buildings and debris in its aftermath.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported the explosion caused multiple deaths and injuries, with many residential houses being severely damaged, but did not give figures.

It said that according to preliminary investigations, the blast occurred at a site where large quantities of explosives used for mining operations were stored.

Local authorities are currently providing relief, medical care and resettlement assistance to affected residents, said the report.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, said in a statement released on its Telegram channel that gelignite had been stored by the group’s economic department for use in mining and stone quarrying sites, and that an investigation into the cause of the explosion is underway.

Gelignite is widely used in mining and rock blasting, but can become highly unstable over time and if poorly stored.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, is a member of the rebel Three Brotherhood Alliance, and has controlled the Namhkam area since the alliance and its allies launched a major offensive against the military in northeastern Myanmar in late 2023. The alliance members and other ethnic armed groups have long fought for increased autonomy.

The TNLA signed a ceasefire with Myanmar's military following China-mediated talks in October last year, but relations remain tense.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1, 2021, triggering widespread popular opposition. After peaceful demonstrations were put down with lethal force, many opponents of military rule took up arms, and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict.

Maria Almonte said she knew something was wrong when authorities asked her to sit down.

“They tell me to sit down. When they tell me to sit down I already knew that they killed my baby. My baby died,” she said.

Maria Almonte said her son was killed after a standoff with deputies.

“But he was a good kid. He just had mental issues, but he was a helpful, kind person,” she said.

Investigators said deputies responded to the Racquet Club community in Oakland Park on Friday night after receiving reports from neighbors about a man armed with a knife.

According to Maria Almonte, her son had argued with a neighbor before the incident.

“He had an argument with a neighbor and that neighbor always antagonized him,” she said. “And I guess he kind of just went off and came out chasing with a knife, but he went back in the house. And that’s when the neighbors are calling the cops.”

Deputies evacuated the area and spent several hours attempting to negotiate with the barricaded man.

While barricaded, investigators said Almonte threaten that he had guns, propane tanks and bombs inside the apartment.

That prompted deputies to evacuate nearby neighbors.

BSO says at some point during the encounter, Almonte armed with knives advanced toward the deputies.

Investigators said the situation escalated at one point, and a deputy opened fire.

“They shot him four times and he doesn’t even have a gun. You’re going to shoot somebody with a knife?” Maria Almonte said.

She said she is still searching for answers and has not yet been allowed to see her son’s body.

“But I want to see it for myself. Just to have some closure that I see my baby. That it is him,” she said.

BSO says the deputy who fired their weapon is on administrative duty.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting. No other injuries were reported.

We don’t see cold fronts very often in early June but there’s a chance for a front and drier air arriving later in the week which could knock our highs down into the middle 80s with a few days of relatively lower humidity by Thursday and Friday. Don’t forget hurricane season begins tomorrow although there’s nothing in the tropics to be concerned about yet. Be prepared for the season!

U.S. Southern Command announced the strike with its usual language that the vessel was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations” and operated by a designated terrorist organization. It provided no evidence for the allegation.

It's the latest in a monthslong campaign against alleged drug boats traversing the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific.

Video released by the military on social media shows a small vessel floating in the ocean before it's hit and engulfed in a fireball.

The attack brings the death toll to 205 in a series of U.S. strikes that began in early September, with other attacks announced on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. The Trump administration has declared that the U.S. is at armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels, saying they are behind the flow of drugs into American communities.

U.S. Southern Command said in its post on X that the strike came at the direction of Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the top U.S. commander in Latin America.

Adm. Frank Bradley, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, told attendees of a recent annual special forces conference in Tampa, Florida, that troops “have to be very careful about how we come to (AI’s) employment and its inspiration into the delivery of lethality.”

Bradley said he can see a future where AI determines what targets to hit but that “we, as humans, have to have the confidence that ... it's going to deliver violence only where we intend it to be delivered.”

The remarks from Bradley, who oversees the units that handle the military’s most difficult and dangerous operations, about the need to ensure safeguards come as his boss, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is pushing to rapidly evolve the military through AI. It is a push that has led to clashes with some tech companies worried about safety measures.

Hegseth has insisted that the Pentagon be allowed to use the technology any legal way it sees fit. He told an audience of SpaceX employees in January he would reject any AI models “that won’t allow you to fight wars” and that his vision for the technology was systems that operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications.”

