After signing House Bill 1471 in Tampa, DeSantis tossed pens into the crowd after the ceremony.

“Expect us to be very jealous and robust in how we approach dealing with these groups,” DeSantis said.

One of the organizations that has drawn attention is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which DeSantis is actively moving to designate as a terrorist group.

Wilfredo Ruiz, communications director for CAIR Florida, said the law raises serious constitutional concerns.

“Today is a dark day for the Florida Constitution and the United States Constitution,” he said.

Omar Saleh, an attorney with CAIR Florida, also criticized the measure, saying it infringes on civil liberties.

“Florida is not the free state that it says it is. Especially when you look at laws like this. It’s baloney,” Saleh said.

CAIR representatives said the law could have broader implications, including allowing students to be expelled from universities for actions such as advocating for Palestinians.

“The government doesn’t agree with it, thus they’re trying to shut it down unconstitutionally,” Saleh added.

They also argued the law unfairly targets Muslims, saying the idea that Muslims are attempting to impose Sharia law is misleading.

Saleh said the U.S. Constitution already protects against the establishment of religion, including any attempt to impose religious rule.

“Shariah law can’t be imposed and no one is trying to impose it,” he said.

Saleh also added that the law sends a concerning message.

“When it’s being presented like this, there’s a clear message at least from these lawmakers that Florida Muslims are not welcome in Florida,” he said.

Miami Beach police said they responded to the Citizen Hotel, located at 1200 Lincoln Road, at approximately 2:52 a.m. after receiving reports of a man who said he was going to jump from the hotel’s sixth-floor roof.

Arriving officers said they found the man on the roof, pacing back and forth along the edge of the building.

Several hours passed before hostage negotiators were able to de-escalate the situation and safely bring the man off the roof.

Police said investigators found suicide notes in the man’s hotel room, and that during their negotiations, the man said he wanted to speak to his deceased father, indicating the death as a contributing factor to the incident.

The man was evaluated by first responders at the scene before being taken to Mount Sinai Medical Center for additional medical treatment, police said.

Deputies with the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office said the suspect, Andrea Houston, was arrested Monday.

According to investigators, the incident occurred on Dec. 25 at McDonald’s, located at 18295 S. Dixie Highway, in the county’s Palmetto Bay area.

Authorities said Houston became upset while at the drive-thru window, believing items were missing from her order. However, the employee told her the order was complete and that she would have to pay for any additional items.

They said the situation escalated when Houston grabbed a piece of wood from inside her vehicle, began yelling at the employee, and threatened to hit him.

Investigators said she then “tapped the victim in the face” with the piece of wood through the drive-thru window before fleeing.

They said the area where the employee was working is not open to the public and is designated for employees only.

A witness recorded the incident and provided the vehicle’s license plate, which investigators later determined was registered to Houston. The victim later identified her in a photographic lineup, deputies said.

They said Houston has prior convictions, including felony battery and battery on a law enforcement officer, firefighter or corrections officer.

Houston’s arrest report states that she was taken into custody Monday after deputies conducted a traffic stop along South Dixie Highway.

During the arrest, deputies said she resisted by tensing her arms and moving her body, making it difficult to detain her.

After being taken into custody, Houston told deputies she is “always under the influence of narcotics” due to medications she takes, according to the report.

Jail records show Houston is facing one count each of burglary with assault or battery and resisting an officer without violence to his person.

As of Tuesday afternoon, she was being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where her bond was set at $8,000.

She was also placed on house arrest and ordered to stay away from the victim and the McDonald’s where the incident took place.

The detention of 22-year-old Annie Ramos, the Honduran born-wife of a U.S. Army staff sergeant preparing to deploy, prompted public backlash from critics of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign who warned it demoralized troops during an ongoing war.

Ramos’ mother-in-law, Jen Rickling, confirmed her release to The Associated Press in a text message. The New York Times first reported her release.

Ramos, who married Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank in March, had been detained by federal immigration agents while attempting to register at his base to receive military benefits and ultimately obtain a green card. She had lived in the country since she was less than 2 years old. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Ramos had been ordered removed by a federal immigration judge in 2005 after her family had failed to appear for a hearing.

Ramos and her husband say she has been attempting to gain legal status, including by applying for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2020 though her application remained stalled amid legal battles to eliminate the program.

“All I have ever wanted is to live with dignity in the country I have called home since I was a baby,” Ramos said in a statement to The AP after her release. “I want to finish my degree, continue my education, and serve my community — just as my husband serves our country with honor.”

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has scrapped policies of immigration enforcement leniency toward the family members of military personnel and veterans, even as the military has promoted the protection of U.S. soldiers' family members from deportation as a recruiting incentive.

Ramos said she plans to continue studying biochemistry and focusing on enjoying married life with her husband.

“As Matthew continues preparing for his long career in the military, my focus now is on securing my status, continuing my studies, and building our life together,” Ramos said. "We want to create a home, a future, and a family. This experience has been incredibly difficult, but it has also reminded me of the power of faith, love, and community. I am hopeful for what comes next.”

“I battled the last 10 holes," Woodland revealed Tuesday, “thinking people were trying to kill me.”

That's not intended to be a joke. The exact opposite, in fact: a powerful admission of Woodland's mental health struggles, and one he hopes will help others dealing with trauma, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder in their own lives.

The inner turmoil that Woodland feels even at Augusta National, one of the most bucolic places in the world, has its roots in a scan that uncovered a lesion on his brain that had been causing him unfounded fears of dying. In September 2023, he wrote letters to his wife and kids in the event something went wrong, then had surgery to remove as much of it as possible.

The procedure involved cutting a baseball-sized hole from the side of his head, but it proved to be successful. Woodland was back on the course in January 2024, slowly working his way back into form, making enough cuts to keep him motivated.

The following year, he finished second at the Houston Open — the same tournament he would win last month, when Woodland got through his Friday bout of hypervigilance and closed with a 3-under 67 on Sunday for a five-shot win over Nicolai Hojgaard.

Few knew that Woodland was still struggling, though. He had become crippled by PTSD to the point that he would rush to bathrooms to break down in tears, and it always felt as if people were out to get him; one symptom of PTSD is a heightened state of sensory sensitivity, which causes the nervous system to continually stay in an on-guard state.

“I talked to (PGA) Tour security that night,” Woodland said of that Friday at the Houston Open, "and I told them what I was going through, and every time I looked up on the weekend, my security team was behind me. Any time I got startled on the weekend, I turn around — last year I didn't talk to Tour security. I fought this on my own. It was awful.

“Turning around and knowing I'm safe, having somebody there with me? It's the only reason I won two weeks ago.”

Well, not quite the only reason.

Woodland's ball speed was 196 mph on one tee shot, a good indication that the strength that helped carry him to the 2019 U.S. Open championship had returned. His approach play was sublime and his short game even better on the way to finishing at 21 under, giving Woodland his first win since his only major championship and the fifth victory of his career.

“We live in a world, as men and especially as an athlete, that you put your head down and you fight through it. I’ve done it my whole life,” Woodland said. “This is honestly one battle that I’m not able to do on my own. I tried, and it wasn’t working.”

So, Woodland got some help. And it has helped him immeasurably.

Never one to think about himself, Woodland quickly realized that his struggles might help somebody else, too. That is why he went public with his PTSD diagnosis in an interview with the Golf Channel, and why he was so forthcoming Tuesday at the Masters.

“The world we live in, speaking about something you would call a weakness is hard,” he said, "but speaking about it and how I feel afterwards made me a lot stronger. I didn’t know that releasing this battle was going to make me stronger, and it’s done that. I feel a lot stronger now than I did three weeks ago, I can tell you that. No matter how hard it is out here, I know I have someone I can talk to that I can have security. My team have been amazing in helping me, but I’ve turned a weakness into a strength.

“I wouldn’t even say it as a weakness, but I think that’s the stigma out there. But I feel a lot stronger after I came out for sure.”

This week will be another test for Woodland, perhaps an even tougher one. More people are sure to trail him around Augusta National after his win in Houston, and the proximity of the patrons to the players — especially on the tees — can be a matter of a few feet.

The PGA Tour has worked with the Masters to provide the security Woodland needs to feel safe.

“There’s probably not a safer golf tournament in the world, so I’m happy for that, but it’s still a battle in my head if I’m safe or not,” he said. “I don’t have control when this thing hits me, and it’s tough. It can be a fan. It can be a walking score (board holder). It can be a camera guy running by me. Just any startlement from behind me can trigger this pretty quickly. Knowing where that security is is a constant reminder that I’m safe.”

___

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

Emerging from the Lightning locker room before playing at Buffalo on Monday night, Cooper shook his head in mock dismay upon seeing the larger than usual crowd of reporters awaiting his arrival.

“Ugh. Why are there so many people here?” Cooper asked with a wink. “It’s Game 77 folks, not Game 83.”

Point taken from a two-time Stanley Cup-winner overseeing a team that’s already clinched its 12th playoff berth over his 13-year tenure in Tampa Bay.

As much as Cooper can appreciate the importance of a late-season outing between two budding Atlantic Division rivals jockeying for playoff positioning, it doesn’t match the ramped-up intensity that follows an 82-game regular season.

“It’s Game 77. I think both teams accomplished their goals for the year in regard to the regular season,” he said, before the Lightning’s 4-2 loss. “It’s just I don’t put a ton of stock into it. The stock was made of making the final eight (in the Eastern Conference), and we did that.”

Tell that to the upstart Sabres and their revitalized fanbase celebrating a team finally snapping an NHL-record 14-season playoff drought.

It’s no different in Montreal, where the young and talented Canadiens are continuing the franchise’s upward trajectory in securing back-to-back playoff berths for just the second time in 11 years.

Upstarts shake up Atlantic hierarchy

Entering Tuesday, the Lightning and Sabres were tied for the division lead with 102 points. Montreal sat only two points back in a season the Atlantic’s hierarchy — save for the Lightning — has been turned upside down.

While the Bruins are in contention and Ottawa and Detroit battling for wild-card seeds, the two-time defending Cup champion Florida Panthers have already been eliminated. So has Toronto, with the Maple Leafs in upheaval after missing the playoffs for the first time in 11 years.

Keith Pelley, CEO of the Maple Leafs’ parent corporation, said as much of the shifting landscape in discussing his reasons for firing GM Brad Treliving last week.

“We definitely didn’t see the train coming which was the Buffalo Sabres and the Montreal Canadiens,” Pelley said. “Buffalo and Montreal have shown that they’re young, energetic teams who are gonna be here for a long time.”

That’s the hope in Buffalo, where the Sabres are on a 36-9-4 run that’s vaulted them from last place in East in early December.

“You’ve got to take a lot of pride in the fact you made the playoffs in a year where this division and this conference was so incredibly tough,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff said.

And unlike Cooper, Ruff is relishing this moment in the second year of his second stint in Buffalo.

Buzz returns to Buffalo

He’s captivated by the electricity the team has generated after its 17th consecutive sellout on Monday, and 22nd of the season. The fans were fully on board in booing the Lightning from the pregame warmup to chanting “We want Hagel!” in the third period.

Hagel has emerged as Public Enemy No. 1 in Buffalo after the Lightning forward jumped captain Rasmus Dahlin from behind in the Sabres electrifying 8-7 win a month ago.

“Everybody’s into it,” Ruff said. “I think our fans have been waiting for this for a while, so it’s good to see.”

Lightning forward Brayden Point was measured in assessing the loss to Buffalo.

“This game definitely had more meaning than some of them. And it’s disappointing not to get the result we wanted,” Point said. “It wasn’t playoff Game 1, so there’s still time to learn from it, but hopefully we learn pretty quick.”

In Montreal, the Canadiens had won eight straight before losing to New Jersey on Sunday, and host the Lightning on Thursday.

Lightning remain competitive

Cooper has enjoyed seeing the competitive shift that's taken place in the division, while reassured the Lightning have stayed in the mix.

“Buffalo has a heck of a team. And I’d like to think we’re not too shabby ourselves,” Cooper said. “There’s been waves of different teams that have made the playoffs in our division, and we’ve found a way to be able to do it.”

Come playoff time, Cooper is holding the Lightning to a higher standard no matter where they finish, noting Tampa Bay hasn’t won a playoff series since failing to three-peat as Cup champions in 2022.

“There’s potentially new teams sitting around the table but it shouldn’t change anything in our mindset,” Cooper said. “We need to look after our business here to keep moving forward because haven’t been really satisfied with the fact that we’ve been bounced the last three years.”

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Here's a short breakdown of some of the issues at play.

Could this raise war crimes questions?

In his news conference on Monday, Trump threatened to blow up every bridge and power plant in Iran, an action that would be so far-reaching that some experts in military law said it could constitute a war crime. The issue could turn on whether the power plants were legitimate military targets, whether the attacks were proportional compared with what Iran has done and whether civilian casualties were minimized.

Trump’s threat did not seem to account for the harm to civilians, prompting Democrats in Congress, some U.N. officials and scholars in military law to say such strikes would violate international law.

The president’s eventual actions often fall short of his all-encompassing rhetoric in the moment, but his warnings about the power plants and bridges were unambiguous both on Sunday and Monday as he set a deadline of Tuesday night for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump said Monday that he’s “not at all” concerned about committing war crimes as he continues to threaten destruction. He also warned that every power plant will be “burning, exploding and never to be used again.”

He followed up Tuesday morning with this threat on Truth Social: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

And last month, shortly after the war started, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said there would be “no stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don’t waste time or lives.”

What the U.N. and experts say about Trump's words

A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Monday warned that attacking such infrastructure is banned under international law.

“Even if specific civilian infrastructure were to qualify as a military objective,” Stephane Dujarric said, an attack would still be prohibited if it risks “excessive incidental civilian harm.”

Rachel VanLandingham, a Southwestern Law School professor who served as a judge advocate general in the U.S. Air Force, said civilians are likely to die if power is cut to hospitals and water treatment plans. “What Trump is saying is, ‘We don’t care about precision, we don’t care about impact on civilians, we’re just going to take out all of Iranian power generating capacity,’” the retired lieutenant colonel said.

Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint in the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s oil normally flows, has been all but halted, sending oil prices soaring and roiling the stock market.

Under the U.N. Charter, nations are only permitted to use force against another nation if it has been authorized by the Security Council or in self-defense, said Marieke de Hoon, an associate professor of international criminal law at the University of Amsterdam.

What Trump is threatening to attack

As the conflict has entered its second month, Trump has escalated his warnings to bomb Iran’s infrastructure, including Kharg Island, central to Iran’s oil industry, and desalination plants that provide drinking water.

In a Truth Social post on March 30, Trump warned that the U.S. would obliterate “all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.’”

On Easter Sunday, Trump threatened in an expletive-laden post that Iran will face “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one,” while adding that “you’ll be living in Hell” unless the strait reopens.

“This strikes me as clearly a threat of unlawful action,” said Michael Schmitt, a professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College and an international law professor at the University of Reading in Britain.

A power facility can be attacked under the laws of armed conflict if it provides electricity to a military base in addition to civilians, Schmitt said. But the strike must not “cause disproportionate harm to the civilian population, and you’ve done everything to minimize that harm.”

Harm does not include inconvenience or fear, said Schmitt, who has taught military commanders. But it does mean severe mental suffering, physical injury or illness.

___

Associated Press journalists Ben Finley, Lindsay Whitehurst, Gary Fields and Mike Corder contributed to this report.

While the trip focused on emergency management, Mullin also weighed in on immigration enforcement, a centerpiece policy of the Trump administration, which his department also oversees. He suggested he might halt customs processing at airports serving cities whose local governments resist the administration's immigration policies, a move that would align with his predecessor's hardline approach.

At his confirmation hearing last month, Mullin tried to project a softer tone on immigration enforcement, after a backlash over high-profile operations and the deaths of two Americans at the hands of federal officers. Mullin also signaled a different approach to the Federal Emergency Management Agency following criticism of Noem's policies.

At a roundtable discussion Tuesday, Mullin said FEMA was focused on catching up on past disaster work and clearing a backlog of needs that stacked up during his predecessor's tenure ahead of the Atlantic hurricane season, which begins June 1.

“Disasters are happening constantly,” Mullin said, adding that he would brief President Donald Trump Tuesday on the 22 still pending major disaster declaration requests from states and tribes across the U.S. “We’re trying to push this stuff forward as fast as possible."

Mullin also said he “may have identified” a candidate for permanent administrator of FEMA, which is on its third temporary leader since Trump took office, but declined to name them.

Asked if eliminating FEMA — which Trump has threatened to do — was still on the table, Mullin said “reforming FEMA would be a better term.”

Mullin's visit comes less than a week after he ended Noem's directive that all DHS expenditures over $100,000 be personally approved by the secretary's office, a rule that critics said bottlenecked FEMA reimbursements and compromised disaster response and recovery.

Mullin threatens to remove CBP officers from some airports

While Mullin has already made strides on disaster response, he has yet to set forth a clear vision for immigration enforcement, although he is expected to align with the president’s agenda. That was apparent in his comments about removing Customs and Border Protection officers from airports in so-called “sanctuary cities.”

“If they’re not enforcing immigration laws, then why would I be processing immigration in their city?” Mullin said, adding that the idea was still under consideration. He suggested he would raise it in his briefing to Trump.

Mullin said the idea was meant to “streamline” DHS in the face of the ongoing partial shutdown of his department. But withdrawing CBP officers from airports could disrupt international travel and trade. CBP officers check all incoming travelers into the country as well as the billions of dollars of trade that enters through land crossings and airports.

The Trump administration has already threatened to withdraw funding to Democratic cities and states that it says do not cooperate with immigration enforcement.

North Carolina is still hard-hit

Few disaster-hit areas experienced the impacts of FEMA's recent tumult as acutely as North Carolina, where about $1.6 billion in FEMA public assistance dollars has been obligated so far and where roughly 2,000 projects are still in some stage of FEMA approval, according to a letter North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein sent Mullin after his swearing in.

Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis excoriated Noem for delays in reimbursements to his state just days before her firing, telling her at a Senate hearing she had "failed” at FEMA.

Mullin said at the roundtable that Trump told him he wanted North Carolina to be his first stop. Trump “wanted North Carolina to love” the president, Mullin recounted.

North Carolina carries outsize political significance this year. Tillis is retiring, raising Democratic hopes of a pickup this fall. The race is sure to attract hundreds of millions in campaign spending and pits Democrat Roy Cooper, the state’s former governor, against Michael Whatley, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Helene, a 350-mile-wide (560 kilometers) hurricane, ravaged multiple southeastern states in September 2024.

The storm caused 108 deaths in North Carolina and $60 billion in damages. It destroyed homes, businesses and utility infrastructure.

Hurricane damage is still visible, with cars and remnants of homes washed up on banks, remains of knocked-out bridges and piles of branches that rushed down the river when it swelled to a torrent of water.

Hilary Yoxall, who lives in Lake Lure and runs a nonprofit that helps families in need, said many people were still impacted by the disaster, removing fallen trees from their property or struggling with high insurance in the storm's aftermath.

“For a lot of people, they’re still in the throes of everyday recovery,” she said.

Misinformation shrouded FEMA's response to Hurricane Helene

Rep. Chuck Edwards, a Republican representing some of the impacted areas who lost one of his own businesses in the storm, said Tuesday he also grew frustrated with what he called FEMA’s “bureaucracy” and the difficulties local communities faced in receiving payments.

“Still plenty of bureaucracy there,” said Edwards, who praised Mullin’s removal of the $100,000 rule.

FEMA’s presence in North Carolina had a tense start as distrust grew among some impacted residents, fueled in part by then-candidate Trump’s own misinformation about the Biden administration and FEMA’s response in the swing state.

After an armed man was arrested in Lake Lure for making threats toward FEMA workers, the agency temporarily suspended door-to-door home visits in the affected areas.

North Carolina's governor, a Democrat, welcomed Mullin's visit. “It is encouraging that Secretary Mullin is getting down to business,” Stein told The Associated Press in a statement Tuesday.

On Monday, FEMA approved $26 million in buyouts of damaged and destroyed North Carolina homes, saying in a statement that Mullin encouraged the agency to “redouble its efforts” to help survivors.

Mullin’s remarks drew a sharp contrast from Noem, who repeatedly called for FEMA to be eliminated “as it exists today." Trump floated the idea of eliminating FEMA altogether on a North Carolina visit just days into his second term, calling the agency a “very big disappointment.” A presidentially appointed council is expected to soon release a report recommending sweeping reforms.

Other challenges await Mullin. Over 4,000 FEMA staff are furloughed or working without pay since the shutdown began on Feb. 14 and the agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, which would be replenished by an appropriations bill, is running low.

———

Aoun Angueira reported from San Diego, California.

Leer en español

The 24-year-old Lil Tjay, whose real name is Tione Jayden Merritt, has not been charged in the shooting and denies any involvement, which happened outside of the building’s valet area.

Lil Tjay denied any fight between him and the 34-year-old Offset, whose real name is Kiari Kendrell Cephus.

“I don’t do no damn fightin‘,” Lil Tjay told media outlets as he walked out of the Fort Lauderdale jail.

He gave an expletive-laden account of what he said happened.

“‘That n---- shot me.’ ‘That n---- shot me.’ ‘That n---- is a rat.’ ‘Cap n----,’” Lil Tjay said. “Weirdos. Y’all gettin’ a good a-- interview.”

According to an arrest report by Seminole tribal police, Lil Tjay, of the Bronx, New York, “directed members of his party to start a fight” with Offset and his group.

The report states that Lil Tjay exited a vehicle, pointed at Offset, and his group began fighting with Offset. Lil Tjay, police said, “had his phone out, recording members of his group” attacking Offset.

At some point, police said “one of the males associated with (Lil Tjay) pulled a firearm and discharged it, wounding one of the individuals.”

Two people were taken into custody.

Offset boasts a whopping 23.8 million followers on social media with more than 17 million Spotify listeners monthly. He was married to well known rap artist Cardi B.

A representative for Offset confirmed he is in stable condition and is being closely monitored at a hospital.

“Did he put his hands on you?” Local 10 News reporter Bridgette Matter asked Lil Tjay, referring to Offset.

“Hell naw,“ Lil Tjay replied. ”How many times I gotta tell you that ain’t nobody touch me?”

Local 10 News has requested Lil Tjay’s arrest report and has asked more questions of Offset’s representative.

Lil Tjay, de 24 años y cuyo nombre real es Tione Jayden Merritt, no ha sido acusado en la balacera y niega cualquier implicación, la cual ocurrió afuera del área de valet del edificio.

Lil Tjay negó que hubiera una pelea entre él y Offset, de 34 años, cuyo nombre real es Kiari Kendrell Cephus.

“Yo no ando peleando para nada”, dijo Lil Tjay a medios mientras salía de la cárcel en Fort Lauderdale.

Ofreció un relato con lenguaje explícito sobre lo que, según él, ocurrió.

“‘Ese tipo me disparó’. ‘Ese tipo me disparó’. ‘Ese tipo es un soplón’. ‘Mentira’, dijo Lil Tjay. “Raros. Están obteniendo una muy buena entrevista”.

Según un informe de arresto de la policía tribal Seminole, Lil Tjay, del Bronx, Nueva York, “dirigió a miembros de su grupo para iniciar una pelea” con Offset y su equipo.

El informe indica que Lil Tjay salió de un vehículo, señaló a Offset y su grupo comenzó a pelear con él. La policía dijo que Lil Tjay “tenía su teléfono en la mano, grabando a miembros de su grupo” mientras atacaban a Offset.

En algún momento, según la policía, “uno de los hombres asociados con (Lil Tjay) sacó un arma de fuego y la disparó, hiriendo a una de las personas”.

Dos personas fueron detenidas.

Offset cuenta con 23.8 millones de seguidores en redes sociales y más de 17 millones de oyentes mensuales en Spotify. Estuvo casado con la reconocida rapera Cardi B.

Un representante de Offset confirmó que se encuentra en condición estable y bajo observación en un hospital.

“¿Él te puso las manos encima?”, preguntó la reportera de Local 10 News Bridgette Matter a Lil Tjay, en referencia a Offset.

“Para nada”, respondió Lil Tjay. “¿Cuántas veces tengo que decirles que nadie me tocó?”

Local 10 News solicitó el informe de arresto de Lil Tjay y ha realizado más preguntas al representante de Offset.

Erick Valencia Salazar formed the Jalisco New Generation Cartel with Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the drug lord known as “El Mencho" who was killed by the Mexican army in February.

Valencia Salazar, 49, of Santa Clara, California, faces a mandatory-minimum prison sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison after pleading guilty in Washington, D.C., to one count of conspiring to distribute cocaine for U.S. importation. Chief Judge James Boasberg is scheduled to sentence him on July 31.

Valencia Salazar was a member of the Milenio Cartel before he and Oseguera Cervantes founded the Jalisco cartel, which is known by its Spanish-language acronym CJNG. Hundreds of CJNG members reported to Valencia Salazar, whose duties included recruitment and obtaining information about cartel rivals, prosecutors said.

Valencia Salazar, also known as “El 85,” formed his own cartel, La Nueva Plaza, after parting ways with "El Mencho," who led the CJNG until his death.

A. Tysen Duva, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said the CJNG has inflicted “immeasurable damage” on the U.S.

“Valencia Salazar was also responsible for furthering the rampant violence in Mexico, at the expense of people’s lives and the safety of communities, that helped destabilize the region and allow crime to flourish,” Duva said in a statement.

A grand jury indicted Valencia Salazar on the conspiracy charge in 2018. In February 2025, Mexican authorities sent him to the U.S. as part of an initial group of 29 drug lords.

Last year, President Donald Trump's administration designated the CJNG and other cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

Valencia Salazar was arrested twice in Mexico. The first time was in 2012, when he was detained by the military in the municipality of Zapopan, near Guadalajara, the capital of the state of Jalisco.

Five years later, he was released from prison by order of a judge who cited alleged procedural flaws. In 2022, the Army recaptured him in the town of Tapalpa, the same place where “El Mencho” was captured and killed.

The U.S. State Department had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Valencia Salazar's arrest or conviction.

___

Associated Press writer Fabiola Sanchez in Mexico City contributed to this report.

The school announced Malone's hiring on Tuesday and scheduled an introductory news conference for later in the day. Malone will replace Hubert Davis, who was fired March 24 after five seasons as the successor to retired Hall of Famer Roy Williams.

In a statement, UNC executive associate athletic director Steve Newmark described Malone as a “selfless teacher and innovator.”

"He is a brilliant coach who will deliver a modern and disciplined approach to leading our men’s basketball program, which is critical in the current landscape of college athletics," said Newmark, who will succeed Bubba Cunningham as AD on July 1. "Carolina Basketball is unique and special — and we have hired a leader well-suited to continuing our championship tradition.”

The 54-year-old Malone spent 12 seasons as a head coach in the NBA, including a 10-year run in Denver. He led the Nuggets to the 2023 championship behind three-time league MVP Nikola Jokic.

The Nuggets fired Malone last spring with less than a week left in that regular season. Almost a year to the day, in another surprise move, Malone is taking over a blueblood program with six national titles, a record 21 appearances in the Final Four and alums including Michael Jordan, James Worthy Vince Carter and Atlantic Coast Conference career scoring leader Tyler Hansbrough.

“Carolina is one of the most historic programs in college basketball, and I am honored to be the head coach of the Tar Heels,” Malone said in a statement. “It is humbling to follow so many legends in Chapel Hill.

“I know from the many Tar Heels in the NBA how special the Carolina Basketball Family is, and I will do everything I can to continue UNC’s championship legacy while preparing our players for professional careers and life after basketball.”

Davis’ firing opened one of the top jobs in college basketball for only the fourth time since the late Hall of Famer Dean Smith’s retirement after 36 seasons in October 1997. The job had stayed in the “Carolina Family” ever since. Longtime assistant Bill Guthridge replaced Smith, followed by former UNC player Matt Doherty, former Smith assistant Williams and then Davis, who played under Smith and worked on Williams’ staff.

Malone has never been a college head coach and has spent most of his career in the NBA. His primary connection to UNC athletics is the presence of daughter Bridget on the Tar Heels’ volleyball team, while he told the UNC athletic department’s “Carolina Insider” podcast in October that he had attended multiple recent basketball practices — with Davis even asking him to speak to the team at least once.

___

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball

If it becomes law, the bill would force social media platforms to install age‑verification systems, provide parental control tools and require companies to rapidly respond to content deemed harmful. It’s unclear how long the parliament debate will last.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ’s government says the proposal aims to mitigate the online risks to children’s safety and privacy.

“Protecting our children from all kinds of risks, threats and harmful content is our top priority,” Mahinur Ozdemir Goktas, Turkey's minister for family and social services, said earlier this year.

The main opposition party — Republican People's Party or CHP — has criticized the proposal, saying children should be protected “not with bans but with rights-based policies.”

Under the draft proposal, digital platforms — such as YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and others — would have to block children under 15 from opening accounts and introduce parental controls that would manage children's access.

Online game companies will also be required to appoint a representative in Turkey to ensure they abide by the new regulations. Potential penalties include internet bandwidth reductions and fines imposed by Turkey’s communications watchdog.

The Turkish government has a recent record of restricting online platforms as they have grown as a means of expressing dissent. Online communications were widely restricted during last year’s protests in support of Istanbul’s jailed opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.

Restrictions on social media access for children under 16 first began in December in Australia, where social media companies revoked access to about 4.7 million accounts identified as belonging to children.

Last month, Indonesia began implementing a new government regulation banning children younger than 16 from access to digital platforms that could expose them to pornography, cyberbullying, online scams and addiction.

Some other countries — including Spain, France and the United Kingdom — are also taking or considering measures to restrict children’s access to social media amid growing concern that they are being harmed by exposure to unregulated social media content.

