El incidente ocurrió alrededor de las 9:45 a.m. en el bloque 4000 de Northwest 21st Street en Lauderhill.

Oficiales de la policía de Lauderhill respondieron a llamadas sobre disparos en el área, pero no encontraron víctimas al llegar al lugar.

Poco después, los agentes fueron alertados de que una víctima de bala había llegado por sus propios medios al Florida Medical Center en Fort Lauderdale.

La policía indicó que el hombre presentaba múltiples heridas de bala y fue trasladado de emergencia al Broward Health Medical Center para recibir tratamiento adicional.

Las autoridades no proporcionaron información sobre posibles sospechosos o personas de interés, y señalaron que no hay un móvil conocido.

Quienes tengan información pueden comunicarse con Broward Crime Stoppers al 954-493-TIPS.

Trump, in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's “Meet the Press,” said he “didn't guarantee” there would be no wars if he were back in office.

"First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?" Trump said.

Trump also defended plans for a now-scrapped $1.8 billion fund that would have compensated allies of the Republican president and he repeated his baseless claims of mass fraud in California’s drawn-out vote count from Tuesday’s primary. He ended the interview abruptly when he became frustrated with pushback from NBC's Kristen Welker.

Iran ‘is not an endless war’

In his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly cast his Democratic opponents as warmongers and said he was a president who started “no new wars" and would bring an era of peace.

But Trump said in the NBC interview, taped Friday in Wisconsin, that as a candidate, “I didn’t promise anything.”

“I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months,” he said of the war with Iran, which began Feb. 28.

Trump said he was “doing the world a service” and “doing our country a service” because he had to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon. But elsewhere in the interview, Trump repeated a contradictory message where he said U.S. strikes last year “obliterated” Iranian nuclear sites.

He also defended his decision in his first term to withdraw from Democratic President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, an agreement he has heavily criticized, without negotiating the “better deal” he has promised to reach.

“It takes years to do these things,” Trump said.

Trump without evidence claims fraud in California vote

California's notoriously prolonged vote count has been a magnet for election conspiracy theories, and Trump since Tuesday's election has claimed without evidence that Democrats are rigging the election. The Trump-appointed top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles said Friday that his office had opened “multiple election fraud investigations.”

Late-tallied Democratic-leaning mail ballots have eaten into the vote totals for Trump's preferred candidates for governor and Los Angeles mayor. While Trump has often said that changes to vote totals as late ballots are counted are a sign of fraud, they are merely a reflection of a slow vote-counting process.

Trump in the interview kept claiming that it was a sign of “cheating” and “a rigged election," and grew increasingly frustrated as Welker pressed him for evidence to support that.

“All I have to do is look. All I have to do is look,” Trump said.

“But that’s not evidence,” Welker responded.

“And I listen. And I listen to people. And let’s see what happens,” Trump replied.

‘Anti-weaponization’ fund

Trump defended plans that his Department of Justice said it has now abandoned to create a $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of a settlement to resolve Trump's lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday that the department was scrapping the plan. That announcement came after the plan was paused by a judge and after both Democrats and some Republicans said they were concerned about the fund's lack of oversight and the possibility of payouts being made to participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

Trump told NBC he thought the fund was “a great idea” and that he would be “disappointed” if it were not approved.

When asked if he thought people who attacked police officers on Jan. 6 should get a payout, Trump said, “I wouldn’t be inclined to say so, but I have to see it." He then began making unfounded and false claims about riot and those who stormed the Capitol. Trump granted a sweeping pardon on his first day back in office in January 2025 to the more than 1,500 people prosecuted over Jan. 6.

Rain interruptions and an abrupt end

The NBC interview was conducted in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, before Trump was set to speak at a roundtable event with farmers. The interview was repeatedly interrupted as waves of heavy rain fell on the metal roof of the barn where the taping took place, making it difficult at times to hear.

At the end, Welker pressed Trump on the settlement fund and his claims about the California election. Trump raised his voice and began calling Welker and the media “crooked," attacking her credibility and complaining about what he called “the fake, dirty press.”

As Welker tried to switch subjects, Trump continued on and there was cross talk between the two. Trump ended the interview, saying said, “Let's call it quits." He took off his microphone, telling Welker, “Thank you, darling. Have a good time." He said he had given the interview enough time, stood up and walked away.

Welker said during the broadcast that she spoke to Trump on Saturday and he agreed the rain had caused complications and said he would do another interview in the future.

Poston, who was at 12-under 204, had a few hours before starting the final round as he goes after the biggest win of his career.

Ryan Gerard fell back with a series of pars and two bogeys when the third round resumed on a much softer Muirfield Village course. He had to settle for a 72 and was four behind.

Sam Burns got swallowed up by the rough on the par-5 11th for a double bogey, rallied with a pair of birdies and was five shots behind.

Scottie Scheffler tried to get closer to the lead, but the best he could do was a 68 that still left him nine shots behind with 18 holes to play. He was trying to join Tiger Woods as the only players to win the Memorial three years in a row.

Scheffler's hopes took a bad turn Saturday, right before a second storm delay halted play. He had played a six-hole stretch around the turn in 5-under par and had a long eagle putt before he three-putted for par, took bogey on the par-3 12th and put his tee shot in the water for bogey on the 14th.

The next morning, with greens more receptive and little wind, Poston thrived after the turn. He hit wedge to 8 feet to a back pin on the 13th for birdie and the lead. His wedge to the 14th spun to 3 feet. And then he hit wedge to 13 feet for birdie on the 15th.

Just like that, Poston was in control with plenty of perks on the line. A victory would be more than enough to get him out of U.S. Open qualifying Monday, and also get him in the British Open.

___

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

The full episode can be seen at the top of this page.

El accidente ocurrió alrededor de las 3:20 a.m. en la zona de la calle Southwest Seventh y la avenida 12.

Según la policía de Miami, el oficial respondía a una llamada cuando su vehículo fue impactado de costado por una persona que conducía una camioneta SUV plateada.

Los servicios de emergencia trasladaron de urgencia al oficial herido al Ryder Trauma Center del Jackson Memorial Hospital.

En el último reporte, las autoridades indicaron que el oficial probablemente sufrió múltiples fracturas, pero se encontraba consciente y en condición estable.

No se ha informado sobre el estado de salud del conductor que provocó el choque ni si enfrentará cargos.

It happened around 9:45 a.m. along the 4000 block of Northwest 21st Street in Lauderhill.

Lauderhill police officers responded to reports of shots fired but said they did not locate any victims after arriving to the scene.

Shortly after, officers said were alerted to a gunshot victim who arrived at Florida Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale.

Police said that man was suffering from multiple gunshot wounds and was rushed to Broward Health Medical Center for further treatment.

Officers did not provide any information regarding any possible suspects or persons of interest, and said there was no known motive.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS.

He joined host Glenna Milberg on the latest episode of “This Week in South Florida”, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

He joined host Glenna Milberg on the latest episode of “This Week in South Florida”, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

He joined host Glenna Milberg on the latest episode of “This Week in South Florida”, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

She joined host Glenna Milberg on the latest episode of “This Week in South Florida”, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

He joined host Glenna Milberg on the latest episode of “This Week in South Florida”, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

At Gilda’s Club South Florida, Saturday’s cancer survivor celebration brought together people of all ages impacted by the deadly disease.

For sisters Monica and Magaly Morales, the day was also a reminder of their own journey.

When Monica was diagnosed with stage one thyroid cancer last year, it caught her completely off guard.

“it took me actually as a shock because it was really unexpected,” she said. “I froze. I didn’t know what to do, who to call. Who do you call?”

Doctors were able to remove the cancer through surgery, but she says the experience still came with questions, appointments, and recovery.

Having her sister in her corner made some of those tougher days a little easier.

“When you see a person weak, when you see a person helpless, confused, depressed, all you can do is encourage them, right?” said Magaly Morales. “Encourage them, embrace them, love them more, and let them know that you’re there for them. Give them a hug, give them that extra kiss, whatever it is that they need that they’re going through, you’re there to see it, and they feel it, and they know that they’re not alone.”

Now, Monica Morales says she’s moving forward with a new perspective, grateful for her health and for the people who stood by her side.

“I’m happy to be alive,” she said. “I’m happy to have health. I’m happy to be surrounded by a loving family, great support system, friends.”

And these days, it’s the simple things she appreciates most.

“I love to sunbathe, I love to go swimming, love to go to the beach,” she said.

The team's participation in the World Cup, jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada, has been complicated by the Iran war. Problems with processing visas earlier led Iran to move its training base from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana, Mexico, which is on the border with California.

“First of all, we’re very happy that the team has finally arrived, and we’re delighted about that,” Hajsafi said. "Thank God, the team’s condition is very good.

“With everything that happened, visas were eventually issued. Personally, however, I do have a complaint about FIFA. Why did it take so long? As far as I understand, visas were issued only to the players and a few members of the coaching staff.”

Some members of Iran's entourage are still without U.S. visas before games in Los Angeles and Seattle. Those include the Iranian Football Federation’s secretary-general, Hedayat Mombeini, and its vice president, Mehdi Mohammad Nabi.

“Unfortunately, several key members of our coaching staff, whose roles are very important within the team, were not granted visas,” Hajsafi said. "That includes the team manager, the executive director and the media director, all of whom play very important roles.

“From here, I would like to ask FIFA to address this issue so that, God willing, the situation can be resolved in the coming days.”

Iran had been training in the Turkish city of Antalya. The team flew directly to Tijuana, Mexico, which is just south of San Diego, on a private jet from the Mediterranean city’s airport.

Hajsafi was the first player to exit the plane with markings for German charter airline USC, which arrived at about 5:05 a.m. He led the team, dressed in blue blazers over white T-shirts, through a brief security check with Mexican officials and dogs before boarding a bus.

The bus stopped briefly at the entrance to the Tijuana airport, where around 20 or so Iran fans waved flags.

Iran plays its first two games in Inglewood, California, against New Zealand on June 15, and Belgium six days later, then heads to Seattle to face Egypt on June 26. Iran and the U.S. could meet in the round of 32 on July 3 in Arlington, Texas, if both teams come second in their groups.

In March, U.S. President Donald Trump had discouraged Iran from participating in the tournament, saying he didn’t think it was “appropriate” and raising concerns over players’ “life and safety.” A day later, Iran’s national team pushed back, saying “no one can exclude” it from playing.

Iran finalized its team on Monday, including 17 home-based players whose clubs haven’t played since February because of the war. Star forward Sardar Azmoun was dropped in March, reportedly because of a social media post that angered Iranian authorities during the war.

Iran’s sports minister said in March that it would “not be possible” for the team to participate in the World Cup, but the republic’s soccer federation said in May that it was moving ahead with a team. The federation had insisted that all players and staff be granted visas, including those who had military service in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

___

AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

It happened at approximately 3:20 a.m. in the area of Southwest Seventh Street and 12th Avenue.

According to Miami police, the officer was responding to a call when his vehicle was T-boned by someone driving a silver SUV.

First responders rushed the injured officer to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

At last check, authorities said the officer likely suffered multiple fractured but was alert and is considered in stable condition.

There has been no word on the health condition of the driver who caused the crash or whether they will be facing any charges.

Leer en español

Casey Liening, a spokesperson with the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, said Sean Peter Alexis, 40, was taken into custody with assistance from the Plantation Police Department.

Jail record show Alexis is facing multiple charges, including hit-and-run involving serious bodily injury, hit-and-run involving property damage, and driving with a suspended or revoked license.

The crash happened around 6:15 p.m. near West Broward Boulevard and Northwest 11th Avenue, when a vehicle struck a marked BSO patrol unit and fled the scene, investigators said.

They said witnesses told police that Alexis ran a red light before the collision.

Video from the scene showed heavy damage to the deputy’s vehicle, with the driver’s side crushed and airbags deployed.

Authorities said the male deputy was hospitalized after the crash.

They said his injuries were determined to be non-life threatening, and he is now recovering at home.

As of Saturday, Alexis was being held without bond at the Broward Main Jail.

Tropical moisture is expected to increase toward midweek and rain chances ramp up towards Thursday and Friday so in the meantime enjoy these nice conditions.

If you have any outdoor activities planned today I expect the “feels like” to approach the upper 90s so stay hydrated and take a break in the air conditioning every once in a while.

A rip current advisory continues for all east coast beaches through this evening so stay within eyesight of the lifeguard stations or stay out of the water entirely today.

David Lammy, who is also the justice minister, said he challenged Vance in what he described as a “robust” phone call on Saturday. Lammy and Vance have struck up a friendship, based on their religious beliefs and family backgrounds, even though they come from different sides of the political spectrum.

“We had an agreeable conversation because we have got a relationship, but I wanted to make him clear that I disagree with some of the facts that he was asserting and to present the facts to him," Lammy told Sky News.

The call came a day after Vance said in a post on social platform X that there should be “righteous anger” in response to the murder of Henry Nowak, 18, who died in December after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa in the English city of Southampton.

Digwa, who is Sikh, falsely claimed to police he was the victim of a racist assault by Nowak, who was white. When police officers arrived, they initially treated the wounded man as a suspect before noticing his injury and trying to resuscitate him.

Vance appeared to blame the murder in part on “the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”

Lammy said he wanted to “emphasize a number of things” to Vance, including that the killer was British and is now behind bars.

"This has got nothing to do with mass migration," Lammy said.

Digwa, 23, was convicted of murder for stabbing Nowak with an 8-inch (21 centimeter) Sikh dagger and sentenced this week to life in prison with a minimum 21-year term.

The case has been seized on by anti-immigration activists and politicians in the U.K. On Tuesday, police in Southampton were pelted with chairs, cans, rocks and flares after a demonstration over Nowak’s death attended by far-right figures and others.

In a statement issued Friday in response to Vance's comments, Prime Minister Keir Starmer 's office criticized people “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets.”

The Independent Office for Police Conduct, which investigates allegations of police wrongdoing, is probing the actions of police officers on the scene.

The victim’s father, Mark Nowak, has said the case was not about racism or religion, and that he wanted his son’s death to lead to safer streets and not to be used to create “further division, hatred or tension.”

Lammy also said he told Vance “it’s not helpful to tweet in this way, partly because of what the Nowak family have asked for, and reminded him about their desire not to make this an issue of division and hatred, but to make this an issue of common sense.”

According to authorities, a call came in around 5:07 a.m. regarding a possible drowning along the 200 block of Southwest Second Avenue.

Local 10 News spoke to a man who tried to save that victim before rescue crews arrived.

The man who asked not to be identified said he was sitting along the Riverwalk with his girlfriend when he saw an older man stumble into the water.

He says he went in after him without hesitation.

“I went in myself, I grabbed him by his two hands,” the man said. “’Bro, what are you doing? You know you’re in the water, right?’”

For a moment, that good Samaritan thought he could bring the older man to safety, but said that the situation quickly changed.

“That’s when I slipped in the water,” he said. “After that, I get all wet and after that he went under the water. I had him for a little second and then he pulled away from me and fell into the water and he never came back up.”

First responders rushed to the scene but the man who fell in the water did not survive.

Investigators said the death is being classified as undetermined, though they say it appears the man drowned.

Now, detectives are working to figure out exactly what happened before the man ended up in the water.

Toledo Deputy Police Chief Joe Heffernan said it appeared that at least two people fired weapons on Saturday near the Old West End Festival and were “probably shooting at each other."

Authorities say a search for the the shooters was ongoing and had not identified any potential suspects. They urged festivalgoers to come forward with any photos or videos.

“As far as violence, this is over the top, right?” Toledo police Lt. Dan Gerken said. “Twelve people being shot, that’s the most I’ve been to a scene. I’ve been to a lot of scenes, but this is way over the top.”

Hundreds of people were at the festival, an annual two-day celebration in Toledo’s historic district that includes live music, food vendors, home tours and shopping.

The remainder of the festival was canceled Sunday. Organizers said “it would not be compassionate, responsible or possible to continue.”

“We are heartbroken about those that were injured at the Old West End Festival,” the festival said in a statement.

Two of the victims were in critical condition on Saturday, Heffernan said. The ages of the victims ranged from 14 to 61, with most of them in their early 20s.

Multiple videos posted to social media showed people running amid the sound of gunshots and emergency officials tending to others who appeared wounded.

Fire Chief Allison Armstrong said it was difficult to get to the hospital due to closed roads and traffic from people leaving the festival, but emergency responders were able to transport all patients from the scene within an hour.

Kevin Berry was sitting in the neighborhood arboretum listening to live music with friends when he heard a handful of gunshots ring out.

“Everybody hit the deck,” he said.

When Berry looked back up, he saw a gun being tossed to the ground less than 50 feet (15 meters) away from him. Officers who were already on site for the festival responded immediately.

Berry, who has medical training and served in the Navy, walked around looking for anyone who might need help and saw at least five people with gunshot wounds.

“The folks who were hit were spread out around the arboretum area,” he said.

George Kral, the city’s safety director, said the Old West End Festival is one of the most iconic festivals in Toledo.

“And it’s a shame that something like this had to ruin it," Kral said.

Now, more than a decade after attending his last Knicks game at Madison Square Garden, Trump is making a rare trip back to New York City as president to cheer for them in Game 3 of the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night. Invited by Knicks owner James Dolan, he will be the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game.

The Knicks are seeking their first championship since 1973, when Trump was 26 and a relative newcomer to the family real estate business that vaulted him to wealth and fame. Two years after that triumph, the team’s owners at the time hired him as a consultant as they looked to sell the arena.

Trump has been to more major sporting events than any of his predecessors, including the Super Bowl and Daytona 500, golf's Ryder Cup in the New York City suburbs, where he was cheered, and last year's U.S. Open men’s tennis championship in Queens, where he was booed and blamed for long security lines.

On June 14, when he turns 80 while wrestling with myriad crises including the war with Iran, economic unease and court rulingsblunting his agenda, he will host a UFC fight on White House grounds. Trump also has expressed interest in attending soccer's World Cup, which kicks off this week across the United States, Mexico and Canada.

New Yorkers love the Knicks more than they love Trump

Trump is an avid sports fan, but the affinity he professes for the Knicks is different.

It speaks to the Republican president’s identity as a New Yorker and harkens to a bygone era where a front-row seat at a Knicks game was a chance for him and other boldface names to see and be seen.

In a city whose wealthy gatekeepers largely turned their noses at Trump's brash personality and playboy image in the 1990s and 2000s, the Garden’s Celebrity Row was one club where he felt at home.

“I’ve been a Knick fan for a long time,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week, a day after New York rallied to win Game 1. “I watched that end of the game and they were dominant — really amazing.”

After another win Friday in San Antonio, the Knicks head home with a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. They have won a remarkable 13 straight playoff games and last lost on April 23, uniting the city in a way unseen since the Knicks went to the NBA Finals twice in the 1990s.

Enter Trump. He returns to the Knicks zeitgeist not as the tabloid curiosity who once sat shoulder to shoulder with the late John F. Kennedy Jr. at a game in 1999, but as a president who is disliked by a majority of the city's Democratic voters.

Trump, who gave up his lifelong New York residency for Florida in 2019, is making his first trip to New York City since he spoke at the United Nations in September. In 2024, he went on trial in the city and was convicted of 34 felony counts related to hush money paid on his behalf during his 2016 campaign.

Knicks fans, though, do not seem to be concerned so much with his politics, but that his attendance — and the hoopla accompanying it — could mess up the team’s momentum. The Knicks said people going to the game should arrive at least two hours before tipoff for airport-style security screening.

“Why does Donald Trump always have to ruin a good thing?” U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, an avid Knicks fan and the House Democratic leader, told CNN. “Like, literally, the Knicks haven’t been in the NBA finals for 27 years. The city is trying to celebrate this. We’ve embraced this team, and this guy has to inject himself.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat who struck up a cordial relationship with Trump after the two met in November, was more inviting.

“We’re excited to welcome anyone and everyone who’s rooting for the Knicks in this moment," said Mamdani, who will also be at the game — albeit, not with Trump.

Last week, as Trump began floating the idea of attending a game, New York magazine published an article, “Is Trump Really a Knicks Fan? An Investigation.” The story, filled with pictures of Trump at Knicks games from 1991 to 2014, described him as a “textbook example of a celebrity bandwagon fan."

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver disagrees.

“Before he ever ran for office, he was a big Knicks fan,” Silver told reporters last week. “I’ve been with the league for a long time. I was there at many Knicks games with him in the old days.”

A courtside regular in the 1990s

Trump and the Knicks came into existence the same year, 1946.

His affiliation with the team — at least in the public record — dates to 1975 when he acted as a real estate adviser to the then-owners of the Knicks and Madison Square Garden, who were looking to sell the building known in a bit of Trump-style branding as “The World’s Most Famous Arena."

Trump claimed to reporters at the time that two groups of “Arab oil interests” were interested in paying $50 million to $75 million. But the arena’s leadership passed on the idea, saying it was “not conceivable” to make such a deal during the Middle East oil crisis raging at the time.

Trump was not much of a known entity when the Knicks won their only championships in 1970 and 1973.

By the time they rebounded in the 1990s, Trump was front and center, taking his then-wife Marla Maples to Game 3 of the NBA Finals in 1994 and his current wife, first lady Melania Trump, to Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals in 1999. In between, he added to his Knicks fan bona fides with a cameo in the Knicks-themed Whoopi Goldberg film “Eddie” in 1996.

Back then, Trump was a more of a mythic figure than a consequential one, known as much for the women he dated and married as the buildings he built.

But just as those Knicks came up short in the NBA Finals against Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets and David Robinson and the Spurs, Trump was running into problems of his own. His business empire was in disarray after his casinos fell into financial trouble and his airline, Trump Shuttle, went out of business.

Like the Knicks, Trump went into rebuilding mode and charted a new course: reality TV with NBC's “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice,” and then, politics. On a Knicks TV broadcast in 2010, he hinted at a possible presidential run.

That same year, as the Knicks struggled to recapture the magic of the 1990s, Trump recorded a video trying to persuade LeBron James to join the team.

“The real winners of the world want to be here," Trump told him.

La aprobación se dio horas después de que las fuerzas del orden, con el apoyo sólo de equipos antimotines, no lograran despejar una estratégica carretera en el oriente y debieron replegarse ante la arremetida de los manifestantes. Seis policías resultaron heridos de bala y otros 26 civiles fueron heridos, según fuentes médicas y de la policía.