AI's use in the military is part of the Republican administration's larger push to grow the capability it sees as a unique American advantage even as it faces pressure to ensure responsible safeguards.

President Donald Trump abruptly called off plans to sign a new AI executive order hours before an expected White House ceremony over concerns the measure could dull America’s edge on AI technology.

“We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump told reporters.

Two differing AI worlds within the military

When asked about Bradley's remarks, a Pentagon official said efforts are focused on using AI to create “functional battlefield tools” that can help troops come up with and identify targets more quickly and, as a result, speed up strikes on those targets. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to offer more candid remarks.

Officials at U.S. Special Operations Command talked about AI not as something that will help eliminate targets but rather as a tool that can offer troops more time to focus on their mission.

Sgt. Maj. Andrew Krogman, the top enlisted official for U.S. Special Operations Command, said at the conference that he sees AI handling administrative tasks to free up operators or helping modernize how the command does business.

Melissa Johnson, the top acquisition official for the command, said AI should be “reducing the cognitive workload on mundane tasks.”

“We’re leveraging AI more and more, but it’s not to replace operator judgment, it’s to enhance it,” she added.

Helen Toner, interim executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, said those differing descriptions about AI in the military are both true.

“There are a huge number of potential uses for AI in these kinds of bureaucratic settings, which the U.S. military is actively exploring,” Toner said.

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, head of Air Force Special Operations Command, told a congressional committee in May that his troops used AI “bots” to convert top secret intelligence down to a secret classification within seconds to make it easier to share with drone operators on the ground during the Iran war.

However, there is no doubt that AI also is helping the military find and strike targets.

The center that Toner oversees published a case study two years ago on how the Army's 18th Airborne Corps used AI to target artillery strikes “just as efficiently as the best unit in recent American history" and with 2,000 fewer service members.

“Human operators are still the ones making crucial decisions, but AI ... is making it possible to operate with a new level of speed and scale,” she said.

AI safety has created a public dispute between the Pentagon and Anthropic

The clash over the integration of AI into the military, who ultimately controls the technology and the ethics behind its use has played out in unusually public fashion during the Trump administration.

Hegseth and Anthropic are embroiled in a bitter contract dispute over the company's concerns about unchecked government use of its technology, including the dangers of fully autonomous armed drones and of AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent.

After CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns about how the chatbot Claude is used in classified Pentagon networks, both Trump and Hegseth accused Anthropic of endangering national security.

The Pentagon formally labeled the San Francisco-based company a supply chain risk — ending its $200 million defense contract and prohibited other government contractors from working with the company.

Anthropic sued, claiming the Pentagon is illegally retaliating by stigmatizing the company with a designation meant to protect against sabotage of national security systems by foreign adversaries. The Pentagon has since emphasized its turn to Anthropic rivals — including Google, OpenAI and SpaceX — to secure AI technology that can “augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments.”

Toner, a former OpenAI board member ousted after a clash with CEO Sam Altman, said “the general public often seems to underestimate the caution with which the U.S. military approaches new technologies.”

“Commanders want their missions to succeed, which means both being able to create lethal effects at scale, and avoiding unintended effects like friendly fire, civilian casualties, or simply identifying targets incorrectly,” she said.

“While not curing the cancer, it is a very large step forward,” said Dr. Zev Wainberg, of the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped lead the study.

The drug is called daraxonrasib and it blocks a mutated protein that fuels tumor growth in more than 90% of pancreatic cancer cases — a target that had eluded treatment for decades.

The daily pills nearly doubled survival time, with fewer severe side effects, in a study that randomly assigned the experimental drug or more chemotherapy to 500 patients whose metastatic, or spreading, cancer had quit responding to prior treatment. The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented Sunday at the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago.

Those taking daraxonrasib lived for a median of 13.2 months compared with 6.7 months for chemotherapy recipients. While that may seem like a small improvement, Wainberg said it marked the first drug to show a substantial advantage over chemotherapy.

“Having treated pancreatic cancer for 16 years, I actually started crying" when first seeing the study results, Dr. Rachna Shroff of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, who wasn't involved with the research, said from the ASCO meeting. She was struck by how “patients stayed on this treatment because it was providing durable and meaningful benefit to them.”