“Nobody has any idea why the attorney general is no longer the attorney general, and I’m the acting attorney general, except for President Trump,” Todd Blanche told reporters when asked at an unrelated news conference if Bondi lost her job because she was not successful in bringing criminal cases against the Republican president's perceived adversaries.

Blanche, who had been deputy attorney general for the last year, was elevated to the top job on at least an acting basis after Trump replaced Bondi. He insisted Tuesday that he did not feel "pressure" in the job despite Trump's well-publicized desire for retribution, though he also said that the president was entitled to seek investigations against former government officials he believes have wronged him.

“We have thousands of ongoing investigations and prosecutions going on in this country right now. And it is true that some of them involve men, women and entities that the president in the past has had issues with and believes should be investigated. “That is his right, and indeed it is his duty to do that — meaning to lead this country.”

Blanche demurred when asked if he was interested in being nominated to the role of attorney general.

“If President Trump chooses to keep me as DAG,” Blanche said, using the acronym for deputy attorney general, “that's an honor. If he chooses to nominate me, that's an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and I go back to being the DAG, that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to do something else, I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’”

Blanche used his first news conference in his new role as acting attorney general to herald a redoubled effort in fighting fraud, offering details about a new fraud enforcement division that he said would draw in prosecutors from offices across the country. The Senate last month confirmed a veteran prosecutor and Blanche aide, Colin McDonald, to lead the division.

Las autoridades informaron que una persona murió en el lugar y dos bomberos resultaron heridos con quemaduras de primer y segundo grado.

La explosión registrada cerca de las 4:00 de la tarde del lunes alcanzó a la estructura de metal del puente, por lo cual se están realizando inspecciones técnicas patológicas por parte de un equipo de expertos del Ministerio de Obras Públicas y el Canal de Panamá.

Las imágenes de cámaras de seguridad captaron el momento de la explosión, seguido por la propagación de las llamas en el área debajo del puente, que conecta a la capital del país con las provincias del centro y occidente. En las redes sociales han circulado videos de personas que pasaban justo al momento de la explosión.

“No tenemos confirmación de otras personas heridas. Dos bomberos y una persona, que lamentablemente falleció en el sitio y se cree que es empleado de la empresa”, dijo Víctor Raúl Álvarez, director del Cuerpo de Bomberos de Panamá.

Añadió que la investigación se encuentra en una etapa inicial y que aún no se ha determinado la causa de la explosión.

Ingenieros advirtieron que el incendio pudo haber afectado la estructura del puente, que fue inaugurado el 12 de octubre de 1962.

“El Puente de las Américas es una estructura de más de 60 años. Debido a los efectos del fuego, si la estructura metálica fue sometida a temperaturas excesivamente altas, podría haber sufrido daños”, explicó Edwin Lewis, ingeniero del Ministerio de Obras Públicas.

Las autoridades ordenaron el cierre temporal del puente mientras equipos especializados realizan inspecciones estructurales, incluyendo evaluaciones de componentes de concreto y metal.

Según indicaron, los resultados del análisis se esperan para el martes y el puente permanecerá cerrado hasta que se confirme su seguridad.

El cierre ha afectado el tránsito en la capital y sus alrededores, impactando a miles de conductores que viajan desde la capital al oeste donde viven miles de trabajadores. Solo hay dos puentes de acceso en los que en conjunto transitan más de 50.000 vehículos diariamente de acuerdo con las cifras de la Autoridad de Tránsito.

It was the first moonship-to-spaceship radio linkup ever. NASA's Apollo crews had no off-the-planet company back in the 1960s and 1970s, the last time humanity set sail for deep space.

"We have been waiting for this like you can’t imagine,” Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman called out.

For Christina Koch on Artemis II and Jessica Meir aboard the space station, it marked a joyous space reunion despite being 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) apart. The two teamed up for the world's first all-female spacewalk in 2019 outside the orbiting lab.

Koch told her “astro-sister” that she'd hoped to meet up with her again in space “but I never thought it would be like this — it's amazing.”

“I'm so happy that we are back in space together,” Meir replied, “even if we are a few miles apart.”

Houston's Mission Control arranged the cosmic chitchat between the four lunar travelers and the space station's three NASA and one French residents.

As Tuesday dawned, Wiseman continued to beam back pictures of the previous day's lunar rendezvous, which set a new distance record for humanity. The highlight: an Earthset photo reminiscent of Apollo 8's Earthrise shot from 1968.

Koch described being awe-struck by not just the beauty of Earth, “but how much blackness there was around it."

“It just made it even more special. It truly emphasized how alike we are, how the same thing keeps every single person on planet Earth alive,” she told the space station crew. “The specialness and preciousness of that really is emphasized" when viewing the home planet from the moon.

In a debriefing later with Mission Control's lead lunar scientist Kelsey Young, the astronauts recounted how they spotted a cascade of pinpricks of light on the lunar surface from impacting cosmic debris. The flashes lasted mere milliseconds and coincided by chance with Monday evening's total solar eclipse.

The first lunar explorers since Apollo 17 in 1972, Wiseman and his crew are aiming for a Friday splashdown off the San Diego coast on Friday to wrap up the nearly 10-day test flight.

It sets the stage for next year's Artemis III, a lunar lander docking demo in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will follow in 2028 with two astronauts attempting to land near the lunar south pole.

As for the Orion capsule’s pesky potty, Mission Control assured the astronauts that no repairs were required Tuesday. The toilet has been on-and-off limits to the crew ever since last week’s launch, prompting them to rely on a backup bag-and-funnel system for urinating.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told the crew following the lunar flyby Monday night: “We definitely have to fix some of the plumbing” ahead of the next Artemis mission.

___

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.

Staley released a statement on South Carolina's X account on Tuesday in which she expressed her respect for Auriemma and said the two have spoken since South Carolina’s 62-48 victory on Friday night. The season ended with UCLA's runaway 79-51 win over South Carolina in Sunday's national championship game.

“With the college women’s basketball season behind us, it’s time to move forward and close the chapter on how our semifinal game with UConn ended,” Staley wrote in her statement. "I spoke with Geno and I want to be clear — I have a great deal of respect for him and what he’s meant to the game. One moment doesn’t define a career and it doesn’t change the impact he’s had on growing women’s basketball.

“The standard at UConn is what it is because of him, and that’s something this game has benefited from. So I’m asking everyone to turn the page. Let’s refocus on what matters most, continuing to elevate our game, creating opportunities and pushing it forward. That’s always been my mission, and it’s not changing.”

Staley's statement followed Auriemma's apology on Saturday after he went over to Staley in the final seconds of Friday night's game and appeared to chastise her. Coaches from both teams had to separate them. When the game finally ended, Auriemma walked off the court to the locker room without going back to shake hands with anyone from South Carolina.

“There’s no excuse for how I handled the end of the game vs. South Carolina," Auriemma said in his statement on Saturday.

"It’s unlike what I do and what our standard is here at Connecticut. I want to apologize to the staff and the team at South Carolina. It was uncalled for in how I reacted. The story should be how well South Carolina played, and I don’t want my actions to detract from that. I’ve had a great relationship with their staff, and I sincerely want to apologize to them.”

___

AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness

Tehran residents rushed Tuesday to stock up on bottled water and charge cellphones, flashlights and portable power banks as the hours ticked down to Trump's latest ultimatum for a deal that includes Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz or face attacks on power plants and bridges. Despite the threats and risks to his health, the 56-year-old employee at Tehran's subway authority said he's no worse off than other Iranians who've been living under attack for more than five weeks.

“I am worried, but I am more worried about my fellow citizens,” Hashemi said, lying on his bed at Tajrish Martyrs Hospital for the treatment. “Whatever happens, we will stand until the end.”

As Trump stressed that his deadline — 8 p.m. in Washington — was final, some Iranians said they were terrified. Others expressed resignation. And some, like Hashemi, said they'd be prepared to defend their country.

“I will be ready to pick up a gun and start a fight against the enemy,” he said.

The Associated Press has been granted permission by the Iranian government to send an additional team into the country for a brief reporting trip. AP already operates in Iran. The visiting team must be accompanied by a media assistant from a government-affiliated company. AP retains full editorial control of its content.

For many Iranians, power is now the No. 1 concern

Tehran, like other parts of the country, has been shaken by almost daily airstrikes by the United States and Israel since Feb. 28. Iranians’ main concern quickly became electricity as Trump's deadline grew closer.

“When there is no electricity, there will be no water, no hygiene, nothing,” said Mahan Qayoumi, 23, who works at an artisan shop, where he said business would stop under a power outage. He brought emergency lights to his apartment to prepare, noting that “all aspects of life” would be affected.

A young designer in central Tehran, speaking on condition of anonymity for her safety, said her parents left at the beginning of the war, but she stayed behind to take care of her cat, Maya. Now, because of Trump's threats, she said she plans to drive north — which has largely been spared heavy strikes — with Maya and join her family.

“If there is no electricity, there is no water," she told AP on the messaging app Telegram, noting Tehran's low water pressure and electric water pumps. “You can’t cook, either.”

The streets of sprawling Tehran, overlooked by snow-capped mountains, have seen less traffic over the past several weeks, with many residents leaving to seek safer areas. Schools and many state institutions remain closed.

But even as some residents frantically prepared, stocking up on water and prepared foods, life in one of north Tehran’s largest covered markets seemed almost normal Tuesday. People went on with business as usual, fresh bread was made at bakeries, and Iranian sweets such as gaz and sohan were prepared.

“We are living our normal lives," said Said Motazavi, 58, who owns a home appliances shop. Motazavi said Iranians have a lot of experience preparing for and living with conflict, referring to the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war and the 12-day war with Israel last year.

At Tajrish Martyrs Hospital, the director told AP that a generator can keep much of the medical facility functioning if needed. He said the hospital has enough fuel to power it, as well as ample medicine and supplies for six months.

“I do not see any problem,” Dr. Masoud Moslemifard said, adding that the hospital has been prioritizing operations for those wounded in the war and postponing nonurgent surgeries.

Tighter security and still a lack of internet in Iran

In the streets of Tehran, security was tighter than usual Tuesday, with checkpoints in different parts of the capital. At major intersections, jeeps with heavy machine guns mounted on top were deployed.

Iran’s internet remains largely shut off, throttling news even as panic spread over Trump's warnings.

A 26-year-old Pilates instructor told AP on condition of anonymity for her safety via Telegram that she's been unable to prepare for possible attacks. She called this week the “worst atmosphere” since the war began.

“Honestly, we’ve kind of lost it at this point," she said, describing how she's not left home for the last few days and she and her family refuse to leave Tehran. "Whatever is going to happen, let it happen. We are dying bit by bit.”

One resident told AP that if the U.S. follows through on its threat, the people of Iran — not the government — will be the victims.

“By attacking infrastructure, the Islamic Republic will not be destroyed, only we will be destroyed,” the woman, a teacher in her 20s, told AP via a message on Telegram, on condition of anonymity for her safety.

She fears the attacks will spread chaos. “If we don’t have the internet, and if we don’t have electricity, water, and gas, we’re really going back to the Stone Age, as Trump said."

____

Associated Press reporters Amir-Hussein Radjy in Cairo and Sahar Ameri in Berlin contributed.

The Wolverines (37-3) claimed all 57 votes in Tuesday's poll in the third year the AP has released its final rankings after the completion of the NCAA Tournament. Michigan beat UConn 69-63 in Indianapolis on Monday night to complete the winningest season in program history, along with winning its first NCAA title since 1989 and the Big Ten's first since 2000.

Michigan spent a week at No. 1 in mid-February and didn't rank lower than fourth after November in its second season under Dusty May.

Yaxel Lendeborg, an AP first-team All-American, had said before the Final Four that this could go down as the best team in program history, including the famed “Fab Five” freshman teams that reached the NCAA title game in 1992 and 1993. Standing amid the confetti on the court after Monday night’s win, Lendeborg figured this year’s group had done enough to earn that distinction.

“I think we are, man,” said Lendeborg, who battled through ankle and knee injuries suffered in the win against Arizona in the national semifinals. “I’m waiting for the Fab Five to give us the approval. But if they do, then I’ll let it be said that we’re the best team ever.”

The top tier

UConn (34-6) jumped five spots to No. 2 after its March Madness run, including an incredible comeback from 19 down to stun Duke in the Elite Eight and keep alive its chances for a third national title in four seasons. Arizona was third, followed by Duke, which held the No. 1 ranking before March Madness and was the tournament's top overall seed before a loss to UConn in the Elite Eight.

Illinois was next, climbing eight spots to No. 5 after the program's first trip to the Final Four since 2005. That marked the second time that a team went from being ranked outside the top 10 to cracking the top five after a Final Four run, the other being Alabama jumping 16 spots to No. 3 to end the 2024 season.

Purdue, Houston, Iowa State, Florida and St. John's rounded out the top 10.

Climbing to final position

Tennessee finished at No. 12 after reaching the Elite Eight for the third straight year. The Volunteers' postseason push vaulted them 11 spots, making them the biggest climber from the March 16 poll before the NCAA Tournament.

In all, nine teams ranked from the previous poll moved up in the season's final rankings.

Last slide

Virginia had the poll's biggest tumble, falling eight spots to No. 17 after falling in the second round to the Volunteers as a 3-seed.

No. 18 Gonzaga and No. 25 Wisconsin both fell six spots after failing to make the second weekend. The Cavaliers, Zags and Badgers were among 11 ranked teams from March 16 to tumble while still remaining inside the final poll.

In and out

Iowa and Texas both jumped into the poll after being unranked heading into March Madness. The Hawkeyes finished the season ranked No. 15 after reaching the Elite Eight in a run that included a second-round upset of top-seeded Florida.

Iowa's jump marked the third time a team that was unranked going into the NCAAs hopped into the top 15 in the post-tournament AP poll. The other two came in 2024, with N.C. State sitting at No. 10 after its improbable Final Four run and Clemson at No. 14 after reaching the Elite Eight.

The 22nd-ranked Longhorns entered the poll after going from the First Four to the Sweet 16.

Iowa and Texas replaced North Carolina (No. 21) and St. Mary's (No. 22) from the previous poll.

Conference watch

The Big Ten dominated this year's tournament, first by getting a league-record six teams into the Sweet 16 then tying the tournament's overall record with four teams in the Elite Eight before ultimately sending Michigan and Illinois to Indianapolis. The league finished with a national-best seven teams in the final AP Top 25 of the season.

The Southeastern Conference was next with six ranked teams, followed by the Big 12 with five, the Atlantic Coast Conference with four and the Big East with two. The West Coast Conference with Gonzaga was the only league from outside the power conferences to have a Top 25 team.

___

AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball

The team will host the fifth annual Jackie Robinson Classic, presented by Nike, on April 10, featuring a matchup between Miami Senior High and Booker T. Washington.

First pitch is set for 6 p.m.

A Marlins news release states that the game will give student-athletes a major league-style experience, complete with player introductions, walk-up music and in-game entertainment. Players will also receive custom Marlins shirts with Robinson’s No. 42 and one of his nine core values.

The event is free and open to the public.

The Marlins will continue the celebration on April 17 when they take on the Milwaukee Brewers at 7:15 p.m. Players and coaches will wear No. 42 in honor of Robinson, while the organization highlights his impact both on and off the field.

Student-athletes from both schools will take part in pregame activities alongside The Player Alliance, which will host an educational initiative and provide equipment for local youth. Participants will also be part of an on-field ceremony that includes the national anthem.

The April 17 game marks the start of a six-game homestand for the Marlins, beginning with a three-game series against the Brewers, followed by three games against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Beginning Wednesday, most passengers on domestic and short-haul international routes will pay $10 more for their first and second checked bags, and $50 more to check a third. That brings the fees to $45 for the first bag, $55 for the second and $200 for the third, according to Delta.

“These updates are part of Delta’s ongoing review of pricing across its business and reflect the impact of evolving global conditions and industry dynamics,” the carrier said in a statement.

The change marks Delta's first increase in checked baggage fees on domestic routes in two years. Fees for long-haul international flights are not affected.

CEO Ed Bastian told investors last month that the jump in jet fuel prices had already added about $400 million to Delta's operating expenses since the conflict began on Feb. 28. Executives at United Airlines and American Airlines reported similar increases.

The average price for a gallon of jet fuel in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and New York was $4.69 on Monday, up from $2.50 just before the war, according to Argus Media. The energy market intelligence company’s U.S. Jet Fuel Index tracks average prices across those major hubs.

Delta said complimentary bags will still be available to customers flying in premium cabins, active-duty military personnel, eligible co-branded credit card holders and members of certain loyalty tiers.

The carrier's move follows similar announcements from United and JetBlue, both of which raised baggage fees last week while maintaining complimentary first checked bags for some customers.

Airlines around the world have been grappling with volatile oil markets as fighting near the Strait of Hormuz — where roughly a fifth of the world's oil passes — disrupts global supplies. Because jet fuel is refined from crude oil, swings in energy prices quickly feed into a carrier’s costs. Fuel typically ranks as the second-largest expense after labor.

In addition to raising ticket prices, analysts say U.S. carriers are more likely to lean on ancillary fees to offset the higher expenses, while many non-U.S. carriers are responding by adding or increasing fuel surcharges.

Los cortes se producían principalmente en carreteras y puentes que unen la provincia de Buenos Aires con el sur y oeste de la capital argentina y eran protagonizados por combativos grupos de izquierda como la Unión de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de la Economía Popular (UTEP), el Polo Obrero y Libres del Sur.

La protesta se enmarca en el rechazo a la decisión oficial de eliminar el programa “Volver al Trabajo” que implicaba una paga mensual de 78.000 pesos (unos 55 dólares) a cambio de tareas como limpieza de calles o asistencia a personas que consumen drogas.

El programa será sustituido por un esquema por el cual los beneficiarios recibirán bonos digitales que sólo podrán ser utilizados para inscribirse en cursos de formación profesional.

Alejandro Gramajo, secretario general de la UTEP, dijo a periodistas que la decisión del gobierno no tiene un gran impacto en términos fiscales pero sí “en el bolsillo de la gente... porque implicaba tener un margen de planificación para más de 900.000 familias”.

Las política de ajuste que Milei ha implementado en Argentina desde fines de 2023 para terminar con el déficit fiscal ha conllevado la desaparición de distintos subsidios, así como el congelamiento del presupuesto para distintos sectores como la universidad y salud públicas.

El gobierno se ha declarado en contra del sistema de asistencia social que estuvo vigente durante décadas en Argentina y ha acusado a las organizaciones sociales que gestionaban los programas de maniobras corruptas para quedarse con parte de la ayuda.

Leer en español

The discussion focused on the rise of Florida and Texas as major financial hubs, and the role of the Texas Stock Exchange.

Inside the museum, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and fellow Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined business leaders and federal officials, including the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to talk about economic growth across the region.

They described what they called the “Boom Belt,” which is a stretch from Florida to Texas, as one of the fastest-growing economic regions in the country, driven by job creation and an influx of younger workers.

“If you look at the two most generations of the workforce that employees are looking for, its Gen Z and millennials,” said Abbott. “And those two categories of workers are relocating to the ‘Boom Belt’ states more than any other region across the country.”

Leaders at the event also encouraged companies and investors to look to Boom Belt states for future growth, saying the region is becoming a powerhouse for business and financial markets.

La discusión se centró en el auge de Florida y Texas como importantes centros financieros y en el papel de la Bolsa de Valores de Texas.

Dentro del museo, el gobernador de Florida Ron DeSantis y el gobernador republicano de Texas Greg Abbott se unieron a líderes empresariales y funcionarios federales, incluido el presidente de la Comisión de Bolsa y Valores de Estados Unidos, para hablar sobre el crecimiento económico en la región.

Describieron lo que llaman el “Boom Belt”, una franja que se extiende desde Florida hasta Texas, como una de las regiones económicas de más rápido crecimiento en el país, impulsada por la creación de empleo y la llegada de trabajadores jóvenes.

“Si observas a las dos generaciones de la fuerza laboral que los empleadores buscan, son la Generación Z y los millennials”, dijo Abbott. “Y esos dos grupos de trabajadores se están trasladando a los estados del ‘Boom Belt’ más que a cualquier otra región del país”.

Los líderes en el evento también alentaron a empresas e inversionistas a mirar hacia los estados del Boom Belt para el crecimiento futuro, señalando que la región se está convirtiendo en una potencia para los negocios y los mercados financieros.

Leer en español

According to the Broward Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to the 1600 block of North Dixie Highway around 2 a.m. Sunday after receiving reports of a body in the roadway.

Upon arrival, deputies found a man who had been shot. The man, identified as Rayon Sanchez, 40, of Pompano Beach, was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.

BSO’s Homicide and Crime Scene units were called to investigate.

Authorities said the 1600 block of North Dixie Highway was tempoarily shut down for around four hours overnight.

Anyone with information on the shooting is urged to contact BSO Detective Allison Craven-Swan at 954-321-4200 or submit a tip through the SaferWatch app.

If you wish to remain anonymous and be eligible for a cash reward of up to $5,000, contact Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477, visit browardcrimestoppers.org, or dial **TIPS (**8477) from any cellphone in the United States.

Job Listing: Assignment Editor

Responsibilities included but are not limited to manning assignment desk in various capacities. Setting up interviews and following-up on viewer phone calls. Researching information and leads, making agency checks, handling news tips and story ideas, phone calls.

Engages users through social media, responds to reader comments and pursues other avenues for integrating with audiences. Knows how to play big and win weather and breaking news. Asks tough questions, demands accurate answers, and exhibits extraordinary poise and ethical decision-making skills under pressure. Other duties as assigned

Minimum 2 years news assignment editor experience. A college degree in Journalism, Communications or a related field is preferred. Must be able to work well under pressure and deal effectively with last minute deadlines. Grasp of Spanish/Creole languages helpful.

***All of the essential functions of this position are not necessarily described in this posting.

***We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider all qualified candidates regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, age gender, marital status, disability, matriculation or political affiliation. Any offer of employment is conditioned on successful completion of a pre-employment drug screen, investigative background check, employment/education verifications and reference checks. A valid driver’s license is required.

Please follow link below to apply for Assignment Editor Position:

https://jobs.dayforcehcm.com/en-US/wplg/CANDIDATEPORTAL/jobs/8796

Send resume and Links to:

Kelly Davis

WPLG/TV

3401 W. Hallandale Beach Blvd.

Pembroke Park, FL 33023

kdavis@wplg.com

954-364-2752

De acuerdo con la Oficina del Sheriff de Broward (BSO), los agentes respondieron al bloque 1600 de North Dixie Highway alrededor de las 2 a.m. del domingo tras recibir reportes de un cuerpo en la vía.

Al llegar, los agentes encontraron a un hombre que había sido baleado. El hombre, identificado como Rayon Sanchez, de 40 años y residente de Pompano Beach, fue declarado muerto en el lugar, indicaron las autoridades.

Unidades de Homicidios y de Escena del Crimen de BSO fueron llamadas para investigar.

Las autoridades informaron que el bloque 1600 de North Dixie Highway fue cerrado temporalmente durante aproximadamente cuatro horas en la madrugada.

Cualquier persona con información sobre la balacera debe comunicarse con la detective de BSO Allison Craven-Swan al 954-321-4200 o enviar una pista a través de la aplicación SaferWatch.

Si desea permanecer en el anonimato y ser elegible para una recompensa en efectivo de hasta $5,000 USD, puede comunicarse con Broward Crime Stoppers al 954-493-8477, visitar browardcrimestoppers.org o marcar **TIPS (**8477) desde cualquier teléfono celular en Estados Unidos.

Una profunda masa de humedad y un frente estacionario cercano provocarán rondas de lluvias intensas y tormentas eléctricas en el sur de Florida hasta el miércoles.

Algunas áreas en Miami-Dade y Broward podrían acumular varias pulgadas de lluvia, con totales aislados de hasta 6 pulgadas, lo que podría generar inundaciones locales, especialmente en zonas con drenaje deficiente.

Aunque no todos verán las lluvias más intensas, algunos vecindarios podrían enfrentar carreteras cubiertas de agua y tránsito lento.

Al mismo tiempo, los vientos aumentarán desde el noreste, con ráfagas en la costa entre el martes y el miércoles.

Esto generará corrientes de resaca peligrosas y condiciones marítimas adversas, haciendo que el Atlántico sea peligroso para nadadores y navegantes.

Aunque las probabilidades de lluvia comenzarán a disminuir hacia finales de la semana, las condiciones ventosas en la costa podrían persistir por un tiempo.

HAGA CLIC AQUÍ para las últimas actualizaciones del tiempo de la Autoridad Meteorológica de Local 10.

El mitin fue convocado por la Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (FMC), una organización vinculada estrechamente con el gobierno y el Partido Comunista.

Banderas cubanas, carteles en los que se leía “Abajo el bloqueo”, fotografías de Fidel Castro y de la fallecida creadora de la FMC Vilma Espín —quien también fue esposa del expresidente Raúl Castro— daban marco al encuentro en el que también se conmemoró a una patriota independentista del siglo XIX.

“Yo le diría (a Trump) que nosotros no le hacemos daño a nadie… que por favor no nos lo haga a nosotros”, dijo a The Associated Press Georgina Reyes, una técnica informática de 36 años.

La viceprimera ministra Inés María Chapman y la vicecanciller Josefina Vidal encabezaron la manifestación. También estuvo presente Mariela Castro, hija de Espín y de Raúl Castro.

"Esta política de abuso tiene que parar… el pueblo de Cuba no merece esto. Es el sistema más completo, abarcador, más largo de medidas coercitivas que se ha impuesto contra todo un país”, dijo la vicecanciller Vidal a AP. “Nos somete a un castigo colectivo", agregó.

Vidal fue una de las negociadoras del histórico acercamiento entre Cuba y Estados Unidos ocurrido en 2014 bajo la administración de Barack Obama.

En enero Trump impuso un cerco petrolero a Cuba tras atacar a Venezuela y capturar al entonces mandatario Nicolás Maduro, privando a la isla de un aliado clave para su sostenimiento energético.

La falta de combustible paralizó a la nación caribeña y provocó desabastecimiento de alimentos al tiempo que afectó el sistema de salud y el transporte público. Las jornadas laborales fueron recortadas y muchos vuelos cancelados.

El cerco energético agudizó la crisis que durante los últimos cinco años ha golpeado a la isla y llevó a una oleada migratoria récord.

Trump dijo que está dispuesto a “tomar” la isla mientras su secretario de Estado, Marco Rubio –un exsenador hijo de cubanos exiliados— exigió la liberación de presos políticos y reformas económicas liberales.

Cuba produce apenas el 40% del combustible que consume. La semana pasada el buque ruso Anatoly Kolodkin con 730.000 barriles de crudo arribó a la isla, el primero en tres meses. Trump dijo que no le importaba su llegada y Moscú indicó que seguirá apoyando a Cuba.

Los gobiernos de Estados Unidos y Cuba indicaron que han mantenido contactos, pero no está claro su alcance.

“Estoy aquí luchando por el pueblo de Cuba. Le pediría a Trump que nos deje en paz. La situación está muy mala por el bloqueo que nos ha impuesto”, dijo Leydys de la Cruz, una costurera de 57 años que asistió al mitin de la FMC.

—————

Siga a Andrea Rodríguez en X: https://x.com/ARodriguezAP

The eldest child of the U.S. president said that “the biggest players, the biggest names in banking and finance, in tech and AI across the board” believe that “Europe is a disaster,” but “the disaster that they feel also needs to be fixed.”

“The only way it gets fixed, though, in my opinion is if they (Europe) get out of of their own way,” Trump Jr. said during a business discussion in the northwestern Bosnian town of Banja Luka, according to video recordings provided by the official television RTRS television.

Banja Luka is the main town in Republika Srpska, the Serb-run part of Bosnia, whose leaders are staunch admirers of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The press office of the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, told The Associated Press in an email that Trump Jr. came “in a private capacity.” The visit was nonetheless seen here as a boost for the Serb separatist political leadership.

Trump Jr.’s trip came as U.S. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary to support the reelection bid of nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán before a highly-contested vote next weekend.

Bosnian Serb politician and former Republika Srpska president, Milorad Dodik, an ally of Orbán, said on X that the two visits “signal an important shift of the U.S. administration under the leadership of President Trump and the care for this part of Europe regarding the position of Christians.”

Trump Jr,, in Banja Luka, said that eastern European countries “have a work ethic that has (withstood) some of the ‘woke’ nonsense that has really been a parasitic thing in the mind in Western Europe.”

“I see that creating major fractures in the European Union between those few countries in eastern Europe that actually still believe in common sense, and Western Europe that’s clearly missing in the political discourse these days,” he said.

Dodik has repeatedly called for the Serb-run half of Bosnia to break off from the rest of the country that is run by Bosniaks, who are mainly Muslims, and Croats. The Serb bid to form its own state and unite with neighboring Serbia was seen as the main cause of the 1992-95 ethnic war that killed more than 100,000 before ending in a U.S.-brokered peace agreement.

The Biden administration in 2022 imposed sanctions on Dodik and individuals and companies linked to him because of the separatist policies that stoked fear of renewed instability. The sanctions were lifted by the Trump administration last year.

The Trump administration has long been critical of the EU, notably over trade and EU regulation of the technology sector. Its criticism of long-time European allies has intensified during the Iran war.

Bosnia is a candidate country for EU membership and the 27-nation bloc says it's Bosnia’s biggest trading partner, investor and provider of financial aid.

It was 40 years ago — April 6, 1986, to be exact — the “Sony Ranking” was introduced.

What began as a list in 1968 for IMG founder Mark McCormack's “World of Professional Golf” annual got the attention of the R&A as it was reviewing criteria for the British Open. It was officially introduced at the 1986 Masters.