Las protestas, que son más duras en La Paz, han dejado con escaso alimento, combustible y suministros básicos a la capital política boliviana. Varios sectores han demandado al mandatario que aplique el estado de excepción y saque al Ejército para controlar el orden público.

La norma autoriza al presidente del Estado a declarar el estado de excepción con el apoyo militar en todo o en parte del territorio mediante un decreto que debe aprobar después el poder legislativo, con el propósito de “preservar el orden constitucional y la seguridad del Estado” en caso de “conmoción interna”. La norma permite suspender o limitar derechos relacionados con la seguridad, el orden público y la libre circulación.

Las acciones que realicen la policía y las Fuerzas Armadas “gozarán de presunción de legalidad”, según una de las disposiciones más debatidas.

El mandatario ha priorizado el diálogo con los movilizados y la apertura de “corredores humanitarios” en La Paz y ha evitado el uso de armamento en las fuerzas de seguridad para evitar posibles incidentes que agravarían el conflicto, según el gobierno. Los movilizados han rechazado negociaciones y se mantiene firmes en pedir la dimisión del gobernante.

El mandatario afronta duras protestas sociales desde que asumió el gobierno hace siete meses por parte de sindicatos rurales y urbanos aliados del expresidente izquierdista Evo Morales (2006-2019). Paz ha culpado a Morales de alentar las protestas y éste ha sugerido una nueva convocatoria a elecciones nacionales como salida a la crisis.

Twenty-four Broadway shows will hope to nab at least one win Sunday across the 26 Tony categories, which can mean the difference between keeping the doors open and pulling down the curtain.

Grammy Award-winner Pink is the host of the show, which will be broadcast live on CBS and streaming for Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. to both coasts on Sunday from 8-11 p.m. Eastern/5-8 p.m. Pacific.

Three generations of Pink's family

Pink promises a big, honking opening number — written by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Mark Sonnenblick that ends with some 170 people on stage — with lots of costume changes and some wire work, which she is familiar with from her acrobatic concerts. She has tapped Amber Ruffin, a writer and performer for “Late Night with Seth Meyers” for help with jokes.

In the audience will be Pink's mother — who took her to shows growing up in Philadelphia, instilling a love of musicals — and Pink's two children, a passing of the musical theater baton. Pink's 15-year-old daughter, Willow, is an aspiring theater actor and urged her to host the Tonys.

“The biggest reason she wanted me to say ‘yes’ was so that she could have a seat at the show because she loves the show so much,” says Pink. “I was like, ‘I can probably get you a seat anyway.’”

Plenty of performances

There will be performances from the seven best new musical and best musical revival nominees: “The Lost Boys,” “Schmigadoon!,” “Titanique,” “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York),” “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” “Ragtime” and “The Rocky Horror Show.”

Other performances include the original lead cast members of “The Book of Mormon” — Josh Gad, Andrew Rannells, Rory O’Malley and Nikki M. James — this year celebrating its 15th anniversary. Leslie Odom, Jr. will sing “Without You” from “Rent” during the In Memoriam section, in honor of that show’s 30th anniversary.

Another show celebrating a milestone, “Chicago” now at 30, will have a performance slot featuring Pink, as well as Queen Latifah, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Alex Newell, Adrienne Warren, Julianne Hough, Whitney Leavitt and Dylan Mulvaney. Plus, “A Chorus Line,” which last year celebrated its 50th anniversary, will get a special tribute by Rachel Zegler.

The musical and play races

The competition for best new musical is between four very different shows: “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York),” an opposites-attract rom-com; “The Lost Boys,” a stage adaptation of a 1987 teen movie vampire thriller; “Schmigadoon!,” which gently mocks golden-age Broadway shows; and “Titanique,” a camp musical comedy that reimagines the 1997 movie “Titanic.”

The two top best play nominees are “Giant,” exploring accusations of antisemitism against children's author Roald Dahl, and “Liberation,” about a consciousness-raising women’s group in the 1970s that explores inequality, gender roles and racism.

There are intriguing races in both the revival categories: A “Death of a Salesman” led by Nathan Lane is competing for best play revival with a modern-set “Oedipus” led by Marc Strong and a sweet “Every Brilliant Thing” starring Daniel Radcliffe.

The best musical revival pits a new “Cats” reimagined as a “Pose”-like competition show, the sweeping American history show “Ragtime” and a rollicking, frisky “The Rocky Horror Show.”

Bill Rauch, who secured his first Tony nomination for co-directing the reimagined “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” was a nominator for three seasons until this one and is impressed by the range now on Broadway.

“I look at everything as an artist within the season, but also as somebody who has seen the wealth of work on Broadway for three years running,” he said. “I just think there’s so much variety on Broadway and so many artistic risks that people take. I left my three years as a nominator really impressed by the landscape, I have to say. And I feel that this year as well.”

June Squibb became the oldest Tony-nominated actor in history at 96 and could become the oldest Tony winner if she hears her name called, surpassing Lois Smith who was 90 when she won in 2021. And Lane is hoping for his fourth Tony for “Death of a Salesman,” which would make him tied as the most-awarded male performer in Tony history, alongside Boyd Gaines and Frank Langella.

___

For more coverage of the 2026 Tony Awards, visit https://apnews.com/hub/tony-awards.

The operation, according to the army’s statement, was conducted in the Mandara mountains which form a part of the militant group’s stronghold. It resulted in the release of several people, including children, who had been abducted across different communities in Borno.

Two infants “succumbed to exhaustion" due to the challenging mountainous terrain and the hardship they endured during their prolonged captivity, an army spokesperson, Haruna Sani, said.

“The remaining rescued abductees were successfully evacuated to safe locations for medical care and humanitarian support, marking a major operational success and a significant setback for the terrorist group,” Sani said.

Nigeria faces a complex security crisis, especially in the north where a more than decade-long insurgency and the activities of armed groups that carry out kidnappings for ransom and illegal mining have heightened the country’s security challenges.

Among the most prominent Islamic militant groups are Boko Haram and its breakaway faction, which is affiliated with the Islamic State group and known as Islamic State West Africa Province.

Last month, the West African country said its joint operation with the United States had killed 175 ISWAP fighters.

The insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast has killed thousands of people and displaced millions, according to the United Nations. Analysts say not enough is being done by the government to protect its citizens, despite repeated promises by President Bola Tinubu to curb the crisis.

It’s the fourth major final of Zverev’s career and it’s a unique opportunity for the third-ranked German without Jannik Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz across the net.

The final on the red clay of Roland Garros starts st 3 p.m. (1300 GMT; 9 a.m. ET).

Zverev has been an overwhelming favorite for the title ever since the top-ranked Sinner struggled in the first week’s heat wave and wasted a two set and 5-1 lead against Juan Manuel Cerundolo in the second round. A day later, 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic was also eliminated.

Alcaraz, the two-time reigning champion, withdrew before the tournament with an injured right wrist.

It’s Zverev’s second French Open final, having wasted a lead of two sets to one against Alcaraz in the 2024 championship match.

Zverev had an even bigger advantage — two sets to none — in the 2020 U.S. Open final and lost that one, too, to Dominic Thiem. He was also beaten in straight sets by Sinner in the 2025 Australian Open final.

Cobolli had never been past a Grand Slam quarterfinal until this week.

He’s attempting to become the first Italian man to raise the singles trophy at Roland Garros since Adriano Panatta 50 years ago.

Cobolli comes from the same tennis club in Rome as Panatta and Panatta has been asked by tournament organizers to present the Coupe des Mousquetaires to the champion to celebrate the anniversary of his 1976 triumph.

Both players have dropped only two sets en route to the final.

Zverev has won three of his four career meetings with Cobolli, including a straight-sets victory in the third round in Paris a year ago. But they’ve also split two encounters on clay this season: Cobolli won in straight sets in Munich and Zverev won in straight sets in Madrid.

Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva won the women's singles trophy on Saturday.

___

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

Iran had warned that an attack on Beirut would renew full-scale war across the Mideast, even as Pakistan tries to restart talks between Tehran and Washington. Iran wants a deal to include ending the war in Lebanon.

Iran’s powerful parliament speaker hinted at retaliation. “The (U.S.) naval blockade imposed against the Iranian people, together with Washington’s green light today to the Zionist regime, makes U.S. and Israeli bases and assets in the region legitimate targets,” Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said on X.

There was no immediate White House comment. A senior U.S. official said “we were not surprised” by the attack in Beirut. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, would not say if the U.S. had been given a heads-up on the strike.

The strike hit a residential building, damaging four of its seven floors. An unexploded weapon was found in the rubble.

Netanyahu wants to remove Hezbollah as a threat

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said it was in retaliation for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group firing at northern Israel earlier, and that Israel targeted “command centers” in the sprawling urban neighborhoods.

“We are striking them very hard, and we know that Hezbollah is on the run,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet.

Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for firing at Israel.

Israel on Monday announced it would strike the southern suburbs after Hezbollah claimed attacks in northern Israel, but urgent talks via Washington halted the attacks on the condition that Hezbollah stop targeting Israeli border towns. Lebanon and Israel later renewed a ceasefire agreement in talks that Beirut hopes will end the fighting.

The first such agreement took effect on April 17, days after a 10-minute Israeli bombardment of Beirut killed over 300 people. Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs twice following that deal. Israeli strikes over southern Lebanon continue daily, and Israeli forces have seized around a fifth of Lebanon in a ground invasion.

Netanyahu, who faces elections later this year, wants to press ahead with Israel’s offensive until he believes Hezbollah no longer poses a threat.

Trump wants attack on Hezbollah to be ‘more surgical’

Hezbollah has scathingly rejected the U.S.-brokered deal and urged Lebanon to end its direct talks with Israel. Instead, it backs Iran’s inclusion of a ceasefire in Lebanon as a condition in negotiations with the U.S.

The fighting threatens efforts to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point for oil and gas and related products like fertilizer. Its closure has jolted the world economy and spiked warnings of hunger in vulnerable regions.

U.S. President Donald Trump, in an interview taped Friday and aired Sunday with NBC's “Meet the Press,” said that “I’d like to see Lebanon have a better life. I’d like to see a more surgical attack on Hezbollah. I think it should be more surgical.”

Trump added that he is “not demanding” that Lebanon be part of the short-term deal to extend the ceasefire in the Iran war.

More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since the war began March 2 when Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israel, two days after Israel and the U.S. began attacking Iran. More than 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced. The fighting has killed at least 31 Israeli soldiers and three civilians.

Lebanon’s army commander, Gen. Rodolphe Haikal, went to Pakistan on Saturday at the invitation of Pakistan’s army chief, who has been involved in mediating talks between the U.S. and Iran. The Lebanese army did not say whether the visit is related to those mediation efforts.

Pakistan's interior minister visits Iran

Pakistan’s interior minister was in Tehran on Sunday in a fresh bid to restart negotiations between Iran and the U.S.

Mohsin Naqvi was delivering a message to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei from Pakistan’s army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency. There were no details on the message's contents.

Khamenei has not been seen in public since he was named the Islamic Republic’s ruler after his father was killed on Feb. 28, the first day of the war.

Naqvi met with Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni late Saturday and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday, according to official Iranian media.

Pakistani authorities have said Islamabad, with support from regional countries including Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, is working to help bridge differences between the United States and Iran.

In Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Bader Abdelatty and Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani discussed “proposed elements” of a potential agreement between the U.S. and Iran, the Egyptian foreign ministry said, without details.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it shot down two more Iranian drones over the Strait of Hormuz that it said threatened international maritime traffic.

The heaviest fighting ended with a preliminary ceasefire on April 8, but Washington and Tehran have not agreed on a long-term end to the war.

The U.S. military has kept up its blockade on Iranian ports in response to Tehran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz. Energy prices have spiked, posing political problems for Trump’s Republican Party ahead of midterm congressional elections in November.

___

Chehayeb reported from Beirut, Magdy from Cairo and Lidman from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Pakistan, Matthew Lee in Washington and Michelle L. Price in Bridgewater, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

Another person was wounded in the drone attack in Balabyne in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on his Telegram channel.

A separate drone strike damaged a storage center for spent nuclear fuel in the Kyiv region, just 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s General Staff said. The attack sparked a fire that was extinguished within an hour. Radiation remains within safe levels, officials said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said the incident was “deeply concerning” due to the large amounts of nuclear material held at the facility. He said in a statement that the agency would visit the site of the attack soon.

Elsewhere, a Ukrainian attack killed one man and injured a woman in Russia’s Kursk region, local Gov. Alexander Khinshtein said.

The meeting on Sunday evening of Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz comes in the wake of a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack that targeted Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, underscoring Kyiv’s growing ability to hit deep inside Russia. Gov. Alexander Beglov said three people sustained minor injuries in Saturday’s attack, during which residents were advised to stay indoors.

The U.K., France and Germany, the so-called E3 group of European nations, have been prominent backers of Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The U.K. and France lead the “coalition of the willing” initiative to provide security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace process.

With the front line barely moving as swarms of drones hinder advances, both sides have sought an edge by launching long-range strikes. The war that followed Russia’s invasion of its neighbor is more than four years old, with no end in sight.

The St. Petersburg attack, which came less than 24 hours after the end of the city's flagship economic forum, was an embarrassing blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to cast the conflict as a distant event that doesn’t affect Russian daily life.

Putin on Friday rejected Zelenskyy's offer for a meeting, saying he sees “no point” in it.

___

Associated Press writer Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.

___

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

The attack came at a time of heightened tensions following a spate of Israeli settler attacks, and the deadly shooting of a Palestinian baby over the weekend, in the nearby West Bank. Police identified the attacker as a resident of the Arab town of Taybeh in his 20s, but his precise motives were not immediately known.

The attack began with a shooting Sunday morning at a gas station near the town of Kokhav Yair, located on the Israeli side of the boundary with the occupied West Bank. Several other shootings were reported in two nearby Israeli towns and close to the Israeli settlement of Salit, inside the West Bank.

Police initially feared a series of coordinated attacks but eventually determined that a gunman and an accomplice who may have served as his driver were involved. The suspected accomplice was arrested later after he tried to stab police with a glass bottle.

Israel's military said a 55-year-old reservist was killed near Tzur Natan. The Magen David Adom rescue service said five other people were wounded, two severely.

Fears of a widespread attack prompted authorities to order residents to stay at home, and children in the area were kept in lockdown at school for at least three hours.

“Since Oct. 7, the scenario we were expecting was terrorists crossing into our towns from over the boundary. I don’t think that anyone imagined that we would discover the attackers were Israeli citizens,” Oshrit Gani Gonen, the regional council head, told Israeli media, referring to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza.

Security minister posts video reportedly with dead gunman

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the security forces who killed the attacker, while Israel’s hard-line public security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police force, released a video of himself standing next to what appeared to be a blurred image of the dead gunman.

“This is the end of every terrorist, this is how it should look,” said Ben-Gvir, who recently led an effort to pass a new law that seeks to impose the death penalty on Palestinian attackers. That law faces legal challenges.

Ben-Gvir has come under sharp condemnation from other Israeli leaders for making controversial videos, such as his treatment of flotilla activists who were detained after attempting to break the maritime blockade to Gaza.

The West Bank has experienced a surge in deadly violence since the war in Gaza began. Israel has stepped up military operations across the territory, killing hundreds of people. It says raids are aimed at militants, but scores of civilians have also been killed.

The Oct. 7 attack killed around 1,200 people and took 251 as hostages. Israel’s ensuing offensive in Gaza has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, including combatants and civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.

Israeli strike kills 4 in Gaza

Also on Sunday, at least four Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a police point in Gaza's southern city of Khan Younis, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. The dead were taken to a field hospital run by the Red Crescent. At least 10 others were wounded, the charity said.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike but has said in the past it will target militants that pose a threat to its troops.

The Oct. 10 U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal attempted to halt the war between Israel and Hamas. While the heaviest fighting has subsided, the ceasefire has seen almost daily Israeli fire.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu in a Cabinet meeting repeated his pledge to take 70% of Gaza: “We are presently holding more than 60% of the territory, and soon we will reach 70%.” He added that Israel is not allowing Hamas to “rearm or harm us,” in comments released to the media.

The head of the U.S.-created Board of Peace that oversees the ceasefire acknowledged last month that next steps in the truce have stalled over the key issue of disarming Hamas.

___

Associated Press writer Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.

___

A previous version of this story was corrected to show that the location where the Israeli man was killed was on the Israeli side of the boundary with the Israel-occupied West Bank, not inside the West Bank.

The crowd cheered and shouted “This is the youth of the pope!” as Leo arrived for the Mass at a central Madrid plaza. He looped around the plaza and surrounding streets in his popemobile before a crowd packed several rows deep with people eager to witness the first papal trip to Spain since 2011, when Pope Benedict XVI visited for World Youth Day.

Sunday’s Mass fell on the Catholic Corpus Domini feast day, which often features processions of faithful through towns and cities led by a priest carrying the Eucharist. In Spain, as in other predominantly Catholic countries, the processions often feature elaborate floral carpets arranged along the route.

Leo, who arrived in Spain on Saturday at the start of his weeklong visit, has been keen to highlight the long tradition of Catholic devotion here to encourage especially young generations to find their faith. It's a tall order in a once-staunchly Catholic country where religious observance has largely been on the wane.

In his homily Sunday, Leo honored Spain's tradition of the Corpus Domini processions, saying the floral carpets express the “spiritual sentiments of this country” through “altars erected in the streets.”

“This is not an exhibition, a remnant of folklore or a simple display of beauty,” he said. “It is a profession of faith in the presence of the risen Lord, who is alive and continues to walk among us.”

He said that the continued observance of such devotional practices points to what Spain can and should be for the world.

“Herein lies the task of Spain today and in the future: to ensure that the religiosity which has shaped and defined this country for centuries is not a museum of the past to be visited, but a school of faith from which to draw even today,” he said.

At the end of the Mass, Leo carried a gilded monstrance, or container, holding a Eucharistic host and walked over the floral carpets, as children dropped additional petals before him and the crowd tossed petals from behind the barricades.

Huge crowds greet the American pope

Leo's visit to the country of 50 million has drawn huge crowds, with a vigil service Saturday night. drawing an estimated 600,000 young Spaniards. They knelt for several minutes in silent prayer alongside Leo, suggesting that there is indeed interest in the faith among young people despite Spain’s heavily secularized society.

On Sunday, their numbers doubled: Organizers said that 1.2 million people had turned out on a brilliant spring morning for Leo's Mass at Madrid's iconic Plaza de Cibeles and surrounding streets, with more trying to get in.

“It’s spectacular," said Julián Tapiador, a consultant who came to the Mass. "I’m so proud that the pope is in Spain after 15 years. Hopefully he comes again and we can all see him again.”

Octavio Puche, a retiree, thanked Leo for making the trip.

“Apparently society is not as secularized as it seems, because there are a million people here in Madrid, and I think he has shown a very human face of Christ, very close to the people, to their suffering," he said.

Sex abuse scandal hangs over visit

Despite the warm welcome, the clergy sexual abuse scandal, which has erupted belatedly in Spain in recent years, has loomed over Leo's trip. The Catholic hierarchy has begun to reckon with its legacy after reporting in the local media.

Leo is expected to meet survivors while in Spain, but several victims groups have complained that they have been left in the dark about when the meeting is taking place and whether they are invited.

Miguel Hurtado, a prominent survivor who accused a monk at Montserrat Abbey outside Barcelona of sexually assaulting him more than two decades ago, protested outside the Vatican’s embassy in Madrid on Sunday. He said that he wrote to the Vatican requesting a meeting with Leo and for the pope to cancel his planned Wednesday visit to the 1,000-year old Benedictine monastery.

“I understand you can’t meet with all of us victims, because we are more than 400,000,” Hurtado said, speaking to a cardboard photo of Leo.

As he spoke, a crowd of nuns and others lined the street outside the Vatican embassy, waving Spanish flags and chanting slogans in favor of former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain with an iron grip for nearly four decades after the 1936-39 civil war.

The Catholic Church was a pillar of Franco’s dictatorship, and at least until the 1960s, the church enjoyed broad control and influence over Spanish society that waned after democracy took root.

“Spain is Christian and not Muslim!” the crowd yelled.

A form of popular piety dating back centuries

The tradition of laying flower carpets — and destroying them when the procession tramples them — dates back two centuries and is popular also in Latin America, where elaborate sand designs are also made. The painstaking displays are considered an offering to the Eucharist.

According to Spanish organizers, the 16 flower carpets decorating Sunday's half-kilometer (less than a half-mile) procession route off Plaza de Cibeles were prepared by a Spanish florists association from the northern region of Galicia. Florists used more than 30,000 flowers, most the yellow and white colors of the Holy See flag, for the carpets that feature decorations such as the Holy See keys.

Poland has already had its tradition of Corpus Domini flower carpets recognized by UNESCO, and Spain's Galicia region is trying to have its tradition listed along with other countries as part of the world’s intangible cultural heritage.

Wildly popular religious processions, pilgrimages and feasts continue to be held in most Spanish regions. The most recognizable are Semana Santa, or Holy Week, processions during the final week of Lent where brotherhoods and robed penitents parade ornate statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary through cities, towns and villages alongside marching bands. Such processions draw the faithful as well as droves of nonbelievers and tourists.

Spanish towns and cities also regularly honor local patron saints with fiestas. Religious pilgrimages to local shrines mix piety with communal festivities and music. In Andalusia, the El Rocío pilgrimage fetches a million people that make a long, dusty journey over the Pentecost weekend on horseback and decorated covered wagons to venerate an icon of the Virgin Mary.

___

Alicia León and Srdjan Nedeljkovic contributed to this report.

___

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

Roberto Burneo, presidente del Jurado Nacional de Elecciones, dio por iniciada a las 7:00 de la mañana la jornada donde más de 27 millones de peruanos están convocados a sufragar en esta segunda vuelta.

En la boleta electoral escogerán entre la conservadora Keiko Fujimori, de Fuerza Popular, y el nacionalista Roberto Sánchez, de Juntos por el Perú, que llegan en un empate técnico según los sondeos y en medio de un elevado número de indecisos. Quien gane gobernará por cinco años desde el 28 de julio, el día en que se celebra la fiesta nacional.

Más del 70% no votó por ninguno de los dos en la primera vuelta de abril. Fujimori sumó 17,18% mientras que Sánchez 12,03%, en tanto que los sondeos —de fines de mayo— daban a ambos un elevado nivel de rechazo. En Perú está prohibido por ley difundir encuestas durante la semana previa al balotaje.