The pills’ effects eventually wane but recipients used them for significantly longer than the comparison group stayed on chemotherapy, reporting less pain and a better quality of life as their tumors shrank. Many still were using the drug after the data was analyzed, which Wainberg said means the survival gap may widen as researchers continue tracking them.

Dr. Brian Wolpin, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, presented the findings Sunday. He said the drug should become “a new standard of care” for previously treated metastatic pancreatic cancer, adding that researchers also will explore its use earlier in the disease, including to see if tumor shrinkage might let more patients qualify for surgery.

Side effects most likely to affect pill usage were a rash that can be severe and mouth sores, he said.

Maker Revolution Medicines funded the study and the Food and Drug Administration plans to expedite review of the drug. Meanwhile, the agency is allowing what’s called “expanded access” to the experimental drug for patients who meet certain criteria. The drug garnered public attention when former U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse described on “60 Minutes” how he's had less pain while taking it. Oncologists are being flooded with requests as the special access program gets started.

Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly forms in large part because it’s hard to detect before it starts spreading to other organs. The American Cancer Society estimates about 67,000 new cases will be diagnosed in the U.S. this year and more than 52,000 people will die from the disease. The five-year overall survival rate is 13%.

Unlike with other cancers that have benefitted from a variety of chemotherapy alternatives, pancreatic cancer has been harder to tackle.

Cancer specialists not involved in the new research expressed optimism that this may be a turning point in the quest for new options, with dozens of experimental drugs in development.

The new drug targets mutations in the RAS gene family that normally regulates cell growth. So-called KRAS mutations are especially critical in fueling pancreatic cancer. But a structure that made it hard for drugs to stick to the mutated proteins meant this cancer driver was long considered “undruggable.”

Revolution Medicines’ drug uses what’s essentially a molecular glue to bind with multiple KRAS subtypes. Wainberg said researchers next will probe whether the drug worked better in certain of those subtypes.

The drug will change pancreatic cancer treatment, said Dr. Andrew Coveler of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, who wasn’t involved in the research.

“This thing works drastically differently,” he said.

Wainberg said other drugs in development target specific KRAS subtypes. Other approaches in earlier stages of testing include vaccines designed to prevent recurrence after pancreatic cancer surgery by teaching the immune system to recognize the mutated protein.

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

The French team, built with Qatari riches and styled by a Spanish perfectionist, looks capable of setting all kinds of records in European club soccer's biggest competition. And after triumphing 4-3 in a penalty shootout against Arsenal in Saturday's final, there is no indication that PSG is ready to relinquish its position of dominance.

“Of course we’re going to go to the market,” president Nasser Al-Khelaifi told TNT Sports while celebrations were just getting started in the center of the field at the Puskas Arena in Budapest.

Those words will ring ominously around Europe. When Qatar-backed PSG goes to the market, it goes hard.

That was the case when signing the world's biggest stars during its Galactico era of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Neymar, Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi. And the same is true in its current incarnation, where it has amassed a remarkable array of young talent that has swept all aside and taken a stronghold on the Champions League in a manner only bettered by Real Madrid in the modern era.

The team that started against Arsenal had an average age of 25.8 years. Ten of the starting XI was in the starting lineup that won the trophy 12 months earlier.

In other words, Spanish coach Luis Enrique has built a squad that looks capable of dominating for years to come.

“It’s whet our appetite,” said man of the match Vitinha. “You always want to win again. Never give up. Never stop. Luis Enrique is probably guilty of that and I hope that he will continue to push us so we can win more and more.”

How to make the best better

The best don't stand still and Luis Enrique demonstrated his ruthless side when discarding goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma last year and promoting back-up Matvey Safonov as his replacement.

The 20-year-old midfielder Warren Zaire-Emery could have more of a prominent role next season and potentially break up the central trio of Fabian Ruiz, João Neves and Vitinha. Luis Enrique made a point of saying how unfortunate Zaire-Emery was not to start the final.

Perhaps a long-term successor to 32-year-old captain Marquinhos will be sought, but it is difficult to see how PSG can improve on a team that, even when it was not at its most fluid, totally dominated Arsenal.

"What they are able to do with the ball, individual actions, I haven’t seen it (before),” Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said afterwards.