The headline that week proclaimed, “Europeans Top Golf Rankings.”

Langer was No. 1 in world, followed by Seve Ballesteros and Sandy Lyle. The leading American was Tom Watson at No. 4. Jack Nicklaus, considered to be past his prime at age 46, checked in at No. 33. By the end of the week, Nicklaus famously won his sixth Masters and 18th professional major.

“It was time to have something like that because international golfers were excluded from tournaments like the Masters, the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship,” Langer said under the big oak tree next to the Augusta National clubhouse.

"Only two or three of us got in," he said. “In Europe, I had to win the money list to get in the Masters. And we had more than one good golfer.”

It wasn't perfect then, and probably isn't now. It's nigh impossible to measure the runner-up of this week's Token Homemate Cup on the Japan Golf Tour against whoever finishes 15th at Augusta.

But it was a start, and its influence is greater now than anyone might have imagined.

Every major championship uses the Official World Golf Ranking an an integral part of its criteria. The Masters and British Open take the top 50, the U.S. Open takes the top 60. The PGA Championship uses invitations in a bid to have everyone from the top 100.

The Sony Rankings — yes, it had a corporate sponsor — became the Official World Golf Ranking when the major tours and the four majors formed a board in 1997. Now the OWGR has 25 tours around the world, the most recent addition being Saudi-funded LIV Golf.

Whether LIV Golf should get more points awarded to more than the top 10 players is a debate as endless as deciding whether the PGA Tour gets too much weight.

But there is no doubt that OWGR has been critical to opening the borders beyond American golf.

The U.S. Open had only three foreign-born champions from 1926 through 1993 — Gary Player of South Africa, Tony Jacklin of England and David Graham of Australia. Starting with Ernie Els of South Africa in 1994, 13 of the last 32 champions were international players.

Padraig Harrington in 2008 became the first European in 78 years to win the PGA Championship when he won at Oakland Hills in 2008.

It wasn't a matter of getting better. It was a matter of getting an opportunity. That much should have been made clear during the 1980s when Europe began its dominance in the Ryder Cup.

More than his own three-week reign atop the world ranking, Langer said it created more paths. Ballesteros, Langer and Lyle combined for six majors in the seven years before the ranking began in somewhat an official capacity.

“That helped open it up, especially in the majors, to some international golfers who Americans never heard of or didn't know much about,” he said. “It's different now with the media. But it was an important step in the right direction. Was it perfect? Maybe not. But it was a good way to get the best field.”

That was mainly for the majors. More hurdles came from the PGA Tour, which always had the best collection of players. The requirement under former Commissioner Deane Beman was a minimum of 15 events for membership.

Europe required 11 events. Top players with a global eye often played the occasional event in Japan and Australia, and the travel and time took a toll.

“We didn't go on boats,” Langer said with a smile, “but we didn't go on private jets.”

Langer recalled that 11 top Europeans asked Beman to reduce the PGA Tour requirement to 12 events and “he wouldn't budge.”

So much has changed.

The man behind the math for years was London-based Tony Greer, and his original plan was to prioritize tournaments into four sections. The four majors received the most weight, followed by most PGA Tour and top European Tour events, on down to lesser events around the world.

There have been changes over the years, most notably going from a three-year rolling period to a two-year system in 1995, and recently expanding the strength-of-field to include everyone playing, not just the top 200 players.

The 40th year of world ranking has Scottie Scheffler on top — he has been No. 1 a total of 185 weeks, trailing only Tiger Woods (683 weeks) and Greg Norman (331). There are five Americans and five Europeans in the top 10. All are on the PGA Tour.

Perhaps the best measure is the Masters, which has a 91-man field from 23 countries. The week the world ranking began, the 88-man field came from 11 countries.

___

On The Fringe analyzes the biggest topics in golf during the season. More AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

The suit, filed last year, marked a new front in the PETA's long-running campaign against dog breeders. The case accused the American Kennel Club of promulgating unhealthy “standards,” or ideals, for Frenchies — the nation's most prevalent dog breed, by the club's count — as well as bulldogs, Chinese shar-peis, dachshunds and pugs. The AKC, the nation's oldest purebred dog registry, rejected the claims and said it prioritizes canine health.

Club President Gina DiNardo hailed the decision Tuesday.

“We remain focused on what matters most, the preservation of purebred dogs, advocating for all dogs and the people who care for them, and supporting the right of individuals and families to choose the dog that is right for their household,” she said in a statement.

PETA, also called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said its lawyers were assessing any legal options.

“Money-grubbing dog merchants flood the market with deformed dogs bred at the AKC’s direction,” founder Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement. She urged people to adopt dogs from shelters instead of buying purebred pups: “No dog should be custom-made for a look that causes pain.”

The suit invoked a New York law that is generally used to challenge state and local government decisions, though it's occasionally applied to private organizations. But those have been organizations with some authority over the people suing them, such as union members bringing complaints about their leadership or co-op apartment residents suing their building's board, state Judge David B. Cohen said in a decision filed Monday.

Since PETA isn't subject to the kennel club's authority, the case “must be dismissed,” he wrote, without opining on the dog health issues at the heart of the case.

It focused on canine ailments that can be associated with flat faces — such as those of bulldogs, pugs and Frenchies — or with the short legs and long backs that dachshunds have. Shar-peis, meanwhile, may suffer spates of fever and inflammation known as “shar-pei autoinflammatory disease.”

The problems aren't universal but can be serious.

PETA had wanted the judge to order the AKC to stop using the “standards” for those breeds. The standards guide dog show judges and many breeders.

The AKC has said the standards — which fanciers develop and the kennel club reviews and circulates — reflect “decades of collaboration with veterinary experts and breeders.” The kennel club says it has given over $40 million since 1995 to its canine health research charity.

Leer en español

According to TMZ, Offset was involved in a shooting following a fight with fellow rapper Lil Tjay.

Offset, whose real name is Kiari Kendrell Cephus, was reportedly injured in the shooting. It’s unclear who is suspected of shooting him.

Authorities said the incident occurred in the hotel’s valet area around 7 p.m.

The Seminole Police Department confirmed that one person was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, but they did not confirm the victim’s identity.

Two people were detained by officers following the incident, according to SPD.

TMZ identified one of those detained as Lil Tjay, whose real name is Tione Jayden Merritt.

Online jail records show Lil Tjay, 24, was arrested Monday night on charges of disorderly conduct-affray and operating in traffic without a valid license. He is being held at the Broward County Jail on a total bond of $3,000.

TMZ reported that the second person who was detained has not been arrested.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dawn M. Florio (@dawnmflorio)

Authorities said the scene had since been secured and that there was no threat to the public.

Offset was part of the rap trio, Migos, before going out on his own.

The trio, with its rapid-fire triplet flow, became known as one of the most popular hip-hop groups of all time. It broke out with the 2013 hit “Versace” and later earned Grammy nominations for best rap album with 2018’s “Culture,” while a track off it nabbed a nod for best rap performance.

Offset was once married to fellow rapper Cardi B, who he shares three children with. The two divorced in 2024.

Offset’s cousin, Takeoff, who was also part of the Migos group, was fatally shot in 2022.

Leer en español

A deep plume of moisture and a stalled front nearby will bring rounds of heavy rain and thunderstorms to South Florida through Wednesday.

Some areas in Miami-Dade and Broward could pick up several inches of rain — with isolated totals up to 6 inches — leading to localized flooding, especially in poor drainage areas.

While not everyone will see the heaviest rain, some neighborhoods could deal with water-covered roads and slow travel.

At the same time, winds will increase out of the northeast, becoming gusty along the coast Tuesday into Wednesday.

This will create dangerous rip currents and rough marine conditions, making the Atlantic hazardous for swimmers and boaters.

While rain chances begin to ease later in the week, breezy coastal conditions may linger for a bit.

The rainy weather affected South Florida’s airports, with Miami International Airport reporting 216 delays into and out of the airport, as of noon, and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport reporting 218 delays. Both airports reported only three cancellations each.

CLICK HERE for the latest weather updates from Local 10’s Weather Authority.

Leer en español

The site, located inside the Big Cypress National Preserve, has become the center of a legal and environmental showdown.

The Everglades facility remains open, still holding detainees, because the appellate court in early September relied on arguments by Florida and the Trump administration that the state had not yet applied for federal reimbursement, and therefore wasn’t required to follow federal environmental law. State officials opened the detention center last summer to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Conservation groups, including Friends of the Everglades, argue the project violates federal environmental law and threatens sensitive wildlife and water systems.

“There is no question of the environmental harm that has been ongoing since last summer at this site and we stand resolute to stop that harm,” Elise Bennett, with the Center for Biological Diversity, said.

The lawsuit also claims the state failed to conduct a proper environmental review as required under federal law.

“There’s no debate about whether the National Environmental Policy Act was complied with and that requires three things,” Eve Samples, with of Friends of the Everglades, said. “It requires an analysis of the government’s actions of the environmental harm; that didn’t occur. It requires public input and consideration of alternatives; none of those three things occurred, as you heard in court today.”

Last August, a federal judge sided with the environmental groups, ordering construction be stopped and operations scaled back.

However, that order was put on hold after state and federal officials appeald, allowing the facility to continue operating while the case moves forward.

Jesse Panuccio, an attorney for the Florida Department of Emergency Management, told the judges on Tuesday federal funding and federal control of the facility were the two criteria for determining if the federal environmental law would apply and the federal agencies had no control over the state-run detention center.

Florida was notified in late September that FEMA had approved $608 million in federal funding to support the center’s construction and operation.

“You need both,” Panuccio said. “Even with funding, I don’t think that would follow because they don’t have federal control.”

The appellate court will decide whether the injunction should be put back in place as the lawsuit heads toward trial. A decision isn’t expected for another few weeks.

The environmental lawsuit was one of three federal court challenges to the Everglades facility since it opened. In the others, a detainee said Florida agencies and private contractors hired by the state had no authority to operate the center under federal law. The challenge ended after the immigrant detainee who filed the lawsuit agreed to be removed from the United States.

In the third lawsuit, a federal judge in Fort Myers ruled the Everglades facility must provide detainees there with better access to their attorneys, as well as confidential, unmonitored, unrecorded outgoing legal calls.

El sitio, ubicado dentro de la Reserva Nacional Big Cypress, se ha convertido en el centro de una disputa legal y ambiental.

La instalación en los Everglades permanece abierta y continúa albergando detenidos, debido a que la corte de apelaciones a principios de septiembre acogió argumentos de Florida y de la administración del presidente Donald Trump de que el estado aún no había solicitado reembolso federal y, por lo tanto, no estaba obligado a cumplir con la ley ambiental federal. Funcionarios estatales abrieron el centro de detención el verano pasado para apoyar las medidas migratorias del presidente Donald Trump.

Grupos conservacionistas, incluidos Friends of the Everglades, argumentan que el proyecto viola la ley ambiental federal y amenaza la vida silvestre sensible y los sistemas de agua.

“No hay duda del daño ambiental que ha estado ocurriendo desde el verano pasado en este sitio y estamos firmemente comprometidos a detener ese daño”, dijo Elise Bennett, del Center for Biological Diversity.

La demanda también sostiene que el estado no realizó una evaluación ambiental adecuada como exige la ley federal.

“No hay debate sobre si se cumplió con la Ley Nacional de Política Ambiental y eso requiere tres cosas”, dijo Eve Samples, de Friends of the Everglades. “Requiere un análisis de las acciones del gobierno sobre el daño ambiental; eso no ocurrió. Requiere la participación del público y la consideración de alternativas; ninguna de esas tres cosas ocurrió, como escucharon hoy en la corte”.

En agosto pasado, un juez federal falló a favor de los grupos ambientalistas, ordenando detener la construcción y reducir las operaciones.

Sin embargo, esa orden fue suspendida después de que funcionarios estatales y federales apelaran, permitiendo que la instalación continúe operando mientras el caso avanza.

Jesse Panuccio, abogado del Departamento de Manejo de Emergencias de Florida, dijo a los jueces el martes que el financiamiento federal y el control federal de la instalación eran los dos criterios para determinar si se aplica la ley ambiental federal, y que las agencias federales no tienen control sobre el centro de detención administrado por el estado.

Florida fue notificada a finales de septiembre de que FEMA aprobó $608,000,000 USD en fondos federales para apoyar la construcción y operación del centro.

“Se necesitan ambos”, dijo Panuccio. “Incluso con financiamiento, no creo que eso aplique porque no existe control federal”.

La corte de apelaciones decidirá si la orden judicial debe restablecerse mientras la demanda avanza hacia juicio. No se espera una decisión por varias semanas.

La demanda ambiental es una de tres impugnaciones en tribunales federales contra la instalación en los Everglades desde su apertura. En las otras, un detenido afirmó que agencias de Florida y contratistas privados contratados por el estado no tenían autoridad para operar el centro bajo la ley federal. Ese caso terminó después de que el inmigrante que presentó la demanda aceptara ser removido de Estados Unidos.

En una tercera demanda, un juez federal en Fort Myers dictaminó que la instalación en los Everglades debe proporcionar a los detenidos un mejor acceso a sus abogados, así como llamadas legales salientes confidenciales, no monitoreadas y no grabadas.

Some have pitched him as a gateway to young people — particularly young men — who have drifted to the right in recent years. Others fear he is a sign of the party beholden to its extremes, pointing to inflammatory rhetoric like “Hamas is a thousand times better” than Israel, describing some Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and that “America deserved 9/11."

Piker's scheduled appearances with Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, have catalyzed questions of how big a tent the party wants to build as it works to regain power in the midterm elections and win back the White House.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Piker cast the reaction as part of a broader fight for the party's future.

“There is definitely, I think, a battle right now for who gets to be more representative of the national Democratic Party,” he said.

Piker remains largely unapologetic for his past remarks, although he's said some were poorly worded. He called the renewed focus on them “totally ridiculous, especially considering that there are far more consequential things happening in the world right now.”

“The super wealthy are picking apart the scraps of the American carcass like a bunch of vultures, and some of the Democrats are talking about their affiliations with a Twitch streamer,” Piker said. “I think Americans understand that this is totally ridiculous.”

The 34-year-old Turkish American streamer has 3.1 million followers on Twitch and 1.8 million on YouTube, making him an influential voice in a shifting media landscape where mainstream outlets are losing clout. Unlike traditional podcasts, his livestreams are often unscripted and interactive. He has hosted prominent Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Piker said he is a “megaphone” for an angry electorate, and he believes the criticism that he faces is less about him personally and more about what he represents — a younger, more populist wing of the party.

“I think they find me to be a more appropriate target than to just actively disparage the voters,” he said.

El-Sayed, who has been backed by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, is attempting to channel that appeal in appearances at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan on Tuesday. A physician and former county health official, he is locked in a competitive Senate primary with U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. It's a critical race for a seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Gary Peters and the winner of the primary will likely face former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers.

The three candidates have differing views on U.S. foreign policy toward Israel. Both El-Sayed and McMorrow have described the war in Gaza as a genocide. El-Sayed wants to stop all military assistance while McMorrow has pushed for a two-state solution. Stevens has described herself as a “proud pro-Israel Democrat."

McMorrow told Jewish Insider that Piker was someone who “says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views and followers," and she compared him to white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Trump's decision to dine with Fuentes between his presidencies ignited a firestorm of controversy over his association with extreme voices on the right. Stevens said El-Sayed is “choosing to campaign with someone who has a history of antisemitic rhetoric.”

El-Sayed responded to the backlash over Piker by saying “if we want to have a conversation where we're actually bringing people together about the things that we need and deserve, we're gonna have to go to unlikely and uncommon places.”

Not everyone in the party wants to go to those places. Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, who chairs the moderate New Democratic Coalition and co-chairs the Congressional Jewish Caucus, called Piker “an unapologetic antisemite.”

“We are deeply disappointed by the decision to host a speaker at the University of Michigan with a documented record of antisemitic rhetoric," said Rabbi Davey Rosen, the CEO of Michigan Hillel. “Such invitations normalize hate and contribute to a hostile environment for Jewish students.”

Piker said he is not antisemitic and describes himself as anti-Zionist. Hostility toward Israel has risen across the political spectrum and became a fault line within the Democratic Party during the war in Gaza.

Criticism has centered on Piker's past remarks. After the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Piker argued that whether reports of sexual violence are accurate “doesn’t change the dynamic” of the conflict. He has repeatedly said the core issue is Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Piker has drawn backlash for a comment in which he said “America deserved 9/11,” made during a 2019 livestream while discussing U.S. foreign policy. Piker has said the remark was poorly worded and added in the AP interview that he “didn’t mean that Americans deserved to die.”

It was 1978. I was 10. “I don't know how much longer I can catch these,” said my already aging parent, who would deny two decades later that he ever said anything of the sort until I was at LEAST 14.

How many children have held an American baseball since it sort of coalesced into being in the latter half of the 19th century? How many have felt those nubby stitches underneath their fingers while their palms cupped the smooth white leather? How many have swung a tiny bat — wooden, then aluminum, now graphite — and connected with a softer, younger kids' baseball, a “T-ball,” and felt that unique thrill of kinetic energy and possibility?

Baseball is, in the end, all about the ball. In the pantheon of the national pastime, bat and glove — as crucial as they are — are but the supporting cast. The ball remains forever at the center. Spinning, bobbing, weaving. Pulverized, soaring, gone.

The baseball itself is a curious object. One killed a man once, Ray Chapman, in 1920. These days dozens are used in a single big-league game.

There, it emerges pristine onto a field from an umpire's waist pouch. From there, it is held meticulously and lovingly and gingerly by one player, who arranges fingers just so and treats the leather sphere like a firstborn for a few seconds. Then it is delivered to another player, an opponent with a large stick who tries mightily to smack the bejeezus out of it. You gotta feel for that little ball.

When I moved overseas in 1979, I met an elderly man who had once interviewed Ted Williams, one of the game's greatest hitters. He — the man, not Williams — knew I was feeling homesick for baseball in particular. When I produced my ball and glove, he said something to the effect of: “As long as you have a baseball, you're home.”

I still pack one most everywhere I go. For me, it is America encapsulated — burning a hole in my glove or my jacket pocket, biding its time, ready for the next big game … of catch.

___

Ted Anthony has written about American culture for The Associated Press since 1992. This story is part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250 anniversary of the United States.

The development of the click-clacking, feet-as-instruments art form traces its roots to a blend of different cultural influences.

The percussive element came from the traditions of enslaved people brought to the southern United States from central Africa. In the 18th century, when they weren't allowed to play musical instruments by plantation owners, they used the rhythmic stomping of their feet as a way to stay connected to their cultures.

Over time, that blended with the fast footwork of dancing styles brought to America by immigrant groups, like Irish step dancing and English and Welsh clog dancing, to evolve into tap. Before metal plates on the bottom of shoes became standard, dancers attached objects like nails or coins to make their sounds.

Tap became popular to watch as entertainment, as in the early 20th century when vaudeville variety shows grew in popularity and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson became one of the few Black men to perform without a white partner in a segregated era.

It became a staple of movies in the middle of the century, with stars like Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, the Nicholas brothers and Shirley Temple showing their tap skills on the silver screen. It faded from that level of popularity as the 20th century came to a close, but still had bright stars and moments, including dancers Gregory Hines and Savion Glover and in the movie “Happy Feet.”

___

Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250 anniversary of the United States.

For certain families in the years after WWII, though, they were perfect — a chance to have a home of one's own, an answer to a serious housing shortage. So was born Levittown, about 40 miles outside of New York City on Long Island. It grew to more than 17,000 houses, the first wholly planned American suburb.

Developer William Levitt wasn't the first builder to use mass-production methods to build homes that were accessible to the middle class, but “nobody was building on the scale that he did,” says Ed Berenson, professor of history at New York University and author of “Perfect Communities: Levitt, Levittown and the Dream of White Suburbia.”

Levitt started out with 2,000 homes, unsure of what the demand would be. About three times that many people signed up, so eager were returning veterans for their own homes. The Federal Housing Authority played a part as well, guaranteeing mortgages.

But the first Levittown and others that he built, and suburbs developed by others, weren't open to all. Federal backing of mortgages was aimed at white buyers, in white communities, not Black buyers. Levitt refused to sell to Black families and included restrictive covenants that barred those who bought the homes from reselling to Black people.

That's left a legacy in a country where the biggest financial asset for many Americans has been their homes, Berenson says.

“What Levitt did by creating these exclusively white communities is he set up a structure that still exists today, and it’s a structure that has really maintained racial inequality, even more than class inequality,” Berenson says. “It’s not nearly as bad as it was, but it still exists.”

___

Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250 anniversary of the United States.

Qalibaf added: “Our firing continues. Our missiles are in place. Our determination and faith have increased.”

The comments came as regional powers met in Pakistan to discuss how to end the fighting in the Middle East as about 2,500 U.S. Marines arrived in the region and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels entered the monthlong war.

The war has threatened global supplies of oil and natural gas, sparked fertilizer shortages and disrupted air travel. Iran’s grip on the strategic Strait of Hormuz has shaken markets and prices.

The Houthis’ entry could further hurt global shipping if they again target vessels in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait off the Red Sea, through which about 12% of the world’s trade typically passes.

Here is the latest:

Latest reports of live fire

1. Israel’s military said on Monday morning that it was striking ‘military infrastructure’ across Tehran. 2. Bahrain sounded its missile alert sirens twice on Monday. 3. At dawn Monday, Israel’s military said Iran had launched missiles at the country. It was the first such launch from Iran of the day. Sirens went off in the area near Israel’s main nuclear research center, a part of the country that has been targeted repeatedly over the past days.

Australia cuts fuel taxes to offset war-driven price spikes

Australia has halved its taxes on gasoline and diesel and removed a tax on heavy vehicles to counter the economic impacts of soaring fuel prices.

The government announced on Monday it expects the tax reductions will cost federal coffers 2.55 billion Australian dollars ($1.74 billion) over three months.

Taxes on gasoline and diesel will be halved to 26.3 Australian cents a liter (68.2 cents a gallon) from Wednesday. The heavy vehicle road user charge of 32.4 Australian cents per liter of diesel (84.1 cents a gallon) that truck and bus operators pay to compensate for the added damage they cause roads will be removed.

Tasmania state introduced free public transport on Monday to reduce private vehicle use and Victoria state will remove public transport fees from Wednesday.

Trump calls Sunday a ‘big day in Iran’ in Truth Social post

“Many long sought after targets have been taken out and destroyed by our GREAT MILITARY, the finest and most lethal in the World,” U.S. President Donald Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social website, without elaborating.

Benchmark Brent crude tops $116 a barrel in trading early Monday

Brent crude was just over $70 a barrel when the war started on Feb. 28. Prices have spiked by over 50% since.

Kuwait says 1 killed in Iranian attack on power, water plant

Kuwait said early Monday an Iranian attack on a power and desalination plant in the small, oil-rich nation killed an Indian worker there.

The statement carried by the state-run KUNA news agency did not identify the plant targeted.

Authorities said power and water supplies remained constant despite the attack.

Desalination plants remain crucial to water supplies in the Gulf Arab states. Iranian attacks already have damaged some facilities.

Trump suggests US could take Iran’s Kharg Island

U.S. President Donald Trump has raised the idea of American forces seizing Iran’s Kharg Island, its main oil terminal in the Persian Gulf.

The comment by Trump came in an interview published early Monday by The Financial Times.

“Maybe we take Kharg Island, maybe we don’t. We have a lot of options,” Trump told the newspaper. “It would also mean we had to be there (on Kharg Island) for a while.”

Asked about Iranian defenses there, he said: “I don’t think they have any defense. We could take it very easily.”

The U.S. already launched airstrikes once it said targeted military positions on the island. Iran has threatened to launch its own ground invasion of Gulf Arab countries and new attacks if U.S. troops land on its territory.

Trump says Iran’s parliament speaker authorized tankers to pass Strait of Hormuz

U.S. President Donald Trump says that Iran’s parliament speaker authorized the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.

The comment by Trump in an interview published early Monday by The Financial Times is the latest signal by the Americans of Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf’s importance within Iran’s theocracy.

“They gave us 10” Pakistani-flagged tankers, he said. “Now they’re giving 20 and the 20 have already started and they’re going right up the middle of the Strait.”

“He’s the one who authorized the ships to me,” Trump told the newspaper about Qalibaf. “Remember I said they’re giving me a present? And everyone said: ‘What’s the present?’ ... When they heard about that they kept their mouth shut and the negotiations are going very well.”

Qalibaf has maintained a combative personality through his X account in the war, mocking the Americans and issuing threats. But the former Revolutionary Guard commander has seen his profile rise as senior members of its theocracy have been killed.

Trump says US is negotiating with Iran ‘directly and indirectly’

U.S. President Donald Trump said that Iran had agreed to allow 20 ships carrying oil through the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday morning and continuing over the next few days “out of a sign of respect.”

“I would only say that we’re doing extremely well in that negotiation but you never know with Iran because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up,” Trump told reporters Sunday night board Air Force One as he flew to Washington.

Trump was asked if Iran had responded to the 15-point ceasefire plan the U.S. has proposed and he said, they did and added: “They gave us most of the points. Why wouldn’t they?”

But Trump didn’t offer details when asked about Iran, by his telling, appearing to make major concessions.

“They’re agreeing with us on the plan,” Trump said.

He also said Iran’s new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei “may be alive but he’s obviously, very seriously in trouble. He’s seriously wounded.”

UN peacekeeper killed in southern Lebanon

A U.N. peacekeeper was killed and another critically wounded when a projectile exploded in their position near a village in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL said in a statement very early Monday.

The statement said the “origin of the projectile” was unknown.

The hilly frontier zone where the UNIFIL force patrols has seen decades of cross-border violence.

Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants fought a full-scale war in 2024 and are fighting again since Hezbollah joined Iran at firing into Israel in the current war. Israel has moved thousands of troops across the border into Lebanon.

Israel says it thwarted 2 attacks against troops in West Bank

Israeli soldiers shot at two men who they assessed were posing a threat to them in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank overnight, killing one and “neutralizing” the other, Israel’s military said early Monday.

According to the military’s statement, one man armed with a knife ran toward soldiers near Dura, in the southern West Bank, and was killed. Another accelerated toward them in his vehicle near a village just north of Jerusalem, and troops also fired at him.

Israel approves ‘limited prayer framework’ at Holy Sepulchre

Israel’s police said it had approved a “limited prayer framework” to open worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem as the sacred season of Holy Week gets underway.

Major sites holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem’s Old City have been closed during the Iran war because of safety considerations. Earlier this month, shrapnel from the interception of an Iranian missile fell on a rooftop just steps from the church, which Christians revere as the place where Jesus was crucified.

But criticism surged from around the world Sunday after the police prevented a tiny group of Catholic faith leaders from entering the church in order to celebrate a private Mass on the Christian holiday of Palm Sunday.

The police announcement said authorities had worked with a representative of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch whose entry they had barred, and more details on what activities would be permitted would be forthcoming.

Israeli air force intercepts 2 drones launched from Yemen

Israel’s military said that its air force had intercepted two drones launched from Yemen early Monday morning.

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for launching their first attack in the current war -- a missile fired at Israel, which was also intercepted -- early on Saturday morning.

Petrochemical facility struck in Iran’s north

Iranian media reported early Monday that one of the facilities of Tabriz Petrochemical was struck in a northern province of the country. They said no hazardous materials had been released.

The company takes oil or natural gas and processes them into chemical products used to make everyday materials like plastics and chemicals.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says it will target residences of US and Israeli officials

Iran’s joint military command spokesperson declared on Sunday that the private residences of U.S. and Israeli officials have now become legitimate targets for Iran, as the war in the Middle East enters its first month and continues to widen across the region.

The threat was aimed at U.S. and Israeli military and political officials living in the Middle East, including Israel.

Ebrahim Zolfaghari said that this decision has been made after the U.S. and Israel have targeted residential homes of Iranians in various cities across Iran.

Military says Iran launched more missiles at Israel

Israel’s military on Sunday night said Iran had launched another salvo of missiles at the country. Sirens went off in the Beersheba area, which has been targeted repeatedly in the last days.

Israel says it hit Tehran with more munitions; Iran says power restored in capital

Late on Sunday, Israel’s military said that over the past 24 hours its fighter jets had dropped more than 120 munitions in Tehran, targeting sites used for weapons research, development and production.

Around the same time, Iran’s state television said power was back in areas of Tehran that had experienced outages.

IAEA reports severe damage to Iran’s Khondab heavy water production plant

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said Sunday that satellite imagery confirmed severe damage to the Khondab heavy water production plant near Arak

The International Atomic Energy Agency added that the installation has no declared nuclear material. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization reported on Friday that the facility was hit and Israel claimed responsibility for the strike.

Since the war began a month ago, several strikes targeted nuclear sites across Iran.

Foreign ministers depart after talks in Islamabad

The foreign ministers of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt departed late Sunday night for their respective capitals after attending a meeting convened by Pakistan to review progress in bringing the United States and Iran to the negotiating table to end war in the region, the ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

It gave no further details.

Pakistan earlier said that top diplomats from Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia would visit Islamabad from March 29 to 30 for in-depth discussions on a range of issues, including efforts to de-escalate regional tensions.

ADAMA pesticide company says warehouse damaged in Iranian missile attack

An agriculture company that produces pesticides in southern Israel said it suffered damage to a warehouse on Sunday.

Israel’s Fire and Rescue Services responded to a massive blaze that began around 3:30 p.m. from an Iranian missile or shrapnel fragments. The company, ADAMA, said the damage was at its Makhteshim plant in Neot Hovav, on the outskirts of Beersheba, and there was no damage to production facilities.