Los que se oponen a Fujimori la relacionan con la herencia autoritaria y de corrupción del gobierno de su padre Alberto Fujimori (fallecido en 2024), mientras los cuestionamientos a Sánchez apuntan al temor de su alianza con Pedro Castillo, percibido como corrupto y caótico. En la breve gestión de 16 meses de Castillo hubo más de 70 cambios ministeriales.

Fujimori y Sánchez desayunaron temprano frente a las cámaras, siguiendo una tradición electoral local en la cual los candidatos se muestran comiendo y conversando.

Desde San Juan de Lurigancho, el municipio más populoso de Perú, Fujimori llegó junto a sus dos hijas adolescentes y dijo que esperaba que esta ocasión sea su último desayuno como candidata presidencial.

“Como presidenta del partido (espero que) sea la última en mi condición como candidata”, señaló.

Sánchez desayunó junto a sus padres, esposa y dos hijas pequeñas en Huaral, su provincia natal. Exhortó a los peruanos “de los pueblos más profundos” a cumplir con su voto para afianzar “la democracia, la justicia el desarrollo y la lucha contra la pobreza”.

Las propuestas de los candidatos

En su cuarta postulación para conquistar la presidencia, Fujimori, de 51 años, ha prometido, en caso de ganar el balotaje, un gobierno firme para acabar con las extorsiones que agobian a miles de peruanos y mantener las inversiones de todo tipo incluidas las de capitales internacionales.

Fujimori aseguró que gobernaría solamente cinco años con un equipo ministerial compuesto por los mejores especialistas con el fin de recuperar “el orden” con respeto a la constitución y al banco central para evitar la inflación. Fujimori ha calificado a Sánchez como “el caos”.

Por su parte, Sánchez, ha indicado que una eventual gestión suya estará abierta a las inversiones internacionales, incluidas las de Estados Unidos y China, aunque dijo que buscaría renegociar los contratos de extracción de recursos naturales, en especial los de minerales y gas natural.

El nacionalista también ha criticado a Fujimori y ha indicado que ella se ha querido vender como “la señora del orden”, pero recordó que la bancada fujimorista impulsó varias normas que, según los críticos, favorecen a la criminalidad y dificultan el trabajo policial.

Sánchez ha señalado que su primera acción, en caso de ganar la segunda vuelta, será unir votos con otros partidos políticos para derogar esas leyes.

Según datos oficiales, la criminalidad ha avanzado el último quinquenio en Perú, en especial las extorsiones que se han quintuplicado, y los asesinatos se han duplicado.

El embajador de Estados Unidos en Perú, Bernie Navarro, visitó un colegio de Lima y a su salida le dijo a la televisora Latina que “Estados Unidos quiere trabajar con cualquier candidato que salga” elegido y su presencia en una escuela peruana era para “observar y asegurar que hay aquí transparencia”.

La agencia de calificación crediticia Fitch Ratings sostuvo que una victoria de Fujimori “impulsaría la inversión privada y la ejecución de proyectos”, mientras que si gana Sánchez “aumentaría la incertidumbre sobre impuestos, regalías, estabilidad contractual e intervención estatal”.

Sin embargo, destacó que “independientemente de quién gane” los problemas de gobernabilidad de Perú — que vio pasar ocho presidentes en una década — y la composición del Congreso bicameral, en el que ningún partido tiene mayoría, “limitarán la capacidad del próximo gobierno” para impulsar reformas claves.

Pese a los problemas políticos, el Banco Central ha logrado mantener una inflación acumulada anual en 2025 de 1,5%, una de las más bajas del mundo.

Keiko Fujimori, a conservative and daughter of a disgraced former president, and Roberto Sánchez, a nationalist congressman, are on the ballot after beating 33 other candidates in the first round in April, but neither earned even 20% of support. Pollsters estimate that roughly 30% of voters remain undecided.

Sunday’s results are expected to be tight, and if the earlier vote was any indication, the outcome may not be known for days. Electoral authorities took more than a month to officially declare Fujimori and Sánchez the winners of that vote.

Voting is mandatory for Peruvians from the ages of 18 to 70. More than 27 million people are registered, and of those, about 1.2 million are expected to cast ballots from abroad, mainly in the United States and Argentina.

Voters are still evaluating the candidates

Official results from April’s election showed Fujimori obtained 17% of the vote, while Sánchez garnered 12%. More than six weeks later, a nationwide poll conducted by the firm Ipsos found that similar shares of voters were supporting Fujimori and Sánchez, with about 3 in 10 saying they were undecided.

Fujimori is linked to the authoritarian and corrupt legacy of the government of her late father, Alberto Fujimori, in the 1990s. She became Peru's first lady in 1994 after her parents’ separation.

Sánchez is one of the closest allies of jailed former President Pedro Castillo, whom many perceive as corrupt and chaotic. Castillo’s 16-month term saw more than 70 Cabinet changes.

Surging crime, particularly extortion, remains the overarching concern. A 2025 national survey carried out by the state’s National Institute of Statistics and Informatics found that 84% of respondents in urban areas feared becoming victims of a crime in the following 12 months.

Experts attribute the increasing power of organized crime in Peru to the profits that decades-old criminal groups are earning from illegal gold mining in the Andes and the Amazon.

Campaigns mostly focused on crime-fighting strategies

For most of her fourth presidential campaign, Fujimori promised to crack down on crime. Her proposals include implementing technology to track extortions, militarizing borders and increasing the presence of police and military personnel in high-risk areas. Fujimori, 51, has also said that prisoners will be required to work and “repay society.”

In the only debate prior to the runoff, Fujimori defended her father’s government and promised to defeat crime just as he defeated the Shining Path, a violent extremist group. She told voters that should she win, they will be able to leave their homes and return without having become victims of a crime.

Meanwhile, Sánchez, a former minister now popular with rural voters, has pledged to combat corruption within the police force and promote reforms that would enable the military to support security efforts.

The 57-year-old, who wears a wide-brimmed peasant hat gifted by Castillo, told debate viewers that he would be open to “all options to generate jobs and progress” but also emphasized his support for Chinese investments.

He also has tried to ease the concerns his candidacy is generating among investors, saying he will not nationalize any assets of transnational companies that extract minerals or gas from Peru.

___

Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.

Lokudu and several of his colleagues work all day at the hospital treating an influx of patients. Notifications of suspected cases come even late at night.

“I have not received my allowance (and) what happened to others could happen to me as well,” Lokudu told The Associated Press. “Despite all the infection prevention and control measures we are implementing, we do not know what may happen.”

Health authorities believe the outbreak, which took the eastern region of Congo by surprise after spreading silently for weeks without detection, started in the bustling mining area of Mongbwalu in Ituri province.

Mining conditions conducive to virus spread

Mongbwalu has emerged as the epicenter of the rare Bundibugyo type. The town attracts large numbers of laborers who work in large gold mines with muddy pools of gold deposits, narrow pits and caves. They live in low-income areas including crowded camps and have little access to proper health protocols.

The conditions increase the possibility of transmitting the disease, which spreads through close contact with bodily fluids of the sick and deceased such as sweat, blood, feces and vomit.

There also has been widespread skepticism regarding the disease, making the job of medical treatment more difficult for Lokudu and his colleagues, while some of the health workers and first responders have died from the disease.

“It is one thing to be far away and hear statistics being reported, but what is happening on the ground is enormous,” Lokudu said. “People are sacrificing their rest and comfort for this cause. There should be recognition that they deserve compensation. These workers should receive their salaries regularly.”

The Congolese government didn't respond to a request for comment from the AP.

Minimal resources available

Congolese authorities released new statistics on Sunday, saying there have been 488 confirmed cases, including 86 deaths, as of Friday. On Thursday, the Central African nation recorded 71 new cases in a day, which authorities said is a sign of “active community transmission.”

In neighboring Uganda, there have been 19 confirmed cases and two deaths.

Bundibugyo has no approved vaccines or treatment, so Congolese health workers have been targeting symptoms of the species. The government said at least five people have recovered from Ebola since the outbreak was officially confirmed by Congo's health ministry on May 15.

The disease “had a big head start,” according to World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Hospitals in the region couldn't test for the right type of Ebola that had begun spreading several weeks before confirmation.

Health workers are handling the disease with minimal resources, because agencies have been scrambling to bring aid into the region. Masks, gloves, boots and medications were initially all in short supply.

“There has been an erosion of the health system,” said Heather Kerr, country director for the International Rescue Committee in Congo. “There has not been investment in the health system, and this has been going on for years.”

Tough conditions for health workers

“During the first week, we did not even have time to go home and eat. The second week was the same. We only eat once a day, what amounts to breakfast in the evening,” said Alice Bamuhinga, a nurse at the Mongbwalu hospital.

Even with widespread skepticism and disregard for health protocols, many in the town are becoming aware of the outbreak's grave reality.

Asero Jeanne, 52, had five children. Two died from the disease within two weeks. When her daughter became ill, the family thought it was malaria and neighbors advised them to avoid the hospital, saying “anyone who went there would die immediately,” Jeanne said.

The daughter died after three weeks of moving between hospitals and home, followed by a son who died days after. Then Jeanne became sick.

“I saw about 20 people die,” Jeanne said. “I watched them being taken to the morgue, yet God is allowing me to leave here alive. I thank the doctors.”

U.N. health agency offers a plan

Tedros on Friday launched a $518 million plan to combat the outbreak, saying “containing Ebola depends on political commitment, sustained financing, and the trust and engagement of communities.”

Efforts to contain the disease also have been hindered by the conflict between the government and Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, in addition to attacks by Islamist militants.

For health workers on the front line of Congo's Ebola outbreak, the work has become harder as the disease spreads faster than their current treatment capacity.

“Despite the alerts we receive and the teams we have on site, we lack the means to travel into the field,” Lokudu said. “As a result, there are alerts we are unable to investigate.”

___

Ope Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria.

Antonelli was on course for victory with 10 laps remaining when the race was red-flagged after parts of the asphalt broke away and two cars crashed in quick succession, one of them third-placed Charles Leclerc.

After the race resumed from a standing start, Antonelli took his fifth Grand Prix win in a row and extended his already vast standings lead. He's the youngest F1 winner in Monaco.

“Thank you so much guys, the car was a beast today," he told the Mercedes team.

Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton crossed the line second and Alpine's Pierre Gasly third. Red Bull's Isack Hadjar was moved up to third due to a penalty for Gasly.

Antonelli’s Mercedes teammate George Russell missed the points for the second race running after an engine failure while battling Antonelli for the lead of last month’s Canadian Grand Prix.

The track damage put a decidedly un-glamorous twist on one of F1’s most prestigious races as drivers waited in the pit lane, officials gazed at the damaged asphalt and a road-sweeping machine inched along the circuit clearing away loose stones.

There was more confusion as numerous drivers received time penalties or were under investigation, meaning the final standings remained uncertain.

Hadjar was facing an investigation after the race for a potential breach of red-flag rules. That raised the possibility that McLaren’s Oscar Piastri could be promoted from fifth on track to third Sunday evening, ahead of Hadjar and Gasly.

Russell had been second in the standings before the race but ended the day in 13th after a hefty penalty for failing to serve an earlier penalty properly.

___

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Polling closed at 8 p.m. local time, with preliminary results expected Monday.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his governing Civil Contract party are looking for a strong mandate for a new geopolitical course for Armenia. The opposition they face includes some parties that are vocally pro-Russia.

Casting his vote on Sunday, Pashinyan said that the country would continue strengthening its independence, statehood, democracy and rule of law.

"The European Union is our main partner in democratic reform implementation, and we will continue that path,” he said.

He also stressed that there were no tensions between Armenia and Moscow, saying "our relations with Russia are institutional and based on mutual respect,” the Armenpress news agency reported.

Russian officials have hit Armenian exports with a barrage of restrictions in recent weeks. President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have made thinly veiled threats comparing Armenia’s path to that already taken by Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia.

Meanwhile, Armenian investigators said that they issued six arrest warrants for members of the opposition Strong Armenia party the day before the election, accusing them of buying votes. The nation's Central Election Committee confirmed Saturday that the party could run after a member of another opposition party, Republic, appealed for Strong Armenia to be barred over corruption allegations.

Commenting on the arrests on Sunday, the head of the Strong Armenia party, Russian Armenian business owner Samvel Karapetyan, said that they “would not change the minds of Armenian voters.”

Karapetyan is under house arrest for allegedly advocating for the government’s overthrow, a charge that the billionaire has rejected as politically motivated. He was escorted to a polling station where he spoke briefly to the media before returning home.

“The Armenian people will make the right choice and Armenia will finally have a legitimate government,” he said.

Trump offers support as Putin urges caution

Armenia’s National Assembly must consist of at least 101 members who are elected for five-year terms. Parties must win at least 4% of the vote to take a seat, while blocs made up of three or more parties must hit 8%.

Two political blocs and 17 parties are taking part in Sunday's election. Most pollsters and experts have predicted Pashinyan, who came to power in 2018 following sweeping street protests, will come out ahead.

“I think Armenians expect, first of all, a peaceful, independent and prosperous Armenia from this election, as we have today,” said Hripsime Grigoryan, a Civil Contract member of the outgoing parliament.

Pashinyan has spoken on several occasions about the need for a balanced foreign policy to ensure that Armenia maintains good relations with the United States, Europe and Russia, as well as regional powers such as Turkey and Iran — both of which border Armenia.

Despite this, Pashinyan has attracted far more enthusiasm in the West than in Moscow. He has been endorsed by several European leaders, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, of Armenia, a great friend and Leader, is making his Country strong, wealthy, and very secure,” Trump wrote on social media, urging Armenians to “Make (Armenia) Great Again.”

This has displeased the Kremlin. Speaking to journalists after Russia’s Victory Day parade on May 9, Putin said if the Armenian people saw benefits in joining the European Union, then “we will certainly have nothing to say against it.”

Yet he also reminded reporters, “We are currently living through everything that is happening in respect of Ukraine. And how did it start? It started with Ukraine’s joining or attempting to join the EU.”

Opposition wants closer ties with Russia

Unlike the Civil Contract party, most of Armenia’s opposition supports building stronger relations with Moscow.

The Strong Armenia party seeks to develop business ties with Russia and has accused Pashinyan of attempting to start a war with Moscow.

Other potential contenders include former President Robert Kocharyan, who leads the Hayastan bloc and also has accused Pashinyan of undermining relations with Russia, and the Prosperous Armenia Party, led by pro-Russia business owner Gagik Tsarukyan.

These parties also have strongly criticized Pashinyan for attempting to normalize relations with neighboring Azerbaijan. The Armenian leader and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev initialed a document on moving toward a peace deal at the White House alongside Trump in August.

Armenia and Azerbaijan were locked in a decades-long conflict over the fate of Karabakh, a breakaway region that had been controlled for decades by ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia. Azerbaijan took control of the entire Karabakh region during a rapid offensive in 2023.

“I want this government to change, because the condition of our country is getting worse,” Sahakyan Elina, a supporter of the Prosperous Armenia Party, told The Associated Press at a rally Thursday. “I don’t want to live with my enemies in unity.”

EU criticizes Moscow's pressure

Russian officials have imposed new restrictions on Armenian produce in the lead-up to the parliamentary vote, banning the import of Armenian flowers, certain types of cognac and wine, eggplant, potatoes, dried fruits, fish and more.

Russia says the bans are related to violations of agricultural import rules.

The European Commission on Thursday described the move as “nothing short of economic coercion.”

“By extending export restrictions on Armenian products, Moscow is weaponizing economic relations for political pressure. We know this playbook all too well,” the commission said in a statement.

Moscow also controls a significant portion of Armenia’s energy and infrastructure, and supplies it with cheap gas, which is a point that Putin has been quick to drive home in his meetings with Pashinyan.

Putin also has stressed that Armenia can't join the EU and remain within the Eurasian Economic Union, a Russia-led customs bloc.

“Being in a customs union with the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union is impossible,” Putin said. “It’s simply impossible by definition.”

___

Associated Press writers Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, and Sam McNeil in Brussels, contributed to this report.

Sunday's ballot was scheduled after the main political parties failed to agree by a March deadline on who should replace former President Vjosa Osmani. The first inconclusive election in February 2025 left the country without a functioning government for much of last year, forcing a second election in December.

The prolonged crisis has negatively affected Kosovo’s economy, already hit hard by the global energy crisis and rising fuel prices. One of the youngest and poorest countries in Europe declared independence from Serbia in 2008, after a 1998-99 war that ended in a NATO bombing that forced Serbia to withdraw.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s center-left Vetevendosje party has held a clear parliamentary majority since the early election in December. But Kosovo’s president is elected by at least 80 lawmakers in the 120-member assembly, requiring a broader political consensus.

Kurti is being challenged by the two main opposition parties, the Democratic Party of Kosovo and the Democratic League of Kosovo, which have accused him of seeking to impose full control over all political institutions in the country.

“Today is a sunny Sunday, a very important day for democracy in Kosovo," Kurti said after voting. “I hope the people of Kosovo once again will show their maturity as always, with a very high turnout.”

Osmani is running on the opposition LDK list in the election, having turned against Kurti after he refused to back her for a second term. Osmani on Sunday expressed “great optimism” that the election will "take us out of the repeated crisis that has damaged our country, both domestically and beyond our borders.”

While the key players blamed each other for the crisis, their inability to reach a compromise has fueled disappointment among Kosovo’s around 2 million voters, who want the government to focus on the economy and living standards instead.

Analysts still don't expect major changes in the election outcome compared to the previous vote in December.

Arton Smajli, 42, a resident of the capital, Pristina, said that “we are tired, but the will for change is greater than that.”

Sejdi Shala, 73, is also optimistic the election will bring "stability of the institutions and the society.”

The institutional vacuum, without a stable government, has delayed access to the EU and other international funds available to the country. European Council President Antonio Costa, during a visit last week, urged Kosovo to end the political stalemate and unite over the goal of EU integration.

Kosovo has been recognized by the United States and most EU countries, but not by Serbia and its allies, Russia and China. Pristina and Belgrade have been told they must mend relations to move forward with their EU membership bids.

Georgia's Republican-led Legislature will convene June 17 for a special session focused on redistricting for the 2028 elections. The agenda includes new voting districts not only for Congress, but also for the state House and Senate — and potentially even the state's utility regulatory commission.

It will mark the first time since a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling weakened minority voting protections that a state legislature will attempt to redraw its own districts. Mississippi Republicans and New York Democrats also could undertake legislative redistricting before their 2027 and 2028 elections, respectively.

Ir remains to be seen, though, how many legislatures will follow, and whether the outburst of mid-decade redistricting will extend down to county commissions, city councils and school boards that make myriad decisions affecting people's lives. The impact could be widespread.

“The stakes here are not political, they are deeply human,” said Joe Kennedy III, founder of Groundwork Project, a nonprofit that supports local civil rights and democracy organizations.

What's fueling the redistricting movement?

Voting district boundaries typically are redrawn once a decade after each U.S. census to account for population changes. But last summer, President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw congressional districts to try to win additional seats in the midterm elections. Other states followed with their own partisan gerrymandering.

Then a 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in late April jumpstarted even more redistricting. The court struck down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana as an illegal racial gerrymander, providing grounds for Republicans in other states to reshape districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.

Why is Georgia redrawing its districts?

A federal judge ruled in 2023 that some of Georgia’s congressional, state Senate and state House districts were drawn in a racially discriminatory manner. The Legislature quickly approved revised maps with new majority-Black districts, though they resulted in little change to Republican majorities in the 2024 elections.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has called lawmakers into special session to again redraw districts in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Louisiana case. That could allow Republicans to undo the court-ordered changes they made in 2023 and potentially redraw other Democratic-held minority districts to the GOP's advantage.

Republicans have yet to unveil details of their plans. But Democratic state Rep. Tanya Miller, who is running for attorney general, denounced the upcoming redistricting as a means of “rigging maps to maintain power.”

How many seats are at stake?

Several months before the Supreme Court ruling, a report by Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter forecast that Republicans in 10 Southern states could eliminate 191 Democratic-held legislative seats — including 140 districts with Black or Hispanic majorities — if the Supreme Court gutted federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities.

“If anything, our report was an understatement,” Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter, recently told The Associated Press. “What’s at stake is the future of this democracy.”

Other analysts don't expect that many seats to be redistricted. But they do expect the Supreme Court's decision to ripple through states.

“We’re going to potentially see a lot of frenzied efforts at every level, including at the local level, to try out undoing district maps and configurations that have performed quite well in providing improved representation for communities of color,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Washington office of the Brennan Center for Justice.

What states have pending court cases?

The precedent from the recent Supreme Court decision already is being applied in several states. In light of the ruling, a federal appeals court is allowing Alabama to use a state Senate map approved by Republican lawmakers in this year's election instead of one imposed by a federal judge who found the state had diluted the voting power of Black residents. The change affects two state Senate districts in the Montgomery area.

The Supreme Court has sent legislative redistricting cases filed on behalf of Black voters in Mississippi and Native Americans in North Dakota back to lower courts for further consideration in light of its Louisiana decision. The Washington attorney general has asked the Supreme Court to do the same for legislative redistricting cases involving Hispanic voters in that state.

What's stopping states from redistricting?

About half the states have provisions in their constitutions prohibiting mid-decade redistricting of state legislative seats, said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who runs the “All About Redistricting” website.

But even in states where it's allowed, lawmakers may have fewer reasons to redraw their own districts than those for Congress, Levitt said. Politicians who promoted congressional redistricting for the 2026 midterms often justified it as a way to counter gerrymandering in other states and win as many seats as possible for their party. They had extra motivation because a swing of only a few seats nationally in the November elections could affect control of the closely divided U.S. House.

By contrast, most state legislative chambers already are dominated by one party.

”There’s a lot less incentive, if you already control the state legislature by 10 or 12 seats, to eke out an incremental one or two at the expense of really ticking off your own party membership, or at the expense of maybe risking losing seats in a broader way,” Levitt said.

Could local governments also redraw districts?

The Supreme Court decision making it more difficult to prove Voting Rights Act violations already has affected some local governments.

Plaintiffs have voluntarily dismissed a challenge to commission districts in Meriwether County, Georgia. A federal court has accepted new legal briefs in a challenge to Board of Supervisors districts in DeSoto County, Mississippi. And Indiana's attorney general has asked a federal appeals court to take note of the Louisiana case when deciding a challenge to how judges are selected in Lake County.