And while the usually lethal Ousmane Dembélé, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Désiré Doué were subdued by Arsenal's suffocating defense, PSG still found a way through when trailing to Kai Havertz's early goal.

Its incessant pressure paid off when Kvaratskhelia's dribbling forced Cristhian Mosquera into a rash challenge in the box to concede the penalty that Dembélé converted to take the game to extra time.

As mesmerizing as PSG’s attacking talent is, maybe a more consistent back-up to Dembélé than Goncalo Ramos would add depth. Bradley Barcola still has room to improve as demonstrated by his errant touch when given the chance to score a late winner at the end of regulation time.

Only the best will do

“We are going to follow the same line. We do not need a lot of players because it is very difficult to find the right players to play in our team,” Luis Enrique said. “We already have a great squad and we need some players to change some different positions. But we are the champions of Europe the last two years.”

It is an important point. Not only is PSG the best team in Europe, but it is also unlike any other team in Europe.

Luis Enrique's insistence on high-intensity, high-pressure soccer with electrifying forwards that dribble through defenses has created a rare blend — arguably even improving on Pep Guardiola's two-time champion Barcelona. It has expanded on the possession soccer of Spain's best teams with the addition of the risk-taking and attacking approach.

It is perhaps uniquely suited to such a young team and PSG's shift away from Galactico signings has seen it become an industry leader in identifying emerging talent, albeit still at a great cost.

Doué is a two-time Champions League winner at the age of 20. João Neves is 21. Nuno Mendes is 23.

"We are really hungry. We are a young team, and we know we are really ambitious. So next season we have to go again,” said Doué.

A question of longevity

How long the players can cope with the demands of Luis Enrique and an overloaded schedule is not known.

Last year, PSG was one game away from winning a quadruple of trophies, but ran out of steam in the final of the newly expanded Club World Cup.

While it has the benefit of playing in a relatively weaker domestic league in France compared to Europe's other top teams, the Champions League final was its 56th game of the season and came after a 65-game campaign the previous year.

Ballon d'Or winner Dembélé has not quite hit the same heights as last year. Ruiz has had an injury-disrupted campaign, which has given Zaire-Emery room to emerge. When Luis Enrique talks about the need to add to his squad, it may be in acknowledgement of the strain on his players.

PSG has the power to keep hold of its best talent

PSG is not the first team to amass such an array of young talent. Ajax, through its famed academy, has repeatedly done as much. The Monaco team of Mbappé did likewise.

Those teams were broken up when European giants came calling.

That should not be a concern for PSG, which has been owned by Qatar Sports Investments since 2011, and can withstand any approach from the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona or Manchester City. And that is what makes this team different and gives it the potential to emulate or even better Madrid's three Champions League titles in a row from 2016-18.

“It’s normal that big clubs want PSG players because they are at the top right now,” Vitinha said. “Today we can say we are the best in the world, the best in Europe and we take a lot of pleasure being here to play in this incredible group.”

The biggest signing of all

Maybe the biggest challenge will be to keep hold of Luis Enrique, who has joined an elite group of coaches including Bob Paisley, Zinedine Zidane and Pep Guardiola by winning three European Cups.

He has done what the likes of Carlo Ancelotti, Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino could not in Paris, by leading it to the summit of European soccer. Keeping it there may be dependent on keeping him in the French capital.

“I want to thank all the managers, ex-managers who trained Paris Saint-Germain, but he’s very, very special as a coach, as a human being, as a person,” said Al-Khelaifi. “He’s fantastic. He’s the best coach in the world.”

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James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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

Undefeated this season on clay, 15th-seeded Marta Kostyuk showed her strong credentials as she reached the quarterfinals in Paris for the first time on Sunday by taking out four-time champion Iga Swiatek 7-5, 6-1 and ruining her birthday.

She will be up against her compatriot Elina Svitolina next, ensuring there will be an Ukrainian woman semifinalist at Roland Garros for the first time in the professional era (1968). The seventh-seeded Svitolina rallied past Belinda Bencic 4-6, 6-4, 6-0.

“There’s going to be Ukraine in the semifinals, so it’s already amazing,” said Svitolina, whose country is in a 4-year-old war with Russia.