ADAMA said its workers evacuated according to instructions from the emergency services. Israel’s Fire and Rescue said the evacuation included the immediate plant as well as a nearby highway and the evacuation was lifted after about an hour.

Dramatic footage after the strike showed pillars of smoke and billowing flames reaching high into the sky. There were no injuries, according to Israel’s rescue services.

Iran’s supreme leader applauds Iraq’s stance in the war

In a message attributed to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, he expressed his appreciation to senior religious authorities in Iraq for their supportive stance toward Iran during the war, according to two semi-official Iranian news agencies.

Since he was named third supreme leader of Iran, Khamenei has made no public appearance, but has conveyed only rare messages.

Iran-backed militias in Iraq have claimed responsibility for several attacks on U.S. bases in the country in solidarity with Tehran.

US embassy warns of potential attacks on universities in Iraq

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, in a statement posted on X Sunday, warned that Iran and allied militias “may intend to target the American Universities in Baghdad, Sulaymaniyah, and Dohuk, along with other universities perceived to be associated with the United States,” after Iran threatened American universities across the Middle East.

The statement added that Iran and affiliated militias have already carried out “widespread attacks on U.S. citizens, targets associated with the United States throughout Iraq” and the “Iraqi government has not prevented terrorist attacks against the United States and regional countries from Iraqi territory.”

It reiterated a warning for U.S. citizens to leave the country.

Many universities around the region have already moved to teaching online since the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran triggered the ongoing war in the Middle East.

Iran reports power outages after attacks

Iran’s energy ministry says power was cut in Tehran and Alborz provinces after attacks on electricity facilities. The state media reports late Sunday did not say who attacked.

Pakistani foreign minister says his country will host talks between US and Iran

Pakistan’s foreign minister says Islamabad soon will host talks between the U.S. and Iran.

Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar made the announcement Sunday. He did not specify whether the talks would be direct or indirect. There was no immediate word from the U.S. or Iran.

“Pakistan is very happy that both Iran and the U.S. have expressed their confidence in Pakistan’s facilitation” of the talks, which will happen in the “coming days,” Dar said in a televised speech after top diplomats from regional countries met in Islamabad.

He said the foreign ministers of Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia endorsed Pakistan’s peace efforts. The ministers are expected to meet again Monday.

Pakistan has emerged as a mediator, having relatively good ties with both Washington and Tehran. Pakistani officials have said their public effort follows weeks of quiet diplomacy.

American University of Beirut moves classes online after Iran threats to US-affiliated campuses

The announcement from the university in the heart of the Lebanese capital comes as American universities and schools across the Mideast fear strikes that may target their facilities.

President Fadlo Khuri in an announcement Sunday said it was a precautionary measure and that there was “no evidence of direct threats” to the prestigious university and its renowned hospital.

“The American University of Beirut has stood for the peaceful emancipation and progress of the people we educate and serve for more than a century and a half,” said Khuri.

The threat from Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard comes after comes after recent U.S. and Israeli strikes on two campuses in the Islamic Republic.

Top US oil industry official presses for quick action to reopen strait

The head of the U.S. oil and natural industry’s top lobbying group says “the only real solution” to rising energy and consumer prices as a result of the war with Iran is to get the Strait of Hormuz open.

“If we can do that this week with targeted regime actions, I think we have to take that opportunity because it’s only going to get worse over time,” said Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute.

Sommers told Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing” that “that artery has to be reopened and fast” because “the longer this goes on, the higher prices are going to go.”

Sommers is also troubled by the entry of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

“If the Houthis start attacking ships going through the Red Sea, that could really put us on the cusp of a major energy crisis throughout the world. That is a top concern this week, as well,” he says.

Death toll in Lebanon exceeds 1,200 people in ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah

Over 3,500 people were also wounded since the start of this latest military escalation, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Among the killed are 52 health workers.

Israel launched intense airstrikes over Lebanon after the Hezbollah militant group fired rockets toward northern Israel in solidarity with Iran on March 2.

Since then,towardne milltowardanese have been displaced as Israeli ground forces continue an invasion into southern Lebanon.

Netanyahu says Israel will widen its invasion of southern Lebanon

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that Israel will widen its invasion of southern Lebanon.

Netanyahu said Israel would expand what he called the “existing security strip” in Lebanon as Israeli forces continue to target the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group.

“We are determined to fundamentally change the situation in the north,” he said on a visit to northern Israel, adding that “Hezbollah still has residual capability to fire rockets at us.”

There were no immediate details.

In Lebanon, officials say more than 1,100 people have been killed in the fighting since the Iran war began.

▶ Read more

Expert says world economy is a ‘crisis point’ as Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen open new front in war

The Houthis joined the war over the weekend with a missile attack on Israel. Their entry has raised concerns that they could resume attacks on vessels in the Red Sea further disrupting the global shipping industry and sending oil prices much higher.

Nomi Bar-Yaacov, fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, said the Houthis’ potential disruption of oil export in the Red Sea will create a “point where we have not been before.”

At this time, both the Homuz and Bab al-Mandab straits will be closed, she said.

“All eyes are on the mediation, but the oil crisis is, I think, at an unprecedented state,” she said.

Kuwait’s top diplomat blasts Iran’s destabilization of the region

Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Jarrah Jaber Al Sabah said Sunday that what the region is witnessing is “systematic pattern of undermining regional stability led by Iran”, as the monthlong war continues to destabilize the region.

In a statement reported by the state-run Kuna news agency, Al Sabah said that Iran is destabilizing the region through “exploiting chaos and terrorism as tools of influence.”

Kuwait’s Armed Forces said Sunday that projectile attacks injured 10 members of its forces, and its Defense Ministry said that the warehouses of a private logistics company were hit, resulting in only material damage, as the country intercepted 26 other Iranian missiles and drones over the past 24 hours.

Also on Sunday, Qatar and Bahrain said that they intercepted missiles and drones launched toward them.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy arrives in Jordan

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Jordan Sunday, part of his tour of Gulf Arab states as Kyiv continues to offer its drone expertise to help governments blunt Iranian attacks during the war in the Middle East.

“Security is the top priority, and it is important that all partners make the necessary efforts toward it. Ukraine is doing its part. Important meetings ahead,” Zelenskyy wrote on his social media channels, alongside a video that showed him arriving by air.

Jordan’s state news agency reported that Zelenskyy would meet with King Abdullah II for talks on regional developments and bilateral relations.

Hundreds gather in central Istanbul for protest against US and Israel

Nearly a thousand people gathered in central Istanbul Sunday afternoon despite heavy rains to protest the ongoing conflicts in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine.

Organized by several religious conservative NGOs, the rally featured slogans like, “Resist, Gaza will prevail” and “Muslims don’t bow to oppression,” as well as signs saying, “Killer Israel, Killer United States” and criticizing the Israeli closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

“We are here for all the oppressed in the world. Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, yesterday it was Venezuela, tomorrow it will probably be Cuba, we are here for all of them,” protester Mehmet Yilmaz told The Associated Press.

“When Iran launches a missile, despite claiming no one can hurt them with their Iron Dome, they (Israelis) all scurry into their holes like mice the second the sirens blare,” Ekrem Saylan told AP. “What do the Iranians do? They take to the streets. This is about belief, faith. If they (Israelis) had faith they wouldn’t be afraid of death.”

___

This story was first published on March 29, 2026. It was updated on March 30, 2026, to correct the name of the site in Israel where a warehouse was damaged in a missile attack. It is Neot Hovav, not Ramot Hovav.

Leer en español

Authorities say Cornelius Sentell Osborne posed as a general contractor and agreed to perform restoration work on a home in Hollywood.

After collecting the money, investigators say he abandoned the project after several months, leaving the home uninhabitable.

Ingoglia said Osborne was arrested on March 19 in Plantation by officers with the Florida Department of Financial Services Criminal Investigations Division.

He said Osborne was on probation at the time of his arrest for fleeing a law enforcement officer in Brevard County.

A news release from the Florida Department of Financial Services states that Osborne is facing charges of grand theft and acting as an unlicensed contractor, which carry a potential sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

Ingoglia said the arrest is part of ongoing efforts to crack down on fraud and protect vulnerable Floridians.

“This case is a direct result of my office’s relentless work to root out fraud in our state and hold bad actors accountable,” he said. “We are cracking down on this kind of criminal activity, especially when it targets those in vulnerable situations. If you think you can get away with this sort of behavior, think again. My office is working tirelessly to bring these fraudsters to justice.”

To learn more about Osborne’s arrest, Local 10 viewers can watch this video.

Las autoridades indicaron que Cornelius Sentell Osborne se hizo pasar por contratista general y acordó realizar trabajos de restauración en una vivienda en Hollywood.

Tras recibir el dinero, los investigadores señalan que abandonó el proyecto después de varios meses, dejando la casa inhabitable.

Ingoglia informó que Osborne fue arrestado el 19 de marzo en Plantation por agentes de la División de Investigaciones Criminales del Departamento de Servicios Financieros de Florida.

Indicó que Osborne estaba en libertad condicional al momento de su arresto por evadir a un agente del orden en el condado Brevard.

Un comunicado del Departamento de Servicios Financieros de Florida señala que Osborne enfrenta cargos de hurto mayor y ejercer como contratista sin licencia, los cuales conllevan una posible sentencia de hasta 30 años de prisión.

Ingoglia dijo que el arresto forma parte de los esfuerzos en curso para combatir el fraude y proteger a los residentes vulnerables de Florida.

“Este caso es resultado directo del trabajo incansable de mi oficina para erradicar el fraude en nuestro estado y responsabilizar a los infractores”, dijo. “Estamos tomando medidas contra este tipo de actividad criminal, especialmente cuando apunta a personas en situaciones vulnerables. Si cree que puede salirse con la suya con este tipo de comportamiento, piénselo de nuevo. Mi oficina trabaja sin descanso para llevar a estos defraudadores ante la justicia”.

Para conocer más sobre el arresto de Osborne, los televidentes de Local 10 pueden ver este video.

Leer en español

Authorities said the threat, which they called a “potential swatting call” in a social media post was made against Nur-ul-Islam, which is a mosque located in Cooper City.

The person who called in the threat claimed to be affiliated with Cooper City High School, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

As a result, Cooper City High School was placed on a “Code Red” lockdown, which BSO said was done “out of an abundance of caution.”

That lockdown has since been lifted, authorities said, and the school has resumed normal operations.

BSO said there was no threat to the school or surrounding community following the lockdown.

Deputies with BSO’s Threat Management Unit said they are actively investigating the incident.

Leer en español

Lamondin, a Democrat, is switching races. He had been running for U.S. House in Florida’s 27th Congressional district, currently represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar.

Lamondin, the co-founder of sustainability company Ecofi, said he is entering the race to address rising costs and what he describes as “corruption” in Tallahassee. He said conversations with voters across the district over the past year shaped his decision to run.

“Florida has everything it needs to give people here a fair shot,” Lamondin said. “What it’s missing is leadership with real skin in the game. I pay preschool bills that rival rent. I support my aging parents. I own a home where insurance premiums have nearly tripled. And every two weeks, I make payroll for my employees whose livelihoods depend on my business succeeding. I’m living this — just like so many people in our community. And I’m done waiting for Tallahassee to do something about it.”

Lamondin said his campaign will focus on issues such as property insurance costs, health care access and public school funding. He also criticized Calatayud’s record in office.

“Alexis Calatayud has had her chance to fight for this district,” Lamondin added. “While people here work harder than ever just to get by, she voted to spend $5 million of taxpayer money renaming an airport for a president who is directly raising our costs.”

He also took aim at her positions on insurance and development issues.

“She voted to hand billion-dollar bailouts to insurance corporations while families watched their premiums skyrocket,” he said. “She voted to let developers override local decisions — time and again siding with special interests over the neighborhoods she represents.”

Lamondin further criticized her response to a land deal involving a local college.

“When Tallahassee forced Miami Dade College to hand over its most valuable piece of land to the Trump Foundation for ten dollars, she said nothing,” Lamondin added. “That’s not representation. That’s abandonment.”

Lamondin lives in Miami with his wife and young son and serves on nonprofit boards focused on youth and community development.

He enters the race with backing from several Democratic leaders, including Florida Senate Democratic Leader-Designate Tracie Davis, State Sen. Shevrin Jones and Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried, as well as groups targeting the seat as part of a broader effort to gain ground in the Legislature.

His announcement can be viewed in this video.

Lamondin, demócrata, cambia de contienda. Anteriormente se postulaba para la Cámara de Representantes de Estados Unidos por el Distrito 27 de Florida, actualmente representado por la congresista republicana Maria Elvira Salazar.

Lamondin, cofundador de la empresa de sostenibilidad Ecofi, dijo que entra en la carrera para abordar el aumento de los costos y lo que describe como “corrupción” en Tallahassee. Señaló que conversaciones con votantes en todo el distrito durante el último año influyeron en su decisión.

“Florida tiene todo lo que necesita para darle a la gente una oportunidad justa”, dijo Lamondin. “Lo que falta es liderazgo con intereses reales en juego. Pago facturas de preescolar que compiten con la renta. Apoyo a mis padres mayores. Soy propietario de una vivienda donde las primas de seguro casi se han triplicado. Y cada dos semanas pago la nómina de mis empleados, cuyos medios de vida dependen de que mi negocio tenga éxito. Estoy viviendo esto, como tantas personas en nuestra comunidad. Y ya no voy a seguir esperando a que Tallahassee haga algo al respecto”.

Lamondin dijo que su campaña se centrará en temas como los costos del seguro de propiedad, el acceso a la atención médica y la financiación de las escuelas públicas. También criticó el historial de Calatayud en el cargo.

“Alexis Calatayud ha tenido su oportunidad de luchar por este distrito”, agregó Lamondin. “Mientras la gente aquí trabaja más que nunca solo para salir adelante, ella votó para destinar $5,000,000 USD de dinero de los contribuyentes a renombrar un aeropuerto en honor a un presidente que está elevando directamente nuestros costos”.

También cuestionó sus posturas sobre seguros y desarrollo.

“Votó para otorgar rescates de miles de millones de dólares a corporaciones de seguros mientras las familias veían dispararse sus primas”, dijo. “Votó para permitir que los desarrolladores anulen decisiones locales, una y otra vez, poniéndose del lado de intereses especiales por encima de los vecindarios que representa”.

Lamondin también criticó su respuesta a un acuerdo de tierras que involucró a un colegio local.

“Cuando Tallahassee obligó a Miami Dade College a entregar su terreno más valioso a la Fundación Trump por diez dólares, ella no dijo nada”, añadió Lamondin. “Eso no es representación. Es abandono”.

Lamondin vive en Miami con su esposa y su hijo pequeño y forma parte de juntas de organizaciones sin fines de lucro enfocadas en la juventud y el desarrollo comunitario.

Entra en la contienda con el respaldo de varios líderes demócratas, incluida la líder designada demócrata del Senado de Florida Tracie Davis, el senador estatal Shevrin Jones y la presidenta del Partido Demócrata de Florida Nikki Fried, así como de grupos que apuntan a ese escaño como parte de un esfuerzo más amplio por ganar terreno en la Legislatura.

Su anuncio puede verse en este video.

Like its predecessor, “The Testaments” is based on a novel by Margaret Atwood of the same name. It takes place five years after the events of “The Handmaid's Tale,” and follows privileged girls in Gilead who are on the cusp of adulthood. Viewers are reintroduced to Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) from the original, who now runs a school training girls to be proper young ladies who are ready for marriage and most importantly, babies. There is a class where the girls are tested in how they pour tea.

Lydia has become a bit softer since we last saw her. “At the end of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ she’s in a deep state of remorse and begging for forgiveness when her life, as she knew it, collapses,” said Dowd of her character. “She’s come into this world a gentler human being. She’s still Lydia, but I think she’s had time to let go of the wall that was built around her.”

New story, new heroes

We meet Agnes, played by Chase Infiniti (“One Battle After Another”) and her friends Shunammite and Becka played by Rowan Blanchard and Mattea Conforti. Lucy Halliday portrays Daisy, a new student who is instructed to shadow Agnes at school.

“I see them as two cats who’ve been put in a room together and are sniffing each other out,” said Halliday. “I think they are aware that there is an inherent similarity overlapping with them both, but they will refuse to admit it because they don’t want to be like the other person.”

Because Agnes and Becka have each started to menstruate, it's immediately declared mating season and the girls must marry. This is when cracks begin to show in the Gilead status quo as Becka is uninterested in finding a husband. Agnes is swept up in the romantic idea of it all — until she's introduced to potential mates who are generally older with powerful positions in Gilead's government. She realizes marriage would be a power move for her family and that love isn't required.

Bruce Miller created both “The Handmaid's Tale” and “The Testaments” and says each tells stories about the oppression of women.

“In ‘Handmaid’s,' they take a child away from its mother and then say to the mother, ‘You’re going to be docile,’” said Miller. By contrast, he said, “The Testaments” “takes a bunch of teenage girls and tells them what they are going to be and also remove their adolescence from their lives.”

A gentler tone, but aiming to create new inspiration for girls and women

This new focus on young women in Gilead, who've only known Gilead “is an easier show on the system to watch, I believe,” said Dowd. “It doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its intensity. It does. But we’re dealing with a whole group of different characters. We’re focusing on the young women and how they interact with one another, and they can’t help but resist and grow.”

“These teenagers’ lives have a certain level of lightness to them,” added Miller. “That’s the interesting thing, their lives have all this lightness that Gilead lets them have and then crushes it into some horribleness and breaks that lightness up.”

Because of “The Handmaid's Tale,” women have been inspired to dress in red cloaks and white bonnets as a symbol of resistance against oppression, most recently at last month's “ No Kings ” rallies. The cast of “The Testaments” hopes this new chapter also moves people to act.

“There are a lot of topics and a lot of things that happen in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ that are unfortunately still happening to this day,” said Infiniti. “If people can watch our show and if any way they feel emboldened to get off the couch and go out there and fight for their communities, fight for their neighbors unapologetically and with love and respect — I think that that would be the ultimate gift for any of us.”

Blanchard, who has been an advocate for women's rights and other causes since she was a teenager, says she can empathize with the teen characters in the story.

“There’s nothing more powerless than being a teenage girl. There’s so much happening in such a short amount of time. So many emotions, you know? So much like self-realization is happening, so much self-actualizing, and these girls are having to form their identities in a very specific way.”

Encouragement from Moss

When the weight of stepping into Gilead seemed daunting, Halliday said she and her co-stars could turn to Elisabeth Moss — who starred in “The Handmaid's Tale” and is an executive producer of “The Testaments” — for reassurance.

“She’s an encyclopedia of information. She was open with us, and she was there for us if we ever had a question or needed guidance on something. But more than anything, what she gave us was the reassurance that we were doing OK and the space to step into these characters and to step into this world and to kind of trust in ourselves.”

The Moline, Illinois-based manufacturer, which does business under the John Deere brand, has faced a handful of “right to repair” complaints over the years. The deal announced Monday — which still needs final approval from the court — would settle a 2022 lawsuit that accused the company of withholding repair software and conspiring with authorized dealers to force farmers to use their services for repairs, when they could otherwise fix tractors and other equipment themselves or use independent alternatives.

The plaintiffs alleged that meant Deere and its dealers could charge higher, “supracompetitive” prices and reap benefits from an “unlawfully restrained” market, per court filings.

Deere has continued to deny any wrongdoing, and maintained Monday it's dedicated to supporting customers' ability and access needed to repair their equipment. But the company agreed to the settlement “to move forward and remain focused on what matters most — serving our customers,” Denver Caldwell, vice president of aftermarket and customer support, said in a statement.

Under the proposed agreement, filed in federal court in Illinois, the $99 million would go into a settlement fund for class members who paid Deere or its authorized dealers for large agriculture equipment repairs between Jan. 10, 2018 until the date of the deal's preliminary approval.

The company also agreed to additional injunctive relief, aimed at strengthening the availability of repair resources and things like diagnostic checks.

Beyond this case, Deere still faces separate litigation from the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC sued Deere in January 2025, at the end of the Biden administration, accusing the company of “unfair practices that have driven up equipment repair costs for farmers while also depriving farmers of the ability to make timely repairs.” Deere at the time said the claims were baseless.

“Right to repair” calls have piled up across sectors over the years, particularly as technology found its way into more and more products workers and consumers rely on. Beyond farm equipment, makers of goods like smartphones and video game consoles have also been accused of withholding tools or creating software-based locks that prevent even simple updates, unless they’re done by a shop authorized by the company — in turn, hampering independent repair businesses. Under public pressure, lawmakers in several states have tried to combat this.

But the weight of that phrase truly sunk in at the O’Smach Resort complex that we visited Tuesday. Thailand's military, which conducted a tour for the media, said that the whole area encompasses around 197 acres (80 hectares), equivalent to 150 American football fields.

It wasn't my first time at a scam center, but its scale dwarfed anything I had seen before.

From my base in Southeast Asia, I have followed this issue for the past few years, watching its scale only grow larger and larger.

Scam compounds have mushroomed across Southeast Asia since the pandemic. Inside these industrial-scale complexes, workers attempt to lure unsuspecting targets from countries all across the world in sophisticated online-based scams. The latest estimates from the U.N. office on Human Rights are that around 300,000 workers are caught up in the industry regionally.

Thailand’s military invited journalists back to the huge scam complex that it had seized in December during its border conflict with Cambodia. The military said that it had taken the area in response to the Cambodian side using it as a base of operations for launching attacks.

The complex was called the O’Smach Resort, owned by Cambodian politician Ly Yong Phat, who faces U.S. sanctions for rights abuses in the very same complex. It's unclear, however, whether the new construction also belongs to Ly. Throughout the massive grounds of the self-contained town, there were signs of construction. Piles of bricks and construction cranes sat waiting for workers to finish the job.

The military also took us to the premises where workers likely scammed Americans. FBI data released Tuesday shows that Americans lost near $21 billion to scams in 2025 alone.

On the desks inside the four-story office building were still snacks from the previous users, as well as scripts and notes in Chinese on each aspect of the scam. American SIM cards were scattered on the surface as well.

There was an elaborate backstory to target the Americans. One of the scripts on the desk was 24 pages of an in-depth character sketch of a woman named Mila who had earned a lot of money on the gold options trading market.

But the script went further. Mila had lost her husband to leukemia when their daughter was just a baby. It constructed memories of her childhood, such as her getting bullied by other girls, and then her parents sending her to South Africa to live with her uncle in order to be in a healthier environment.

There’s 157 buildings, 29 of which were buildings that housed the scam companies and their offices. The rest included massive dorm complexes, and more luxurious accommodations that included apartments and three-story villas. The military officials said that they estimated at least 10,000 people were living there.

There was also a variety of Chinese restaurants, catering to people who wanted spicy Hunan cuisine, or southern Shaxian cuisine, or hot and sour rice noodles, a Sichuanese classic.

While Thailand and Cambodia have vowed to tackle the problem, the scale of the problem is far more global.

“Every country of the world has to join together to solve this problem, (we) cannot do it alone with Cambodia and Thailand,” said Air Chief Marshal Prapas Sornchaidee, who was one of the officials leading the tour.

Leer en español

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office took Marianela Baez Dorta, 55, of St. Cloud, into custody Tuesday around 4:30 a.m.

According to authorities, Baez Dortawas in Marathon driving in a Toyota and exceeding the speed limit, going more than 80 mph in a 35 mph zone.

Deputies said Baez Dorta attempted to evade them after they tried to pull her over. . She was eventually taken into custody after authorities said she parked her car and attempted to hide near a vacation rental home located along 23rd Street.

They said the illegal actions did not stop there, though.

MCSO said that Baez Dorta made multiple threats to kill an arresting deputy.

She also kicked a detention deputy in the stomach while using racial slurs, authorities said.

Baez Dorta is facing felony charges for fleeing or eluding law enforcement and battery, as well as a misdemeanor charge for intimidation.

La Oficina del Sheriff del condado Monroe detuvo a Marianela Baez Dorta, de 55 años y residente de St. Cloud, el martes alrededor de las 4:30 a.m.

Según las autoridades, Baez Dorta conducía un Toyota en Marathon y excedía el límite de velocidad, circulando a más de 80 mph en una zona de 35 mph.

Los agentes indicaron que Baez Dorta intentó evadirlos después de que intentaron detenerla. Finalmente fue puesta bajo custodia luego de que, según las autoridades, estacionó su vehículo e intentó esconderse cerca de una casa de alquiler vacacional ubicada en la calle 23.

Indicaron que las acciones ilegales no terminaron allí.

MCSO informó que Baez Dorta realizó múltiples amenazas de muerte contra un agente que efectuaba el arresto.

También pateó a un agente de detención en el estómago mientras profería insultos raciales, según las autoridades.

Baez Dorta enfrenta cargos graves por huir o evadir a las autoridades y agresión, así como un cargo menor por intimidación.

The Everglades facility remains open, still holding detainees, because the appellate court in early September relied on arguments by Florida and the Trump administration that the state had not yet applied for federal reimbursement, and therefore wasn’t required to follow federal environmental law. State officials opened the detention center last summer to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Questions by the three appellate judges during oral arguments in a Miami courtroom focused on how much control the federal government had over the state-built facility and under what circumstances an environmental review was required to be in compliance with federal law. The judges did not indicate when they would rule.

Jesse Panuccio, an attorney for the Florida Department of Emergency Management, told the judges federal funding and federal control of the facility were the two criteria for determining if the federal environmental law would apply and the federal agencies had no control over the state-run detention center.

Florida was notified in late September that FEMA had approved $608 million in federal funding to support the center’s construction and operation.

“You need both,” Panuccio said. “Even with funding, I don’t think that would follow because they don’t have federal control.”

An attorney for the environmental groups said the law requiring a review applied to the facility because the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had authorized the funding and immigration was a responsibility of the federal government, not the state. There only needed to be “substantial federal control” and not complete control, said Paul Schwiep, an attorney representing the Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Chief Judge William Pryor, who was appointed to the appellate court by President George W. Bush, responded, “It's not federally controlled when the state retains authority to make decisions.”

Judge Nancy Abudu, who was named to the appellate court by President Joe Biden, asked an attorney for the federal government if states can be in charge of immigration matters. Adam Gustafson responded that the federal government can delegate certain responsibilities to states.

"Is it also, once the federal government gives the states its authority, it’s the ‘Wild, Wild West?’ Abudu asked.

The federal district judge in Miami in mid-August ordered the facility to wind down operations over two months because officials had failed to do a review of the detention center’s environmental impact according to federal law. That judge concluded that a reimbursement decision already had been made. The appellate court halted the order on an appeal.

The environmental lawsuit was one of three federal court challenges to the Everglades facility since it opened. In the others, a detainee said Florida agencies and private contractors hired by the state had no authority to operate the center under federal law. The challenge ended after the immigrant detainee who filed the lawsuit agreed to be removed from the United States.

In the third lawsuit, a federal judge in Fort Myers, Florida, ruled the Everglades facility must provide detainees there with better access to their attorneys, as well as confidential, unmonitored and unrecorded outgoing legal calls.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.

Los líderes indígenas también buscaron presionar al presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, quien ha respaldado los derechos indígenas y la protección ambiental en la mayor nación de América Latina al tiempo que impulsa proyectos petroleros y otros que parecen ir en contra de esos objetivos. El líder izquierdista muy probablemente se postulará a la reelección en octubre.

Los manifestantes caminaron por la Explanada de los Ministerios hacia la Plaza de los Tres Poderes, donde se encuentran el palacio presidencial, el Congreso y el Supremo Tribunal Federal. La manifestación formó parte del Campamento Tierra Libre anual, que celebra ahora su 22ª edición.

Tierra Libre es la mayor movilización indígena de Brasil y reúne a unas 7.000 personas de 200 grupos de todo el país, que acampan en Brasilia durante una semana para exigir demandas unificadas. El encuentro de este año se produce en medio de crecientes reportes de ataques violentos contra el pueblo pataxó en el estado de Bahía, en el marco de una disputa de tierras con agricultores, así como de importantes protestas en la región amazónica en los últimos meses.

“El Congreso, el Supremo Tribunal y el presidente toman decisiones por nosotros sin escucharnos. A menudo eligen a uno o a una docena de indígenas y dicen que todos estamos de acuerdo con una hidrovía, un ferrocarril, un proyecto minero”, declaró Alessandra Korap, líder indígena y ganadora del Premio Ambiental Goldman 2023. Habló con The Associated Press mientras comenzaba a marchar junto a su pueblo, los munduruku.

“En una asamblea como esta, cuando los pueblos indígenas de todo Brasil se mantienen unidos, nadie se atreve a acercarse a nosotros, aunque tomen decisiones sobre nuestras vidas", añadió Korap. "Pero estamos aquí para enviar un mensaje”.

La protección de los territorios indígenas es vista ampliamente como una de las formas más eficaces de frenar la deforestación en la Amazonía, la selva tropical más grande del mundo y un regulador clave del clima global. Investigadores advierten que la pérdida continua de bosque podría acelerar el calentamiento global. Un análisis de 2022 de MapBiomas, una red de grupos no gubernamentales que monitorea el uso del suelo, concluyó que los territorios indígenas en Brasil habían perdido apenas el 1% de la vegetación nativa en tres décadas, frente al 20% en tierras privadas a nivel nacional.

El campamento sigue a protestas recientes en toda la Amazonía

Las mujeres indígenas han protestado desde febrero en Altamira, en el estado de Pará, después de que un tribunal aprobara un proceso de licenciamiento para una enorme mina de oro operada por la empresa canadiense Belo Sun. Grupos ambientalistas y líderes indígenas se oponen al proyecto y denuncian graves irregularidades en el proceso de licenciamiento.