Over roughly the past four decades, data from the University of Michigan shows that cities, counties and school boards have been involved in more than three-fifths of the 466 lawsuits alleging violations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which forbids providing minorities less opportunity than other voters to elect the representatives of their choice.

But that doesn't necessarily mean local governments will rush to redistrict as a result of a weakened Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court decision cleared the way for officials to justify redistricting based on partisan ambitions. But many local offices are officially nonpartisan.

The race for governor between Sand and Republican Zach Lahn stands to be one of the most competitive in the country as Iowans face a state budget deficit, struggling agricultural economy and cancer crisis.

Even as Sand downplays party politics, Democrats are putting faith in him to blaze a trail in the state after struggling electorally in recent cycles.

“We are all in on flipping Iowa,” said Beshear, chair of the Democratic Governors Association and a potential presidential candidate in 2028. “It’s certainly time for a change, and I think the people of Iowa know that Rob Sand will always put them first and lead in a way that lifts families up and doesn’t leave them out.”

Sand, who was unopposed on the primary ballot, learned who his opponent would be after Tuesday’s primary settled an unpredictable five-way Republican contest.

Little known before his bid for governor, Lahn made a splash as a business owner criticizing farm consolidation and tax breaks for corporate giants, a regenerative farmer who subscribes to Robert F. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement and a former political operative who galvanized Iowa’s conservative grassroots.

Iowa has open races for both governor and U.S. senator for the first time since 1968, plus three battleground congressional races. National attention on the state has soared in recent months, drawing President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance to Iowa.

Democrats will have an uphill climb with a 200,000-person deficit in statewide voter registration, and they are outnumbered in every House district. Sand, along with Senate candidate Josh Turek, say they can win over independents and Republicans who are frustrated with party politics and a Republican trifecta in Washington and Des Moines that they blame for the state's challenges.

Turek will face U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who already has portrayed Turek as a liberal puppet for party leader Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Lahn has also rejected Sand's nonpartisan pitch.

“Rob Sand is not a moderate,” Lahn said in his victory speech Tuesday. “He’s a liberal career politician pretending to be someone he’s not.”

Sand says divided government is a good thing

Sand is vocal about his dislike of partisanship, his distrust of both political parties and his desire for divided government in Iowa. He says he thinks most Iowans feel the same.

Even if Sand is elected governor in November, he will likely have to work with Republican majorities in the state House and Senate, which recently passed bills to restrict the executive’s power that outgoing Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law.

“I’m not here to tell you that the answer to 10 years of one-party control is to give the other party 10 years of one-party control. I don’t think that’s right,” Sand said Tuesday after casting his primary ballot. “But I do think that it’s time to say enough to the people who have had 10 years of one-party control. It’s time for balanced government in Iowa.”

Neither Sand or Lahn use their party's traditional blue or red in campaign materials, opting instead for green. They both say they aren’t beholden to their party establishments and that Iowans want a new direction, though Lahn’s Republican Party has held a statehouse trifecta for nearly a decade.

Sand’s campaign has given about $750,000 to the Iowa Democratic Party already this cycle, funding that Republicans call hypocritical for a candidate who claims he is not a party man. The Sand campaign says that sum reflects his investment in a state party-run coordinated campaign that will help him get elected as governor, even as it also supports candidates up and down the ballot.

Beshear brings national support as he considers his own future

As Democrats continue to debate what went wrong in 2024 and the direction of the party, Beshear has offered up his own example as the leader of a red state for lessons on how the party can go forward.

Beshear said he is trying to be a “voice of reason in the chaos” of Trump’s administration and that he is comfortable being listed among the names of Democrats considering a presidential bid in 2028, even as he said he is focused on the critical midterms.

In addition to rallying with Sand, Beshear will also be at a “Beers with Beshear” fundraiser for congressional candidate Sarah Trone Garriott, who wants to unseat Republican Rep. Zach Nunn in the competitive House district that includes Des Moines. Beshear said he will see Turek too.

The Democratic Governors Association, which Beshear chairs, gave the Iowa Democratic Party about $140,000 so far this cycle, according to filing reports.

The 24-year-old right-hander's record-setting pitch was low and outside to Kyle Karros in the third inning.

“It’s one of those things: It is what it is,” Misiorowski said. “I’m going to keep going, trying to get strikeouts, and if that’s what it takes to get strikeouts, then so be it.”

Misiorowski (7-2) has thrown the 12 fastest pitches by a starter. His previous high was 103.4 mph against St. Louis on May 25.

He threw 52 pitches 100 mph or faster Saturday night, including a record 45 of at least 101 mph. He allowed just an unearned run while striking out eight in seven innings, lowering his ERA to 1.50 in a 7-1 victory over the Rockies at Coors Field.

"Miz has got great extension and great velocity, so that doesn’t surprise me," Brewers manager Pat Murphy said about the 103.7 mph fastball. “But we've got to get off that — the harder the better, and all that. He’s got to throw the ball in the zone and throw his other pitches in the zone. As I say often, good hitters can time up anything.”

Misiorowski threw a record 57 pitches 100 mph or faster in the May 25 game, including 40 of 101 mph or more.

The fastest pitch overall since tracking began was clocked at 105.8 mph by Cincinnati reliever Aroldis Chapman in September 2010 at San Diego, according to Statcast.

___

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

The results from this positive vibe shift have been spectacular all season, and it's working again at the U.S. Women's Open. After Korda started poorly this week at Riviera, she shook it off and responded with two straight stellar rounds that have put the World No. 1 in prime position to win the title she covets most of all.

Korda shot her second straight 4-under 67 on Saturday to claim a share of the lead in the 81st Open, ending with three consecutive birdies and finishing even with Sei Young Kim at 6-under 207.

“It’s always amazing to be in this position,” Korda said. “That’s what we work so hard for, to be in this spot. So whatever happens tomorrow happens, but I’m going to give it my all and see what the outcome is.”

Korda, already a three-time major winner after dominating The Chevron Championship in April, has played her way into prime position to contend for her second straight major title and first U.S. Open championship.

It won't be simple: Seven players were within two shots of the top of a leaderboard crowded with major winners. First-round leader Jennifer Kupcho and 2015 U.S. Women’s Open champion In Gee Chun were a shot back at 5 under after 69s, while second-round co-leader Ruoning Yin, Mexico’s Gaby Lopez and Japan’s Nasa Hataoka were 4 under.

But Korda's surge in Southern California is her latest superlative in a year already featuring three wins, three second-place finishes and a spot atop the world rankings in her first seven starts.

“I’m not going to get too frustrated,” Korda said. “I think last year I really, really wanted it, and the more you want it, sometimes the more you stiffen up and you get a little bit more nervous. So I play my best golf when I’m happy, free Nelly and I’m kind of joking around out there. That’s kind of the attitude that I’m going to have (Sunday).”

Korda was seven shots off the lead and struggling with her driver after that opening-round 73. Her big sister, six-time LPGA Tour winner Jessica Korda, encouraged her to strengthen her grip, and Nelly promptly got into contention by posting Friday’s lowest score and then surging steadily up the leaderboard on moving day.

Korda chipped in from the fringe for birdie on the third hole Saturday, and she nailed an 18-foot birdie putt on the sixth. She finished with her birdie spree, reaching the par-5 17th green in two before smashing her 154-yard approach shot to 4 feet on the 18th.

Korda had never posted consecutive rounds in the 60s in a U.S. Women’s Open, not even last year when she tied for second at Erin Hills.

She believes that experience and her ongoing work on her mental game have put her in a prime position to execute Sunday. Her attitude shift was a necessary self-improvement decision encouraged by her parents, her time with a sports psychologist and even her fiance, who sometimes implores her to be a bit more positive.

“So there has been a bunch of work that I’ve done with other people, but I would say the person that makes the biggest change is myself,” Korda said.

Several players traded the lead on a sunny afternoon in front of the week’s biggest crowd at this 100-year-old country club in Pacific Palisades.

Kim was one shot off the lead after each of the first two rounds, and the South Korean star carded a steady 68 after a birdie on 17 to stay right on pace with Korda.

“I tried to keep my patience and just waited for a chance,” said Kim, a 13-time winner on the LPGA Tour. “When the chances came to me, I just made it. ... When I finished, that was the first time I saw the scoreboard with a lot of good golfers, especially Nelly and then Gaby, who I played with. It always feels great to play with great players. I’m competitive, so it’s really like I’m lucky to play with them.”

Both second-round leaders are also still firmly in contention.

Southern California native Alison Lee was one shot off the lead on the back nine before making three late bogeys and finishing at 3 under. Lee, who gave birth to son Levi 15 months ago, would be only the fourth mother to win the U.S. Open and the first since Juli Inkster in 2002.

Yin made three bogeys on the front nine before getting back to 4 under with two late birdies. Her 71 made her the first golfer in U.S. Open history with seven consecutive rounds of even par or better.

England's Charley Hull carded Saturday's low round at 65, making seven birdies and moving just three shots back of the lead. Asterisk Talley, a 17-year-old amateur from California’s Central Valley, shot a 66.

___

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

The statement came a day before Chinese President Xi Jinping visits North Korea for talks with Kim Jong Un, in his first visit to the country in seven years.

“The U.S. assertion to backbite the status of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state has no legally binding force and no one will be bound by the U.S. unilateral rhetoric,” said Kim's sister and senior official, Kim Yo Jong, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name.

She dismissed as “false information” a U.S. announcement that President Donald Trump and Xi confirmed their shared goal to denuclearize North Korea in their summit in Beijing last month.

“Some officials in the United States have failed to wake from their escapist and anachronistic dream,” Kim Yo Jong said.

North Korea has been focusing on enlarging its nuclear arsenal since Kim Jong Un's high-stakes diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019. Experts say the North Korean leader wants an international recognition as a nuclear state so that he could demand lifting of international economic sanctions on North Korea.

During a visit to a new nuclear materials production plant last week, Kim Jong Un said North Korea would bolster the country’s nuclear forces “at an exponential rate.” On Sunday, North Korea's state media reported Kim Jong Un visited a weapons factory the previous day and called for increasing the country's missile production capacity 2.5 times under a five-year plan period.

In her statement, Kim Yo Jong accused the U.S. and South Korea of pushing for “ceaseless arms build-ups," saying her brother's push for “steadily beefing up the nuclear war deterrent for self-defense” is “an irreversible final conclusion to be carried out unconditionally.”

Analysts say Xi's visit to North Korea is largely meant to reassert China's influence over North Korea, whose foreign policy priority has shifted to Russia in recent years. They say Xi will likely refrain from directly raising the denuclearization issue and offer economic assistance programs during his meeting with Kim Jong Un.

North Korea has sent troops and conventional weapons to Russia to back its war efforts against Ukraine. South Korean and U.S. officials say North Korea has received economic and other assistance from Russia in return.

Exclusive video captured deputies taking a man into custody, who was wearing a blue polo shirt and has gray hair.

Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office deputies responded around 5:50 p.m. to the 5400 block of Northwest 192nd Lane, where they found a man suffering from a major laceration to his leg.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue transported the victim by helicopter to a nearby hospital, where he was reported to be in stable condition.

Deputies also took another man into custody at the scene.

According to investigators, the two men were involved in a verbal argument that escalated when the man in custody got into a vehicle and struck the victim, causing the injury.

One nearby resident said he heard a different version of what happened from other eyewitnesses.

According to Zakary Garner, the man who was arrested was acting in self-defense.

Garner said the man was sitting inside his truck when another neighbor approached him with a pole and began striking the vehicle’s headlight. He said the driver then tried to leave the area, but the other man remained attached to the truck.

Garner said the truck later crashed into a parked vehicle down the street, causing the man’s injuries.

“The person who was arrested for sure, they’re gonna process him, he’s gonna spend a few nights in jail, but once they get the story and realize he did that out of self-defense because he felt like his life was threatened, they’re gonna let that old man out,” Garner said.

The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office has not confirmed that version of events and said the investigation remains ongoing.

Hamlin was the last driver of the session at Michigan International Speedway, and his No. 11 Toyota’s 195.117-mph lap knocked Carson Hocevar’s No. 77 Chevrolet (195.022 mph) from the top spot on the 2-mile oval. The speed stunned Hamlin, who credited his team with some quick fixes that stabilized the wounded vehicle.

“It was a handful,” the Joe Gibbs Racing star said after passing Hall of Famer Bobby Isaac for 10th in career poles in NASCAR’s premier series. “It was all I wanted, certainly. But hats off to this whole team. Yeah, that was surprising. It was the limit for sure.”

Hamlin continued a streak of Toyotas winning every pole at Michigan since the debut of the Next Gen car in 2022, but the news wasn’t all good. Hamlin expects his car will need further repairs that would be unapproved by NASCAR, sending him to the rear of the 37-car field for the start.

“That’s going to be a challenge in itself, certainly at this racetrack,” he said. “So we’re going to have to have good restarts and have the race play out just right.”

Last week, Hamlin started first at Nashville Superspeedway but was sent to the back on the opening lap for jumping the start. He rallied to lead a race-high 57 laps for his 62nd career win, leading a top-three Gibbs sweep with teammates Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe.

Hamlin said he’ll need to catch some breaks Sunday over 400 miles at Michigan.

“The race is long, and you can certainly do it,” he said. “It’s not unachievable. And sometimes when you’re in the back, it gives you an opportunity if there’s an early caution to try a different strategy. I know if you look at last week, that all seemed easy, but things really fell our way, and they’re going to have to again (Sunday).”

If Hamlin does start from the back, it’ll be a break for Hocevar after Saturday’s disappointment. The Portage, Michigan, native threw up his hands in disbelief after Hamlin bumped him from the pole at his home track.

“I would have loved to have that one,” Hocevar said. “I feel like it’s a really good race car, one of the best I’ve had here, so I hope it really translates to (Sunday). Starting up front is going to be super important.”

__

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

As winds stream in from the east, the rip current risk will be elevated Sunday. It is important to swim only at guarded beaches.

Get ready for a resurgence of deep tropical moisture this week. Widespread showers and storms are expected to return by midweek. We will continue to monitor the potential for downpours that could bring rounds of heavy rain.

It might have come at a good time for Scottie Scheffler, who was making quite a charge until two bogeys in three holes, the last one from an iron off the tee into a creek.

And it probably won't help the players like Poston who face a long Sunday to make up for the lost time and then have 36 holes of U.S. Open qualifying Monday.

Poston and Gerard were tied at 9-under par through five holes, one shot ahead of Sam Burns, who was through six holes.

Even with four hours of daylight available, the PGA Tour felt there was enough thunderstorm activity on the way to call it a day. The third round was to resume at 7 a.m., followed by a final round off both tees in threesomes for the first time all week.

Only 21 players finished the round, with Harris English (69) posting the best score at 3-under 213.

Scheffler, trying to join Tiger Woods as the only players to win three in a row at the Memorial, started 10 shots behind and bogeyed the first hole. And then in a matter of minutes, or so it seems with Scheffler, he was in fourth place after a birdie-birdie-eagle stretch approaching the turn, and then an 8-foot birdie to start the back nine.

But then he had a three-putt par from some 65 feet, back to front, on the par-5 11th. He found a back bunker on the par-3 12th, a spot where it's nigh impossible to keep it on the green (he didn't) leading to another bogey.

And then on the 14th, his iron drifted left and led to a splash and a penalty stroke, adding to a bogey that dropped the world's No. 1 player to 2 under for the round, still eight shots behind.

Rory McIlroy also was eight behind through 16 holes.

And this was no longer the same Muirfield Village, fast and firm and frightening all week, suddenly softened by bursts of rain and even some hail.

No one felt it quite like Justin Thomas, who made a superb par save from behind the 18th green on Friday to make the cut on the number. That got him to the weekend, and he played as a single. Thomas figured that would at least give him the best weather, the best conditions to put up a good number and salvage the week.

But he only played 12 holes in dry conditions before the first delay of 1 hour, 40 minutes. Enough rain fell to make the course a touch easier. And now 32 players still on the course return to a course much softer and easier.

Thomas could only chuckle at his bad luck after his round of 72.

“That’s kind of the joy of being first off because you normally get no wind and an easier course,” he said. “But I missed the window. You know, you've got to play better.”

Poston, meanwhile, can take a little stress off with one more long day of good play. A victory or even a runner-up finish would be worth enough world ranking points to move him high enough in the world ranking to be safe for the top 60 next week and get into the U.S. Open.

___

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

No suspects were in custody hours afterward, Toledo Deputy Police Chief Joe Heffernan said, and officials urged people who were at the festival to come forward with any photos or videos on their phones for possible leads.

The shooting happened near the Old West End Festival, an annual gathering of live music and home tours.

Heffernan said it appeared that at least two people fired weapons and they were “probably shooting at each other.”

Two of the victims were in critical condition, Heffernan added. The ages of the victims ranged from 14 to 61, with most of them in their early 20s.

“I am deeply concerned about the situation in Toledo tonight,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a statement. “Summer festivals should be safe spaces for families to spend time together without fear of violence.”

Multiple videos posted to social media showed people running amid the sound of gunshots and emergency officials tending to others who appeared wounded.

Fire Chief Allison Armstrong said it was difficult to get to the hospital due to closed roads and traffic from people leaving the festival, but emergency responders were able to transport all patients from the scene within an hour.

Kevin Berry was sitting in the neighborhood arboretum listening to live music with friends when he heard a handful of gunshots ring out.

“Everybody hit the deck,” he said.

When Berry looked back up, he saw a gun being tossed to the ground less than 50 feet (15 meters) away from him. Officers who were already on site for the festival responded immediately.

Berry, who has medical training and served in the Navy, walked around looking for anyone who might need help and saw at least five people with gunshot wounds.

“The folks who were hit were spread out around the arboretum area,” he said.

The Old West End Festival is a two-day celebration in Toledo’s historic district that includes live music, food vendors, home tours and shopping. Berry described it as the “kick-off to Toledo’s summer festival season.”

George Kral, safety director for the city, said officials were discussing with organizers whether it would continue through the weekend.

“This is one of the most iconic festivals in Toledo,” he said, “and it’s a shame that something like this had to ruin it.”

Casey Liening, portavoz del Departamento de Policía de Fort Lauderdale, informó que Sean Alexis, de 40 años, fue detenido con la ayuda del Departamento de Policía de Plantation.

Los registros de la cárcel muestran que Alexis enfrenta múltiples cargos, incluidos choque con fuga con lesiones corporales graves, choque con fuga con daños a la propiedad y conducir con una licencia suspendida o revocada.

Los investigadores indicaron que el choque ocurrió alrededor de las 6:15 p.m. cerca de West Broward Boulevard y Northwest 11th Avenue, cuando un vehículo impactó una patrulla identificada de la Oficina del Sheriff de Broward (BSO) y huyó de la escena.

Indicaron que los testigos dijeron a la policía que Alexis se pasó una luz roja antes de la colisión.

Video de la escena mostró daños severos en el vehículo del agente, con el lado del conductor aplastado y las bolsas de aire desplegadas.

Las autoridades informaron que el agente, un hombre, fue hospitalizado tras el choque.

Indicaron que sus lesiones fueron consideradas como no mortales, aunque no estaba claro de inmediato si permanecía hospitalizado.

Hasta el sábado, Alexis permanecía detenido sin derecho a fianza en la cárcel principal del condado Broward.

Leer en español

The case has gone cold, but authorities hope newly released video could generate leads.

“Look at me. It’s killing me, it’s draining every ounce left in me. It’s tearing me up people,” Willis’ mother, Deborah Willis, said during an emotional plea.

With courage and unwavering strength, she spoke about her son, Terrance, who was gunned down near the busway and Southwest 184th Street in Miami in May 2021.

“He was a giver, he was giving anything, he had love and loved God,” she said.

According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, Willis was riding a Miami-Dade Transit bus and was seated in the rear when he became involved in a small verbal altercation with someone else on board.

“Terrance was riding a MD Transits bus and seated in the rear of the bus and was involved in a small verbal altercation with someone in the back of the bus,” Sgt. Pedro Camacho said.

Investigators said Willis got off the bus and was then shot multiple times.

Five years later, detectives hope newly released surveillance video will help move the investigation forward. Authorities have identified a person of interest described as a Black male who was between 18 and 25 years old at the time and about 6 feet tall.

“It is possible that someone who was reluctant, scared or didn’t feel their input could be useful,” lead investigator Detective Oscar Andino said. “Any piece of information could be relevant to this investigation.”

Willis was a father of three and grandfather of one. His family said he was simply on his way home when his life was cut short.

His mother said she is still searching for answers.

“I don’t even want you to go to prison. I just want you to talk to me, talk to me. Prison is not gonna help you. I know this,” she said.

Investigators are urging anyone with information to come forward. A Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers reward is available for information that leads to an arrest. Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.

El caso permanece sin resolver, pero las autoridades esperan que un video recientemente divulgado genere nuevas pistas.

“Mírenme. Me está matando, me está drenando cada parte que me queda. Me está destrozando, gente”, dijo Deborah Willis, madre de Willis, durante una emotiva súplica.

Con valentía y una fortaleza inquebrantable, habló sobre su hijo, Terrance, quien fue asesinado a tiros cerca del busway y Southwest 184th Street en Miami en mayo de 2021.

“Era una persona generosa, daba todo lo que podía, tenía amor y amaba a Dios”, dijo.

Según la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade, Willis viajaba en un autobús de Miami-Dade Transit y estaba sentado en la parte trasera cuando se vio involucrado en una breve discusión verbal con otra persona a bordo.

“Terrance viajaba en un autobús de Miami-Dade Transit y estaba sentado en la parte trasera del autobús cuando se involucró en una pequeña discusión verbal con alguien que también estaba en la parte trasera”, dijo el sargento Pedro Camacho.

Los investigadores indicaron que Willis bajó del autobús y luego fue baleado en múltiples ocasiones.

Cinco años después, los detectives esperan que un video de vigilancia recientemente divulgado ayude a impulsar la investigación. Las autoridades han identificado a una persona de interés descrita como un hombre afroamericano que tenía entre 18 y 25 años en ese momento y medía aproximadamente 6 pies de estatura.

“Es posible que alguien haya sido renuente, haya tenido miedo o no haya pensado que su información podía ser útil”, dijo el detective principal Oscar Andino. “Cualquier dato puede ser relevante para esta investigación”.

Willis era padre de tres hijos y abuelo de un nieto. Su familia dijo que simplemente regresaba a casa cuando su vida fue truncada.