“I think it couldn’t be a better, amazing achievement for Ukrainian tennis. I think in such a difficult situation right now in the war, with the invasion, it’s really, really difficult, and I think it’s really inspiring for the next generation to really believe that it is possible one day to play on this court and win.”

None of the players still in the draw have yet lifted the trophy in Paris, following Coco Gauff’s elimination on Saturday and Swiatek's exit. It's the same in the men’s draw, after the defeats of Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic and with Carlos Alcaraz absent because of an injury.

In men's play, Spanish teenager Rafael Jodar moved into his first Grand Slam quarterfinal after coming back from two sets down to beat Pablo Carreno Busta 4-6, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2. Jodar, who also played five sets in the previous round, will play second-seeded and former runner-up Alexander Zverev in the quarterfinals. Zverev defeated Jesper de Jong 7-6 (3), 6-4, 6-1.

Also, 19-year-old Joao Fonseca followed up his five-set victory over Novak Djokovic by beating two-time runner-up Casper Ruud 7-5, 7-6 (8), 5-7, 6-2.

Fonseca will next face 20-year-old Jakub Mensik, who held off a comeback from Andrey Rublev in a 6-3, 7-6 (6), 4-6, 2-6, 6-3 win.

Swiatek's bad day

Kostyuk had lost her three previous matches against Swiatek and never taken a set against the former top-ranked player, who turned 25 on Sunday.

“I’m still in shock. To beat such an unbelievable player, who won four times here," she said.

Kostyuk has been the best player of the clay-court season. She defended extremely well, chasing Swiatek’s shots all over the court, and also produced some stunning groundstroke winners while her rival was also undone by her own mistakes.

An intense baseline battle unfolded from the outset. Swiatek showed signs of nerves as she double-faulted, shanked a forehand wide and then missed a volley at the net, allowing Kostyuk to level at 5-5 in the opener. Swiatek hit two more double faults in the 12th game and the 15th-seeded Ukrainian player sealed the set with a backhand passing shot.

Swiatek then briefly left the court. Meanwhile, Kostyuk kept herself warm by stretching and hopping beside her chair, then received some applause as she did a few dance moves to the music playing in the stadium.

Following a first week marked by a suffocating heatwave, relief finally arrived in Paris on Sunday, with temperatures dropping to 21 degrees C (70 F) around midday. When play resumed, Swiatek broke but another double fault coupled with more unforced errors brought her opponent back at 1-1. Kostyuk then won the last five games.

Kostyuk, who had reached the fourth round at Roland Garros in 2021 when she lost to Swiatek, extended her winning streak on clay to 16 matches. Ahead of the French Open, she won in Madrid, the biggest title of her career, after she claimed another clay-court title in Rouen, France.

“The most important thing that I’ve been doing this whole time is really just trying to enjoy,” she said. “It’s helping. I want to keep enjoying. I try not to focus at all on winning or losing because I’m not playing tennis to win, I’m playing tennis because I love it."

17 years later

Romanian veteran Sorana Cirstea, who is planning to retire at the end of the season, beat Chinese qualifier Wang Xiyu 6-3, 7-6 (4) to reach her second Roland Garros quarterfinal, 17 years after first making it to the last eight.

The gap between Cirstea’s first and second Grand Slam quarterfinal appearances in Paris is the longest at a single major by any woman in the Open Era.

“There is no expiration date for ambition and for dreams,” Cirstea said. “I think back then I was a kid, just started on tour. Now I have so many years behind me. I have so much experience, maturity. I feel I’m a completely different player.”

Also advancing was Mirra Andreeva of Russia, who beat Jil Teichmann 6-3, 6-2.

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AP Sports Writer Andrew Dampf contributed to this report.

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

“Four people will be discharged today and there was one that was discharged the day before yesterday,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during the opening of a new Ebola treatment center in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province.

“Of course, we’re still working on vaccines and treatments but that doesn’t mean that people cannot recover from Ebola,” he added.

The WHO said Friday a patient had recovered from the Bundibugyo virus, the current species of Ebola, which has no approved treatment or vaccine. It was the first documented recovery of a confirmed Bundibugyo patient during the current outbreak.

The health organization said authorities have reported 134 confirmed cases in Congo and neighboring Uganda, including 18 confirmed deaths as of May 29.

Recovered patients describe their experience

Baraka Bulambulu, one of those who recovered, told The Associated Press on Sunday that community members feared contracting an unknown illness from them, keeping their distance while delivering food and medicine.