En febrero, el movimiento indígena obtuvo una victoria cuando Lula revocó un decreto que permitía concesiones privadas para vías navegables. La decisión se produjo tras 33 días de protestas en las que participaron miles de manifestantes en una instalación de Cargill —entre ellos Korap— en Santarém, también en el estado de Pará.

La gente comenzó a llegar a Brasilia durante el fin de semana. A medida que el lunes llegaban más personas y empezaban a montar tiendas en el césped de un espacio cultural en la ciudad, los líderes indígenas organizaron asambleas. En una de ellas, alguien preguntó a la multitud por un micrófono: “¿Está todo el mundo satisfecho con lo que el gobierno ha hecho sobre la demarcación de tierras indígenas?” y “¿Está todo el mundo satisfecho con el Congreso? ¿Con el Tribunal Supremo?”. La multitud gritaba "No" al responder a cada pregunta.

Las personas indígenas de distintas generaciones y comunidades marcharon el martes coreando consignas y llevando tocados tradicionales y pintura corporal, creando un mosaico de culturas indígenas.

“El actual entorno político de Brasil nos está obligando a mantenernos cada vez más movilizados, unidos y visibles”, dijo a la AP Dinamam Tuxá, jefe de la Articulación de los Pueblos Indígenas de Brasil.

Proyectos controvertidos avanzan en el Congreso y los tribunales

Aunque reconoció los avances logrados bajo la administración de Lula, Tuxá sostuvo que los derechos indígenas siguen bajo presión por parte del Congreso, de sectores del poder ejecutivo y de intereses económicos impulsados por la creciente demanda global de petróleo, gas y minerales críticos.

Los legisladores han impulsado leyes que debilitan las protecciones constitucionales o buscan reinterpretar los derechos territoriales indígenas, mientras persiste el debate de larga data sobre permitir la minería en territorios indígenas.

“También estamos en un año electoral. Por eso Tierra Libre adoptó el tema: Nuestro futuro no está en venta, y la respuesta somos nosotros”, señaló Tuxá.

Lula fue invitado al campamento, pero no había confirmado su asistencia hasta la tarde del lunes, indicó Kleber Karipuna, uno de los líderes del grupo de defensa de derechos indígenas Articulación de los Pueblos Indígenas de Brasil. Integrantes del gobierno —incluido Eloy Terena, ministro de los Pueblos Indígenas— comunicaron a los líderes indígenas que participarían en audiencias en Tierra Libre durante la semana.

El presidente brasileño, un destacado ícono de la izquierda, se ha comprometido a proteger el medio ambiente y a los pueblos indígenas, mientras al mismo tiempo defiende proyectos considerados vitales para los sectores del agronegocio, la minería y la energía, todos los cuales han recibido críticas de grupos indígenas y ambientalistas. Lula ha argumentado que el desarrollo y la conservación pueden ir de la mano.

En febrero, el juez del Supremo Tribunal Flávio Dino ordenó al Congreso aprobar, en un plazo de dos años, una legislación que regule la minería en tierras indígenas.

En el mismo fallo, Dino determinó que el pueblo cinta larga, que vive en una región que abarca los estados amazónicos de Mato Grosso y Rondônia, tiene derecho a extraer minerales dentro de su propio territorio, siempre que cumpla los requisitos ambientales y obtenga una aprobación mayoritaria entre las comunidades. Dino indicó que la minería ya ocurre de forma ilegal en áreas indígenas, sin respetar las normas ambientales y con el uso de la violencia.

Según la ley brasileña, cualquier investigación mineral o actividad minera en territorios indígenas requiere la aprobación del Congreso, además de la consulta a las comunidades locales.

Renata Vieira, abogada de la organización sin fines de lucro Instituto Socioambiental, afirmó que el Congreso de Brasil —dominado por representantes del sector del agronegocio— es en general hostil a la agenda indígena.

“Cualquier legislación sobre minería en tierras indígenas será muy perjudicial”, manifestó. “Creo que el impulso para autorizar la minería en territorios indígenas representa una de las amenazas más graves para los derechos indígenas”.

___________________________________

La cobertura climática y ambiental de The Associated Press recibe apoyo financiero de múltiples fundaciones privadas. La AP es la única responsable de todo el contenido. Encuentra los estándares de la AP para trabajar con organizaciones filantrópicas, una lista de las fundaciones y las áreas de cobertura que financian en AP.org.

___________________________________

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

The Board of Regents scheduled a meeting for 6 p.m. EDT to consider firing Jay Rothman, the leader of the system that oversees the state's four-year universities, including the flagship Madison campus.

The regents have not given a clear reason why they're considering terminating Rothman, who has served a little more than four years in the top leadership post.

The vote is scheduled just five days after The Associated Press first reported that the regents asked Rothman to either resign or be fired. Rothman said in two letters to the regents that he would not leave voluntarily without knowing what he did wrong.

Regent President Amy Bogost said in a statement Monday that the board has shared results of a performance review with Rothman, with “direct conversations and clear feedback regarding leadership expectations.” She said the system needs “a clear vision” but did not elaborate on the review's findings.

Rothman countered Tuesday with his own statement insisting regents repeatedly declined to cite a specific reason for finding no confidence in his leadership. No one ever indicated to him that an evaluation could lead to termination, he said, adding that Bogost called his review “overwhelmingly positive.”

“It is disappointing that the first I heard any sort of defense of their position was when they communicated with the media,” Rothman said. “I am left to conclude that, at best, this reflects an after-the-fact rationalization of a decision that was previously made.”

The secrecy has drawn the ire of Republicans who control the Legislature and the system's budget.

The state Senate's committee that oversees higher education scheduled a hearing for Thursday for 10 regents whose appointments by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers have yet to be confirmed by the Senate.

Republican Sen. Rob Hutton, chair of the committee, said “backroom maneuvering” by regents threatens to “throw the System into turmoil.”

Rothman has served as president of the 165,000-student, multicampus system since January 2022. The former chair and CEO of the Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner law firm, Rothman had no prior experience administering higher education.

He has spent his tenure lobbying Republican legislators to increase state aid for the system in the face of federal cuts, navigating free speech issues surrounding pro-Palestinian protests, and grappling with declining enrollment that has forced eight branch campuses to close. Overall enrollment across the system has remained steady under his leadership.

He has to tread carefully dealing with a Republican-controlled Legislature and a Board of Regents where all current members were appointed by Evers. When Rothman was hired, the board also had a majority of Evers appointees.

Rothman brokered a deal with Republicans in 2023 that called for freezing diversity hires and creating a position at UW-Madison focused on conservative thought in exchange for the Legislature releasing money for UW employee raises and tens of millions of dollars for construction projects across the system.

The regents initially rejected the deal only to approve it in a second vote held just days later. Evers said at the time the deal left him disappointed and frustrated.

Asked Monday about the move to oust Rothman, Evers didn't take a side. “It's their call,” he said of the board.

The fight over Rothman’s future comes as the flagship Madison campus is losing its chancellor. Jennifer Mnookin is leaving in May at the end of the current academic year to take the job as president of Columbia University.

Rothman makes $600,943 annually as UW president. He can be fired for no stated reason and he has no appeal rights, said Wisconsin employment law attorney Tamara Packard, who reviewed Rothman’s contract at the AP’s request.

Under the contract, Rothman would have to be given six-months’ notice of his termination. In practice, what usually happens is the person is told to focus on transitioning their duties and not actually work in the office any longer, Packard said.

Según TMZ, Offset estuvo involucrado en una balacera tras una pelea con el también rapero Lil Tjay.

ABC News informó que Offset, cuyo nombre real es Kiari Kendrell Cephus, resultó herido en la balacera.

Las autoridades indicaron que el incidente ocurrió en el área de valet del hotel alrededor de las 7 p.m.

El Departamento de Policía Seminole confirmó que una persona fue trasladada al Memorial Regional Hospital con heridas que no ponen en riesgo su vida, pero no confirmó la identidad de la víctima.

Dos personas fueron detenidas por los agentes tras el incidente, según la policía.

TMZ identificó a una de las personas detenidas como Lil Tjay, cuyo nombre real es Tione Jayden Merritt.

Registros carcelarios en línea muestran que Lil Tjay fue arrestado la noche del lunes por cargos de conducta desordenada—affray y operar en el tráfico sin una licencia válida. Permanece detenido en la cárcel del condado Broward con una fianza total de $3,000 USD.

TMZ informó que la segunda persona que fue detenida no ha sido arrestada.

View this post on Instagram

Las autoridades indicaron que la escena ya fue asegurada y que no existe amenaza para el público.

Offset formó parte del trío de rap Migos antes de iniciar su carrera como solista.

El trío, con su característico estilo de flow en tripletes, se convirtió en uno de los grupos de hip-hop más populares de todos los tiempos. Alcanzó la fama con el éxito de 2013 “Versace” y posteriormente obtuvo nominaciones al Grammy por mejor álbum de rap con “Culture” de 2018, mientras que una de sus canciones recibió una nominación a mejor interpretación de rap.

Offset estuvo casado con la también rapera Cardi B, con quien tiene tres hijos. Ambos se divorciaron en 2024.

El primo de Offset, Takeoff, quien también formaba parte de Migos, murió tras ser baleado en 2022.

A day after the historic lunar flyaround, NASA on Tuesday released striking new photos taken by the U.S.-Canadian crew.

The four astronauts channeled Apollo 8’s famous Earthrise shot from 1968 with their own: Earthset, showing our planet setting behind the gray, pockmarked moon. Another photo captures the total solar eclipse that occurred when the moon blocked the sun from the crew’s perspective.

The three Americans and one Canadian are now headed home, with a splashdown in the Pacific set for Friday. In the meantime, scientists at Houston's Mission Control are poring over the stream of moon photos beaming down.

Apollo 8's three astronauts became the world's first lunar visitors, orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve 1968. Their Earthrise shot became a symbol of the modern-day environmental movement.

Artemis II marks NASA's first return to the moon with astronauts — a critical step toward a lunar landing by another crew in two years.

___

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.

Las autoridades indicaron que la amenaza, que describieron como una “posible llamada falsa” en una publicación en redes sociales, fue hecha contra Nur-ul-Islam, una mezquita ubicada en Cooper City.

La persona que realizó la llamada afirmó estar afiliada a Cooper City High School, según la Oficina del Sheriff de Broward (BSO).

Como resultado, Cooper City High School fue puesta en un cierre de emergencia “Code Red”, el cual, según BSO, se implementó “por precaución”.

Posteriormente, el cierre fue levantado, indicaron las autoridades, y la escuela reanudó sus operaciones normales.

BSO señaló que no hubo amenaza para la escuela ni para la comunidad circundante tras el cierre.

Agentes de la Unidad de Manejo de Amenazas de BSO indicaron que investigan activamente el incidente.

Bidunga finished his second season with the Jayhawks as the Big 12 defensive player of the year and an Associated Press All-Big 12 second-team pick. He averaged 13.3 points and 9.0 rebounds and was a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Center of the Year finalist. He led the Big 12 and was fourth nationally with 91 blocked shots and 10th in field-goal shooting at 64%.

Bidunga recorded 13 double-doubles and was the only Division I player to average more than 13 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocked shots.

Harris was voted the Atlantic Coast Conference's most improved player after he increased his scoring average from 6.1 points as a freshman to 21.4 this past season. He also was an AP All-ACC second-team pick after becoming one of two players in program history to score 750 points in a season. Myles Colvin, the Demon Deacons' second-leading scorer, joined Harris and four other teammates in the portal.

Murauskas was joined in the portal by four of his teammates as the Gaels transition from longtime coach Randy Bennett, who left for Arizona State, to Mickey McConnell, who was Bennett's associate head coach. Murauskas was the West Coast Conference's second-leading scorer with 18.4 points and had two 30-point games. He was an All-WCC first-team pick both years he was with the Gaels after transferring from Arizona.

Isaiah Johnson, who led Colorado and was third in the Big 12 in scoring with 16.9 points per game, went into the portal after one season with the Buffaloes.

Providence, which fired Kim English last month and hired Bryan Hodgson, had just one player listed on its 2026-27 roster Tuesday. Among seven players in the portal was Stefan Vaaks, who as a freshman averaged 15.2 points and 3.3 assists and made a Big East-leading 91 3-pointers.

LSU's Dedan Thomas (15.3 ppg) and Michael Nowoko (13.4 ppg), the Tigers' second- and third-leading scorers, were among seven players in the portal with Will Wade returning as coach after the firing of Matt McMahon.

California saw its top two scorers enter the portal in Dai Dai Ames and Justin Pippen. Ames is looking for his fourth school in four years after having made one-year stops at Kansas State and Virginia. He scored 16.9 points per game for the Bears. Pippen, son of NBA great Scottie Pippen, started his career at Michigan and will be heading to his third school in three years after averaging 14.2 points.

KJ Lewis, who averaged 14.9 points and 5.1 rebounds at Georgetown after two seasons at Arizona, is seeking a third school in four years.

Also entering the portal was San Diego State forward Miles Byrd, the Mountain West's defensive player of the year.

Gavin Doty, who averaged 18 points for Siena to rank second in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, announced he would follow coach Gerry McNamara to Syracuse.

Purdue announced it had signed forward Caden Pierce, who played three seasons at Princeton and sat out this year as a redshirt while completing his degree. Pierce started 89 games for the Tigers and was 2023-24 Ivy League player of year after averaging 16.6 points, 9.2 rebounds and 3.2 assists. He chose the Boilermakers over Duke, Gonzaga, Louisville and Connecticut.

___

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball

Tormentas y fuertes lluvias que han causado deslizamientos de tierra, inundaciones y rayos en todo el país durante las últimas dos semanas han dejado más de 130 muertos y han destruido o dañado miles de viviendas, según han indicado las autoridades.

Las cifras más recientes de víctimas, difundidas por la Autoridad Nacional de Gestión de Desastres de Afganistán, se suman a decenas de muertes provocadas por intensas nevadas e inundaciones a principios de este año en un país empobrecido y muy vulnerable a fenómenos meteorológicos extremos. La autoridad señaló que las cifras podrían aumentar aún más.

Grandes zonas de la ciudad oriental de Jalalabad quedaron inundadas durante la noche hasta el martes, y el derrumbe de techos causó la muerte de 13 personas y dejó otras 19 heridas en la ciudad y en distritos aledaños, manifestó Siddiqullah Quraishi, director de información de la Dirección de Información y Cultura de la provincia de Nangarhar, cuya principal ciudad es Jalalabad.

Quraishi indicó que 104 personas tuvieron que ser evacuadas por aire a un lugar seguro en helicóptero en distintas zonas de la provincia, después de quedar varadas por las aguas de la inundación.

Cientos de kilómetros de carreteras en diversas partes del país han sido destruidos por inundaciones, deslizamientos de tierra y desprendimientos de rocas durante las últimas dos semanas, mientras que se cerraron importantes autopistas que conectan la capital, Kabul, con provincias del norte, el este y el oeste.

La nieve y las lluvias intensas suelen desencadenar inundaciones repentinas que matan a decenas, o incluso a cientos, de personas de una sola vez en Afganistán. En 2024, más de 300 personas murieron en inundaciones repentinas de primavera.

________

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

The development came after the powerful Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah said in a statement earlier in the day that it had decided to free Kittleson, who was abducted on March 31. Its condition was that that Kittleson must “leave the country immediately” upon her release.

Two officials within the militia, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, told The Associated Press that in exchange for freeing Kittleson, several members of the group who had previously been detained by Iraqi authorities would be released.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Typically, the State Department does not confirm the release of Americans abducted abroad until they have been transferred to U.S. government hands or have safely left a country.

In Wisconsin, Kittleson's mother said her daughter was not yet free and declined to comment further.

A one-off release

According to one of the two Iraqi officials, Kittleson was freed in the afternoon. The officials, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, did not share her current whereabouts but said that prior to her release, Kittleson had been held in Baghdad.

In its statement, Kataib Hezbollah said its decision came “in appreciation of the patriotic stances of the outgoing" Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, without giving more details.

It added that “this initiative will not be repeated in the future.”

In Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, Kittleson's mother told a reporter who knocked on her door that FBI agents were at her home. A number of people could be seen sitting at Barb Kittleson’s kitchen table.

Caroline Clancy, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Milwaukee field office, did not immediately respond to an email asking for more information.

Kataib Hezbollah had not previously acknowledged that it was the one responsible for Kittleson’s abduction, although both U.S. and Iraqi officials had pointed fingers at the group.

A respected journalist in conflict zones

Kittleson, 49, a freelance journalist, had lived abroad for years before the kidnapping, using Rome as her base for a time and building a respected journalism career across the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria. Like many freelancers, she often worked on a shoestring budget and without the protections afforded by large news organizations to staff.

She had entered Iraq again shortly before her abduction. U.S. officials have said that they warned her multiple times of threats against her, but that she did not want to leave.

Iraqi officials have said that two cars were involved in the kidnapping, one of which crashed while being pursued near the town of al-Haswa in Babil province, southwest of Baghdad. The journalist was then transferred to a second car that fled the scene.

Three other Iraqi officials said earlier Tuesday that attempts to negotiate her release had run into obstacles. The two Iraqi security officials and one official from the pro-Iran Coordination Framework political bloc spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the sensitive case publicly.

A shadowy militia group

According to one of the security officials, a member of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of Iran-backed militias that is nominally under the control of the Iraqi military, had been tasked with communicating with the abductors to secure Kittleson’s release but had run into difficulties in communicating with the Kataib Hezbollah leadership.

“The primary challenge is that the leaders of the Kataib militia — specifically, the commanders of the battalions — are nowhere to be found. No one knows their whereabouts, and the process of establishing contact with them is extremely complex,” the security officials said.

“These leaders have gone underground, maintaining no active lines of communication, out of fear of being targeted,” they added.

According to the officials, a message had been sent to the Kataib leadership to determine their demands in exchange for releasing Kittleson. Iraqi authorities were willing to release six Kataib Hezbollah members who are currently detained, most of them in connection with attacks on a U.S. base in Syria, they said.

Kataib Hezbollah has previously been accused of kidnapping foreigners.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton graduate student with Israeli and Russian citizenship, disappeared in Baghdad in 2023. After she was freed and handed over to U.S. authorities in September 2025, she said that she had been held by Kataib Hezbollah.

The group never officially claimed responsibility for kidnapping Tsurkov.

Iran-backed militias in Iraq have also launched regular attacks on U.S. facilities in the country since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

___

Associated Press writers Todd Richmond in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, and Matthew Lee and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

The vote — 11-2, with two abstentions from Pakistan and Colombia — took place just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an unprecedented threat that a “whole civilization will die tonight" if Iran does not open the strategic waterway and make a deal before his 8 p.m. Eastern deadline. One-fifth of the world’s oil typically passes through the strait, and Iran’s stranglehold during the war has sent energy prices soaring.

Russia and China strongly defended their opposition, both citing Trump’s most perilous threat yet to end Iran’s civilization as confirmation that the proposal would have given the U.S. and Israel “carte blanche for continued aggression," as Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia put it.

Nebenzia and China’s U.N. ambassador, Fu Cong, said the resolution failed to capture the root causes and full picture of the conflict by not showing that America and its closest ally started the now spiraling war.

Fu said in his statement that resolution was “highly susceptible to misinterpretation or even abuse,” and if it were adopted ”would send a wrong message and have serious, very serious consequences."

Russia and China immediately followed up by circulating a rival resolution, seen by The Associated Press, which urged all parties to halt military activities and condemned attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. Nebenzia told reporters it was already in a form that could be put to a vote.

,The foreign minister of Bahrain, which authored the draft, assailed the U.N.'s most powerful body for not taking action and allowing the international community to be “held hostage to economic blackmail" from Iran.

Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani said failing to adopt the resolution sends “the signal that the threat to international waterways can pass without any decisive action by the international organization responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

Al-Zayani told reporters that Gulf countries will intensify diplomatic efforts to deter Iran's attacks and safeguard freedom of navigation.

But Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. thanked its allies on the 15-member council for refusing to adopt the resolution.

“The text unjustifiably and misleadingly portrays Iran’s lawful measures in the Strait of Hormuz, which have been taken in the exercise of its inherent right of self-defense in accordance with the UN Charter, as threats to international peace and security,” Amir-Saeid Iravani said in his statement.

How the resolution evolved

It’s doubtful the resolution, even if it had been adopted, would have impacted the war, now in its sixth week, because it was been significantly weakened to try to get Moscow and Beijing to abstain rather than veto it.

The initial Gulf proposal would have authorized countries to use “all necessary means” — U.N. wording that would include military action — to ensure transit through the Strait of Hormuz and deter attempts to close it.

The United States, which had supported the draft from its original form, assailed the countries that objected to the resolution.

“No one should tolerate that they are holding the global economy at gunpoint," Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said of Iran, “but today, Russia and China did tolerate it.” He said in his statement: “They sided with a regime that seeks to intimidate the Gulf into submission, even as it brutalizes its own people during a national internet blackout, for daring to imagine dignity or freedom.”

After Russia, China and France, all veto-wielding members of the Security Council, expressed opposition to approving the use of force, the resolution was revised to eliminate all references to offensive action. It would have authorized only “all defensive means necessary.” A vote had been expected on Saturday.

But instead the resolution was further weakened to eliminate any reference to Security Council authorization — which is an order for action — and limit its provisions to the Strait of Hormuz. Previous drafts had included adjacent waters.

The resolution vetoed Tuesday would have “strongly” encouraged countries to coordinate their efforts to ensure the safety of navigation across the Strait of Hormuz, including escorting merchant and commercial vessels.

The resolution also demanded that Iran stop impeding freedom of navigation through the strait and attacking civilian infrastructure.

Why it was Bahrain pushing the UN resolution

In response to the U.S. and Israeli attacks beginning on Feb. 28, Iran has targeted hotels, airports, residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure in more than 10 countries, including the Islamic Republic's Gulf neighbors, some of the world’s major exporters of oil and natural gas.

Iran's blockade in the strait is seen by Gulf nations as an existential threat. Bahrain, a Gulf nation that hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet and is the Security Council’s Arab representative and its president this month, has been pressing for U.N. action.

In response to Iran’s strikes against its Gulf neighbors, the Security Council adopted a Bahrain-sponsored resolution on March 11 condemning the “egregious attacks” and calling for Tehran to immediately halt its strikes.

That resolution, adopted by a vote of 13-0 with Russia and China abstaining, also condemned Iran’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz as a threat to international peace and security and called for an immediate end to all actions blocking shipping.

—-

This version corrects the second reference to China's U.N. ambassador to Fu.

More thunderstorms are expected Wednesday, mainly in the afternoon. The first half of the day will be drier. Similar threats are expected, including heavy rain. Drier weather will move in for the weekend, with only a stray shower or two off the water and highs in the low 80s. A more seasonable weekend is on the way.

Según se esperaba, Sheinbaum reaccionó el lunes con dureza frente a un informe del Comité de la ONU contra la Desaparición Forzada (CED), que la semana pasada solicitó remitir urgentemente la situación de México a la Asamblea General para que sopese medidas de prevención, investigación, castigo y erradicación de las desapariciones forzadas.

Según el comité, que forma parte del sistema de la ONU, existen “indicios fundados” de que en México se han cometido y se siguen cometiendo desapariciones forzadas como “crímenes de lesa humanidad”.

“No fueron consideradas las acciones que hemos hecho y no tiene nada que ver con los colectivos, la solidaridad con los familiares buscadores y el trabajo que hacemos de la alerta y erradicar el delito de la desaparición vinculado con la delincuencia organizada”, manifestó la mandataria al rechazar el informe, y agregó que el análisis se basó en casos ocurridos en cuatro estados mexicanos entre 2009-2017 y que los resultados “los extrapolan hasta 2025”.

De igual forma, Sheinbaum le restó importancia al comité, asegurando que “no es de Naciones Unidas”, sino que es “un comité de expertos que está vinculado con Naciones Unidas”.

En su conferencia matutina, la presidenta anunció que su gobierno buscará una comunicación directa con el responsable del Alto Comisionado de Derechos Humanos de la ONU en México “para que conozca lo que se está haciendo y por qué razones no estamos de acuerdo con este informe”.

El comité se defiende

Ante las críticas de las autoridades mexicanas, Juan Pablo Albán, presidente del CED, afirmó el lunes en su cuenta en la red social X que las diferencias jurídicas, incluso políticas, “son comprensibles” en el marco del diálogo internacional y la cooperación, pero sostuvo que es “fundamental preservar el respeto institucional” hacia los órganos de supervisión de los derechos humanos y sus integrantes.

Asimismo, Albán recordó que, según la normativa internacional, los miembros del comité no pueden ser sometidos a ningún tipo de dirección, influencia o presión de un Estado.

Sin mencionar a Sheinbaum, el experto ecuatoriano respondió a las críticas de la presidenta, diciendo que el CED sí forma parte del sistema de la ONU, y agregó que son “mecanismos creados por tratados internacionales adoptados en el seno de la ONU por los Estados miembros”, que eligen a los integrantes del comité.

El jurista también refutó las críticas al informe, y sostuvo que el análisis de los casos de desaparecidos en México “no se limita a un periodo cerrado”, sino que “examina la evolución de la situación hasta la actualidad”, y como ejemplo de ello citó un párrafo del texto que reconoce que el “constante aumento” de los casos representa un indicio de la magnitud del fenómeno “sin que se vislumbre una tendencia inversa”.

Retrocesos y avances

En medio de la controversia, un grupo de familiares de víctimas de desapariciones forzadas ocurridas en 2018 en la ciudad fronteriza de Nuevo Laredo, estado de Tamaulipas, realizó el lunes un acto en esa localidad para protestar contra la inacción de las autoridades.

“A ocho años de distancia, la Fiscalía General de la República no ha localizado a ninguno de nuestros familiares. Todavía seguimos buscando a 32 personas, entre ellas a mi hijo Julio César”, afirmó Ericka Arredondo, al denunciar que, de las 54 víctimas que dejó un operativo de las fuerzas especiales de la Secretaría de Marina en Tamaulipas, aún siguen sin ser localizadas 32. Hasta la fecha no se ha dado ninguna sentencia condenatoria firme en contra de los presuntos responsables en ese caso.

La problemática de desaparecidos en México se remonta al último tercio del siglo XX, pero a partir de 2006, cuando se inició la guerra frontal contra el crimen organizado, las cifras se dispararon, sin que se hayan logrado contener hasta la fecha.

En un intento por hacer frente a esta crisis, el año pasado Sheinbaum anunció una serie de reformas para agilizar las búsquedas, y a finales de marzo presentó una revisión del registro nacional de personas desaparecidas. Organizaciones humanitarias locales criticaron dicha revisión, asegurando que las debilidades en los registros revelan la enorme impunidad que existe en el país sobre esos casos, y consideraron que las nuevas clasificaciones no tienen fundamento legal.

La mandataria decidió hacer los cambios tras la fuerte controversia que se desató en el país luego de que, en marzo de 2025, un colectivo denunció el hallazgo de numerosos restos óseos y cientos de prendas de vestir en el Rancho Izaguirre, ubicado en el municipio Teuchitlán del estado occidental de Jalisco. El predio era utilizado por el poderoso Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación como un centro de entrenamiento de sus integrantes.

Leer en español

It happened on Thursday evening after they were found in the Intracoastal Waterway near Hallandale Beach.

In the video, a rescue crew member is heard asking the woman if she went in the water because of her dog.

Crews ultimately used different types of ladders and floating devices during the rescue.

“I guess she jumped in because the dog was trying to come out,” said witness Dimitry Shaposhnikov. “It was low tide, so at that point for her to even get to somewhere was almost impossible. I didn’t even see a ladder or anything to come up, so she was stuck.”

Afterwards, the dog was seen wagging its tail while near its owner back on dry land.

No injuries were reported.

Ocurrió el jueves por la noche, luego de que fueran encontrados en el Intracoastal Waterway cerca de Hallandale Beach.

En el video, se escucha a un miembro del equipo de rescate preguntarle a la mujer si entró al agua por su perro.

Los equipos finalmente utilizaron diferentes tipos de escaleras y dispositivos flotantes durante el rescate.

“Supongo que ella saltó porque el perro estaba tratando de salir”, dijo el testigo Dimitry Shaposhnikov. “Había marea baja, así que en ese momento para ella llegar a algún lugar era casi imposible. Ni siquiera vi una escalera o algo para subir, así que estaba atrapada”.

Después, el perro fue visto moviendo la cola mientras estaba junto a su dueña nuevamente en tierra firme.

No se reportaron heridos.

Indianapolis councilman Ron Gibson said he and his 8-year-old son weren’t harmed in the incident that occurred around 12:45 a.m. Monday, but the bullets struck just steps from the dining room table where his son played with Legos the day before.

“That reality is deeply unsettling,” Gibson said. “This was not just an attack on my home, but endangered my child and disrupted the safety of our entire neighborhood.”

The incident comes as data centers have emerged as a target for extremists motivated by a range of anti-tech, anti-government and pro-environment narratives, according to Jordyn Abrams, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

Though the details behind the latest incident are not yet clear, Abrams said local conversations around data centers have increasingly made them a symbol for grievances spanning the political spectrum.

Concerns include the centers’ massive energy consumption and water usage, which consumer advocates fear could drive up electric rates and deplete wells. Data center developers also can strike confidential power deals with local utilities that are profitable for utilities, making it unclear whether center operators are paying for their electricity or are foisting costs onto ratepayers, consumer advocates warn.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement that officers called to a home on East 41st Street just after 9 a.m. Monday found evidence of gunshots being fired at a house, but no injuries were reported. Police said they believe it was an isolated, targeted incident and the FBI was assisting.