Su madre afirmó que todavía busca respuestas.

“Ni siquiera quiero que vayas a prisión. Solo quiero que hables conmigo, háblame. La prisión no te va a ayudar. Lo sé”, dijo.

Los investigadores instan a cualquier persona con información a presentarse. Hay una recompensa de Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers disponible para información que conduzca a un arresto. Cualquier persona con información debe llamar a Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers al 305-471-TIPS.

Según la Policía de Miami, una alerta de ShotSpotter fue detectada cerca de Northwest Second Avenue y 38th Street alrededor de las 10 p.m.

Los investigadores indicaron que el conductor recibió un disparo en el hombro mientras transportaba a un pasajero.

Dijeron que, a pesar de estar herido, el conductor continuó hacia el norte y llamó a la policía desde el área de Northwest Fifth Avenue y 46th Street.

Paramédicos de Miami Fire Rescue trasladaron tanto al conductor como al pasajero al Ryder Trauma Center del Hospital Jackson Memorial, según la policía. Indicaron que el pasajero pudo haber sufrido una herida por roce de bala.

Mientras respondía a la balacera, un sargento de la Policía de Miami se vio involucrado en un accidente por separado después de que otro vehículo no respetó una señal de alto, confirmaron las autoridades.

La policía informó que la patrulla del sargento volcó durante la colisión. El sargento no sufrió heridas graves, pero fue trasladado a un hospital cercano para una evaluación.

Las autoridades no han divulgado información sobre un sospechoso ni sobre lo que pudo haber provocado la balacera.

En respuesta a la balacera, un portavoz de Uber dijo:

“Lo que vivieron este conductor y este pasajero debió haber sido aterrador. Hemos estado en contacto con ellos para conocer su estado y nuestros pensamientos están con ellos mientras se recuperan. Estamos disponibles para ayudar a las autoridades en su investigación en todo lo que podamos”.

La investigación continúa en curso.

Cualquier persona con información debe llamar a Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers al 305-471-8477.

According to Miami police, a ShotSpotter alert was detected near Northwest Second Avenue and 38th Street around 10 p.m.

Investigators said the driver was struck in the shoulder while transporting a passenger.

They said despite being wounded, the driver continued north and called police from the area of Northwest Fifth Avenue and 46th Street.

Miami Fire Rescue medics transported both the driver and passenger to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center, according to police. The passenger may have suffered a graze wound, they said.

While responding to the shooting, a Miami police sergeant was involved in a separate crash after another vehicle ran a stop sign, authorities confirmed.

Police said the sergeant’s patrol vehicle overturned in the collision. The sergeant was not seriously injured but was taken to a nearby hospital for evaluation.

Authorities have not released information about a suspect or what may have led to the shooting.

In response to the shooting an Uber spokesperson said:

“What this driver and rider went through must have been terrifying. We have been in touch with them to check on their wellbeing, and our thoughts are with them as they recover. We are standing by to assist law enforcement with their investigation however we can.”

The investigation remains ongoing.

Anyone with information is urged to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.

Organized by the Miami Host Committee, Copa de Sol is designed to showcase the power of soccer when communities, cultures and generations unite.

The event has drawn soccer fans from throughout the region, with participants signing up to compete in matches running through Sunday.

About 160 teams are competing on a 4-versus-4 mini pitch.

Organizers said the festival is the result of about two months of planning and is focused on creating a community-centered experience.

“It’s all about community,” said Alina Hudak, president and CEO of the Miami Host Committee. “It’s a very fast, rapid-pace tournament. We’ve got youth teams that have been playing all day. They’re going to be playing throughout the weekend. We have corporate teams. We have women teams. We have influencers. So it’s just an opportunity to be excited.”

“The game that we love, not only the skills that it gives you but the community and the routine and the bringing people together is in danger of getting interrupted by extreme heat, by flooding,” said Jenna Lamb, U.S. campaign director for Where Football Lives.

Fans attending the event said their passion for the sport brought them out.

“I just love soccer,” said Joshua Leconte. “It’s a good event. I love soccer. That’s why I came.”

Kai Havertz put the four-time champions in front with a header from a free kick in the second minute but Antonee Robinson tied the score in the 37th with a left-foot volley from the top of the arc following Christian Pulisic’s corner kick.

Sané scored off a short pass from Havertz, a diagonal shot between the legs of Miles Robinson that appeared to take a slight deflection off the defender and beat goalkeeper Matt Freese to the far post.

The 16th-ranked United States has lost nine straight games to European opponents dating to 2022.

Hosting the World Cup for the first time since 1994, the Americans open against Paraguay on Friday, then play Australia and Turkey. The U.S. hadn’t lost its last match heading into a World Cup since 2002.

No. 10 Germany starts against Curaçao on June 14 in a group that includes Ivory Coast and Ecuador.

The match drew a sellout crowd of 63,636 to Soldier Field, site of the 1994 World Cup opener. Chicago refused to bid to host 2026 World Cup matches, citing what it said was a lack of financial assurances by FIFA.

The U.S. played without top defender Chris Richards, sidelined since tearing a pair of left ankle ligaments on May 17.

Germany was missing 18-year-old midfielder Lennart Karl, ruled out for the World Cup after injuring a thigh in training. Oliver Baumann started in goal as Manuel Neuer rested while recovering from a calf muscle issue.

Freese started in goal for the 15th time in 18 matches.

Die Mannschaft went ahead after Tyler Adams' foul just outside the penalty area. Joshua Kimmich's free kick was headed in by Havertz at the top of the 6-yard box for his 22nd international goal.

Robinson scored his fifth international goal after Jonathan Tah's headed clearance attempt on Pulisic's corner kick went just outside the area. Robinson celebrated with a cartwheel and a backflip.

___

AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

Leer en español

Really impressed with the Dolphins leadership Sullivan & Hafley..nice visit at the Big Chill pic.twitter.com/DK3pnZKxOr

— Jimmy Johnson (@JimmyJohnson) June 5, 2026

Johnson posted a photo Friday evening on X, writing: “Really impressed with the Dolphins leadership Sullivan & Hafley.. nice visit at the Big Chill.”

The gathering took place at Johnson’s Key Largo restaurant, The Big Chill.

The photo included Johnson, former Dolphins coach Dave Wannstedt, Dolphins general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan, Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley and restaurant owner Larry Calvano.

Sullivan and Hafley previously worked together with the Green Bay Packers, where Sullivan served as vice president of player personnel and Hafley was defensive coordinator.

Now reunited in South Florida, the pair already appears to be making a positive impression on some of the franchise’s most recognizable figures.

Johnson served as both head coach and general manager of the Dolphins from 1996-99, compiling a 36-28 record and leading the team to three playoff appearances. During his tenure, Miami drafted future Pro Football Hall of Famers Jason Taylor and Zach Thomas, two cornerstone players who helped define the franchise for more than a decade.

Since taking over, Hafley and Sullivan have signed all 13 members of the Dolphins’ 2026 draft class, reached a contract extension with Pro Bowl running back De’Von Achane and added quarterback Malik Willis as they look to help end a drought that has seen Miami go without a playoff victory since 2000.

Johnson publicó una foto el viernes por la noche en X y escribió: “Realmente impresionado con la dirigencia de los Dolphins, Sullivan y Hafley... buena visita en The Big Chill”.

pic.twitter.com/DK3pnZKxOr — Jimmy Johnson (@JimmyJohnson)June 5, 2026

El encuentro tuvo lugar en el restaurante de Johnson en Key Largo, The Big Chill.

En la fotografía aparecen Johnson, el ex entrenador de los Dolphins Dave Wannstedt, el gerente general de los Dolphins Jeff Hafley, el ejecutivo de los Dolphins Jon-Eric Sullivan y el propietario del restaurante Larry Calvano.

Sullivan y Hafley trabajaron anteriormente juntos con los Green Bay Packers, donde Sullivan se desempeñó como vicepresidente de personal de jugadores y Hafley fue coordinador defensivo.

Ahora reunidos en el sur de Florida, la dupla ya parece estar causando una impresión positiva en algunas de las figuras más reconocidas de la franquicia.

Johnson fue entrenador en jefe y gerente general de los Dolphins entre 1996 y 1999, acumulando un récord de 36-28 y llevando al equipo a tres apariciones en los playoffs. Durante su gestión, Miami seleccionó en el draft a los futuros miembros del Salón de la Fama Jason Taylor y Zach Thomas, dos jugadores fundamentales que ayudaron a definir a la franquicia durante más de una década.

Desde que asumieron sus cargos, Hafley y Sullivan han firmado a los 13 integrantes de la clase del draft de 2026 de los Dolphins, alcanzaron una extensión de contrato con el corredor Pro Bowl De’Von Achane y añadieron al mariscal de campo Malik Willis, mientras buscan poner fin a una sequía que ha mantenido a Miami sin una victoria en los playoffs desde el año 2000.

Leer en español

Participants walked from the Lauderhill Police Department to City Hall, carrying signs that read “Our Community, Our Peace, Our Responsibility” and “Guns Down, Peace Up.”

The walk was escorted by Lauderhill police officers to ensure participants’ safety along the route.

Many of those taking part have been personally affected by gun violence, including parents who have lost children.

Among them was Brittany Bucknor, a mother who shared the story of her daughter, Destiny Bucknor, who was killed by gunfire nearly three years ago.

“I lost my daughter Destiny, who was only 19 years of age on July 4th of 2023,” she said. “She was riding with a family member in a slingshot, and they shot at the slingshot, and she was killed instantly on impact.”

Bucknor said Destiny had recently graduated from high school and survived lupus.

“She was ready to live her life, wanting to become a Black firefighter woman, and her life was taken from her shortly,” she added.

The event honored victims of gun violence while promoting peace and public safety throughout the community.

“It’s important to come out here ... guns down, peace up,” Bucknor said. “We’re here together to celebrate those who’ve lost family members due to gun violence and any type of violence.”

Organizers said the walk and festival were designed to bring the community together, support grieving families and encourage efforts to reduce violence.

The dismissal on Friday was granted under Washington's Anti-SLAPP laws, which are designed to prevent meritless lawsuits intended to silence opposing points of view on matters of public interest.

Redd, a drummer and vibraphone player who has toured with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Ray Brown, had presided over holiday “Jazz Jams” at the Kennedy Center since 2006. He called off last year’s performance shortly after Trump’s handpicked board at the Kennedy Center voted to add the president’s name to the facility.

“The Center sued Mr. Redd because he publicly and rightly objected to adding Donald Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center, a living memorial to former President John F. Kennedy," Lisa J. Banks, one of Redd's lawyers, said in a statement. "The lawsuit against Mr. Redd was political retribution, pure and simple, by the Trump Kennedy Center, and the Court correctly saw it as such in dismissing the case with prejudice.”

Redd told The Associated Press in an email Saturday morning that he is “very pleased with the judge's ruling.”

The motion to dismiss, filed in March, argued that Redd wasn't contractually obligated to perform. It included the contract provided by the Kennedy Center, which the artist never signed.

Representatives for the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit's dismissal.

Los participantes caminaron desde el Departamento de Policía de Lauderhill hasta el Ayuntamiento, portando carteles con mensajes como “Nuestra comunidad, nuestra paz, nuestra responsabilidad” y “Menos armas, más paz”.

La caminata fue escoltada por agentes de la Policía de Lauderhill para garantizar la seguridad de los participantes a lo largo de la ruta.

Muchas de las personas que participaron han sido afectadas personalmente por la violencia armada, incluidos padres que han perdido hijos.

Entre ellos estaba Brittany Bucknor, una madre que compartió la historia de su hija, Destiny Bucknor, quien murió por disparos hace casi tres años.

“Perdí a mi hija Destiny, que tenía solo 19 años de edad, el 4 de julio de 2023”, dijo. “Iba con un familiar en un Slingshot y dispararon contra el vehículo, y murió instantáneamente por el impacto”.

Bucknor dijo que Destiny se había graduado recientemente de la escuela secundaria y había sobrevivido al lupus.

“Estaba lista para vivir su vida, quería convertirse en una mujer afroamericana bombera, y su vida le fue arrebatada demasiado pronto”, agregó.

El evento honró a las víctimas de la violencia armada mientras promovía la paz y la seguridad pública en toda la comunidad.

“Es importante venir aquí... menos armas, más paz”, dijo Bucknor. “Estamos aquí juntos para honrar a quienes han perdido familiares debido a la violencia armada y cualquier otro tipo de violencia”.

Los organizadores indicaron que la caminata y el festival fueron diseñados para unir a la comunidad, apoyar a las familias en duelo y fomentar esfuerzos para reducir la violencia.

Instead, the longtime owner of Richard Childress Racing held a news conference Saturday at the track to publicly address the unexpected death of Kyle Busch for the first time since the two-time Cup Series champion died on May 21 after severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis.

For Childress, whose NASCAR team weathered the loss of seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt in a fatal crash at the 2001 Daytona 500, the ache was all too familiar.

“You lose two of the greatest drivers that’s ever driven a car in NASCAR and to have to go through it again,” Childress said. “I just feel so bad for the family and the employees and everybody. But yeah, I mean, I haven’t slept very good lately.”

Childress said he spoke to Busch the night before he was hospitalized after becoming unresponsive while testing in the Chevrolet racing simulator in Concord, North Carolina.

Busch, who was in a contract year, died the next day. His death certificate cited hemorrhagic shock and disseminated intravascular coagulation. The 41-year-old was in the midst of a 105-Cup race win drought.

But he had finished a season-best eighth at Watkins Glen after a crew chief change, and Childress said there were positive discussions about Busch returning to the No. 8 Chevrolet next year.

“He said, ‘You give me cars like you gave me the last three weeks, I will make The Chase this year,’” Childress said. “We were that confident.”

With RCR switching to the No. 33, Austin Hill has driven Busch’s car the past two races. Childress said Hill will remain in the ride the rest of the season.

“We don’t want to put a burden back on everybody trying to go from one driver to the other,” Childress said.

The team is safeguarding the No. 8 for the possible Cup career of 11-year-old Brexton Busch, even if Kyle’s son races for another team.

Kyle and Brexton Busch had been on hunting trips recently with Childress, who watched the father and son race at a dirt track in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area.

“Talking to Kyle at different times, knowing his plans and what he had in the future for Brexton and his family,” Childress said. “The many things that we all could have done together, that was probably the toughest part of this whole thing.”

Childress, 80, founded his team in 1969 and has been leaning on grandsons Austin and Ty Dillon to guide the organization along with RCR president Mike Verlander and team executive Mike Dillon, Childress’ son-in-law.

“It’s never easy,” Childress said. “They just gave me a little bit of time to get my head right.”

He believes Busch should go immediately into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which elected its 2027 class last month.

“Kyle will go down in history as one of the greatest race drivers that’s ever been,” Childress said. “His legacy is that he was a man that a lot of people thought he was tough to deal with, and that he wouldn’t last long. He is a man that loves his sport. He loved it so much he wanted to see his family carry on in it. To see the enjoyment in Kyle’s eyes watching his son race was just unbelievable.”

___

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Los seis policías resultaron heridos por disparos de bala, uno de ellos en la cabeza, informó el coronel David Gómez, comandante de la región de Santa Cruz. Los policías solo usaron equipos antimotines, aseveró.

También hubo 26 civiles heridos, la mayoría por contusiones, en San Julián, poblado rural de Santa Cruz, escenario de los violentos choques, informó a la prensa Carlos Escalante, el director médico del hospital público de dicha localidad.

Un similar operativo ejecutado la víspera logró despejar una ruta que abastece de alimentos a La Paz que por más de un mes sufre de escasez de alimentos y combustibles por las protestas.

La intervención del sábado en la región de Santa Cruz, la mayor región agroindustrial, derivó en violentos choques con manifestantes afines al expresidente Evo Morales (2006-2019).

“La vía fue despejada en un primer momento, pero los manifestantes volvieron a reagruparse para mantener los cortes”, dijo Gómez más temprano.

Tras el repliegue policial y militar, los manifestantes asaltaron y saquearon la comisaria policial de San Julián, dijo la policía.

El mandatario centroderechista Paz afronta duras protestas sociales desde que asumió el gobierno hace siete meses por parte de sindicatos rurales y urbanos que reclaman su dimisión ante la falta de respuestas a la peor crisis económica que vive el país en cuatro décadas. El gobierno acusa a Morales de alentar las protestas.

Paz ha priorizado el diálogo con los movilizados y la apertura de “corredores humanitarios” en La Paz y ha evitado el uso de armamento en las fuerzas de seguridad para evitar posibles incidentes que agravarían el conflicto, según el gobierno.

Varios sectores del país han demandado al mandatario que declare estado de excepción debido a la escasez de alimentos y combustibles en La Paz y otras ciudades, con centenares de camiones atrapados en los bloqueos y pérdidas por más 2.000 millones de dólares, según los gremios empresariales.

El sábado, el legislativo debatía los alcances de una ley de estado de excepción para frenar la ola de protestas, cuya aprobación se prevé para la madrugada del domingo.

“Vamos a desbloquear las carreteras con diálogo y con los instrumentos legales para defender a las mayorías y lo que se debate en el legislativo es el marco legal para el empleo de las fuerzas armadas”, dijo el mandatario la víspera.

Hasta el momento las protestas han dejado 10 fallecidos, la mayoría por falta de atención médica debido a los cortes de ruta, según el Defensor del Pueblo.

El gobernante boliviano ha recibido el respaldo del gobierno estadounidense y de varios países de la región.

Ridden by jockey Jose Ortiz from 12 lengths off the lead, Golden Tempo surged from the back of the pack to win the 158th rendition of the race. The victory came five weeks after his last-to-first charge to win the Kentucky Derby.

“Golden Tempo is amazing. Jose is amazing,” said DeVaux. “I think he needed to do this to kind of show that he was meant to win the Derby and that he is a horse that belongs in that conversation of being one of the top 3-year-olds.”

Golden Tempo held off Commandment to win by a length and a quarter at odds of 6-1. Commandment was second and favorite Renegade placed third.

“I followed them closely in the second turn,” Ortiz said. “They started to pick it up, so I did as well. I was just waiting for the right time to go all in. When I asked him to go, my horse responded.”

DeVaux, after becoming the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner, is the second in four years to do so at the Belmont. Jena Antonucci won it with Arcangelo in 2023. DeVaux is the first woman to win multiple Triple Crown races.

“It’s overwhelming,” DeVaux said. “All the credit goes to Golden Tempo, who won the race, and Jose did a wonderful job of making it happen. But I’m just so fortunate to be in this position. It’s history-making, and I’ve kind of shied away from it, but I’m really grateful that I am that person.”

DeVaux was born in Saratoga Springs and began her training career there, but she doesn’t call herself a Saratoga native. She spends most of her time in Kentucky now and said she grew up in southern Florida. But after all the support she’s received from the town, she has started to embrace it.

“Everyone is kind of calling me the hometown girl,” DeVaux said. “So that’s kind of fun. I’m going to miss our appetizer (at) Saratoga, as we call it, the ‘Bellatoga.’”

Golden Tempo was the third choice in the race. There were concerns about whether he could pull off another big comeback win in a field that included Renegade. The Todd Pletcher-trained horse finished second to Golden Tempo by a neck in the Derby.

The pace was not nearly as fast as it was at Churchill Downs, yet Golden Tempo still was able to close in time to win the 1 1/4-mile race in 2:03.49. It didn’t matter, as he was the best in the field of nine horses.

“He wasn’t going to get that setup as he did in the Derby,” Ortiz said. “We all knew that, and I was a little worried about it. He needed some kind of setup. But today, there wasn’t one and he showed up today and won.”

Golden Tempo won two-thirds of the Triple Crown after DeVaux and owners decided to bypass the Preakness. He is the second horse in as many years to win the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont after not running in the middle jewel.

“We made our decision, and we won today and we’re going to be happy about that,” DeVaux said.

This was the third and final time for the Belmont at Saratoga in upstate New York, while its traditional home on the border of Queens and Long Island is getting demolished and rebuilt. Run at 1 1/4 miles because of the track at Saratoga, the race is set to return to Belmont Park next year when it will return to its traditional 1 1/2-mile distance.

“It’s so meaningful,” DeVaux said. ”A lot of family here. Saratoga, it’s been wonderful to have such a historic race here. ... It’s so meaningful because the town gets to have this and celebrate it along with us.”

Golden Tempo paid $14 to win, $7.32 to place and $3.88 to show. Commandment paid $7.02 to show and $4.08 to place, while Renegade paid $2.52 to place.

Ortiz followed Renegade, ridden by older brother Irad, just as he did in the Derby. It worked out just the same in the first Saturday in June as the first Saturday in May.

“He was bouncing a bit today, which made me very happy because I wanted him to be a little bit sharper today,” Jose Ortiz said. “You can see him, he’s very relaxed. He does what I ask him to do. That’s the main thing.”

Co-owner Vinnie Viola dedicated the race to his late friend Dominic DiPrisco, who died Wednesday at age 70. Viola prayed to DiPrisco Saturday morning, hoping for an extra push in the Belmont Stakes.

“I know you’re in heaven, and I love you, and this race is for you,” Viola said. “It means more than I can express in words right now.”

Ortiz won the Belmont Stakes for the second time, nine years after his first aboard Tapwrit in 2017.

“We just wanted him to get better and keep winning these kinds of races,” Ortiz said. “We’re very happy with him. It’s all about him.”

___

AP Sports Writer Stephen Whyno in New York contributed.

___

AP horse racing: https://apnews.com/hub/horse-racing

Ament's first love was a “terrible” clay wheel skateboard and his passion blossomed on a family trip to California, where he skateboarded and felt the g-forces on urethane wheels on paved asphalt streets and then poured through the pages of Skateboarder magazine on the 20-hour drive home to Montana.

Ament found pictures of decks and ramps that he used as inspiration for designs that his dad, George, would help him build — like how to craft a kick tail and create the perfect tail radius — and took his skateboard to compete in larger contests around the state.

“I think the idea that he was helping me build something was the most important thing to him,” Ament said. “He gave me a life skill.”

Ament's other major life skill, as bassist for the Pearl Jam band he co-founded, also has served him well and provided him with the means to help fund the creation of world-class skateboard parks in Montana. Many are in small, isolated communities, including at least one on every state Native American reservation by the end of the year. Construction starts in two weeks for one on the last reservation on the list, Northern Cheyenne.