He said the uncertainty was overwhelming, as he and other patients believed they might die without knowing what disease they had, though testing eventually confirmed Ebola.

“Being able to come out of this alive is an immense source of happiness,” Bulambulu said. ”Many people who were in the same situation died.”

Ezo Étienne, a nurse, said his symptoms began during ward rounds when he suddenly felt dizzy, then rapidly deteriorated into vomiting, intense itching, severe diarrhea and extreme weakness. He was tested seven times before Ebola was confirmed.

His treatment remained purely to treat the symptoms: medications to control vomiting, fluids to prevent dehydration and pain relievers. “That was all they could provide,” he said.

He urged the public and healthcare workers not to dismiss early symptoms such as vomiting and headaches, warning that misinformation leads many people to believe they have been poisoned rather than seeking hospital care.

Lack of supplies, distrust and insecurity complicate response

Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said Saturday the virus continues to spread faster than the response despite better-organized health facilities and new aid arrivals. It called for the immediate expansion of testing, faster deployment of aid workers and sustained access for medical supplies.

The dangers faced by health workers have been heightened by anger among residents over the stringent medical protocols for handling the victims’ bodies, which clash with local burial rites. Residents have launched at least three attacks against health centers.

Tedros stressed the importance of involving the community in the outbreak response during the opening of the new treatment center on Sunday.

“If you come to health facilities when you have symptoms, you can get the support and recover, so the key is to come forward as early as possible and to get the necessary support," the WHO chief said.

“We can stop this Ebola and anyone who has it can also recover. But the rule ... is this thing is everybody’s business and every citizen should be involved,” he added.

Attacks in the region by the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group allied with the Islamic State group, and a coalition of ethnic militias have also hindered the response.

ADF fighters killed seven people Saturday in Beni, North Kivu province, an area also affected by the outbreak, the Congolese army and civil society groups said.

The illness also has been reported in both North Kivu and South Kivu, south of Ituri, where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group controls many key cities, including Goma and Bukavu.

“The final message we would like to share with the Ituri community is that there is hope,” Pierre Akilimali, incident manager at Congo's National Institute of Public Health, said during the inauguration on Sunday.

“With the symptomatic treatment that we are currently providing, we are seeing patients recover,” Akilimali added.

“We truly have hope. The virus here is not as complicated as those we have dealt with in the past, and with the support of all our partners, we believe we will be able to bring this outbreak under control as quickly as possible,” said Davin Ambitapio, another doctor at the treatment center.

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Banchereau reported from Dakar, Senegal.

Sturgeon told the BBC that she felt betrayed by the actions of her husband, Peter Murrell, who last week pleaded guilty to stealing more than 400,000 pounds ($540,000) from the SNP to fund a lavish lifestyle when he was the party’s chief executive. She consistently denied having any knowledge of his crimes.

“I am not responsible for the crimes that my former husband committed,’’ she told the BBC. “I’m not going to apologize for somebody else’s crimes.”

Sturgeon’s comments came as she pushed back against widespread disbelief about her previous statements that she knew nothing about Murrell’s crimes. The case has heightened concerns about the accountability of U.K. politicians after a series of scandals that has eroded trust in government at all levels.

Many critics have also questioned why Murrell was allowed to remain chief executive of the SNP after Sturgeon became party leader in 2014. Sturgeon acknowledged that this was a mistake.

“Of course, with hindsight, I wish that I could go back and take a different decision,” she said.

Murrell’s plea capped a five-year police investigation of the SNP, which has led Scotland’s semiautonomous government for almost two decades while campaigning for the country to break away from the United Kingdom.

Turmoil within the SNP exploded in 2023, as questions swirled about the party’s finances and dwindling membership numbers.

Sturgeon led the Scottish government for almost a decade but abruptly resigned as first minister in February 2023. Observers were bewildered by her statement at the time that she knew in her “head and in my heart” that it was the right time to go.

The following month, Murrell quit his job after two decades as SNP chief executive and took responsibility for misleading the news media about the collapse in party membership. In April, police arrested him at the couple’s home in Glasgow.

Sturgeon was arrested in June of 2023 and l ater cleared by police.