“I understand that public service can bring strong opinions and disagreement, but violence is never the answer, especially when it puts families at risk,” Gibson said on Monday. “This will not deter me. I will continue to serve the residents of this district with integrity and respect for all voices.”

Last week, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Development Commission approved a rezoning petition for a project for Metrobloks, a data center developer, in Gibson's district. Some area residents and leaders opposed to the project attended last week’s hearing, raising concerns about the project’s impact on the community, news outlets reported.

Gibson supported the commission's decision in a statement last week.

“The site has remained underutilized for years, and today’s action is an important step toward bringing it back into productive use in a way that benefits both the surrounding neighborhood and our city,” Gibson said. “As the district councilor, when this petition comes before the full Council, I do not intend to call it down.”

Liverpool heads into the first leg of its Champions League quarterfinal against Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday in disarray.

“We need 90 minutes full energy and full commitment otherwise we will have no chance,” Liverpool attacking midfielder Florian Wirtz said Tuesday at a news conference.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot knows what to expect from the outset at Parc des Princes.

“PSG under (coach) Luis Enrique do not give you a second to have the ball comfortable on your feet,” Slot said, calling PSG one of the top two sides in the world from open play. “It’s press, press, press every second of the game.”

But Slot hopes six-time champion Liverpool can draw on its vast European experience to keep the tie alive heading to Anfield for next Tuesday's second leg.

“We've shown a few times we can do special things in difficult circumstances,” he said. “The answer is already in the history of Liverpool, but it’s easier said than done.”

Roles reversed

It was a far different dynamic when the sides met in the last 16 last year.

Back then, Liverpool was romping to the Premier League title, new manager Slot was the toast of the city and Mohamed Salah was at his brilliant best. By contrast, PSG struggled to get out of the Champions League group stage and observers were questioning Luis Enrique's methods.

PSG scraped through on penalties against Liverpool after an intense battle over two legs.

Knocking Liverpool out at Anfield gave PSG the belief it could finally win the Champions League. By contrast, Liverpool's agonizing defeat marked the start of Salah's decline and Liverpool's gradual slump as it lost the League Cup final soon after.

Slump in form

Liverpool began the current campaign poorly as Salah's goals dried up and he clashed with Slot.

PSG is closing in on another French title but Liverpool is fifth in the Premier League, 21 points behind leader Arsenal. Following a crushing 4-0 defeat to Manchester City in the FA Cup quarterfinals on Saturday, captain Virgil van Dijk said his team “gave up” and he apologized to fans.

Slot called it a humbling loss and, while he did not agree with Van Dijk's conclusion, felt his captain was justified in speaking out.

"I think it is good for a captain to have a strong and firm reaction," Slot said. "Hopefully as a team we can show a strong and firm reaction tomorrow.”

The Dutchman is reportedly clinging onto his job. Salah will be gone next season and, if PSG knocks out Liverpool, a trophy-less season may threaten Slot's position.

Wirtz said the players back Slot.

“Yes, of course. The team should believe in the manager because they won the league last season," said Wirtz, who joined in the offseason from Bayer Leverkusen.

Ekitiké threat

Liverpool forward Hugo Ekitiké returns to face his old side as a player transformed.

He joined PSG four years ago as a promising 19-year-old but struggled to make an impact in a team containing Kylian Mbappe, Neymar and Lionel Messi. He scored only four goals in 33 games in two disappointing seasons.

“You could already see the qualities he had," PSG midfielder Vitinha said. "It just wasn't the right context for him at the time.”

A move to Eintracht Frankfurt changed Ekitiké's fortunes and, after scoring 22 goals last season, he joined Premier League champion Liverpool for 69 million pounds (then $93.5 million).

He has netted 17 times and has broken into the France team.

"After leaving PSG he did well in Germany and England," Luis Enrique said when asked about Ekitiké. "He was very young when he was here and he has improved a lot.” ___

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

But new research released Tuesday shows that such financial gains for many Black-led nonprofits were short-lived, if they happened at all. A subset of large, Black-led nonprofits saw only temporary funding increases between 2020 and 2022, according to the analysis by nonprofit research service Candid and Black philanthropy group ABFE. Smaller organizations saw no significant change.

The pattern of disinvestment put many community groups at a greater disadvantage when President Donald Trump’s policies curtailed funding for diversity, equity and inclusion. The nonprofit sector's struggles deepened as the administration threatened a range of social service programs, left future grants uncertain by cutting agency staff and chilled racial justice funding through anti-DEI executive orders.

Black Voters Matter co-founder Cliff Albright noted these community nonprofits are the same ones now tasked with helping more and more low-income families deal with spiking healthcare costs and rising food prices.

“We're literally being asked to do more with less resources,” Albright told The Associated Press.

Small, Black-led nonprofits tended to have to rely on new rather than continuing funders, losing out on transformational relationships that sustain their longer-term goals and cushion them through challenging periods. These small organizations — those with annual expenses of $1 million or less — got just over one-third of their funding from continuing supporters, according to the report.

The dynamic rang true for a South Side Chicago group serving a predominantly Black neighborhood among the city's most impoverished. Asiaha Butler, the CEO of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, cofounded the nonprofit more than 15 years ago to empower her neighbors to combat their area's negative narratives.

That mission had a handful of consistent backers. But summer 2020 brought more than two dozen new funders.

“All of a sudden, we were desirable for people to fund,” recalled Butler, adding the “spurt” became a “curse” as the quick infusion of capital tapered off.

“We started seeing this revenue and thinking we're gaining really great relationships with funders," she said. "And, really, those priorities shifted quickly.”

Lacking relationships

Foundations lacked relationships with Black organizations of any scale prior to 2020, according to ABFE CEO Susan Taylor Batten.

Black philanthropy professionals say that distance created a scramble when protestors demanded businesses and philanthropies address systemic racism.

Kia Croom, whose fundraising firm works with nonprofits in Black communities, said her clients received more funding than ever from corporations. Some hired additional development staff to meet the demand — and then underwent layoffs when funds disappeared.

“It was just a very transactional gift at best,” she said.

Positive Results Center CEO Kandee Lewis oversees a Los Angeles nonprofit assisting survivors of domestic violence and other harms. It was wonderful, she said, to receive checks from new supporters. But oftentimes, the support turned out to be a one-time donation rather than the beginning of a relationship.

Lewis felt the funding came only because her group was Black-led — not because funders understood its work.

"They were so busy trying to figure out who was who that they didn’t really take time to get to know people," she said.

Limited networks

Jaleesa Hall knows philanthropy is a relationship game.

She heads Raising A Village Foundation, which aims to advance educational equity through tutoring programs. She didn't have many high net worth members in her network when she founded the Washington, D.C. nonprofit more than six years ago.

That circle made it difficult to catch the attention of foundations, which she said “haven't really cracked” how to find potential grantees outside of their existing web of connections.

“Small, Black-led nonprofits simply aren't in those rooms to begin with," Hall said.

Most of their foundation grant dollars came from first-time funders, according to the report.

Cathleen Clerkin, the associate vice president of research at Candid, said the nonprofits' work is made even more challenging by the “song and dance” necessary to secure long-term investment every year.

“They're just constantly going on first dates with new funders and hoping that somebody will invest in them and understand them,” she said.

Small nonprofit leaders are so focused on day-to-day upkeep and financial viability that they don't have time to attend networking opportunities or money to fly out for national convenings.

T’Pring Westbrook, a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute's Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, co-founded a consulting group that works with small nonprofits. The problem isn't that foundations don't want to support marginalized communities, she said, but that they do so through “trend funding.”

“Maybe during Black History Month there will be a funding campaign,” she said. “But the thing about a campaign is a campaign doesn't build sustainability.”

Restrictive practices

Small nonprofits say they face additional barriers, regardless of race, including grant eligibility requirements. And limited staff may prevent qualifying organizations from keeping up with foundations' required weekly or monthly reports on the status of projects they’ve funded.

“It ends up feeling like a burden,” Hall explained. “The juice isn't worth the squeeze."

Philanthropy has seen a sector-wide shift towards trust-based models that offer general operating support and multi-year grants, acknowledging nonprofits' expertise on how to best fulfill their missions. But Batten, the ABFE leader, said Black-led nonprofits generally have not reaped the benefits of those best practices.

The report showed Black-led nonprofits had significantly fewer continuing funders than their non-Black counterparts. Only one-third received general operating support, compared to just over half of other nonprofits.

“We are still seeing remnants of bad practice when it comes to investing in Black communities," Batten said. "There’s just no way for a foundation to move its mission for communities in this country, let alone Black nonprofits to move theirs, if we do not evolve this sector."

‘Pulling teeth’ in Chicago

Butler, the Chicago neighborhood association leader, hears excuses now from supporters who gave at the height of the 2020 racial justice movement: “Priorities have shifted,” they tell her, or there are “new strategic goals."

“Little buzz words that just say perhaps this nonprofit -- grassroots, Black-led, very focused on the Black population -- is probably just not in peoples’ cards to continue to support,” she said.

That downturn delayed a nearly $7 million capital project building off their economic justice work after the post-George Floyd civil unrest. An 8,800-square-foot (817 square-meter) building would include a dine-in restaurant and another Black-owned business. One tenant would provide workforce development trainings. Her goal is to strengthen Englewood’s economic and social fabric through a thriving Black business district.

By 2023, she had secured a $1 million grant — her nonprofit's largest — to start the project. But she compared her search for additional funding to "pulling teeth.” Past philanthropic partners withheld support. Their prospects weren't good.

She's turning to public funding. The City of Chicago provided a $2.5 million grant and Butler said another $1.5 million state award is pending.

“Things shifted and so we didn’t want to start soliciting for a capital campaign,” she said. “The timing was off.”

___

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits 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. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

The activist and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback has completed “The Perilous Fight,” to come out Sept. 15 through the Hachette Book Group imprint Legacy Lit. His memoir will come out almost exactly 10 years after he knelt before a preseason game, a protest against police violence and racial inequality that was emulated by some players and criticized by politicians, team owners and fans, some of whom booed him and burned his jersey.

Kaepernick, who has not played in the NFL since 2016, said in a statement that he wanted to offer context for what led to his taking a knee. Before that, he had remained seated during the anthem.

“People saw the moment. But they didn’t see the years that made it possible: the questions about who I was; the injustices I could no longer ignore; the voices of those who came before me that I carried into that stadium,” Kaepernick said in a statement released Tuesday. “That journey, from a Black kid navigating an identity the world didn’t always make space for, to an athlete who realized the game was bigger than football, shaped everything. When I took a knee, it wasn’t a sudden act.”

Legacy Lit is calling the book “equal parts memoir and manifesto,” tracing “the off-the-field battles that turned a single act of protest into a movement that changed American sports and culture forever.” Kaepernick is narrating the audio edition, produced and to be sold exclusively by Audible.

Kaepernick, 38, played six years for the 49ers and helped lead them to an appearance in the Super Bowl in 2013. Baltimore won the game 34-31.

Kaepernick has spoken out often on social issues, launched his own publishing imprint and co-written the picture story “We Are Free, You & Me” and the graphic novel “Change the Game.”

That’s because candidate Shlomo Danzinger and Jewish advocacy groups filed an emergency lawsuit to delay the runoff election to later in April because of a conflict with the Passover holiday.

Danzinger, who was Surfside’s first Orthodox Jewish mayor, is seeking a return to office. He lost his 2024 re-election bid to Mayor Charles Burkett and now faces Tina Paul, the town’s vice mayor.

Nearly half the town’s population is Jewish.

“You’re looking at about 20 to 50% of the voters who were having their voting rights impaired by having this runoff election tomorrow,” attorney Joshua Kligler argued.

Town representatives and the county elections supervisor agreed that accommodations should be made for voters, but questioned the 11th-hour timing of the lawsuit.

“Passover was established 3000 years ago when the Jews were released from Egypt,” Oren Rosenthal, an attorney for the county elections supervisor, said in court, “The date of the runoff election was capable of being known for 30 years.”

Judge Lourdes Simon pointed out that changing an existing election date could disenfranchise additional voters who may not be able to vote on a new date.

“As a general rule, I would agree that courts do not engage in enjoining or changing an election during a period of time, especially on the eve of an election, because of the risk of confusion to voters,” she said.

Simon ultimately agreed to a compromise to keep in-person voting on Tuesday, but to extend the mail-in ballot period until April 28.

“This will ensure enough time for people to order receive and cast their ballots,” she said.

Danzinger was pleased with the decision.

“I think she found the right balance and ensured that people would not be disenfranchised from participating in this upcoming election,” he said.

All mail-in ballots have to be received by the county elections office in Doral by April 28. Residents unable to mail the ballots in time can drop their ballots off there.

Election results will be posted after 7 p.m. on April 28 on Miami-Dade County’s elections website.

“I am happy with this development and the opportunity to provide people of all faiths in Surfside the chance to fully participate in this election,” Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections Alina Garcia said in a statement.

Call it cognition cardio — better known as “Ageless Grace.” It’s a workout designed to challenge the brain, as much as the body — and it’s sweeping the country.

“It was just stupid crazy. It was, like, fun,” said Barbara Malina, a longtime participant.

Simple movements quickly turn into multitasking drills — mixing numbers, sounds and gestures. Every motion carries a mental component, forcing participants to think while they also work out.

The program is found in 50 states and 34 countries — with classes all across South Florida.

Click here to find a class near you.

Many of the classes are free of charge for residents. Local 10 joined a group at the Helen B. Hoffman Library in Plantation.

“Everybody laughs all the time and everybody is nice and friendly,” said Ann, another longtime participant of the program.

For Ann, who is 86, it’s become more than just a workout and a way to socialize — it’s a family activity.

“This is my daughter. And she made me stop driving. She’s my daughter and I love her and it’s just, if I do something wrong, she’s right there to say, ‘Mom!’” Ann said, jokingly.

Her daughter, Janet, didn’t expect to join in — at least not at first.

“I thought, ‘Oh, let me sit here and watch so I could help her later, help her learn the numbers or whatever they were doing,’ and then I found out that - guess what - I need this too!” said Janet.

What starts as observation often turns into participation.

Tracey Gelb, an educator and trainer with Ageless Grace, says the program has expanded far beyond South Florida.

“It is for everybody, every age,” said Gelb. “And it’s fabulous. You’re going to have an unbelievable brain workout. You’re going to be surprised. You’re going to be challenged. It’s going to be like nothing you’ve ever done before.”

According the the program’s website, Ageless Grace activates all 5 functions of the brain:

• Strategic Planning
• Memory and Recall
• Analytical Thinking
• Creativity and Imagination
• Kinesthetic Learning

SMACK! We like to think of that as the sound of the neurons firing in the brain when we attempt to do something new.

Lana Gelb, a cognition and movement specialist and author of Everything You Need to Know About Your Brain, says the concept goes beyond traditional ideas of fitness.

For more information, visit https://goodvibesconsultants.com.

“Change your brain to change your life. People think that wellness is exercise. But it’s way more than that. I use to think that until 14 years ago,” Gelb said.

To submit an idea for What Connects Us, email whatconnectsus@wplg.com.

Agyemang was visibly emotional when he was stretchered off, with his right leg strapped, after landing awkwardly in Derby’s 2-0 victory over Stoke in the second-tier English Championship on Monday.

Derby confirmed on Tuesday that the striker would miss soccer’s biggest tournament, which is being held in the U.S., Canada and Mexico in June and July.

“As a result of this injury, Patrick will unfortunately miss this summer’s FIFA World Cup,” Derby said in a statement. “At this stage it would be wrong to put a timeline on his recovery."

The club added that Agyemang would undergo more tests later on Tuesday and “further updates will be communicated in due course.”

Agyemang has helped Derby into contention for promotion to the Premier League thanks to a team-leading 10 goals since arriving last summer from Charlotte in Major League Soccer.

During the recent international break, he came off the bench for the United States and scored in a loss against Belgium and also got some minutes against Portugal.

___

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

Leer en español

Jason Miller said his surveillance camera recorded the cruelty on Sunday at Don Eisele Park. Peter Carey was walking his dog when he witnessed it.

“As I got closer, I saw kittens running into the bushes, and then I knew they had dumped these kittens in the park,” Carey said.

Carey found four out of the five kittens and took them home.

“She must have had to pass a veterinarian clinic, a pet store, the shelter, to dump the cats out,” Carey said. “You left your house. Why wouldn’t you just take them to the right place?”

He said the fifth kitten was found Monday with the help of trappers.

“We’re just so happy we got the last kitten,” said Hope Gold, with Castaways Animal Rescue.

Carey said he has found homes for two out of the five. Police officers are investigating.

“I wouldn’t call myself a hero,” Carey said. “You see these little kittens in need and your heart goes out to them.”

Carey asked anyone who may be interested in adopting the remaining kittens to call him at 407-310-2406 or Brenda at 786-353-8415.

Related story: South Florida cat owner claims records show evidence of vet hospital’s malpractice

Leer en español

Authorities took Kevin Six, 41, of Akron, Ohio, into custody on Friday at Port Everglades.

Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies said the 15-year-old victim and Six were sharing a room on the cruise, when the teen found “his friend’s phone in a concealed area.”

The victim told investigators that on Tuesday, he told Six he was about to take a shower and asked if he needed to use the bathroom first.

Six said ‘yes’ and went into the bathroom, and then when the victim went in to shower, he noticed Six’s backpack inside, and Six’s cellphone camera “sticking out of his backpack in the direction of the shower,” according to an arrest form.

When the victim took out the phone and watched the video, deputies said it showed Six setting up the phone to record in the direction of the shower, knowing the victim was about to remove his clothes and bathe, authorities said.

Deputies said the victim recorded the video on his phone and then told his grandmother, who said they should alert cruise security.

Authorities said Six and the victim were both placed in isolation until the ship docked at Port Everglades on Friday. The BSO report doesn’t name the ship the two were on.

According to the report, Six refused to speak to investigators once the ship returned, and he was subsequently arrested on a charge of video voyeurism on a child less than 16 years old.

He was granted a bond of $50,000 and was not listed among Broward County inmates, as of Monday afternoon.

Leer en español

Deputies arrested Annie Flaherty, 37, of Oakland Park on Saturday.

She is accused of approaching neighbors and pretending to be a law enforcement officer.

According to an arrest form, Flaherty knocked on two of her neighbors’ doors while wearing a police badge on her hip and identifying herself as “Miami-Dade police,” saying she was investigating stolen diamonds.

Deputies said when they went to Flaherty’s home to question her about the incidents, she provided them with the badge she was seen wearing.

It was described as a Miami-Dade Corrections officer Super Bowl LIV edition badge. Authorities did not say how Flaherty obtained the badge, or whether it was counterfeit.

According to Flaherty’s arrest form, her occupation is listed as a flight attendant for Spirit Airlines.

She was arrested on a charge of impersonating a law enforcement officer and was taken to the North Broward Bureau detention center where she remains on a bond of $15,000, as of Monday night.

The proposed deal would involve Universal Music merging with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, an acquisition company approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023. Plans would include the new company being based in Nevada and moving its stock listing from Amsterdam to the New York Stock Exchange.

“UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction,” Ackman said in a statement on Tuesday.

The total cash-and-stock value of the deal is estimated at 30.40 euros per share, or $35.12. That puts Universal Music's value at approximately 56 billion euros based on its outstanding shares.

Universal Music shareholders will receive 9.4 billion euros in cash (or 5.05 euros per share) and 0.77 shares of the newly created company's stock for each share of Universal Music that they own.

Universal Music did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The proposed transaction is anticipated to close by the end of the year, according to Pershing Square.

In 2021 Ackman walked away from a deal that would have given him a 10% stake in Universal Music. At the time, Ackman cited questions from the SEC about whether the structure of a special-purpose acquisition company would allow such an acquisition under the rules of the New York Stock Exchange.

Shares of Universal rose more than 10% in midday trading in Amsterdam.

While practicing, members were waving vibrant flags and ribbons in the air as they danced in sync.

The team is one of five local schools competing in the WGI Color Guard Word Championships this week.

“Having the kids grow and having the team grow year after year, and having them come here and share the love with everybody and their friends and have the same experiences that I did is everything that I ever wanted,” said Flanagan Color Guard Director Nicholas Rodriguez.

The other schools competing on Thursday are Cooper City High School, West Broward High School, Somerset Academy, FIU Pegasus World and Doral Academy Preparatory School.

The Shell station at 41st Street and Royal Palm Avenue in Miami Beach was the first to break the $5 barrier, with a price tag of $5.39 per gallon for regular fuel on the first Monday in April.

According to Gas Buddy, the average price at the pump in Miami has risen 23 cents over the last week alone.

The high cost is causing some drivers to do what they can to save money.

Carlos Perez told Local 10 News’ Brett Knese that he stopped driving for Uber temporarily because the price of gas makes the work no longer worth it.

“My son also does Uber too and it’s very expensive, and the price goes up, but the Uber pays the same so it’s bad,” he said.

Experts say prices will likely continue to trend upwards until the Strait of Hormuz reopens.

Official documents show a judge granted a motion to dismiss charges of organized scheme to defraud and operating a business without a license against Carlton Tedford.

In his motion to dismiss, Tedford said that he was licensed to sell tickets through StubHub and Vivid Seats.

The detective in the case also testified that he did not verify whether Tedford was actually licensed to sell the tickets on behalf of those companies.

In the same testimony, the detective stated he did not witness Tedford re-selling wristbands that were taken off of other patrons.

The judge ultimately dismissed the charges against Tedford, records show.

You can review Tedford’s motion to dismiss below:

The offer was made through the United States, which has been mediating talks between delegations from Moscow and Kyiv, Zelenskyy said, as Russia’s invasion stretches into a fifth year.

“If Russia is ready to stop strikes on our energy infrastructure, we will be ready to respond in kind,” the Ukrainian leader said in a public address late Monday. "This proposal, conveyed through the Americans, has already been presented to the Russian side.”

There was no immediate comment from Moscow about the proposal. Previous attempts to secure ceasefires have had little or no impact. Russian President Vladimir Putin unilaterally declared a 30-hour ceasefire last Easter, but each side accused the other of breaking it.

Russia effectively rejected a 30-day unconditional truce proposed last year by the U.S. and Ukraine as a step toward peace, insisting instead on a comprehensive settlement, but Moscow has announced several short, unilateral ceasefires.

Zelenskyy said he doubted the Kremlin would take up his offer for the April 12 holiday pause as Russia is currently benefiting from higher oil prices driven by the Iran war.

Zelenskyy is concerned that a prolonged U.S.-Israeli war on Iran could erode America’s support for Ukraine.

The U.S.-led talks have made no progress on key issues, as Washington’s attention is held by the Middle East conflict, and the Russian and Ukrainian armies remain locked in battle on the roughly 1,250-kilometer (800-mile) front line.

At the same time, Russia has pounded Ukraine’s power grid in an effort to demoralize civilians while Kyiv’s domestically produced long-range drones have repeatedly hit Russian oil infrastructure in a bid to dent Moscow’s main export revenue.

“Ukraine’s expanding long-range strike campaign against Russian oil infrastructure is exploiting overstretched Russian air defenses and significantly damaging Russian oil export capabilities,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in an assessment late Monday.

“Russia’s geographical size poses an enormous challenge to defend, especially with traditional air defense systems on which the Russians reportedly still rely to protect against Ukraine drone salvos,” it added.

Russia is also targeting public transport, including Ukraine’s vital rail network and bus services.

On Tuesday morning, a Russian drone struck a bus as it approached a stop, killing four civilians and injuring 15 others, in the southeastern Ukraine city of Nikopol, authorities said.

“This brutal attack on civilian regular transportation occurred during rush hour, when people were just going to work,” Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote in an online post. “This is not an accident, it’s their (Russian) tactic: deliberate strikes on civilians.”

Also, Ukrainian authorities said three people were killed and three others were injured in an attack on a residential building in the southern city of Kherson. An 11-year-old boy was killed in a drone strike near the eastern city of Synelnykove, officials there said, bringing the day’s civilian death toll to eight.

Government and military authorities also reported power cuts in several eastern and southern areas in Ukraine following artillery and drone strikes.

___

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

“I owe the truth to the French people,” Sarkozy told a three-judge panel during a hearing in the case that led him to spend 20 days in prison before being granted release pending appeal.

“I’m innocent,” he said.

Sarkozy, 71, is challenging his conviction after being found guilty in September of criminal conspiracy. He was sentenced to five years in prison for his alleged part in a scheme to obtain funds from the government of then Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in exchange for political and diplomatic favors.

Sarkozy has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and says the allegations are politically motivated.

Review of evidence

Sarkozy's wife, supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, attended Tuesday's hearing, which focused on his role as a conservative presidential candidate and then president from 2007 to 2012.

The 12-week appeal trial, which began last month, will reexamine all of the evidence and testimony related to him and nine co-defendants — including three former ministers.

Sarkozy said that he championed Western military intervention in Libya in 2011 after Gadhafi’s government violently cracked down on anti-government protesters, when Arab Spring pro-democracy protests swept through the region.

“I took the initiative, France took the initiative. Why? Because Gadhafi had no hold over me — financially, politically or personally,” Sarkozy said.

Gadhafi was killed by opposition fighters in October 2011, ending his four-decade rule of the North African country.

Families of plane bombing victims raise concerns

Sarkozy’s appeal hearing comes after families of French victims of a 1989 plane bombing expressed their distress last week over possible promises made to Gadhafi’s government as part of the alleged deal.

In 2003, Libya took responsibility for both the 1988 plane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the bombing of UTA flight 772 over Niger the following year that killed 170 people, including 54 French nationals.

“I believe that such unspeakable suffering can only be answered with the truth,” Sarkozy said.

Financial prosecutors have accused Sarkozy of having promised to lift the arrest warrant targeting Gadhafi’s brother-in-law and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi, accused of masterminding the attacks, in exchange for alleged campaign financing.

Sarkozy rejects allegations

“The truth is that I did not act in favor of Mr. Senoussi … who is in prison (in Libya) because he was arrested following the international action led by France,” Sarkozy said. “I never promised him anything.”

Visibly irritated, Sarkozy, who as interior minister met with Gadhafi in 2005 in Libya, told the court: “Why would I have chosen Mr. Gadhafi, whom I had never met before, to set up a suspicious financing arrangement with him during a 30-minute meeting? It makes no sense,” Sarkozy said.

In 2005, people close to Sarkozy, including his chief of staff, Claude Guéant, and junior minister Brice Hortefeux, traveled to Tripoli, where they met with al-Senoussi.

The trial at Paris appeals court is scheduled to last until June 3, with a verdict expected at a later date.

“Defendants have so far been unable to explain all the inconsistencies that may exist in this case," Vincent Brengarth, lawyer for French anti-corruption group Sherpa, told reporters.

"Up to now, the various hearings have not resulted in these explanations, and we are now expecting them from the main defendant, namely Nicolas Sarkozy,” he said.

Sarkozy has faced multiple legal cases since leaving office. In November, the Court of Cassation — France’s top court — upheld his conviction for illegal campaign financing of his 2012 reelection bid, requiring him to spend six months under house arrest wearing an electronic ankle tag, a sentence that has yet to be implemented.

___

Oleg Cetinic contributed to this report.

A deep plume of moisture and a stalled front nearby will bring rounds of heavy rain and thunderstorms to South Florida through Wednesday. Some areas in Miami-Dade and Broward could pick up several inches of rain — with isolated totals up to 6 inches — leading to localized flooding, especially in poor drainage areas. A Flood Watch is in effect, and while not everyone will see the heaviest rain, some neighborhoods could deal with water-covered roads and slow travel.

At the same time, winds will increase out of the northeast, becoming gusty along the coast Tuesday into Wednesday. This will create dangerous rip currents and rough marine conditions, making the Atlantic hazardous for swimmers and boaters. While rain chances begin to ease later in the week, breezy coastal conditions may linger for a bit.

Two police officers sustained slight injuries, Istanbul Gov. Davut Gul told reporters. The assailants were carrying long-barreled weapons.

The consulate is located in a high-rise building in Levent, one of the city’s main business districts. Officials said that there are no Israeli diplomats present in Israeli missions in Turkey. Israel withdrew its diplomats amid security concerns and deteriorating relations with Turkey during the war in Gaza.

Interior Minister Mustafa Cifti wrote on X that the attackers had traveled from the city of Izmit, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Istanbul, in a rented car. One of the assailants was linked to a group he described as “exploiting religion,” without naming the organization.

The Islamic State group has carried out deadly attacks in Turkey in the past.

The two wounded assailants are brothers, identified as Onur C. and Enes C. The first has a criminal record related to drugs. Both are being interrogated, according to the Interior Ministry.

Video from the attack showed one assailant carrying what appeared to be an assault rifle, wearing a brown backpack and hiding behind a bus when exchanging fire with police. A police officer falls to the ground, apparently having been shot, and then rolls away to get behind a tree for cover.

One of the police officers was wounded in the leg and the other in the ear, the Interior Ministry said.

Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said that three prosecutors, including a deputy chief prosecutor, have been assigned to lead an investigation.

Police sealed off the building and blocked several roads, while forensic experts in white protective suits combed the area for evidence.

A witness described seeing officers take cover behind parked cars and communicate with each other during the shooting.

“In general, this is a noisy area, so initially we thought this might be something else. But the gunshots continued,” said Omer Dilki, 34. “We saw the police officers standing behind the cars, take shelter, and call out to each other.”

Ali Rıza Arpacı, who works nearby, described witnessing “serious clashes” happening right in front of him.

“We were almost inside the clashes,” he said, adding that the gunfight lasted for around 10 minutes.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced what he said was a “treacherous” attack.

“We will resolutely continue our fight against all forms of terrorism, and we will not allow the climate of security in Turkey to be harmed by vile and timed provocations like today’s,” he said.