“I think a lot of people don’t understand artists,” Ament said on a Zoom with The Associated Press. “I think skateboarding is probably even more of an art than it is a sport.”

Ament has found the parks can help kids survive and thrive outside of daily isolation, a message spread in the short documentary “Paving the Way.” Ament created original music for the film — which captures skateboarding’s power to foster creativity, challenge stereotypes and build community, spotlighting Indigenous youth on the Flathead Reservation — that premiers Sunday at the Tribeca Festival in New York.

The film tells the story through skater and artist Alishon Kelly, who perseveres with her love of skateboarding even with a broken foot. “Paving the Way” is directed by Keelan Williams and was nominated for the Big Sky Award at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

“I think what he captures really well is just, when you have that thing inside of you, you just feel the need to be created,” Ament said. “I think it explains it really well, how cathartic it can be, how it helps you understand other aspects of your life.”

At the film’s backbone is a partnership between Jeff’s Montana Pool Service — a nod to the large bowl at the center of a skate park — and the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes, as five new skateparks rise across the Flathead Reservation.

“We’re reminding people of our first peoples,” Ament said. “I think most people in this country have no idea that they even exist. I think there’s even been certain people in our government that are trying to kind of rewrite history, erase history. You even hear young people, say, younger people than me, talk about the Native people as if they’re immigrants.”

The 63-year-old Ament delivered the commencement speech at MSU-Northern in Montana last month and touched on the importance for the graduates to be being open to getting out and seeing the world, even if they come from areas that can seem disconnected from their rural hometowns. He met with some of the students after the ceremony and found the experience “gave me hope. I think sometimes I don’t always see the best of the younger generation. They’re almost to a person, so gung-ho about getting out, getting after it.”

There also are plans in the works to get “Paving the Way” out in the world — Ament hoped for distribution beyond Tribeca, where Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder was the focus of a film in the festival last year — now available on YouTube or PBS — but wanted to make sure the film is somehow available to those in Indigenous communities and to show them the hope, resilience and joy that can be found at the skateboarding parks.

“These parks are where we come together and where we look out for each other,” said Terrence Lozeau, a skater featured in the film. “You see little kids watching the older ones and learning.”

As for Ament's day job, Pearl Jam returns in September to headline the Ohana festival in Dana Point, California, in its first performance since drummer Matt Cameron left the band in May after 27 years. The band has kept the identity of his replacement under wraps and will make it official at the Sept. 27 festival.

“I think the big question is, if it’s going to work out that this is our future drummer,” Ament told the AP. “It’ll be the first show, so there’s a little bit of a trial happening. It’s exciting. It’s taken a little bit longer than we thought it would take. We’re not in any massive rush either."

Ament said the band has started writing new songs but would like to play a few dates with the new drummer before Pearl Jam hits the studio again next year.

“I think we need to get out and play like 10, 15 shows with whoever our drummer is and just kind of get that part going before we make a record,” Ament said.

Theodore’s goal went in off goalie Brandon Bussi’s skate. It came long after teammate Mitch Marner had the fastest hat trick in Stanley Cup Final history.

The teams take two days off before meeting in Game 4 on Tuesday night in Las Vegas. Teams that take a 2-1 series lead in the final went on to win the Cup 46 of 57 times, or 80.7%.

Carolina had been 6-0 in overtime this postseason. The Hurricanes were trying to become the first team to win after trailing by at least four goals in the third period, but now clubs in that situation are 0-109.

“We just left our foot off the gas,” Theodore said on the ABC broadcast. “I think we have to be sharper in the third, but I liked the resiliency out of our group. I liked the way we started that second overtime, and I felt like we were more on our toes.”

This was the 10th time the first three games of a Cup Final were decided by a point. The last time was in 2016 between Pittsburgh and San Jose.

The Golden Knights seemed to have it in hand after scoring four times in the second, including a natural hat trick by Marner.

But Jordan Martinook, Taylor Hall and Jordan Staal scored goals for the Hurricanes. Their goals, occurring 39 seconds apart, are the fastest in a Cup Final game.

Andrei Svechnikov jammed in a puck on a six-on-four power play with 1:42 left to force overtime.

Marner’s scoring outburst came over a 6:10 stretch of the second period, and he had four points in the period. He had the secondary assist on Tomas Hertl’s goal midway through the period.

The last time a player had four points in a period of the Cup final was in 1919 when Frank Foyston of the Seattle Metropolitans pulled off that feat.

Marner nearly added to the total in the third period, but failed to capitalize on a breakaway and a penalty shot. Those missed chances came back to bite the Golden Knights.

The Hurricanes made the comeback after changing goalies to open the third, going with Bussi, who made 18 saves. Frederik Andersen had given up those four goals on 16 shots.

Carolina also rallied without forward and former Golden Knight William Carrier, who had an upper-body injury in the second period.

Vegas’ Carter Hart stopped 29 shots.

Vegas twice thought it took the lead early in the second period, but the Hurricanes successfully challenged both goals to keep the game scoreless.

Mark Stone’s goal from the slot 36 seconds into the period was overturned when Brett Howden was determined to be offside after a video review. Another review wiped off Jack Eichel’s rebound goal four minutes in when Rasmus Andersson was called for goalie interference.

It’s not the first time this series went against the Golden Knights.

An unsuccessful video challenge by Vegas coach John Tortorella in Game 2 on Thursday night led to a power-play goal by Staal, whose goal helped the Hurricanes rally to win 4-3 in overtime.

The Golden Knights received a major boost when defenseman Brayden McNabb took the ice. He took a puck in the face in the first period Thursday night at Carolina and didn’t return to the game. McNabb, who had on a cage to protect his face, is Vegas’ best defensive defenseman. He was on the first defensive pair with Theodore.

This series has been, if anything, unpredictable.

Each team blew two-goal leads in the first two games, with the Golden Knights rallying in the opener and Hurricanes responding with a Game 2 victory in overtime.

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Castro's celebration of his 95th birthday with top officials and military leaders at the Ministry of Interior in Havana on late Friday offered Cuba's socialist government an opportunity to close ranks and project defiance as the Trump administration escalates its pressure campaign on the fuel-starved island.

State TV broadcast footage of Castro, clad in his olive-green military uniform, entering a packed theater to a standing ovation, followed by his grandson and bodyguard, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez, and Cuban President Miguel Diáz-Canel.

Diáz-Canel delivered an effusive tribute to the “heroism and dignity" displayed by Castro and his late brother, the central figure of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro. He praised Raúl Castro, who served as defense minister of Cuba for nearly 50 years, for his “courage and loyalty (that) made him a target from a very early age for the intelligence services of our enemies."

In a more direct response to provocations by the Trump administration, Diaz-Canel warned that “there will be a decisive and resolute battle" if the U.S. acts on its threats to invade the island.

“Raúl is Raúl," he said, echoing the slogan that has appeared in billboards across Havana and in a flood of social media posts since the May 20 U.S. indictment of Raúl Castro on murder charges — an apparent attempt to mobilize national unity to counter the government's image of isolation. “Raúl is Cuba, and Cuba is untouchable.”

Friday's late-night celebration, two days after Castro turned 95, marked a rare public appearance for the low-profile but influential Cuban army general. Although he formally retired from politics in April 2021, Castro is believed to wield considerable political power.

The Justice Department’s indictment unsealed last month accuses Castro of ordering the 1996 shootdown of civilian planes flown by Miami-based exiles. It was the steepest in a series of escalations since the Trump administration all but cut off Cuba’s oil supplies in January, exacerbating the island's long-running problems like blackouts and a public health crisis.

The Trump administration demands that Cuba’s socialist government release political prisoners, implement major economic reforms and change its way of governance to avoid becoming a national security threat. Cuba has said it poses no threat to the U.S.

Phillips, the son of Charles' sister Princess Anne, wed Harriet Sperling, a nurse working for the National Health Service, in a church ceremony in the southwestern English village of Kemble.

They were joined by more than 100 guests including Prince William, Princess Catherine, Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice and other royals.

The bride wore a high-neck lace gown designed by Emilia Wickstead.

Phillips, 48, is the son Anne and her first husband Mark Phillips. He is the late Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest grandson, and William and Prince Harry’s first cousin.

Phillips split from his first wife Autumn Kelly, with whom he has two children. His engagement to Sperling was announced last year.

Well-wishers cheered when the bride and royals arrived, and after the ceremony guests held umbrellas in heavy rain to throw rose petals over the couple as they left the church.

The San Antonio Spurs are down 0-2. They say they're unfazed.

Such is the state of things in the NBA Finals, where both teams were taking a travel day on Saturday. Practices resume Sunday and Game 3 of the title series is Monday night at Madison Square Garden, where President Donald Trump will be watching alongside fans who are willing to pay nearly $10,000 for seats so far from the court that 7-foot-4 Spurs center Victor Wembanyama will look tiny.

The Knicks insist they're not celebrating yet. The Spurs insist they're not defeated yet.

“Every single day, we chip away and try to be the best that we can be. ... Even with the series it is now, next game, mindset has to be 0-0 again,” said Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, the late-game hero in both the Game 1 and Game 2 wins that New York got in San Antonio to take an absolute stranglehold on the series. “It’s just how it has to be. You can’t be comfortable. You can’t be satisfied with anything. Just got to continue to push forward.”

That's all they've done for a month and a half now.

They've won 13 consecutive games, the second-longest single-season playoff run in NBA history behind only a 15-game winning streak by Golden State in the 2017 postseason. They have a chance to be the first team in NBA history to make it through the last three rounds of the playoffs — the conference semifinals, conference final and NBA Finals — unbeaten.

“One of the things that we preach is being present,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “In order to be present, you can’t think about the past, you can’t think about the future. For all of us as humans, that’s hard as heck to do. I constantly, boom, flick myself in the head, tell myself, ‘Be present, be present, be present.’ I obviously mention it to the group, too. With those guys being who they are, they’ve really embraced it, and they’re really trying to live it every single moment during this run.”

They don't get rattled, even on this stage. Counting the NBA Cup final, which isn't recognized in standings or official league stats, the Knicks are 4-1 against the Spurs this season. The four wins by New York all have something in common: the Knicks trailed by double digits in each of those games.

— Cup final in Vegas, the Spurs led by 11 (and lost by 11).

— Regular-season game at MSG, the Spurs led by 12 (and lost by 25).

— Game 1 of the finals, the Spurs led by 14 (and lost by 10).

— Game 2 of the finals, the Spurs led by 12 (and lost by one).

“We just need to figure it out,” Wembanyama said. “We need to keep working on it.”

The only Spurs win over New York was the regular-season game at home, where they won by two after trailing by 19 and never leading by more than six.

Go figure.

“It was going to take everything to win the series anyway,” Spurs guard Stephon Castle said. “Putting ourselves in this type of predicament is going to be tough, but I don’t think it’s anything we can’t handle.”

The Knicks have an idea of what's coming on Monday.

The Garden will be shaking to its core, since people who spent the kind of money that they're spending to come see a basketball game likely won't decide to sit quietly in their seats. The energy in the city will be beyond compare, with a 53-year wait for another NBA championship now just two games away and oddsmakers — who have the Knicks at -550 to win the series — basically saying it's inevitable. And the Spurs will come out throwing whatever punches they have left to throw.

“Knowing them, there’s going to be another level,” Brunson said. “We have to be prepared and be ready to match it and play for 48 minutes. No matter what goes on in the game, we have to have each other’s back, what’s going on, who is on a run, what’s not, who is up, who is down, making sure we are playing together for 48 minutes is really important.”

If the Knicks could use a cautionary tale, they need look no further than Mikal Bridges. He was with Phoenix when the Suns took a 2-0 lead in the 2021 finals against Milwaukee. The Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo won that series in six games. It's a different situation now — those two Suns wins were in Phoenix, not on the road — but it is a reminder that two wins aren't enough.

“It’s still 0-0 as far as we’re concerned,” Knicks forward Josh Hart said. “Being up 2-0 means really nothing. This (San Antonio) team is going to come out on Monday with an unbelievable amount of energy and desperation, and we’ve got to be better.”

___

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

Signs of trouble were everywhere.

The mood in New York was abysmal.

Mike Brown's future as coach was a hot topic.

“Stuff's going to happen,” Brown, the Knicks coach in his first year, said that night in Atlanta. “Plenty of teams have been down 1-2. I even think Oklahoma City was down 1-2 last year and they ended up winning it. I'm not saying we're going to win it or anything like that, but the reality of it is it's seven games and you take one game at a time.”

The Knicks have played 13 games since. The results: win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win and win. One game at a time, one win at a time, and quite possibly, one championship at a time. The Knicks are back in New York with a 2-0 lead over San Antonio in the NBA Finals, still riding the strength of a 13-game winning streak.

A streak like that has happened once before in NBA postseason history, when counting just single-season winning runs. Golden State won 15 in a row on its way to the 2017 title.

The common thread between those Warriors and these Knicks? That would be Brown. He was an assistant on that Golden State staff and went 12-0 as acting head coach during the playoffs while Steve Kerr was sidelined by back issues.

“You've got to have good players,” Brown said. “I’m not that smart. You've got to have good players that carry you.”

Brown's playoff record, officially, is a stellar 64-42 as a head coach.

Throw those 12 games with the Warriors on his record — which, by NBA rule and precedent, doesn't happen because Kerr was still head coach, just not present on the sideline for those games — and Brown's playoff winning percentage would rise to .644. That would be third best in NBA history among coaches with at least 100 playoff games, behind only Phil Jackson and Kerr.

Either way, Brown now has to be considered the coaching king of the playoff winning streak.

A look inside this run by New York:

Dominant margins

— The Knicks have outscored Atlanta, Philadelphia, Cleveland and San Antonio in these 13 games by 273 points, the biggest 13-game margin in NBA playoff history. Before this stretch, the biggest 13-game playoff point-differential margin was 225, by those Warriors — the team that Brown led on an interim basis — in 2017.

— All but two of the Knicks' wins in this streak were by double figures. The exceptions: Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against Philadelphia (a six-point win) and Game 2 of the NBA Finals against San Antonio (a one-point win). Six additional wins have come with a final margin between 10 and 16 points, and the other five were total blowouts — the Knicks winning those by 29, 30, 37, 39 and 51 points.

— The Knicks have led by 40 or more in four different games during the streak, including a 61-point lead at Atlanta in the clinching game of that East first-round series.

Rarely in trouble

— The Knicks have faced double-digit deficits in just four of the games, with two of those the first two of these NBA Finals against the Spurs. They trailed by 14 in Game 1 and by as many as 12 in Game 2.

— They also trailed Philadelphia by 12 in Game 3 of the East semifinals and Cleveland by 22 in Game 1 of the East final.

Road warriors

— New York is 8-0 on the road during this winning streak, the final margin in those games — even with a one-point game from Friday in there — averaging a staggering 21.5 points.

— The only team in Knicks history with a longer road winning streak, either in the regular season or playoffs, was the 1969-70 team that once won 12 in a row away from home. That team went on to win New York's first NBA title.

___

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

Leer en español

The attack happened Thursday night in the Keystone neighborhood.

Officials said a resident had hired a professional trapper and had a nuisance raccoon trapped in a backyard.

“The person went out to investigate because of the noise and to secure the area,” North Miami Council Member Kevin Burns said. “And as they were doing that, three additional raccoons came under the fence and attacked the individual, causing severe trauma.”

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, raccoons are intelligent animals found throughout Florida. The agency says a panicked raccoon can bite.

“We have a large raccoon population,” Burns said.

Burns said he has received many emails from concerned residents following the attack.

“We advise people, along with FWC, don’t feed the animals,” Burns said.

The injured woman is recovering at Ryder Trauma Center, where several FWC officers were seen.

In a statement, the agency said the county health department has been notified.

“FWC Wildlife Assistance biologists will be providing the injured party and neighbors with technical assistance and guidance for prevention of further conflicts with raccoons,” the agency said.

El ataque ocurrió la noche del jueves en el vecindario Keystone.

Las autoridades informaron que una residente había contratado a un trampero profesional y tenía un mapache considerado una molestia atrapado en un patio trasero.

“La persona salió a investigar debido al ruido y para asegurar el área”, dijo Kevin Burns, miembro del Concejo Municipal de North Miami. “Y mientras hacía eso, tres mapaches adicionales entraron por debajo de la cerca y atacaron a la persona, causándole lesiones graves”.

Según la Comisión de Conservación de Pesca y Vida Silvestre de Florida (FWC), los mapaches son animales inteligentes que se encuentran en todo Florida. La agencia señala que un mapache asustado puede morder.

“Tenemos una gran población de mapaches”, dijo Burns.

Burns indicó que ha recibido muchos correos electrónicos de residentes preocupados tras el ataque.

“Aconsejamos a las personas, junto con la FWC, que no alimenten a los animales”, dijo Burns.

La mujer herida se recupera en el Ryder Trauma Center, donde fueron vistos varios oficiales de la FWC.

En un comunicado, la agencia indicó que el departamento de salud del condado ha sido notificado.

“Los biólogos de Asistencia a la Vida Silvestre de la FWC brindarán a la persona lesionada y a los vecinos asistencia técnica y orientación para prevenir futuros conflictos con mapaches”, señaló la agencia.

Lee en español

Wachter said the kittens arrived at the shelter in early April weighing just 0.33 pounds, before their eyes had even opened. After spending several weeks in a volunteer foster home, she said the siblings are now ready for adoption.

Madonna, a black-and-white kitten, was described as outgoing and playful, while Mariah, a long-haired calico, was more reserved. Wachter noted that nearly all calico cats are female.

Wachter also spotlighted Kobe, a 1½-year-old dog available for adoption. She described him as energetic, playful and well-suited for an active family. Kobe enjoys playing with other dogs, entertaining himself with toys and splashing in water, according to Wachter.

Shelter staff encourages other prospective adopters to visit the shelter and meet available pets.

Click here for more information on how you can adopt a pet.

Wachter explicó que las gatitas llegaron al refugio a principios de abril pesando apenas 0.33 libras, antes incluso de abrir los ojos. Tras pasar varias semanas en un hogar temporal con una familia voluntaria, indicó que las hermanas ya están listas para ser adoptadas.

Madonna, una gatita blanco y negro, fue descrita como extrovertida y juguetona, mientras que Mariah, una gata carey de pelo largo, es más reservada. Wachter señaló que casi todas las gatas carey son hembras.

Wachter también destacó a Kobe, un perro de un año y medio disponible para adopción. Lo describió como enérgico, juguetón e ideal para una familia activa. Según Wachter, a Kobe le gusta jugar con otros perros, entretenerse con juguetes y chapotear en el agua.

El personal del refugio anima a otros posibles adoptantes a visitar las instalaciones y conocer a las mascotas disponibles.

Haga clic aquí para obtener más información sobre cómo adoptar una mascota.

Leer en español

According to deputies, Mary Maruri was reported missing on Friday near her home in the 5300 block of Southwest 62nd Avenue.

Investigators on Saturday said that she has since been reunited with her loved ones.

Authorities have not said what led to her disappearance.

Según los agentes, Mary Maruri fue reportada como desaparecida el viernes cerca de su vivienda en la cuadra 5300 de Southwest 62nd Avenue.

Los investigadores informaron el sábado que ya fue reunida con sus seres queridos.

Las autoridades no han informado qué provocó su desaparición.

Castro, quien acaba de cumplir además 95 años, se presentó este viernes por la noche en una ceremonia que celebró tanto su onomástico como el 65 aniversario de la fundación del Ministerio del Interior de la isla, informaron los medios de prensa oficiales.

La televisión mostró imágenes de la llegada del líder al teatro a donde se organizó la velada, vestido con su tradicional uniforme verde olivo y rodeado de los militares de alto rango además de la plana mayor del gobierno y del actual presidente del país, Miguel Díaz-Canel.

“Raúl es Raúl” –una consigna repetida en actos y manifestaciones revolucionarias-- , “dice el pueblo en todas las tribunas. La idea trae la singularidad de una figura excepcional que, junto a Fidel, ya ocupa una posición distinguida en la digna historia de la nación cubana por la suma de valores humanos que lo distinguieron”, expresó Díaz-Canel en las palabras centrales del mitin.

“Significa heroísmo, dignidad y escudo moral. Significa haber derrotado varios intentos de asesinato, porque su valor y lealtad lo convirtieron desde muy temprano en un objetivo de los servicios de inteligencia de nuestros enemigos y de los mercenarios entrenados y financiados por ellos. Raúl es Cuba, y a Cuba no se toca”, agregó el mandatario.

Fiscales federales de Estados Unidos anunciaron el 20 de mayo cargos contra Raúl Castro por el derribo de dos aeronaves civiles operadas por exiliados cubanos asentados en Miami en 1996, con lo que el gobierno estadounidense intensifica la presión sobre el gobierno socialista de Cuba.

La acusación alega que Castro ordenó el derribo las naves operadas por el grupo Hermanos al Rescate, con sede en Miami. Castro era en ese entonces el ministro de Defensa. Los cargos, que fueron presentados en secreto por un jurado investigador en abril, incluyen asesinato y destrucción de una aeronave.

Castro arribó a los 95 años el 3 de julio pasado y desde que fuera acusado no había sido visto en público, ya que se encuentra retirado de cargos formales, aunque su presencia es simbólicamente fuerte el país

El presidente Donald Trump desató una dura campaña contra la isla en enero pasado e impuso un cerco petrolero dispuesto a asfixiar a la isla, imponer un cambio de gobierno o “tomarla”, según él mismo aseguró.

Cuba advirtió que no está dispuesta a aceptar pasivamente una intervención militar en la isla.

El bloqueo energético estadounidense impidió la llegada de combustibles y agudizó las condiciones de crisis que vive en el último lustro con consecuencias para la población como largos apagones, deficiencias en la salud pública y la producción y la isla casi paralizada.

Ambos países reconocieron que mantienen conversaciones pero no se conoce el alcance de las mismas.

Leer en español

But a new exhibit may be prompting an about-face from the federal government.

The Stonewall National Museum, Archives and Library has struggled to keep its doors open, according to director Robert Kesten.

“We were notified that the federal government would not be giving any grants,” Kesten said.

So when the museum began planning its latest exhibit, Kesten was surprised to learn it had received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“And we were told that we got the grant and so I remember calling to find out if that was true,” he said.

The grant is funding an exhibit about the Revolutionary War and the story of Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a military general who many historians believe was gay.

Around 1778, the Americans were looking for military help. Kesten said von Steuben had some of the best military training in Europe.

“He had the best training in Europe,” he said.