De la Espriella obtuvo 43,73% de los sufragios seguido de Cepeda, ahijado político del presidente Gustavo Petro, con 40,91%, según el 99,43% del conteo preliminar informado por la Registraduría Nacional.

Cepeda, del oficialista Pacto Histórico, sembró dudas sobre el conteo previsional, mientras que De la Espriella, del movimiento independiente Defensores de la Patria, respondió celebrando su resultado y llamando al oficialista un “aliado de narcoterroristas”.

El senador Cepeda afirmó que "existe información e indicios de un número indeterminado de mesas que estamos verificando...en las cuales se han presentado según los primeros informes votaciones atípicas”. El oficialista hizo esas declaraciones ante sus simpatizantes en un hotel de Bogotá y sin mostrar pruebas.

"Sólo cuando las comisiones escrutadoras dejen totalmente aclarado este asunto nos vamos a pronunciar sobre los resultados de esta noche”, agregó el candidato oficialista.

El presidente Gustavo Petro —padrino político de Cepeda— se pronunció en similares términos minutos antes en un mensaje en su cuenta de X, asegurando que no acepta los resultados del conteo preliminar a los que se llegó mediante un software operado por privados.

“Los resultados vinculantes que el presidente atenderá y aceptará son los de las comisiones escrutadoras dirigidas por los jueces de la República”, dijo Petro.

La Registraduría Nacional, encargada de la logística de la elección, hizo el domingo el conteo de los sufragios de forma informativa y en los días posteriores será verificado durante el escrutinio oficial. En esa última fase se resuelven las reclamaciones y se declaran los ganadores.

De la Espriella promete derrotar al “comunismo”

Vestido con la camiseta de la selección de Colombia y protegido dentro de una cabina a prueba de balas, De la Espriella celebró sus resultados desde una plataforma ubicada en el río Magdalena con pantallas gigantes y pirotecnia.

Afirmó que “vamos a defender la patria por la razón o por la fuerza” y manifestó estar “listo para la segunda vuelta” en la que los electores deberán decidir entre la “libertad” o el “comunismo”.

“Que los Estados Unidos de América y los partidos democráticos vigilen esta segunda vuelta. Yo estaré al frente de esta batalla, estaré como el mejor guerrero de Colombia”, dijo De la Espriella, admirador del presidente estadounidense Donald Trump y del mandatario salvadoreño Nayib Bukele.

Su postura crítica al gobierno le ha valido la simpatía de sectores opositores como la reserva militar y los uribistas —la corriente del expresidente Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010)— que ven en su figura la representación de los valores conservadores que defienden.

De la Espriella promete acabar con los diálogos de paz mantenidos con los grupos armados ilegales y aumentar la presión militar en los territorios donde operan.

“Feliz, Dios es grande, y vamos a recuperar la seguridad en nuestro país, ya no vamos a tener miedo”, dijo a The Associated Press Daicy Orozco, simpatizante de De la Espriella.

Cepeda dice luchar contra el “pasado parapolítico”

Cepeda cargó contra su contrincante e instó a los votantes a elegir “la vida”.

“El señor De la Espriella es un misógino y es un homófobo, digámoslo con claridad. Representa el regreso al pasado parapolítico, narcotraficante, mafioso, plutocrático y corrupto que vivió el país bajo los dos gobierno de Álvaro Uribe”, aseguró Cepeda.

Cepeda ha señalado que aspira a ganar la presidencia para derrotar a la “extrema derecha” y en especial al uribismo, recalcando que durante su gobierno se produjeron los “falsos positivos”, como se conoce a las ejecuciones extrajudiciales de civiles presentados como guerrilleros abatidos en combate.

Analistas afirman que Cepeda representa la continuidad del proyecto político de Petro, quien en su mandato mantuvo disputas con las altas cortes, la banca central y los órganos de control.

El senador ha dicho que sostendría y profundizaría las reformas sociales de Petro —como la del sistema laboral y de pensiones— e impulsaría las que faltaron, especialmente la reforma del sistema de salud rechazada por el Congreso.

Ukraine’s General Staff said Ukrainian drones struck the Saratov oil refinery in southwestern Russia, causing a large-scale fire. It claimed the refinery has been supplying Moscow’s war effort.