U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack condemned the assault, praising Turkish authorities for “their swift and decisive response.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry similarly condemned the attack and commended Turkish security forces for their rapid action in thwarting it.

___

Suzan Fraser reported from Ankara. Mehmet Guzel contributed to this report from Istanbul.

___

A previous version of this story, relying on Turkey’s Haberturk news, incorrectly reported that two attackers had been killed. Only one of the three assailants was killed, while the other two were wounded and captured, according to Turkish officials.

Festival organizers canceled the three-day outdoor event as a result of the travel ban and said those who had bought tickets would get refunds.

Ye applied for an electronic travel authorization to visit the U.K., but it was blocked by the government on the grounds that his presence in the country would not be “conducive to the public good.”

“Kanye West should never have been invited to headline Wireless,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement posted on social media. “This government stands firmly with the Jewish community, and we will not stop in our fight to confront and defeat the poison of antisemitism. We will always take the action necessary to protect the public and uphold our values.”

The rapper, who changed his name in 2021, had been expected to play his first U.K. dates for more than a decade in front of around 150,000 revelers over three nights July 10-12 at the Wireless Festival, in London’s Finsbury Park. Other acts for the festival had not yet been announced.

The event's organizers had been under mounting pressure from sponsors and politicians to cancel the gigs by the rapper, who has drawn widespread condemnation for making antisemitic remarks and voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler.

Last year, Ye released a song called “Heil Hitler” and advertised a swastika T-shirt for sale on his website. Officials in Australia canceled the musician's visa in July after the release of the single.

The 48-year-old apologized in January with a letter, published as a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal. He said his bipolar disorder led him to fall into “a four-month long, manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life.”

Wireless sponsors Pepsi, Rockstar Energy and Diageo pulled out of the festival since Ye was announced as the headliner.

In a statement issued Tuesday before his travel authorization was revoked, Ye said he “would be grateful for the opportunity to meet with members of the Jewish community in the U.K. in person, to listen.

“I know words aren’t enough — I’ll have to show change through my actions,” he said. “If you’re open, I’m here.”

Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, had said the group would be willing to meet with the musician if he pulled out of the festival.

“The Jewish community will want to see a genuine remorse and change before believing that the appropriate place to test this sincerity is on the main stage at the Wireless Festival,” Rosenberg said.

Organizer Festival Republic had stood by Ye. In a statement issued Monday, managing director Melvin Benn urged people to offer the performer “forgiveness and hope.”

“We are not giving him a platform to extol opinion of whatever nature, only to perform the songs that are currently played on the radio stations in our country and the streaming platforms in our country and listened to and enjoyed by millions,” the statement said.

Announcing the cancellation, Festival Republic said that “multiple stakeholders were consulted in advance of booking Ye and no concerns were highlighted at the time.

“Antisemitism in all its forms is abhorrent, and we recognize the real and personal impact these issues have had,” it said in a statement. “As Ye said today, he acknowledges that words alone are not enough, and in spite of this still hopes to be given the opportunity to begin a conversation with the Jewish community in the U.K.”

The Community Security Trust, which works to protect British Jews, said the government had made the right decision.

“Anti-Jewish hatred should have no place in society and cultural leaders have a role to play in ensuring that is the case,” it said in a statement.

“People who show genuine and meaningful remorse for previous antisemitic behavior will always receive a sympathetic hearing from the Jewish community, but that process must come before this kind of public rehabilitation.”

A representative for Ye didn’t reply to a request for comment.

Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd reunited to mark the show's 50th anniversary at PaleyFest LA on Monday night. They were greeted with a standing ovation and whoops and cheers from an audience at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

The hour-long crime adventure series debuted on Sept. 22, 1976, in a pre-internet and streaming world when there were just three major television networks. It was a top-10 hit for ABC in its first two of five seasons, ending in 1981.

“I knew the show was different, special and unique,” Smith told the audience. “Three women chasing danger instead of getting rescued.”

Jackson added, “We made an impact, I think.”

Farrah Fawcett-Majors became a 1970s icon with her feathered hair and sexy swimsuit poster. She left after the first season to pursue a film career. She died in 2009.

She was replaced by Ladd, who showed up on her first day wearing a Farrah Fawcett Minor T-shirt. She had turned down producer Aaron Spelling three times, knowing how beloved Fawcett had been.

“I knew that there was nobody that was going to replace Farrah, so I made a joke of myself,” Ladd said on the red carpet. “Everybody laughed. Farrah would have done something like that.”

Jackson added, "Cheryl stepped in and we didn’t miss a beat.”

Critics weren’t kind, however, calling the show “jiggle television” because the women dressed scantily to go undercover and slamming it for vapid acting.

“It didn’t bother me,” Jackson said on the red carpet. “I knew what we were doing and Gloria Steinem knew what we were doing, and some other very impressive people knew what we were doing. We were helping to punch a hole in that glass ceiling and that makes a big difference."

Five decades later, the show remains popular in reruns and DVDs, having spawned a film series starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu.

"We were giving people an hour to sit back, put their feet up, forget everything and watch television,” Jackson said, “and then again just kind of subtly getting the message in there that women are just as capable, intelligent, can do anything that a man can do.”

The mostly older audience cheered and laughed as scenes from various episodes were played. Included in the highlights were Shelley Hack, who lasted one season after replacing Jackson, and the late Tanya Roberts, who appeared in the final season. Smith and the late David Doyle, who played Charlie's go-between, were on the show's entire run.

Smith, who is 80, and Ladd, who is 74, went on to prolific careers in made-for-TV movies and guesting on other shows. Jackson, who quit after three seasons, later starred in the CBS hit “Scarecrow and Mrs. King.”

Jackson left the business nearly 20 years ago to raise her son. Now 77, she said, “I’m ready to go back.”

The trio's sisterhood includes all of them overcoming breast cancer, with Ladd revealing for the first time publicly Monday that she had an aggressive form of the disease. She didn't say when it occurred.

“When Cheryl called me,” Smith said, “the first thing I did was send her my wigs.”

Smith was at Jackson's bedside during her cancer battle. Each of them urged the audience to have regular health screenings.

In one of many lighter moments, the women were asked to name their favorite outfits.

“I wore a lot of turtlenecks,” Jackson said, drawing laughs.

Smith singled out her tiny white bikini seen in the opening credits.

Ladd recalled, “Bikinis, a lot of bikinis.”

Smith joked, “Our ratings went up.”

Jackson, Smith and Ladd will reunite again on May 14 when they are among the recipients at the Paley Honors gala in New York. Smith's memoir titled “I Once Knew a Guy Named Charlie” comes out in September.

“I was really proud to be part of that show,” said Ladd, who always welcomed fans expressing their fondness for the Angels. "I felt so loved. You couldn't be in a bad mood. It was always uplifting to hear it.”

Rose is 45 — only four players older than him have won major championships — and yet he prefers to refer to his “Indian summer” of playing great golf at this stage in his career. Evidence can be found three months ago when he beat a strong field at Torrey Pines.

He became a footnote in Masters history last year when Rory McIlroy beat him in a playoff, making Rose the only player to have twice lost in a playoff at Augusta National without ever having won the Masters green jacket.

The consolation — fine print, at that — is getting his name etched three times on the Masters trophy because the club lists the runner-up each year. The playoff loss to McIlroy. A more crushing playoff loss to Sergio Garcia in 2017. A runner-up by four shots to Jordan Spieth in 2015.

All that means to Rose is he knows his way around Augusta National, and that's the inspiration he brings to the Masters this year.

“I'm very aware that I've been close here,” Rose said Monday afternoon. “I'm very aware that I've had tough, tough losses here. I also am aware that I enjoy this place. I don't want to feel that those three second-place finishes need to create a different sort of feeling for me.”

The record for winning the silver salver awarded to the runner-up without ever having Tuesday night plans at the Masters Club dinner is held by the late Tom Weiskopf, four times a bridesmaid.

Weiskopf was haunted by coming close without ever winning the Masters, as were so many others over the years. Greg Norman had Larry Mize hole a miracle chip in a playoff in 1987 and blew a six-shot lead to Nick Faldo in 1996. David Duval, who had three chances in a four-year stretch. It's a long, sad list.

There is desire and obsession when it comes to the green jacket.

“I’d say firmly in the desire camp, just because I know that the latter is not going to help me,” Rose said. “It’s probably professional discipline just to keep it in the desire realm. I think I probably wouldn’t let myself go down the other path. Like I said, that probably won’t be fruitful. Professionally, I’m not going to do that.”

Rose had a two-shot lead with six holes to play and Sergio Garcia in the azaleas left of the 13th hole, but the Spaniard caught him and beat him in a playoff. Last year, Rose holed a 20-foot birdie putt on the 18th and needed McIlroy to make bogey from the fairway on the 18th to get in a playoff.

Both times he lost to friends. That doesn't make it easier.

“The key is showing up. The key is to try to be as free as you can in those moments,” Rose said. “Yeah, you have to hope a little bit along the way that it’s your day. It could have been my day in a couple of major championships. Hopefully with that mindset, keep chipping away, my day might still happen where a little bit of something goes my way.”

And now he returns to Augusta National, which holds so much familiarity as the only major held on the same course every year. That's what can make it so difficult to win after coming so close. There's a lot of scar tissue built up over the years.

Rose is leaning on that half-full glass.

“I hope it only boosts my belief that I can go ahead and do it,” he said. "I feel like I’ve pretty much done what it takes to win. I just haven’t walked over the line. I feel like I’ve executed well enough to have done the job. From that point of view, I don’t feel like I have to find something in myself to do something different. I truly believe that.

“No, I don’t feel like it owes me anything. I come here with a good attitude. It’s a place that I enjoy being. There’s certain places you get to and you take a deep breath and go, ‘Right, it’s nice to be here.’ Augusta still is one of those places for me.”

___

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

Vance's two-day visit to Budapest was the clearest sign yet that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is going all-in for an Orbán victory when Hungarians go to the polls on Sunday. With only five days until the vote, Orbán, the European Union’s longest-serving leader and a close Trump ally, is trailing in the polls.

Speaking before over 1,000 Orbán supporters at an election rally at a sports arena in Budapest, Vance campaigned openly for the autocratic leader, telling the crowd: “We have got to get Viktor Orbán reelected as prime minister of Hungary, don’t we?”

Orbán is running for his fifth-straight term as prime minister. He and his nationalist-populist Fidesz party are facing their toughest race in two decades against a center-right challenger, the Tisza party led by Péter Magyar, that could bring an end to his 16 years in power.

Orbán has bristled at the slightest mention of the Hungarian election by any of his EU partners, decrying any expressions of support for his opponent as a grave breach of Hungary’s sovereignty and meddling in the election.

Yet Vance's appearance alongside Orbán at the election rally — dubbed a “Day of Friendship” event — was an unusual step from a foreign leader, and a break with most politicians who avoid taking an active role in the political campaigns of other countries.

To loud applause, Vance asked rally attendees: “Will you stand for Western civilization? Will you stand for freedom, for truth, and for the God of our fathers?”

"Then, my friends, go to the polls in the weekend. Stand with Viktor Orbán, because he stands for you, and he stands for all these things,” Vance said.

‘I love that Viktor’

Long accused by critics of taking over Hungary’s institutions, clamping down on press freedom and overseeing entrenched political corruption — charges he denies — Orbán has become an icon in the global far-right movement.

Trump has repeatedly endorsed Orbán’s candidacy for reelection, and many in the Make America Great Again movement approve of the Hungarian leader's opposition to immigration, curtailing of LGBTQ+ rights, and capture of the media and academia.

But with most independent polls showing a double-digit deficit for Fidesz among decided voters ahead of the April 12 vote, Orbán has sought to boost his profile by appearing publicly with his international admirers.

Vance spoke at length on Tuesday about what he views as the civilizational dangers posed by progressivism, “faceless bureaucrats” and censorship. He lauded Orbán for his strong stand against immigration, and his adversarial approach to the EU.

“I admire what you’re fighting for,” Vance said. “I am here because President Trump and I wish for your success, and we are fighting right here with you.”

Vance used his phone to call Trump from the lectern, to loud applause. After first reaching an automated message about the caller’s voicemail box not being set up yet, Trump answered the call and told the crowd through a microphone: “I love Hungary and I love that Viktor, I tell you he’s a fantastic man.”

Trump said Orbán had not allowed migrants “to storm” and “ruin” Hungary.

“He’s kept Hungarian people in your country,” Trump said.

Hungarian ‘reconquista’

The Trump administration’s embrace of Orbán reflects its affinity for European far-right parties broadly, and the admiration, from Spain to France to Germany and the Netherlands, has been mutual.

Orbán has long been a thorn in the side of the EU, and has tested the bloc’s system of governance by frequently using his veto power to paralyze decision making in order to leverage concessions.

Last month, he vetoed a major, 90-billion euro ($104-billion) EU loan to Ukraine, angering the bloc's leaders who accused him of hijacking the critical aid while undermining the EU in an effort to win his election.

At the rally on Tuesday, Orbán declared that “freedom-loving Americans and Hungarians must unite and save Western civilization.”

“To do this, we must fight the progressives that nest in Brussels,” the EU's de-facto capital, he continued. He declared that Hungary had launched a “reconquista” of EU institutions which “will bring new patriotic governments to power.”

Late last month, Orbán hosted dozens of allies from around Europe and beyond at the Hungarian iteration of the Conservative Political Action Conference, and at a meeting of the far-right Patriots for Europe party family, the third-largest group in the European Parliament.

Trump sent a video message to CPAC Hungary, saying Orbán had his “complete and total endorsement” and was a “fantastic guy.”

Still, Trump’s recent approach to foreign affairs has reverberated in Europe, with his actions over Greenland, Venezuela and Iran straining those relationships. Some commentators have suggested support from Vance and Trump may not help boost Orbán's popularity at home.

Orbán, however, has remained deferential, and echoed Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.

Russian energy

Orbán's government has broken with most EU countries by refusing to assist Ukraine with financial assistance or weapons to ward off Russia's full-scale invasion. Meanwhile, it has remained firmly committed to purchasing Russian energy despite EU efforts to wean off such supplies.

In November, Hungary received an exemption from U.S. sanctions on Russian oil and gas after a White House meeting between Orbán and Trump.

Yet at a joint news conference with Orbán earlier on Tuesday, Vance seemed to contradict U.S. efforts to push its allies to break with Russian energy, excoriating other EU countries for moving to cease their imports of Russian fossil fuels in response to the war.

“It's funny to watch prime ministers and leaders in some of the Western European capitals talk about the energy crisis when frankly they should have been following the policies of Viktor Orbán,” he said.

Despite his clear endorsement of Orbán, Vance lashed out at the EU for what he said was “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I’ve ever seen or ever even read about.”

Vance did not address numerous recent reports that Russian secret services are meddling in Hungary's election to tip it in Orbán’s favor.

___

Mike Catalini in Morrisville, Pennsylvania contributed.

Then again, they rarely show up with a resume like Chris Gotterup's.

The 26-year-old Gotterup already has four PGA Tour wins, meaning he'll be the third player since World War II to make his Masters debut with that many. He's already won twice this year and joins Ben Griffin and Jacob Bridgeman as the highest-ranked first-timers this week. All three are in the world top 20.

“Just embracing the whole experience,” Gotterup said. “Trying to take it all in and enjoy it while also trying to go out there and compete and give it everything I’ve got.”

Not since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979 has a Masters rookie won the tournament, and before that nobody had won his debut since Gene Sarazen in the second year of the event. But favorites like Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy haven’t been all that dominant lately, and Gotterup stands out with his wins in the Sony Open and Phoenix Open earlier this year.

He also won the Scottish Open last year. The immediate reward for that victory was a trip to Royal Portrush for Gotterup's first British Open, but it also qualified him for the Masters.

Gotterup finally visited Augusta National more than a month ago. He says he didn't want to come to the Masters previously because watching — instead of playing — would be difficult to handle. And it's not as though he was being bombarded with opportunities to try out the course on his own time.

“I don’t think I’ve actually ever declined an invite. I don’t know if I’ve been invited. So you can’t turn down nothing,” said Gotterup, whose first PGA Tour win was at an opposite-field event in 2024. “I have gotten offered to come watch the tournament from sponsors or from whoever it may be, and I said I can’t go over there until I play. Or else if I’m retired, then I can go over.”

Bridgeman, who won at Riviera in February in his first attempt there, came to Augusta as an autograph-seeking 10-year-old in 2010. He got the chance to play the course when he was a freshman at Clemson, which is about 100 miles away.

“We had a couple members that hosted and we were able to bring down a group of nine of us, so I played with a roommate of mine and we had a blast.” Bridgeman said. “I remember teeing it up on (No.) 1 and there was not a soul around and I was super nervous. A little bit more comfortable this time. I don’t know what it is. I’m kind of in tournament mode.”

Griffin came to the course in November and again last week. Of course, he didn't need to see Augusta National up close to understand its history.

“Tons of memories, all the iconic shots that have been hit. The one that comes to mind first is Tiger Woods’ chip on 16 with the dramatic Nike symbol,” he said. “I feel like every hole there’s like a shot that’s been hit by someone that I’ve either heard of or seen on television that I kind of remember.”

Griffin played the back nine Monday. Gotterup played the front with veteran Justin Rose. Bridgeman's group included 18-year-old Mason Howell, last year's U.S. Amateur champion. Howell is a University of Georgia commit who figures to have plenty of support this week.

Howell is keeping expectations manageable and says his goal is to play four good rounds. Bubba Watson, a two-time Masters champ who finished tied for 20th in his first appearance, recommends that approach for any young newcomer.

“There’s very few that’s won it the first time,” Watson said. “But talent can take over and anybody can win because they’re good enough to get here, they’re good enough to win. Just enjoy it. You want your first one to be, just enjoy it, take it all in, try to learn some things and get ready for the next time you come around here.”

___

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

As time ticks down on U.S. President Donald Trump's latest ultimatum, their thoughts were clouded by new fears: How long will the power be out if plants are bombed? How would they leave the city if the bridges are taken out?

Five weeks on, they have grown used to the roar of American and Israeli fighter jets, the sound of explosions and sleepless nights. Like many, they've left the capital and returned in search of elusive safety. Married for over a decade, they made it through the COVID pandemic and the 12-day war last June.

They've used clear packing tape to lines the edges of their windows, a precaution against blasts. Mirrors and fragile objects have been moved or secured. A packed bag holds documents, medications and essentials, ready in case they need to leave quickly.

In an expletive-laden threat over the weekend, Trump vowed that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day,” and that Iran's leaders will be “living in Hell” if they don't open the Strait of Hormuz.

“Honestly, the situation is really unclear,” Arghavan said. “We don’t really understand things like how long the power might go out if it does, or what life without electricity would even look like.”

Alishir said he and his wife could handle life without power — and potentially without running water — for a week at most. “If it goes on longer, we’ll definitely run into problems,” he said.

Their struggles began even before the first American and Israeli bombs slammed into Iran on Feb. 28.

The Iranian government's crackdown on nationwide protests in January severely limited internet access. The internet monitoring organization NetBlocks says it's the longest nationwide shutdown ever recorded.

Arghavan runs a small language school that teaches French to Iranians who want to live in the Canadian province of Quebec.

“We were basically an online school, and our students had classes with kids abroad,” she said. “Around 50% of our learners were outside the country. But now, with all these internet outages, it’s really disrupting our work.”

Iranians are divided over the war: Some take part in daily pro-government rallies; others quietly cheer the strikes against their leaders while condemning the deaths of civilians and damage to infrastructure.

The couple blames Israel and the U.S. for starting the war and hope for a diplomatic solution.

“I really hope an agreement is reached soon and that whatever happens, it ends up helping people, because right now people are the ones paying a heavy price,” Arghavan said.

Trump has yet to weigh in on a proposal for a two-week ceasefire with Iran, made by Pakistan’s prime minister on social media, who also called on Iran to open the strait during the truce as a "goodwill gesture."

Trump on Monday threatened to blow up every bridge and power plant in Iran if it does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Such destruction would be so far-reaching that some experts in military law said it could constitute a war crime.

The U.S. has already struck military targets on Tuesday on the Iranian oil hub of Kharg Island, according to a White House official, while Israeli warplanes struck bridges and railways in Iran.

Here is the latest:

Federal authorities say pro-Iran hackers breached US infrastructure

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI and the National Security Agency together issued the warning on Tuesday, reporting that hackers allied with Iran exploited vulnerabilities in internet-connected devices used to control machinery used in several important sectors.

They offered no details about the attacks but said they were intended to disrupt operations and cause financial harm. The bulletin urged any U.S. entity that uses the controllers to check their cyber defenses.

A number of cyberattacks targeting U.S. and Israeli entities have been attributed to pro-Iran hackers since U.S.-Israeli strikes began. Authorities say critical infrastructure like ports and water plants could be targeted by Iranian hackers or independent groups working on their behalf.

Trump says it’s ‘totally illegal’ for Iran to have young people surround power plants as human shields

The U.S. president threatening to destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure and bridges said the country can’t use its citizens as human shields.

“Totally illegal,” Trump said in a phone call with NBC News. “They’re not allowed to do that.”

Trump was also asked about his reasons for saying on social media that “a whole civilization will die tonight” and Trump answered by saying: “You’ll have to figure that out.

White House is aware of a request by Pakistan’s prime minister for a 2-week delay on Trump’s threats to Iran

Trump has yet to weigh in on the request for further negotiations with Iran made over social media by Pakistan’s prime minister, but he plans to address the call to push back his deadline for attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure and bridges by two weeks.

“The President has been made aware of the proposal, and a response will come,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement.

Pakistan urges Trump to extend deadline and seeks a 2-week pause in Mideast conflict

In a post on X, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said, “diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in near future.”

“To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks.” he said. The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the post.

“Pakistan, in all sincerity, requests the Iranian brothers to open the Strait of Hormuz for a corresponding period of two weeks as a goodwill gesture,” he added. “We also urge all warring parties to observe a ceasefire everywhere for two weeks to allow diplomacy to achieve conclusive termination of war, in the interest of long-term peace and stability in the region.”

A Jewish leader in the US decries Trump’s threat to destroy ‘a whole civilization’

“We know what it means when leaders call for communities and populations to be wiped out,” Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said in a statement. “Any suggestion that this advances Jewish or Israeli safety is simply an exploitation of our community to advance horrific war crimes and the President’s broader extreme anti-democratic agenda.”

Spitalnick’s council describes itself as a “mainstream Jewish organization.” It believes in the need for Israel to serve as a Jewish homeland, but often criticizes policies of the current Israeli government.

She urged people to recognize “multiple truths:” that Iran’s government is repressive and dangerous, and the Trump administration is increasingly flouting its constitutional and humanitarian obligations.

Fewer Americans have confidence in Trump on Iran decisions than last year, Pew poll finds

Americans are less confident in the president’s decision-making on Iran than they were last year, according to a new Pew Research Center poll, with drops among Republicans and Democrats.

About one-third of U.S. adults are “very” or “somewhat” confident Trump can make good decisions when it comes to U.S. policy toward Iran, according to the Pew poll conducted in late March. That’s down from 44% in August. Roughly two-thirds of Republicans have high confidence, down from 78% last year.

The poll also found about 7 in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about higher gas and fuel prices as a result of U.S. military action, with most Republicans and Democrats being worried. Majorities of Americans also worry about U.S. ground troops being sent into Iran, possible military casualties and potential terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Pope sharply criticizes Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian civilization

“Today, as we all know, there was this threat against all the people of Iran. This is truly unacceptable,” Pope Leo XIV said, adding that any attacks on civilian infrastructure violate international law.

In some of his strongest comments yet against the war, Leo urged Americans and others of goodwill to contact their political leaders and congressional representatives to demand they reject war and work for peace.

The remarks to reporters Tuesday came as he left his country house in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome, just hours before Trump’s deadline for Iran to capitulate and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

UN chief answers Trump: No military objective justifies destruction of a society’s infrastructure

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “deeply troubled” by the statement suggesting that an entire people or civilization may bear “the consequences of political and military decisions,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

Guterres didn’t name Trump but was clearly referring to the American leader’s warning to Iran earlier Tuesday that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if the Strait of Hormuz isn’t opened.

“There is no military objective that justifies the wholesale destruction of a society’s infrastructure or the deliberate infliction of suffering on civilian populations,” Guterres’ spokesman said.

The secretary-general reiterates that leaders can still choose “dialogue over destruction” and the choice for talks must be made now, Dujarric said.

Guterres calls for stepped-up diplomacy to find a path to peace and appeals for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the spokesman said.

UN says initial findings show Israeli tank fire and a Hezbollah roadside bomb killed peacekeepers

In a statement released Tuesday, a U.N. official said that “based on available evidence,” a projectile fired from an Israeli tank on March 29 resulted in the death of one Indonesian peacekeeper.

“It is recalled that, to mitigate the risk to United Nations personnel, UNIFIL had again provided the Israel Defense Forces with the coordinates of all its positions and facilities on 6 March and 22 March,” the statement read.

Additionally, the March 30 episode that resulted in the death of two other Indonesian peacekeepers came after a improvised explosive device, most likely placed by Hezbollah, was discovered nearby.

“Allow me to reiterate that these are preliminary findings, based on initial physical evidence,” the statement continued, adding the full investigation processes of the U.N. will continue.

Israel says Iran has fired a new barrage of missiles

Israel’s military said Iran had launched missiles at the country Tuesday evening, the seventh time of the day.

Sirens sent people to shelters in the southern part of the country, while earlier salvos had been centered on the major metropolis of Tel Aviv, as well as central Israel and parts of the occupied West Bank.

Northern Israeli communities continued to come under fire from Hezbollah as well.

Sundown Tuesday marks the beginning of the last day of the Passover holiday, an especially important religious occasion in the Jewish calendar.

Earlier in the day, an elderly couple and their son, who were killed in a missile attack, were buried in Haifa.

Top House Democrats issue joint statement asking for Congress to be brought back into session to end war

House Democratic leaders in a joint statement called President Donald Trump “completely unhinged” and asked the House to be brought back immediately into legislative session.

“His statement threatening to eradicate an entire civilization shocks the conscience and requires a decisive congressional response,” said the joint statement from Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark and four other top House Democrats.

“The House must come back into session immediately and vote to end this reckless war of choice in the Middle East before Donald Trump plunges our country into World War III,” the Democratic lawmakers said.

They called on House Republicans to put patriotic duty over party loyalty and “join Democrats in stopping this madness.”

Iranian envoy says Tehran will ‘take immediate and proportionate’ action if Trump follows through on attack threats

Iranian envoy says Tehran will not “stand idle’ if Trump follows through on ‘war crime’ threats

Amir-Saeid Iravani, Tehran’s representative at the U.N., said that Trump’s threats earlier Tuesday that a “whole civilization will die” if Iran does not make a deal “constitute incitement to war crimes and potentially genocide.”

During a Security Council session on the Strait of Hormuz, Iravani urged the international community to call out Trump’s rhetoric before it’s too late.

“Iran will not stand idle in the face of such egregious war crimes. It will exercise, without hesitation, its inherent right of self-defense and will take immediate and proportionate reciprocal measures,” he said.

WHO warns about long-term impact of strikes near Iranian nuclear plant

Top World Health Organization official warned about the long-term health risks caused by the continued military activity near an Iranian nuclear power plant.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director general, wrote on X that more military operations near the Russian-built Bushehr power plant, where hundreds of workers were evacuated following a strike recently.

“Such actions could lead to a severe radiological accident, with serious and long-term health consequences for people now and for generations to come, while also harming the environment across Iran, the region, and beyond,” he wrote.

Tehran resident says attacks on power plants will plunge Iran into darkness and leave hundreds of thousands unemployed

An engineer in a construction company who lives in Tehran says hitting infrastructure, including some power plants, has already left many people unemployed.

“Because of this, workers and employees, and people who are losing their jobs and income are becoming against the war,” they said. “There is a huge amount of fear about tonight.”

Speaking to The Associated Press through a messaging app from Tehran, the engineer said only people who are financially able are buying generators to prepare for possible power outages. Just like the internet outage ... so they are less (doomed),” they said. But the fact is, everyone is impacted, the engineer added, speaking anonymously for his own safety.

The engineer said Trump’s threats still lack any clarity.

“People don’t know what his plan is.”

Trump phones into rally to praise Hungary’s Orban

Hours ahead of a deadline he imposed on Iran to capitulate, President Donald Trump boosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Tuesday when Vice President JD Vance dialed him into a rally in Budapest.

Trump told the crowd gathered ahead of Hungary’s weekend election that he loves their country and praised Orban.

“You have a man that kept your country strong,” Trump said.

Vance spoke at the rally for Orban in the Hungarian capital, defending Western civilization and criticizing “bureaucrats in Brussels.”

The vice president attempted to dial the president in front of the crowd and first got an automated message saying the voicemail box wasn’t set up, to laughter from attendees. Soon after, he got Trump on the phone and put him on speaker for the crowd.

Bread and cash shortages leave Palestinians in Gaza struggling to feed their families

In Gaza City, dozens of people had to wade through flooded streets to reach a bread distribution point on Tuesday because of war-damaged drainage systems, AP footage showed.

A $1 bag of bread — about 15 loaves — is barely enough to feed large families, residents said.

Israel’s two-year war has been muted by a fragile ceasefire since October, but many in Gaza fear the Iran war is overshadowing urgent humanitarian needs and delaying reconstruction.

Jamal Hamad, a displaced resident from northern Gaza, said shortages of small bills are compounding the crisis, leaving many unable to pay. Digital options remain out of reach.

People waited for hours in the rain, pushing to reach the front as supplies ran low. Some resold bags for up to $6.