According to the exhibit, von Steuben was wanted for arrest in Europe over homosexual activities before being recruited to America by Benjamin Franklin.

“He really was expert at military strategy,” Kesten said.

Historians believe von Steuben became one of George Washington’s most trusted military advisers.

“Some people would say he is the father of the U.S. Army,” Kesten said.

Von Steuben also wrote the military training manual known as the “Blue Book.”

“That book is still in print, and still available, and still used,” Kesten said.

The exhibit highlights von Steuben’s role in helping the Americans defeat the British during the Revolutionary War.

“He gave them strategy, he gave them a sense of purpose,” Kesten said.

The exhibit is now open and is part of the country’s 250th anniversary celebration.

Kesten said he believes it may be the only diversity, equity and inclusion-related exhibit in the country that is partly funded by the federal government.

Kesten said the exhibit’s message is especially relevant during Pride Month.

“We hurt ourselves when we dismiss people because we are uncomfortable with their lifestyle that has no impact on their ability to protect and defend the country,” he said.

The exhibit will remain on display through June as the museum faces additional state funding cuts in the coming months.

The museum has largely been operating on donations from residents, according to Kesten.

La segunda vuelta se celebrará el 21 de junio, entre el senador Iván Cepeda, aliado del presidente Gustavo Petro, y el abogado Abelardo de la Espriella, respaldado por el mandatario norteamericano Donald Trump.

Es un momento crucial para Colombia, que bajo Petro se consolidó como uno de los defensores más vehementes de la protección de la Amazonía y de la transición para dejar atrás el petróleo, el gas y el carbón, los principales impulsores del cambio climático.

Petro se opuso a nuevos contratos de exploración de petróleo y gas, prometió no impulsar el fracking —una técnica utilizada para extraer petróleo y gas de formaciones rocosas subterráneas — y buscó posicionar a Colombia como líder mundial en temas climáticos. Colombia organizó recientemente una cumbre internacional sin precedentes centrada en una transición global para abandonar los combustibles fósiles.

Analistas señalan que Cepeda probablemente representaría la continuidad de las prioridades de Petro. Ha enfatizado los derechos indígenas, la conservación ambiental y la reducción de la dependencia de Colombia de los combustibles fósiles, al tiempo que ha dado señales de apoyo a mantener los esfuerzos de Petro para orientar al país hacia las energías renovables y alejarlo de nuevos desarrollos de petróleo y gas.

De la Espriella, por su parte, ha hecho campaña con una plataforma centrada en la seguridad y el crecimiento económico. Ha expresado apoyo a ampliar las industrias extractivas de Colombia, incluido el fracking, y ha sostenido que el país debería aprovechar más sus recursos subterráneos.

“Aunque ambos candidatos aseguran que valoran la conservación del ecosistema amazónico, la elección a la que se enfrentan los votantes es entre un enfoque que se centra en mantener un ecosistema prístino frente a otro basado en la explotación productiva”, declaró Elizabeth Dickinson, subdirectora para América Latina del International Crisis Group.

“En materia de clima, esta es una elección entre priorizar la energía verde y reimpulsar los combustibles fósiles”, añadió.

Representantes de Cepeda y de la Espriella no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios de The Associated Press.

Visiones contrapuestas sobre el desarrollo

Petro ha chocado repetidamente con Trump por la migración, la política climática y la cooperación en seguridad. A comienzos de este año, ambos se enfrentaron públicamente en redes sociales después de que Petro se negara a permitir el aterrizaje de vuelos de deportación de Estados Unidos con migrantes colombianos, lo que llevó a Trump a amenazar con aranceles y restricciones de visado antes de que los países alcanzaran un acuerdo.

Espriella, en cambio, recibió recientemente el respaldo de Trump, quien elogió las posturas del candidato sobre el orden público y la seguridad, y dijo que la elección era importante para las relaciones entre Washington y Bogotá.

Colombia alberga una porción significativa de la selva amazónica, uno de los bosques tropicales más importantes del mundo, que está cada vez más presionado por la deforestación, la minería ilegal, el narcotráfico y el cambio climático.

El gobierno de Petro intentó combatir esos problemas promoviendo una mayor participación indígena en la política ambiental y buscó fortalecer la cooperación entre los países amazónicos. En el escenario internacional, se convirtió en uno de los defensores más visibles de la protección de la selva y del abandono de los combustibles fósiles.

Quienes apoyan ampliar la producción de petróleo y gas sostienen que Colombia sigue dependiendo en gran medida de esos ingresos y advierten que una transición rápida podría tensionar las finanzas públicas y el crecimiento económico.

Es probable que la tensión entre la dependencia económica de las industrias extractivas y la protección ambiental marque a cualquier administración que asuma el poder.

Cómo difieren los candidatos sobre la minería ilegal y la extracción de recursos

La minería ilegal, el narcotráfico y la deforestación se han expandido en los últimos años por grandes zonas de la selva, a menudo bajo el control de grupos armados. El aumento del precio del oro, la demanda persistente de cocaína y la expansión de redes criminales transnacionales han hecho que los delitos ambientales sean más rentables que nunca.

“La mayor amenaza para la conservación del ecosistema amazónico es la expansión del crimen organizado. El desafío para ambos candidatos será frenar esa expansión criminal hacia estas industrias”, indicó Dickinson.

Señaló que los grupos criminales han invertido cada vez más en la minería ilegal y la deforestación, convirtiendo la destrucción ambiental en un modelo de negocio lucrativo.

Esa realidad ha alimentado visiones contrapuestas sobre la seguridad.

Cepeda ha dado señales de apoyo a continuar las negociaciones con grupos armados, sobre la base de la política de Petro de “Paz Total”, que buscaba reducir la violencia mediante diálogos con guerrillas, organizaciones de narcotráfico y otros actores armados. Sus partidarios dicen que el diálogo ofrece la mejor oportunidad de reducir la violencia, mientras que críticos sostienen que algunas organizaciones criminales han aprovechado el proceso para consolidar el control territorial.

Incluso bajo Petro, la violencia contra defensores del medio ambiente se disparó, según Andrew Miller, director de incidencia de Amazon Watch, una organización sin fines de lucro enfocada en la protección ambiental y los derechos indígenas. Colombia ha figurado repetidamente entre los países más mortíferos del mundo para los activistas ambientales, pese a la agenda ambiental del gobierno.

De la Espriella ha prometido un enfoque más duro, centrado en la fuerza militar y en restaurar la autoridad del Estado.

Gimena Sánchez, directora para los Andes en la Washington Office on Latin America, sostuvo que las comunidades indígenas están particularmente preocupadas por cómo las operaciones de seguridad podrían afectar territorios que durante mucho tiempo han quedado atrapados entre los grupos armados y el Estado.

“La historia de la militarización de los pueblos indígenas en toda la Amazonía, pero especialmente en Colombia, ha sido devastadora”, apuntó.

Qué piden las comunidades amazónicas que se verían afectadas

Alex Rufino, integrante del pueblo indígena ticuna en la región amazónica de Colombia, afirmó que la protección ambiental no puede separarse de la inversión social.

Sostuvo que las discusiones sobre la selva a menudo pasan por alto a las personas que viven allí y los desafíos que enfrentan, incluido el escaso acceso a educación, atención médica, vivienda y empleo.

Afirmó que políticas sociales más sólidas podrían ayudar a abordar algunas de las presiones de fondo que impulsan la destrucción ambiental, entre ellas el cultivo de coca para el comercio de cocaína, el reclutamiento en grupos armados y la actividad económica ilegal. Un mejor acceso a educación, salud, vivienda y empleo, argumentó, daría a los residentes alternativas a economías que a menudo contribuyen a la deforestación, la minería ilegal y el conflicto.

El cambio climático es cada vez más visible en toda la región, con sequías en los últimos años que redujeron los niveles de los ríos y contribuyeron a la muerte de peces y delfines. También crecen las preocupaciones por la contaminación con mercurio vinculada a la minería ilegal. Estudios en la Amazonía colombiana han detectado mercurio en peces consumidos por comunidades locales y niveles elevados en algunos residentes, lo que ha encendido alarmas sobre impactos a largo plazo en la salud.

Así, mientras los políticos en Bogotá debaten estrategias de seguridad, política energética y crecimiento económico, muchos habitantes de la Amazonía dicen que el próximo gobierno debe primero escuchar a quienes viven en la selva misma.

Para Rufino, eso significa reconocer que la Amazonía no es simplemente una fuente de petróleo, minerales o madera, sino el hogar de comunidades que la han protegido durante generaciones.

___________________________________

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.

Sin embargo, una nueva exhibición podría estar provocando un cambio de postura por parte del gobierno federal.

El Museo, Archivos y Biblioteca Nacional Stonewall ha tenido dificultades para mantener sus puertas abiertas, según su director, Robert Kesten.

“Nos notificaron que el gobierno federal no otorgaría ninguna subvención”, dijo Kesten.

Por eso, cuando el museo comenzó a planificar su exhibición más reciente, Kesten se sorprendió al enterarse de que había recibido fondos del Fondo Nacional para las Humanidades (National Endowment for the Humanities).

“Y nos dijeron que habíamos recibido la subvención, así que recuerdo haber llamado para confirmar si eso era cierto”, dijo.

La subvención financia una exhibición sobre la Guerra de Independencia de Estados Unidos y la historia del barón Friedrich Von Steuben, un general militar que muchos historiadores creen que era gay.

Alrededor de 1778, los estadounidenses buscaban ayuda militar. Kesten señaló que von Steuben tenía una de las mejores formaciones militares de Europa.

“Tenía la mejor formación de Europa”, dijo.

Según la exhibición, Von Steuben era buscado para ser arrestado en Europa por actividades homosexuales antes de ser reclutado para venir a Estados Unidos por Benjamin Franklin.

“Realmente era un experto en estrategia militar”, dijo Kesten.

Los historiadores creen que Von Steuben se convirtió en uno de los asesores militares de mayor confianza de George Washington.

“Algunas personas dirían que es el padre del Ejército de Estados Unidos”, afirmó Kesten.

Von Steuben también escribió el manual de entrenamiento militar conocido como el “Libro Azul”.

“Ese libro todavía se imprime, todavía está disponible y todavía se utiliza”, dijo Kesten.

La exhibición destaca el papel de Von Steuben en ayudar a los estadounidenses a derrotar a los británicos durante la Guerra de Independencia.

“Les dio estrategia, les dio un sentido de propósito”, dijo Kesten.

La exhibición ya está abierta al público y forma parte de la celebración del 250 aniversario del país.

Kesten afirmó que cree que podría ser la única exhibición relacionada con diversidad, equidad e inclusión en el país que está financiada parcialmente por el gobierno federal.

Kesten dijo que el mensaje de la exhibición es especialmente relevante durante el Mes del Orgullo.

“Nos perjudicamos cuando descartamos a las personas porque nos sentimos incómodos con su estilo de vida, algo que no tiene ningún impacto en su capacidad para proteger y defender al país”, dijo.

La exhibición permanecerá abierta durante junio mientras el museo enfrenta recortes adicionales de fondos estatales en los próximos meses.

Según Kesten, el museo ha estado operando en gran medida gracias a las donaciones de los residentes.

Un video de vigilancia obtenido por Local 10 News muestra los momentos previos a una balacera.

Según la policía, la balacera fue reportada a las 4:53 a.m. en la cuadra 6700 de Collins Avenue.

La policía informó que los agentes llegaron a la escena y encontraron a un hombre con una herida de bala.

Funcionarios del Departamento de Bomberos de Miami Beach trasladaron a la víctima al Ryder Trauma Center del Hospital Jackson Memorial en condición crítica.

La policía indicó que el tráfico en dirección norte sobre Collins Avenue permaneció cerrado durante varias horas a la altura de la calle 67 mientras se desarrollaba la investigación.

Los residentes del área comenzaron el día con preguntas y preocupaciones, especialmente cuando el equipo SWAT fue visto en el vecindario buscando a un sospechoso en complejos de apartamentos cercanos.

“Los vi reuniéndose en la acera con sus armas, preparándose para entrar y asegurarse de que todo estuviera seguro, y fue entonces cuando pasé en mi bicicleta y le pregunté a un agente: “¿Todos están bien?” Y él me respondió: “Sí””, dijo Thomas Antone.

“Simplemente ocurrió muy rápido”, dijo otro residente, Rene Welcome. “Vi a la gente y luego vi a la policía acordonando el área y todo eso, fue peor de lo que pensé”.

Según las autoridades, una persona de interés fue detenida para ser interrogada.

No se divulgaron de inmediato más detalles.

Cualquier persona con información debe comunicarse con el Departamento de Policía de Miami Beach o con Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers al 305-471-8477.

Hegseth, speaking at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in northwestern France during commemorations for the 82nd anniversary of the June 6, 1944, landings, said that today, “different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.”

“Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive,” he said.

“When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?” he added. “I pray not, and I believe not.”

Hegseth did not use the word immigration, but his remarks echoed broader Trump administration criticism of Europe over migration, borders and what U.S. officials have described as censorship of nationalist and far-right voices.

On Saturday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office condemned U.S. Vice President JD Vance for blaming immigration for the killing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old British student stabbed to death in Southampton, even though both Nowak and his killer were British.

In December, the Trump administration’s national security strategy warned that Europe faced the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and could become “unrecognizable” within 20 years.

¿Quién se llevará el título?

El evento deportivo más visto del mundo abrirá con México enfrentando a Sudáfrica, una revancha del partido inaugural de 2010, pero la atención rápidamente se centra en los favoritos que se espera lleguen lejos en el torneo.

La actual campeona Argentina llega al torneo como una de las principales contendientes después de ganar el título en 2022, mientras que Francia sigue entre las favoritas tras alcanzar las últimas dos finales de la Copa Mundial.

Brasil vuelve a figurar entre los favoritos mientras busca su sexto título de la Copa Mundial, y España también está generando atención.

Haga clic aquí para un análisis más detallado de cómo podría desarrollarse la fase de grupos de la Copa Mundial.

Sin embargo, la conversación no se limita a las potencias tradicionales.

Algunos aficionados incluso señalan posibles sorpresas, incluida Haití, lo que representaría un avance histórico y una gran historia para los seguidores en el sur de Florida.

Mientras continúan llegando las predicciones, sigue el debate: ¿Brasil, Argentina, Francia, España o un campeón sorpresa?

Los espectadores pueden votar en la encuesta de arriba o dejar sus predicciones en la sección de comentarios a continuación.

Who will take home the title?

Leer español

The world’s most-watched sporting event opens with Mexico facing South Africa — a rematch of the 2010 opener — but attention quickly turns to the favorites expected to make a deep run.

Defending champion Argentina enters the tournament as a top contender after winning it all in 2022, while France remains in the mix after reaching the last two World Cup finals.

Brazil is once again among the favorites as it chases a sixth World Cup title, and Spain is also drawing attention.

Click here for a closer look at how the World Cup group stage could unfold.

Still, the conversation isn’t limited to the traditional powerhouses.

Some fans are even pointing to possible underdog runs, including Haiti, which would be a historic breakthrough and a major storyline for supporters in South Florida.

As predictions pour in, the debate continues: Brazil, Argentina, France, Spain — or a surprise champion?

Viewers can vote in the poll above or leave their predictions in the comment section below.

Leer en español

According to Reuters, Castro appeared at an Interior Ministry event in Havana, Cuba, and was shown on Cuban state television.

The Trump administration accuses Castro of ordering the Cuban Air Force’s shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue Cessna 337 Skymasters that departed from Opa-locka Executive Airport at about 3:20 p.m. on Feb. 24, 1996. Investigators said four people were killed in the shootdown.

Castro was indicted by a Miami federal grand jury on April 23. The superseding indictment remained sealed until it was publicly announced on May 20.

Reuters reported that Castro, who turned 95 on Wednesday, was last seen publicly during May Day celebrations in Havana, shortly before the indictment was announced.

Before that, he had not appeared in public since Jan. 15, when he attended a ceremony honoring 32 Cuban soldiers killed during the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The case stems from one of the deadliest incidents involving Cuban exile groups and remains a source of tension between the United States and Cuba nearly three decades later.

Según Reuters, Castro asistió a un evento del Ministerio del Interior en La Habana, Cuba, y fue mostrado por la televisión estatal cubana.

La administración del presidente Trump acusa a Castro de ordenar el derribo por parte de la Fuerza Aérea Cubana de dos aeronaves Cessna 337 Skymaster de Hermanos al Rescate que despegaron del Aeropuerto Ejecutivo de Opa-locka alrededor de las 3:20 p.m. del 24 de febrero de 1996. Los investigadores indicaron que cuatro personas murieron en el derribo.

Castro fue acusado formalmente por un gran jurado federal de Miami el 23 de abril. La acusación sustitutiva permaneció sellada hasta que fue anunciada públicamente el 20 de mayo.

Reuters informó que Castro, quien cumplió 95 años el miércoles, fue visto públicamente por última vez durante las celebraciones del Primero de Mayo en La Habana, poco antes de que se anunciara la acusación.

Antes de eso, no había aparecido en público desde el 15 de enero, cuando asistió a una ceremonia en honor a 32 soldados cubanos fallecidos durante la captura del ex presidente venezolano Nicolás Maduro.

El caso surge de uno de los incidentes más mortales relacionados con grupos de exiliados cubanos y sigue siendo una fuente de tensión entre Estados Unidos y Cuba casi tres décadas después.

Leer en epañol

Police have since cleared the scene, but an urgent search remains underway for the driver who struck a BSO patrol vehicle and fled.

Video from the scene showed significant damage to the deputy’s vehicle. The driver’s side door was heavily crushed, and the airbags had deployed.

Investigators said the crash happened around 6:15 p.m. near West Broward Boulevard and Northwest 11th Avenue. After the collision, the driver involved ran from the scene, according to authorities.

Investigators were seen examining a black Hyundai SUV as they continued working to determine exactly what led to the crash.

Witnesses said the black SUV ran a red light before colliding with the deputy’s vehicle.

“The black vehicle ran through the red light,” the witness said. “Caught the sheriff car on the side. The sheriff car spun all the way down Broward Boulevard until it made a stop and the officer was very injured. We know he’s injured because he got hit on the driver’s door.”

The witness said he went to check on the deputy after the crash.

“Then I went to check on the officer,” he said. “The officer was pulled from the car. He wasn’t thrown from the car. He was pulled from the car by paramedics.”

The deputy was rushed to a hospital for treatment. Authorities have not released an update on the deputy’s condition.

The investigation remains ongoing as detectives work to identify and locate the driver who fled.

Anyone with information on the case is urged to call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477.

La Policía de Miami informó que los agentes fueron enviados a la cuadra 3800 de Oak Avenue alrededor de la 1:55 a.m.

La policía indicó que, al llegar, los agentes reportaron haber escuchado disparos en el área y posteriormente encontraron a una persona que había sido baleada.

Indicaron que personal de Miami Fire Rescue trasladó a la víctima a la sala de emergencias del Hospital Jackson Memorial.

La edad, el género, la identidad y la condición de la víctima no fueron divulgados de inmediato.

Cualquier persona con información sobre la balacera debe llamar a Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers al 305-471-8477.

La policía ya despejó la escena, pero continúa una búsqueda urgente del conductor que impactó una patrulla de la BSO y huyó.

Video de la escena mostró daños significativos en el vehículo del agente. La puerta del lado del conductor quedó severamente aplastada y las bolsas de aire se desplegaron.

Los investigadores indicaron que el choque ocurrió alrededor de las 6:15 p.m. cerca de West Broward Boulevard y Northwest 11th Avenue. Después de la colisión, el conductor involucrado huyó de la escena, según las autoridades.

Los investigadores fueron vistos examinando una SUV Hyundai negra mientras continuaban trabajando para determinar exactamente qué provocó el choque.

Testigos dijeron que la SUV negra se pasó una luz roja antes de chocar contra el vehículo del agente.

“El vehículo negro se pasó la luz roja”, dijo un testigo. “Impactó la patrulla del sheriff en un costado. La patrulla giró por completo sobre Broward Boulevard hasta detenerse y el agente resultó gravemente herido. Sabemos que está herido porque recibió el impacto en la puerta del conductor”.

El testigo dijo que fue a verificar el estado del agente después del choque.

“Luego fui a ver al agente”, dijo. “El agente fue sacado del vehículo. No salió expulsado. Los paramédicos lo sacaron del vehículo”.

El agente fue trasladado de urgencia a un hospital para recibir tratamiento. Las autoridades no han divulgado una actualización sobre su condición.

La investigación continúa mientras los detectives trabajan para identificar y localizar al conductor que huyó.

Staged at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, the musical is in its third run on Broadway — and earned 11 Tony nominations, including for best revival. It's resonating the most with audiences this time, they said. “Three is the charm,” Ahrens said.

“When we originally did it on Broadway, which was 1998, I think a lot of people, if not most people, were thinking about this piece as a period piece,” Flaherty said. “I think now, people are responding to it as a contemporary story.”

Adapted from the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, the show's book is by the late playwright Terrence McNally. It depicts a wide swath of the American experience in New York at the turn of the 20th century, from Black Americans in Harlem to Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to the white upper-class residents of the suburbs of Westchester County.

The story that unfolds is fiction, but features historical figures like activist Emma Goldman, educator and leader Booker T. Washington, banker J.P. Morgan, auto founder Henry Ford and illusionist Harry Houdini. The show's breadth — encompassing immense tragedy as well as great optimism — and the depth of the actors' performances has been bringing Broadway audiences to their feet, often mid-act.

It also has people returning. “They’re like, ‘I’m coming back with my parents,’ ‘I'm coming back with my grandchildren,’ ‘I’m coming back with my grandparents,’ and it’s not even like they have to see it. They want to experience it with them,” said Brandon Uranowitz, who had his own return to the show, decades after he acted as a child in the pre-Broadway production.

Now, he's nominated for best lead actor in a musical for playing the role of Tateh, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia. “I think it’s sort of speaking to this generational reckoning that we’re having with America and our national identity.”

‘Ragtime’ at the Tony Awards

The original production lost the best new musical Tony Award to “The Lion King,” but Ahrens and Flaherty took home the prize for best original score, McNally best book and William David Brohn best orchestrations in a competitive year. It also won Audra McDonald, the Tonys' most decorated performer, her first award. A 2009 revival received six nominations, but lost best revival to “La Cage aux Folles.”