The refinery belongs to Russia’s state oil enterprise, Rosneft. Local Russian Gov. Roman Busargin said Ukrainian drones had damaged civilian infrastructure, but did not give details. Astra, an independent Russian news channel, said an oil refinery was on fire in the city of Saratov.

Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Russia’s oil and gas facilities in recent months, arguing the energy sector funds and directly fuels Moscow’s more than four-year invasion.

“Tonight, our soldiers applied Ukraine’s long-range sanctions against an oil refinery in Saratov, Russia — approximately 700 kilometers (435 miles) from the front line. A significant achievement,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media on Sunday.

Drone debris also set fire to a fuel depot in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, which borders Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, Gov. Yuriy Slyusar reported on Telegram on Sunday. He said residents of nearby homes were evacuated.

Ukraine's General Staff on Sunday confirmed its forces were behind the strike on the facility in the town of Matveev Kurgan. Local authorities said a drone strike on the depot had caused a large-scale fire across a wide area.

According to its General Staff, Ukraine ​also struck the Lazarevo pumping station in Russia's Kirov region northeast of Moscow, more than 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) from Ukrainian-controlled land. The station helps ship Russian oil ​from Siberia to Belarus.

Regional Gov. Alexander Sokolov said drones had hit ​a facility in the Kirov region, without giving further details.

Russia says a Ukrainian drone struck a nuclear plant

Kyiv denied that a Ukrainian drone struck the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest. Russia’s state nuclear energy company, Rosatom, said on Saturday that the drone exploded after tearing a hole in the wall of a turbine hall. Rosatom’s CEO Alexei Likhachev accused Ukraine of a deliberate attack.

“This afternoon, a Ukrainian kamikaze combat drone struck the turbine hall building of Power Unit No. 6, resulting in a detonation,” Likhachev said. He added there was no damage to main equipment.

Ukraine’s military said it did not target or strike the plant, describing the Russian claim as “yet another propaganda ploy.” A military statement said that it adheres to international humanitarian law and is aware of the "consequences of any actions targeting nuclear facilities.”

Rafael Grossi, head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency — expressed “serious concern” in a post on X following the incident.

The IAEA said in a statement Sunday that its inspectors at the plant “observed damage to the exterior of a turbine building” that was “consistent with the impact" of a drone. It gave no details of where the drone may have come from, but said radiation levels at the site remained normal. It added that its inspectors had requested access to the inside of the turbine hall for further examination.

Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early weeks of the war, and it remains close to the front lines in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, one of four Russia has formally annexed despite lacking full military control or international recognition for its actions. The nuclear plant has repeatedly come under fire since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, sparking fears of a nuclear accident. Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for targeting the plant.

Zelenskyy claims Russia treats abducted Ukrainian children ‘as combatants’

In an interview broadcast Sunday, Zelenskyy told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that Russia treats abducted Ukrainian children “essentially as combatants,” claiming Kyiv has evidence they are being trained to fight against fellow Ukrainians.

“They taught these children to hate their native country, to hate (their) native people. And Ukrainians, can you imagine, such young Ukrainians — young boys — come to the battlefield and kill (other) Ukrainians,” he said.

He also alleged that Russians have separated abducted Ukrainian siblings, adopting them out to different families, and offered to trade some children for captured Ukrainian soldiers in prisoner swaps.

“There are hundreds of examples of such steps by Russia,” Zelenskyy said, without specifying what evidence his government had.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, tens of thousands of children have been unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred to Russia or Russian-held territories in eastern Ukraine.

Earlier this month, the European Union imposed sanctions on 16 officials accused of helping the abductions, claiming many children had their identities changed or were put up for adoption.

Sanctions were also slapped on seven centers suspected of indoctrinating the children or training them to serve in the armed forces, either for Russia or pro-Russian militias inside Ukraine.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions.

Deadly drone attacks continue

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s air force said Sunday that it had shot down 212 of 299 drones launched by Russia overnight. It said 14 drones had reached their targets, while drone debris fell in five locations.

A truck driver died early on Sunday as drones hit a parking lot in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, according to local administration head Vyacheslav Chaus.

Russian drones struck the city of Dnipro and an oil refinery in Ukraine’s Rivne region, causing fires, authorities said. The head of the Dnipropetrovsk region, of which Dnipro is the capital, said later on Sunday that one person was killed and nine were injured in Russian attacks in the province.

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