Key bridge between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain closes

The King Fahd Causeway, a key bridge linking Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, closed Tuesday for the second time as a precautionary measure following alerts issued by the National Early Warning Platform in the Eastern Province.

The King Fahd Causeway Authority said on X Tuesday evening vehicle traffic has been suspended.

Iran-backed Iraqi militia releases American journalist Shelly Kittleson

American journalist Shelly Kittleson, who was kidnapped in Baghdad last week, has been released, an Iraqi official with direct knowledge of the situation said Tuesday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said Kittleson was freed in the afternoon. He did not share her current whereabouts but said that before her release, she was being held in Baghdad.

The powerful Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah said in a statement earlier Tuesday that it had decided to free the journalist, and officials with the militia told The Associated Press that members of the group previously detained by Iraqi authorities would be released in exchange.

Pope Leo expresses solidarity with Lebanese Christians facing ‘injustices’ as Israel invades

In an Easter message released Tuesday by the Vatican, Leo suggested a parallel between Christ’s crucifixion and the suffering of south Lebanese Christians.

“In your misfortune, in the injustice you endure, in the feeling of abandonment you experience, you are very close to Jesus. You are close to Him also on this Easter Day when He conquered the forces of evil, and which resonates for you as a promise of the future,” read the message.

The message was written in French, was signed by the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and was addressed to the residents of the village of Debel.

A convoy carrying over 40 tons of aid led by the Vatican was supposed to have reached the Christian village of Debel for Easter, but was canceled for what Lebanon’s Maronite Church said were “security reasons.”

Leo visited Lebanon late last year on his first international trip as pope.

US senators warn Britain against changes to Diego Garcia island base

Two Republican senators warned Prime Minister Keir Starmer that altering the status of the U.S. military base on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia could harm U.S.-U.K. relations, as the base plays a key role in operations tied to the Iran war.

Sens. Ted Cruz and Tommy Tuberville urged Britain to halt a planned transfer of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, saying it would undermine U.S. national security.

Passage of the deal through the U.K. Parliament is on hold until American support can be regained.

The Trump administration initially welcomed the deal, but the president changed his mind in January, calling it “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.”

Iraqi militia says it will free a kidnapped American journalist

The powerful Iran-backed Iraqi militia known as Kataib Hezbollah said in a statement Tuesday that it will release American journalist Shelly Kittleson, who was kidnapped from a Baghdad street last week.

The group said its decision came “in appreciation of the patriotic stances of the outgoing Prime Minister,” Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, without giving more details. It added that “this initiative will not be repeated in future.”

Kataib Hezbollah had not previously acknowledged that it was the group responsible for Kittleson’s abduction, although both U.S. and Iraqi officials had pointed fingers at the group.

Iran agrees to French prisoner swap deal

Iran’s state-run IRNA news outlet confirmed Tuesday that an agreement was reached with Paris for the release of two French citizens, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, held in Iran over alleged espionage, in exchange for Iranian woman Mahdieh Esfandiari, who was detained over her social media content. The French government will also drop its case against Iran.

The French citizens had been holed up in the country’s diplomatic premises there since their release from prison.

The green light for them to leave Iran, long sought by France, signaled how Iran is differentiating between nations, treating some favorably and others as foes, in the context of the Iran war.

Iranian diplomat responds to Trump’s latest threat

Responding to Trump saying “a civilization will die tonight,” an Iranian diplomat described the country’s civilization as a tree that nourished the West.

“Therefore, no fool would cut off the branch of a tree he is sitting on because he himself would fall first, and it is the sturdy tree that always stands, not the branches and appendages that have grown from it,” Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, head of the Iranian mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press.

Iran fires more missiles at Israel

Just before sunset on Tuesday — twice in less than half an hour — Israel’s military said it was working to intercept missiles launched from Iran.

Sirens went off in the Tel Aviv area as well as parts of the occupied West Bank.

Congress, away from Washington, watches and waits on Trump’s threat

Lawmakers are on recess from Washington as Trump threatens to kill “a whole civilization” in the Iran war. So far, the reaction from Congress — which is supposed to have the ultimate say in matters of war — has drawn sharp rebukes from Democrats and mostly silence from Republicans.

Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro called on Trump to immediately make it clear that he is not considering using nuclear weapons, and Colorado Democratic Rep. Jason Crow warned that “calling for the elimination of a civilization is a war crime.”

Most Republicans stayed away from the issue, though Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast that he was “hoping and praying” that Trump’s threat was “bluster.”

“I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure,” Johnson said.

Democrats intend to force further votes on legislation to rein in Trump’s ability to attack Iran, but not until Congress returns to Washington next week.

Russia and China veto a watered-down UN resolution aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz

The vetoes by Russia and China came despite the resolution being repeatedly weakened to get the two countries to abstain.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council on the Bahrain-sponsored resolution was 11-2, with Pakistan and Colombia abstaining. It came hours before Trump’s 8 p.m. Eastern deadline for Iran to open the strategic waterway or face attacks on its power plants and bridges.

Bahrain’s initial proposal would have authorized countries to use “all necessary means” — U.N. wording that would include military action — to ensure transit through the Strait of Hormuz and deter attempts to close it.

The final text eliminated Security Council authorization for offensive or defensive action. Instead, it “strongly encourages” countries using the Strait of Hormuz to coordinate defensive efforts to ensure safe navigation through the waterway, where about one-fifth of the world’s oil passes.

Packing up to leave Tehran, a young designer says she’s ‘terrified’

Facing heavy bombardment, many middle-class residents of Iran’s capital have been waiting out the war in the country’s coastal north.

A young designer who lives in central Tehran said her parents left at the beginning of the war but she stayed behind to take care of her cat.

Now, she says she’s “terrified” by Trump’s threats and is planning to drive north with her cat to join her family — if the U.S. really does knock out power plants after Tuesday night’s deadline.

“If there is no electricity, there is no water because the water pressure in Tehran is low and all buildings have electric water pumps. You can’t cook either. In the north, you can at least do something in nature, like the ‘Stone Age’ that he promised,” she said.

The designer spoke on condition of anonymity for her safety.

Normally a popular vacation spot, the Caspian Sea coast is carpeted in forested mountains with plentiful water — unlike other areas which have suffered years of drought.

— Amir-Hussein Radjy

In Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hezbollah militants, more than 1,500 have been killed

And more than 1 million people have been displaced, the country’s health ministry said.

Among the 1,530 killed are 102 women and 130 children are among the dead, as well as 57 paramedics, according to the government count.

The number of Hezbollah militants killed is unclear.

More than 4,800 people were also wounded in the war.

Eleven Israeli soldiers have died there.

This latest war was sparked after Hezbollah fired rockets towards northern Israel on March 2 in solidarity with Iran also at war with Israel and the United States.

The move departs from Vietnam’s tradition of shared leadership, in which the jobs have typically been held by different people, and echoes power structures in China under Xi Jinping and neighboring Laos.

It has been widely expected since Lam’s reelection as Communist Party head in January, when observers noted that his consolidation of party authority positioned him to assume the presidency as well.

Former central bank governor Le Minh Hung was elected as the country's prime minister for the next five years.

After being sworn in, the 69-year-old told the National Assembly that his top priority was to maintain peace and stability, which were the foundation for fast and sustainable growth. “We aim to improve people’s livelihoods so all can share the benefits of development,” he said.

This is To Lam’s second time holding both jobs, after briefly doing so in 2024 when his predecessor as party chief, Nguyen Phu Trong, died.

The concentration of power was significant since it meant that Lam had a “stronger mandate and far more political room to push through his agenda than any leaders” since the 1980s, when Hanoi launched reforms to shed a state-run economy in favor of a market-oriented one open to foreigners, said Nguyen Khac Giang, of Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute research center.

“The opportunity is obvious. Faster decision-making, greater policy coherence, and a better chance of pushing difficult reforms at a pivotal moment. But the risk is that concentration of power can move faster than institutional reform,” he said.

Lam's rise to the top caps the ascent of a career policeman who advanced from Vietnam’s security services to the top of the political system. This was aided by a sweeping anti-corruption campaign launched by his predecessor, which he oversaw as head of the Ministry of Public Security.

As party chief, Lam has led Vietnam’s biggest bureaucratic overhaul since the 1980s, cutting jobs, merging ministries, redrawing provincial boundaries and advancing major infrastructure projects.

He has focused on economic performance and private-sector growth, aiming to move Vietnam beyond the labor- and export-driven model that has helped lift millions from poverty and build a manufacturing-based middle class. The country is targeting 10% or higher annual economic growth over each of the next five years.

Hung, the new prime minister, said that the 10% growth target is meant to help achieve the country’s strategic goals and that the government had identified “strengthening science, technology, innovation and digital transformation as top priorities.”

But challenges remain, especially the immediate task of turning this ambitious vision into reality with the world economy upended by the energy shock from the war in Iran. Vietnam’s economy expanded at an annualized rate of 7.8% in the first three months of the year, up from 7.1% last year but below the 9.1% target and slower than in late 2025.

Giang said that Lam also faces political hurdles for reform buy-in and the challenge of maintaining Vietnam's pragmatic approach to foreign policy.

Vietnam is facing U.S. pressure over its trade surplus but also has to balance ties with China, its largest trading partner and rival claimant in the South China Sea.

“It has benefited from a careful balancing strategy in foreign policy, but maintaining that position will become harder in a more turbulent world,” he said.

___

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

The Huskies were physical, controlled the pace and held the Wolverines' potent offense in check. But this time, the big shots that propelled them to the cusp of a third national championship in four seasons simply didn't fall.

Not for fabulous freshman Braylon Mullins, not for record-breaking forward Alex Karaban, not even for Malachi Smith, who missed a layup with 7 seconds left that might have kept hope alive in Storrs, Connecticut. Instead, UConn came up short in a 69-63 loss, its first in seven title game appearances, thwarting its chance to become the first team since the UCLA dynasty of the 1960s and 1970s to win three crowns in such quick succession.

“This is where you wanted to be. It hasn’t set in yet,” Hurley said. “On the flight (Monday) it’ll set in, on the bus ride back. Eventually it’ll hit you that you were close to pulling off what would have been a historic third championship. But this team just gave us so much this year — just didn’t make enough shots.”

Karaban also had a shot to become the first player to win three titles since UCLA captured eight during a nine-season span from 1967-75. He played all 40 minutes in his finale and leaves UConn as the school's leader in games played (151), wins (126) and 3-pointers (292).

UConn picked the wrong night to shoot a season-low 30.9% from the field and a dismal 27.3% from 3-point range. The Huskies were even worse in the second half: 28.9% from the field and 4 of 18 from beyond the arc.

Maybe UConn didn't have enough fight left after it survived the tourney's top seed, Duke, with a 19-point comeback in the regional semifinals and after winning a 71-62 bruiser against Illinois on Saturday night.

This loss was UConn's first after the second round of an NCAA Tournament since 2011, ending a 19-game winning streak in the toughest parts of the bracket.

Michigan, which won its second national title and first since 1989, also brought plenty of physicality to the matchup. The Wolverines held each of their last four opponents to season-low shooting percentages.

They relied on the Big Ten's brand of bully ball to get UConn into foul trouble, win the wrestling matches for loose balls and eventually wear down the perimeter shooters who had saved UConn in its incredible 19-point comeback against Duke.

This time, it was the Huskies' shooters who came up empty.

Mullins scored 11 points on 4-of-17 shooting, including 3 of 10 on 3s. After opening the game by making his first two shots, Karaban made three of his next 12 and converted only one of his last eight 3-point attempts to finish with 17 points and 11 rebounds.

Nobody else was much better. Big man Tarris Reed Jr. finished with 13 points and 14 rebounds but was 4 of 12 from the field. And while Mullins and Karaban combined for six 3s, the rest of the team was 3 of 13 beyond the arc.

“We came up short, missed some shots we normally make, but we gave it our all,” Karaban said.

The shooting woes were compounded by UConn's foul trouble.

Reed, Solo Ball and Silas Demary Jr. all finished the first half on the bench with two fouls. Ball picked up his third just 29 seconds into the second half and his fourth with 16:20 remaining.

He finished with 11 points but had no assists while playing on a sprained left foot.

“It’s definitely frustrating not being on the court for that long, and it hurts my team at the moment,” Ball sad. “But this has been the most fun year of my life with this group of guys, and I just cherish this team.”

Even though UConn held Michigan to its worst shooting of the tournament — 38.2% — the Huskies came up just short too many times.

“I’m not real emotional. Players are crying a lot more than I am,” Hurley said. “It’s hard to be upset with your team. We lost the game because we missed. We missed — we didn’t make enough shots.”

___

AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness

Trump’s expansive threat did not seem to account for potential harm to civilians, prompting Democrats in Congress, some United Nations officials and scholars in military law to say such strikes would violate international law.

Tehran’s representative at the U.N., Amir-Saeid Iravani, said the threats “constitute incitement to war crimes and potentially genocide” and that Iran would "take immediate and proportionate reciprocal measures” if Trump launches devastating strikes.

As Trump’s deadline neared, an official said indirect talks continued between the United States and Iran.

Pakistan's prime minister urged Trump to extend his deadline by two weeks to allow diplomacy to advance. In a post on X, Shehbaz Sharif, whose country has been leading negotiations, also asked Iran to open up for two weeks the strait through which a fifth of the world’s oil transits in peacetime. The White House said Trump had been informed of the proposal and would respond.

Even before the deadline, airstrikes hit two bridges and a train station, and the U.S. hit military infrastructure on Kharg Island, a key hub for Iranian oil production.

Trump has extended deadlines before

Since the war began, Trump has repeatedly imposed deadlines linked to threats, only to extend them. But the president insisted this one is final and will expire at 8 p.m. in Washington unless there is a major diplomatic breakthrough. Tehran has rejected a 45-day ceasefire proposal, saying it wants a permanent end to the war.

Iran’s president said 14 million people, including himself, have volunteered to fight. That's despite Trump saying that U.S. forces could wipe out all bridges in Iran in a matter of hours and reduce all power plants to smoking rubble in roughly the same time frame.

It was not clear if airstrikes against Iran on Tuesday were linked to Trump’s threats to widen the civilian target list. At least two of the targets were connected to Iran’s rail network, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli warplanes struck bridges and railways in Iran.

Tehran fired on Israel and Saudi Arabia, prompting the temporary closure of a major bridge.

While Iran cannot match the sophistication of U.S. and Israeli weaponry or their dominance in the air, its chokehold on the strait since the war began in late February is roiling the world economy and raising the pressure on Trump both at home and abroad to find a way out of the standoff.

Trump keeps an off-ramp open

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” if a deal isn’t reached, Trump said in an online post Tuesday morning. But he also seemed to keep open the possibility of an off-ramp, saying that “maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen.”

Earlier, Iranian official Alireza Rahimi issued a video message calling on “all young people, athletes, artists, students and university students and their professors” to form human chains around power plants.

Iranians have formed human chains in the past around nuclear sites at times of heightened tensions with the West. State media posted videos online that showed hundreds of flag-waving people massed at two bridges and at a power plant hundreds of kilometers (miles) from Tehran, though it was not clear how widespread the practice was.

“They’re not allowed to do that,” Trump said in a phone call with NBC News.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian posted on X that 14 million Iranians had answered campaigns urging people to volunteer to fight — and said he would join them — while a Revolutionary Guard general urged parents to send their children to man checkpoints.

The Guard warned that Iran would “deprive the U.S. and its allies of the region’s oil and gas for years” and expand its attacks across the Gulf region if Trump carries out his threat.

In Tehran, the mood was bleak. A young teacher said that many opponents of Iran's Islamic system had hoped Trump's attacks would quickly topple it. As the war drags on, she fears U.S. and Israeli strikes will spread chaos.

“If we don’t have the internet, and if we don’t have electricity, water, and gas, we’re really going back to the Stone Age, as Trump said,” she told The Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity for her safety.

Growing criticism of threats

In Rome, Pope Leo XIV said Tuesday that the threats were “truly unacceptable” and that such attacks would violate international law.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said that attacks targeting civilian and energy infrastructure could constitute a war crime. Such cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute. Trump has said he’s “not at all” concerned about committing war crimes.

Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said he deplored the rhetoric being used over the last two weeks “by all parties."

Airstrikes hit Iran, which fires on Saudi Arabia and Israel

Intense airstrikes pounded Tehran, including in residential neighborhoods. In the past, such strikes have targeted Iranian government and security officials.

The Israeli military said it attacked an Iranian petrochemical site in Shiraz, the second day in a row it hit such a facility. The military later said it also struck bridges in Tehran, Karaj, Tabriz, Kashan and Qom that were being used by Iranian forces to transport weapons and military equipment.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, described the strikes on Kharg Island as hitting targets previously struck and not directed at oil infrastructure.

Saudi Arabia said it intercepted seven ballistic missiles and four drones launched by Iran. Saudi Arabia also temporarily closed the King Fahd Causeway, the only road connection between Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, and the Arabian Peninsula. Iran also fired on Israel.

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began, but the government has not updated the toll for days.

In Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, more than 1,500 people have been killed. and more than 1 million people have been displaced. Eleven Israeli soldiers have died there.

In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 23 have been reported dead in Israel, and 13 U.S. service members have been killed.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands, and Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers David Rising in Bangkok; John Leicester in Paris; Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia; Nicole Winfield in Rome; Amir-Hussein Radjy in Cairo; Natalie Melzer in Jerusalem; Farnoush Amiri at The United Nations; and Konstantin Toropin, Seung Min Kim, Michelle L. Price, Joshua Boak and Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.

Police have not confirmed the name of the 47-year-old former soldier who was arrested Tuesday. But he has been widely reported in the media to be Roberts-Smith, a former Special Air Service Regiment corporal who was awarded both the Victoria Cross and Medal of Gallantry for his service in Afghanistan.

Police charged him Tuesday with five counts of war crime murder. He will remain in custody overnight and make his first court appearance on Wednesday, a police statement said.

He will potentially apply for release on bail Wednesday.

Roberts-Smith is only the second Australian veteran of the Afghanistan campaign to be charged with a war crime.

Former SAS soldier Oliver Schulz, 44, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of war crime murder. He is accused of shooting Afghan man Dad Mohammad three times in the head in an Uruzgan province wheat field in May 2012.

War crime murder carries a potential sentence of life in prison. It's a federal crime in Australia, defined as the intentional killing in the context of armed conflict of a person who is not taking an active part in hostilities, such as civilians, prisoners of war or wounded soldiers.

Police arrested Roberts-Smith at Sydney Airport on Tuesday after he arrived on a flight from Brisbane, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said.

“It will be alleged that the victims were not taking part in hostilities at the time of their alleged murder in Afghanistan. It will be alleged the victims were detained, unarmed and were under the control of ADF members when they were killed,” Barrett told reporters, referring to the Australian Defense Force.

“It will be alleged the victims were shot by the accused or shot by subordinate members of the ADF in the presence of and acting on the orders of the accused,” Barrett added.

A civil court has already found similar allegations against Roberts-Smith credible in a defamation suit he brought after several newspapers published articles in 2018 accusing him of a range of war crimes. In 2023, a federal judge rejected Roberts-Smith’s claims and ruled that he likely killed four noncombatants unlawfully in 2009 and 2012.

But while the civil court found the war crimes allegations were mostly proved on a balance of probabilities, the new charges would have to be proved in a criminal court to a higher standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

In September, Australia’s High Court said it would not hear an appeal, ending his chances of overturning the ruling.

Nick McKenzie, a reporter unsuccessfully sued for defamation by Roberts-Smith who has been investigating allegations against the soldier since 2017, expected SAS colleagues to testify in the criminal trial as they had during the civil trial.

“You’re investigating conduct allegedly taken by some members of the most secretive, elite fighting force Australia has. The journalism task is difficult. What’s been really difficult, though, is those brave SAS witnesses” testifying, McKenzie told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“For them to come forward and say: ‘Well, we served our country bravely like Ben Roberts-Smith did, alongside him in Afghanistan, but we saw things with our own eyes that we feel uncomfortable about.’ These brave soldiers, some of them broke down after they testified, so difficult was it for them to stand up and speak out,” McKenzie added.

The charges follow a military report released in 2020 that found evidence that elite Australian SAS and commando regiment troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers and other noncombatants.

Barrett said few soldiers were involved in the new allegations.

“The alleged conduct related to these charges is confined to a very small section of our trusted and respected ADF which helps keep this country safe,” Barrett said.

“The overwhelming majority of our ADF do our country proud. Today’s charges are not reflective of the majority of members who serve under our Australian flag with honor, with distinction and with the values of a democratic nation,” she added.

The Office of the Special Investigator was established to work with police on the war crime allegations. The office’s director of investigations Ross Barnett said allegations of 53 war crimes had been investigated and 39 of those investigations had concluded without charges. Around 40,000 Australian military personnel served in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, of whom 41 were killed.

El incidente ocurrió el jueves por la noche, luego de que ambos fueran encontrados en las aguas del Intracoastal Waterway, cerca de Hallandale Beach.

En el video, se escucha a un rescatista preguntarle a la mujer si entró al agua por su perro.

Los equipos de emergencia utilizaron distintos tipos de escaleras y dispositivos flotantes durante el rescate.

“Creo que ella saltó porque el perro estaba tratando de salir”, dijo el testigo Dimitry Shaposhnikov. “Era marea baja, así que para ella llegar a algún lugar era casi imposible. Yo no veía ni una escalera ni nada para subir, estaba atrapada”.

Después del rescate, el perro fue visto moviendo la cola junto a su dueña, ya en tierra firme.

No se reportaron heridos.

La estación Shell ubicada en la calle 41 y Royal Palm Avenue en Miami Beach fue la primera en romper la barrera de los $5, con un precio de $5.39 por galón el primer lunes de abril.

Según GasBuddy, el precio promedio en las bombas de Miami ha subido 23 centavos solo en la última semana.

El alto costo está llevando a algunos conductores a buscar la manera de ahorrar dinero.

Carlos Pérez le dijo al periodista Brett Knese, de Local 10 News, que dejó de manejar para Uber temporalmente porque el precio de la gasolina ya no hace rentable el trabajo.

“Mi hijo también hace Uber y es muy caro, y el precio sube pero Uber paga lo mismo, así que está mal”, dijo.

Los expertos señalan que los precios probablemente seguirán subiendo hasta que el estrecho de Ormuz vuelva a abrirse.

Leer en español

Wigawa Putu Janu, 36, of Jembrana, Indonesia, is now facing a sexual battery charge in South Florida. According to BSO, he worked aboard the Celebrity Xcel.

A BSO arrest report states that Putu Janu had been drinking with the victim, who described him as a “friend,” after their shift last Tuesday. Deputies said “she remembers taking two shots of bourbon before losing all memory for the rest of the night.”

According to the report, the woman said she woke up naked in Putu Janu’s bed and, in the bathroom, saw that she was bleeding and saw marks on her shoulder and back. BSO Detective Kyle Schnakenberg wrote that she gathered her belongings and reported what happened to her supervisor.

“I reviewed video footage of the incident, which shows the victim falling to the ground, appearing completely intoxicated, unable to walk or stand on her own,” Schnakenberg wrote. “Video continues to show the offender attempting to lift the victim off the floor, then holding the victim up, who was stumbling into the walls while they walked to his cabin.”

Deputies took Putu Janu into custody after the ship returned to South Florida on Sunday. A statement by Putu Janu was redacted from the report.

He was arrested on a sexual battery charge and a Broward County judge ordered him held without bond in court Monday.

Local 10 News has contacted Celebrity Cruises seeking comment on the arrest.

This year’s Supreme Court election stands in stark contrast to the swing state's previous two, where national spending records were set in battles over majority control. Spending and national attention is down dramatically this year without control of the court at stake.

Democrats are looking to tighten their control of the court just months before a November election in which they seek to keep the governor's office and flip the state Legislature, where Republicans have held the majority since 2011. Democrats aspire to undo a host of Republican-enacted laws that made Wisconsin a focal point for the nation’s conservative movement in the 2010s.

In Tuesday's Supreme Court race, Democratic-backed Chris Taylor, a former state lawmaker who also worked for Planned Parenthood, faces Republican-supported Maria Lazar. Both Taylor and Lazar are state Appeals Court judges.

Liberals would increase their majority on the court to 5-2 from 4-3 with a Taylor win. That would lock in the liberal majority until at least 2030.

Liberals took control of the state's top court in 2023, ending 15 years under a conservative majority. They held onto their majority with last year's victory in a race that drew involvement from President Donald Trump and billionaires George Soros and Elon Musk, who personally handed out $1 million checks to voters in the state.

Liberals argued that democracy was at stake in the 2025 election, noting that when the court was controlled by conservative justices in 2020 it came just one vote shy of siding with Trump in his attempt to invalidate enough votes to overturn his loss in that year's presidential election.

Since liberals took control, the court has reversed several election-related rulings, including one that overturned a ban on absentee ballot drop boxes, and it is poised to once again be in the spotlight around the 2028 presidential election.

Races for the court are officially nonpartisan, but support for candidates breaks down mostly along partisan lines.

Taylor has focused much of her campaign on abortion rights, with one TV ad saying that “abortion is on the ballot.” In another ad, she criticized Lazar for calling the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 “very wise.”

Lazar, who was supported by anti-abortion groups in her run for the appeals court, tried to brand Taylor as nothing more than a politician who will push a partisan agenda on the court.

They sparred over each other's partisanship during the campaign's sole debate last week.

Lazar accused Taylor of being a “radical, extreme legislator” and a “judicial activist.” Taylor said that Lazar would bring “an extreme, right-wing political agenda to the bench.”

Lazar has had a much harder time getting her message out. Taylor had a large fundraising advantage and spent about nine times as much as Lazar on television ads, based on a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice.

The liberal-controlled court has already struck down a state law banning abortion and ordered new legislative maps, fueling Democrats’ hopes of capturing a majority this November.

Taylor has been a judge since 2020 and before that she spent 10 years as a Democrat representing the liberal capital city of Madison in the state Assembly.

Lazar, a judge since 2015, previously worked four years under a Republican attorney general in the state Department of Justice. In that role, she defended a law enacted under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers.

A circuit court judge ruled in December that the law is unconstitutional, a decision expected to ultimately land before the state Supreme Court.

Lazar also defended laws passed by Republicans and signed by Walker implementing a voter ID requirement and restricting abortion access.

Democrats are optimistic given the past two Supreme Court elections, which saw candidates they backed winning by double digits.

The seat is open due to the retirement of a conservative justice. Another conservative justice is retiring next year, giving liberals a chance to take 6-1 control of the court if they win on Tuesday.

Los agentes arrestaron a Annie Flaherty, de 37 años y residente de Oakland Park, el sábado.

Se le acusa de acercarse a sus vecinos fingiendo ser oficial de la ley.

Según el informe de arresto, Flaherty tocó la puerta de dos de sus vecinos con una placa policial en la cadera, se identificó como “policía de Miami-Dade” y dijo que investigaba el robo de diamantes.

Los agentes dijeron que cuando fueron a la casa de Flaherty para interrogarla sobre los incidentes, ella les entregó la placa que se le vio portando.

La placa fue descrita como una edición del Super Bowl LIV de oficial de correccionales de Miami-Dade. Las autoridades no dijeron cómo Flaherty obtuvo la placa ni si era falsa.

Según el formulario de arresto de Flaherty, su ocupación figura como azafata de Spirit Airlines.

Fue acusada de suplantar a un agente de la ley y trasladada al centro de detención North

Harris led a first round of voting on March 10 with 37% in the district that stretches across 10 counties from suburban Atlanta to Tennessee. While Fuller came in second in the 17-candidate all-party special election with 35%, the Republican candidates combined won nearly 60% of the vote. The 14th District is rated as the most Republican-leaning district in Georgia by the Cook Political Report.

President Donald Trump in February endorsed Fuller, a district attorney who prosecuted crimes in four counties, to succeed Greene in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. Greene, once among Trump’s most ardent supporters, resigned in January after falling out with the president.

Fuller has backed Trump to the hilt, finding no issue on which he disagreed with the president when asked in a March 23 debate.

“We need an America First fighter to stand strong for northwest Georgia," Fuller said March 23. He was a White House fellow in the first Trump administration and is a lieutenant colonel in the Georgia Air National Guard.

Trump reiterated his support for Fuller on Monday night.

"I am asking all Republicans, America First Patriots, and MAGA Warriors, to please GET OUT AND VOTE for a fantastic Candidate, Clay Fuller, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement!" the president wrote on social media.

Harris, a cattle farmer and retired general who lost to Greene in 2024, has contrasted himself with Greene’s bomb-throwing style. He said he's a “dirt-road Democrat" with common sense, and practical-minded Republicans should vote for him because he will focus on the district's interest.

“He has sold his soul to Donald Trump," Harris said of Fuller on March 23. "The reality of it is he cannot fight for you because he cannot go against the president.”

The winner will serve out the remaining months of Greene’s term. A Republican win would bolster the party’s slim majority in the House, where Republicans control 217 seats to Democrats’ 214, with one independent.

But if the winner wants to remain in Congress beyond January, he will have to run again. Republicans seeking a full two-year term are set for a May 19 party primary, and possibly a June 16 party runoff, before advancing to the general election in November. Harris is the only Democrat running, meaning he faces no primary election.

Greene was one of the most well-known members of Congress until she left in January. She remained loyal to Trump after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020, promoting Trump’s falsehoods about a stolen election. When Trump ran again in 2024, she toured the country with him and spoke at his rallies while wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat.

But Greene began clashing with Trump last year after he and other Republicans pushed back against her running for U.S. Senate or governor. Greene criticized Trump’s foreign policy and his reluctance to release documents involving the Jeffrey Epstein case. The president eventually had enough, saying he would support a primary challenge against her. Greene announced a week later that she would resign.