This could be the year it finally wins a best show award: “Ragtime” is a front-runner for best musical revival, against strong competition from “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” and “The Rocky Horror Show.” Among its other nods are nominations for all three leads, and for featured performers Nichelle Lewis and Ben Levi Ross.

Portraying a range of American experiences

Joshua Henry, nominated alongside his costar for best lead actor, plays Coalhouse Walker Jr., a celebrated Black pianist at the center of his community in Harlem. Caissie Levy, nominated for her role of Mother, is the matriarch of a wealthy white family in a suburb outside New York City.

A cast of supporting characters, and a large ensemble, flesh out the lead trio's lives, relationships and eventual connections: Lewis plays Sarah, Coalhouse’s beloved; Ross is Mother’s Younger Brother and Colin Donnell her husband, Father; Shaina Taub is Goldman, the real-life activist.

Emotions in the first act peak during “Wheels of a Dream,” Lewis' iconic duet with Henry, which draws standing ovations, mid-song, nearly every night.

“She is a person who represents women — especially women of color — who don’t have a voice, women of color who are fighting to have a voice, women of color who find strength in other ways because we weren’t allowed to have it,” Lewis said of Sarah. But above all, she said, the character represents the power of trust, love and hope as a buoying force.

That hope is also what propels Uranowitz's Tateh. “Despite everything he goes through, despite the rejection, despite the oppression, despite the othering, despite antisemitism,” it’s what persists.

In the song “Journey On,” his character arrives in New York with his young daughter just as Mother's husband, Father, leaves on an expedition to the North Pole.

“You depart on a ship from a country like this,” Tateh sings, watching Father leave. “Why on Earth would you want to be leaving?” The two men are perched on separate, moving staircases on a sparsely furnished stage, but sing from the same height, emphasizing the valley between their experiences.

Like many of the characters, Father and Tateh (also “father,” in Yiddish) are nameless. The intention, Uranowitz said, is for aspects of Tateh's journey — from immigrant artist to successful moviemaker — to reflect the experience of Jewish Americans, and to resonate with people from other backgrounds as well. “If you pan out, which ‘Ragtime’ does so beautifully, it also holds just a capital ‘I’ immigration experience. And I think that’s really important for people to see right now.”

Holding a mirror to the current moment

The musical feels so relevant to 2026 that audience members have asked director Lear deBessonet, also Tony-nominated, if the creative team rewrote the script for this production. Lyrics by Ahrens and dialogue by McNally about the discrimination and brutality that Black Americans and immigrants face can seem straight out of the current moment. There are also references to keeping the country “great,” and commentary on celebrity culture and the power of industry leaders.

But the text hasn't changed. “We, in the audience, are hearing it differently,” deBessonet said. “There’s something that actually, I think is very unifying about coming together with a community of our time to look at this other time, and to look at the promise and the wound of America right next to each other.”

A 2027 tour, with deBessonet and the Broadway run’s creative team at the helm, will bring the show to a wider audience around the country.

“It does not feel like we’re looking back. It feels like we're looking in a mirror at ourselves,” Flaherty said.

There is one small change, however. When “Wheels of a Dream” is reprised in the final number, the ensemble sings “Our son will ride on the wheels of a,” and then takes a long pause before a final, resonant, “dream.” The goal is not to prescribe a particular emotional response, but to allow viewers — and the actors themselves — space for their own interpretations.

“In that moment, every single actor, every artist on that stage is invited to fill that moment with whatever feels honest to them that night,” deBessonet said. “Sometimes you can really feel that there is exuberant hope in the air. And sometimes there is grief or rage or confusion,” she added.

Ahrens said it's been a “revelation” to see how audiences have responded to the production, before and after the 2024 presidential election — and throughout this Broadway run, which concludes on Aug. 2. “It's such a visceral thing,” she said. “I don't think we've ever experienced anything like it.”

Leer en español

FWC officials on Saturday said their officers were notified by the Hollywood Police Department on Thursday about the fatal incident.

Investigators said two fishermen spotted the victim in the surf near Hollywood Beach and called law enforcement at about 8 p.m. Wednesday.

The victim was identified by authorities as 31-year-old Kellie Melinda Williams.

FWC officials later confirmed Williams “had injuries consistent with a vessel strike.”

Williams, who was born in California and lived in South Florida, was an American Airlines flight attendant and experienced swimmer who had recently married. She disappeared while snorkeling Wednesday near Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park in Dania Beach, according to authorities.

Investigators said her body later washed ashore on Hollywood Beach, where witnesses reported seeing fishermen pull her from the water. The Broward Medical Examiner’s Office ruled her cause of death was blunt force injuries.

FWC officials said the investigation remains active and that a full report will be available through a public records request once the case is completed.

The agency also extended its sympathies to Williams’ family and loved ones.

The FWC is asking anyone who witnessed the incident or has information about what happened to call the Wildlife Alert Hotline at 888-404-3922. Tips can be submitted anonymously.

Funcionarios de la FWC informaron el sábado que sus agentes fueron notificados por el Departamento de Policía de Hollywood el jueves sobre el incidente fatal.

Los investigadores indicaron que dos pescadores vieron a la víctima en el oleaje cerca de Hollywood Beach y llamaron a las autoridades alrededor de las 8 p.m. del miércoles.

Las autoridades identificaron a la víctima como Kellie Melinda Williams, de 31 años.

Posteriormente, funcionarios de la FWC confirmaron que Williams “presentaba lesiones compatibles con el impacto de una embarcación”.

Williams, quien nació en California y residía en el sur de Florida, era asistente de vuelo de American Airlines y una nadadora experimentada que se había casado recientemente. Según las autoridades, desapareció mientras practicaba snorkel el miércoles cerca del Parque Estatal Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson en Dania Beach.

Los investigadores indicaron que su cuerpo posteriormente llegó a la orilla en Hollywood Beach, donde testigos reportaron haber visto a pescadores sacarla del agua. La Oficina del Médico Forense de Broward determinó que la causa de muerte fueron lesiones por trauma contundente.

Funcionarios de la FWC informaron que la investigación sigue activa y que un informe completo estará disponible mediante una solicitud de registros públicos una vez que el caso concluya.

La agencia también expresó sus condolencias a la familia y seres queridos de Williams.

La FWC solicita que cualquier persona que haya presenciado el incidente o tenga información sobre lo ocurrido llame a la Línea Directa de Alerta de Vida Silvestre al 888-404-3922. Las denuncias pueden realizarse de forma anónima.

It also comes against the backdrop of the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran, mounting political violence in President Donald Trump's orbit and growing fears of artificial intelligence-fueled disruptions, creating a complex threat environment for authorities.

Overseeing the sprawling security apparatus is a legion of federal agencies, state and local police departments and private entities. Their responsibilities range from securing stadiums and fan zones to escorting teams and protecting dignitaries.

Their tools include hunter drones that can shoot nets over objects in restricted airspace, bag-inspecting robot dogs, giant X-ray trucks and thousands of AI-powered cameras trained on public spaces soon to be thronged by fans.

In the U.S., it’s “78 Super Bowls over 39 days,” said Andrew Giuliani, executive director of Trump’s World Cup task force, which is overseeing the multiagency effort.

“There’s never been a summer like this in American history from a security angle,” said Giuliani, son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

“We’re as prepared as we can be.”

An unprecedented security collaboration

The tournament has the same high-level federal security designation as the Super Bowl, just below a presidential inauguration or a national political convention, ensuring federal, state and local coordination. It coincides with other major events linked to the 250th anniversary of America's founding.

So far, Giuliani said, there are no credible threats.

The Department of Homeland Security, focused on Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown and hit by a funding lapse only recently resolved, estimates up 7 million people will visit the U.S. for the World Cup.

The U.S. Secret Service, under scrutiny after security breaches and attempts on Trump’s life, is in charge of protecting world leaders who show up to cheer on their countries. Trump has expressed interest in attending a match.

“I feel very comfortable where we’re at, and we feel like we have a zero-fail mission,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Congress this week, noting that the Secret Service was understaffed by about 860 agents. “But it’s going to be complicated.”

Officials have indicated they are confident they can keep Trump safe because they will be integrating his usual security into the robust World Cup plan on days he may watch a match.

The FBI has spent two years developing its security plan, incorporating lessons from other major events such as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and New Year’s Eve ball drop in New York and testing them at smaller ones, including last week’s Israel Day parade in the city.

"We prepare for the worst day,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Amit Kachhia-Patel in New York told The Associated Press. “And that’s how we go into any single event."

To help cover security costs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has distributed $625 million to the 11 U.S. host cities. An additional $250 million is being directed toward tracking and neutralizing suspect drones.

The disbursement of those funds was held up by the department's funding delay, which the Republican administration has argued hindered security planning.

Others involved in the planning effort said the federal government could have played a more hands-on role even before the shutdown.

John Cohen, a former senior DHS official who has been briefing state leaders before the matches, said the government was largely absent from planning meetings last year and did not begin sharing threat intelligence with host regions until recently.

“With an event of this magnitude, one would expect the federal government would’ve played a more active role,” Cohen said. “It felt like a missed opportunity to showcase that collaboration.”

Evolving threats from drones and AI

In January, thousands of officials involved in World Cup security gathered for exercises simulating crowd surges, vehicle attacks and mass shootings.

A month later, the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran.

“The security picture fundamentally changed,” said Stefano Ritondale, chief intelligence officer at Artorias, a defense intelligence company not involved in the security preparations. “There’s a major difference in preparing for a lone wolf radical who rams his car into a public place and a terrorist who is bankrolled by a foreign country we’re at war with.”

Among the greatest concerns are drones.

Since the last World Cup in Qatar in 2022, drones have become a prominent weapon in conflicts including Russia’s war in Ukraine and Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“If there is one threat that keeps me up at night, it is from drones,” said New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whose department is partnering with the FBI on drone mitigation.

Drones are prohibited over stadiums and fan zones, and Kachhia-Patel said the FBI has a “full suite of options” to thwart incursions. They include agents monitoring the sky and a “variety of means” to safely down the devices, he said without elaborating.

Before this year’s World Cup, the growing sophistication of AI videos was a particular concern, with officials warning that state actors can harness the technology to sow misinformation and panic.

On match days, the FBI will activate joint operations centers in each host city, bringing together local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to monitor and investigate threats.

“If there’s a video that shows an explosion going off at a site, and it’s AI generated, we have people on the ground who can validate whether or not that’s true,” said Kachhia-Patel.

A scoring opportunity for private tech

Some AI companies have pitched themselves to police departments in host cities, promising to comb through data and surveillance on game days to prevent threats, including unruly fan behavior.

“We know sports fanaticism around here in terms of the NFL and baseball to some extent, but nothing like international soccer,” said Jake Becchina, a police spokesperson in Kansas City, Missouri, which is hosting six matches.

The department has contracted with Peregrine Technologies, which promises to sift through police data and publicly available information such as team practice locations and the country affiliation of popular bars, to get ahead of possible conflict.

In Dallas, a recent $120 million tech upgrade will give local police body cameras capable of real-time translations, helping law enforcement communicate with international visitors soon to descend on the region.

Several drone detection and mitigation companies are joining efforts to help federal agencies secure the skies.

One of those companies, Fortem, has claimed to have signed a multimillion-dollar contract with DHS before the World Cup for an unusual drone mitigation strategy: quadcopters that can shoot nets at encroaching drones to trap them in midair. A spokesperson for DHS declined to discuss the contract.

Just as the teams will aim to perform their best on the pitch, Giuliani said the security planning was a unique chance to “show off American exceptionalism."

“If we do our job right,” Giuliani added, “nobody will be talking about security at the World Cup.”

____

Santana reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

The June 21 runoff comes at a pivotal moment for Colombia, which under Petro emerged as one of the world’s most vocal advocates for protecting the Amazon and transitioning away from oil, gas and coal, the main drivers of climate change.

Petro opposed new oil and gas exploration contracts, vowed not to pursue fracking, a technique used to extract oil and gas from underground rock formations that has environmental consequences, and sought to position Colombia as a global leader on climate issues. Colombia recently hosted a first-of-its-kind international summit focused on a global transition away from fossil fuels.

Analysts say Cepeda would likely represent continuity of Petro’s priorities. He has emphasized Indigenous rights, environmental conservation and reducing Colombia’s dependence on fossil fuels, while signaling support for continuing Petro’s efforts to shift the country toward renewable energy and away from new oil and gas development.

De la Espriella, meanwhile, has campaigned on a platform centered on security and economic growth. He has voiced support for expanding Colombia’s extractive industries, including fracking, and has argued the country should make greater use of its underground resources.

“While both candidates claim that they value the conservation of the Amazon ecosystem, the choice that voters face is between an approach that focuses on maintaining a pristine ecosystem versus one based on productive exploitation,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, deputy director for Latin America at the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit think tank.

“On issues of climate, this is a choice between prioritizing green energy and reinvigorating fossil fuels,” she added.

Representatives for Cepeda and de la Espriella did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Competing visions for development

Petro has repeatedly clashed with Trump over migration, climate policy and security cooperation. Earlier this year, the two sparred publicly on social media after Petro refused to allow U.S. military deportation flights carrying Colombian migrants to land, prompting Trump to threaten tariffs and visa restrictions before the countries reached a deal.

Espriella, on the other hand, was recently endorsed by Trump, who praised the candidate’s positions on law enforcement and security and said the election was important to U.S.-Colombia relations.

Colombia contains a significant portion of the Amazon rainforest, one of the world’s most important tropical forests, which is increasingly under pressure from deforestation, illegal mining, drug trafficking and climate change.

Petro’s administration tried to combat those things by promoting greater Indigenous participation in environmental policy and sought to strengthen cooperation among Amazon nations. On the international stage, he became one of the most vocal advocates for protecting the rainforest and moving away from fossil fuels.

Supporters of expanding oil and gas production argue Colombia remains heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues and foreign investment, and warn that a rapid transition away from fossil fuels could strain public finances and economic growth.

The tension between economic dependence on extractive industries and environmental protection is likely to shape whichever administration takes office.

How candidates differ on crime and resource extraction

Illegal gold mining, drug trafficking and deforestation have expanded across large areas of the rainforest in recent years, often under the control of armed groups. Rising gold prices, persistent demand for cocaine and the expansion of transnational criminal networks have made environmental crimes more profitable than ever.

"The greatest threat to conservation of the Amazon ecosystem is the expansion of organized crime,” Dickinson said. “The challenge for both of these candidates will be to hold back that criminal expansion into these industries.”

She said criminal groups have increasingly invested in illegal mining and deforestation, turning environmental destruction into a lucrative business model.

That reality has fueled competing visions on security.

Cepeda has signaled support for continuing negotiations with armed groups, building on Petro’s “Total Peace” policy, which sought to reduce violence through negotiations with guerrilla groups, drug-trafficking organizations and other armed actors. Supporters say dialogue offers the best chance of reducing violence, while critics argue some criminal organizations have used the process to consolidate territorial control.

Even under Petro, violence against environmental defenders spiked, said Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch, a nonprofit focused on environmental protection and Indigenous rights. Colombia has repeatedly ranked among the world’s deadliest countries for environmental activists despite the administration’s environmental agenda.

De la Espriella has promised a tougher approach centered on military force and restoring state authority.

Gimena Sánchez, Andes director at the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit focused on human rights, said Indigenous communities are particularly concerned about how aggressive security operations could affect territories that have long been caught between armed groups and the state.

“The history of militarization of Indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon, but especially Colombia, has been devastating,” she said.

What Amazon communities that would be impacted are asking for

Alex Rufino, a member of the Ticuna Indigenous people in Colombia’s Amazon region, said environmental protection cannot be separated from social investment.

He argued that discussions about the rainforest often overlook the people who live there and the challenges they face, including poor access to education, healthcare, housing and employment.

“There are more than a million people living and caring for this territory,” said Rufino, from the Amazonian city of Leticia.

He said stronger social policies could help address some of the underlying pressures driving environmental destruction, including coca cultivation for the cocaine trade, recruitment into armed groups and illegal economic activity. Better access to education, healthcare, housing and jobs, he argued, would give residents alternatives to economies that often contribute to deforestation, illegal mining and conflict.

Climate change is increasingly visible across the region, highlighting droughts in recent years that lowered river levels and contributed to the deaths of fish and pink river dolphins. There are also growing concerns over mercury contamination linked to illegal mining. Studies in Colombia’s Amazon have detected mercury in fish consumed by local communities and elevated levels in some residents, raising alarms about long-term health impacts.

So as politicians in Bogota, the capital, debate security strategies, energy policy and economic growth, many Amazon residents say the next government must first listen to the people living in the rainforest itself.

For Rufino, that means recognizing that the Amazon is not simply a source of oil, minerals or timber, but home to communities that have protected it for generations.

“The dialogue should focus on speaking from the Amazon and with the Amazon,” he said. “With the people. With young people. With women. With elders.”

___

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 15-year-old opening batter is the youngest cricketer to get an India call-up. If he plays against Ireland on June 26 in Belfast he will overtake Sachin Tendulkar, who was 16 when he made his test debut against Pakistan in November 1989.

Sooryavanshi set the Indian Premier League alight this season, finishing as the highest run-getter with 776 in 16 innings. He scored at a remarkable strike-rate of 237.31 and hit 72 sixes.

“He has forced us to pick him with how well he’s played,” chief selector Ajit Agarkar said. “I know his age…how young he is and (it is) early in his career. But...we can see the kind of talent he has and we are hopeful, if he gets the opportunity to play for the country, he will show the same ability.

“Playing for the country will mean tougher challenges, but he has shown tremendous temperament. He has picked himself through his performances – he single-handedly carried Rajasthan Royals in the IPL playoffs. Like everyone else who’s watched him play, we have high hopes of him.”

Sooryavanshi made his first-class debut at 12. At 13, he became the youngest to get an IPL deal when Rajasthan bought him for the 2025 season. He scored 252 runs in seven games at a strike-rate of 206, including a 35-ball century – the second-fastest in IPL history.

He then starred in India’s win at the 2026 Under-19 World Cup, smashing 175 off 80 balls in the final against England – the highest individual score in any ICC global tournament final.

Shreyas Iyer will captain a full-strength India squad in Ireland and England, a precursor to the Asian Games T20s in Japan. He replaces Suryakumar Yadav, who has been dropped.

Yadav’s reign comes to an end due to poor form in both IPL and international cricket.

India will play two T20s in Ireland on June 26 and 28, and another five in England next month.

Squads for Ireland and England tours: Shreyas Iyer (captain), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakaravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Mohammad Siraj, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Prince Yadav, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.

India squad for Asian Games: Shreyas Iyer (captain), Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Tilak Varma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakaravarthy, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Arshdeep Singh, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.

___

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

Miami police said officers were called to the 3800 block of Oak Avenue at about 1:55 a.m.

Police said when officers arrived, they reported hearing gunshots in the area and later found a person who had been shot.

They said Miami Fire Rescue personnel transported the victim to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s emergency room.

The age, gender, identity, or condition of the victim was not immediately released.

Anyone with information about the shooting is urged to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.

After bursting onto the scene at 15, Andreeva became a Grand Slam champion at 19 when the Russian ended the run of 114th-ranked Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska with a 6-3, 6-2 victory in the French Open final on Saturday.

“I’ve done a lot of visualizations before. Not just this tournament, but I’ve had dreams, I’ve had a lot of thoughts on how it’s going to happen, if it’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, where,” Andreeva said, still hardly breathing as she talked quickly in true teenage style. "The feeling in real life is so much better than in your dreams.

“I can call myself a Grand Slam champion,” Andreeva added.

The biggest challenges for Andreeva have not been on the court — she already has one of the best attacking baseline games in the sport — it's been the mental side. And her stubbornness.

“Her attitude is difficult,” said Conchita Martinez, Andreeva's coach and a former Wimbledon champion. “You tell her something, and maybe she’s not open to listening. ... When she works hard and when she listens and she does everything, she has no limits.”

Andreeva acknowledged as much during the trophy ceremony.

“I know I can be a tough cookie sometimes and it’s pretty hard to put up with me,” Andreeva said.

The victory took Andreeva one step further than Martinez, who lost the 2000 French Open final to Mary Pierce.

Pierce presented the winner’s trophy to Andreeva, who became the youngest woman to win the clay-court Grand Slam since Monica Seles was 18 when she claimed her third straight French Open in 1992.

“You’re so young and talented. It’s so annoying,” the 24-year-old Chwalinska told Andreeva.

Andreeva took the unusual step of thanking herself “for believing in myself, always giving my 100%, even when it’s tough, trying every day to be better as a person and as a player, believing that I can do this, fighting so many demons inside of me.

“Only I know how tough it was for me,” Andreeva added. “How nervous I was throughout these two weeks.”

Andreeva also thanked her psychologist, who she said was watching from Florida: “Everything that you’ve told me I’ve been trying to use these two weeks.”

Chwalinska opens up about depression

Chwalinska was attempting to become the first qualifier to capture the Roland Garros title. She was a promising junior alongside four-time Roland Garros champion Iga Swiatek before she began struggling with depression in 2019.

“Tennis is such a tough sport. It’s so individual. We start so early. We are basically kids when we start,” Chwalinska said. “People are expecting that we are going to behave like adults already and we are just kids really. So the pressure is huge.”

Andreeva was born in Siberia and moved to Sochi and eventually France to develop her tennis career.

She drew a loud applause from the crowd on Court Philippe-Chatrier when she spoke a few words of French during the trophy presentation.

“Thanks for your support today and over these past two marvelous weeks here in Paris,” Andreeva said in French. “It was very important for me.”

Breakthrough at 15

Andreeva has been considered a Grand Slam contender since she burst onto the scene as a 15-year-old at the 2023 Madrid Open, where she became the third-youngest player to win a main draw match at a WTA 1000 tournament and made the quarterfinals.

Lately, Andreeva has had to contend with playing under neutral status and without her country’s flag because of the war with Ukraine.

When she beat Marta Kostyuk in the semifinals, Kostyuk refused to shake her hand, as has been the custom for Ukrainian players facing Russians ever since the war started in 2022.

“Every person doesn’t want to have a war in the world,” Andreeva said. “I never think about those things when I play.”

Mastering the wind

The final was played under a mostly sunny sky, though wind was a factor in the first Grand Slam final for both players.

Chwalinska double-faulted on the opening point of the match, but she was the first player to hold serve in the fifth game for a 3-2 lead.

But then Andreeva won nine stright games to take control as she found a way to hit through the wind and answer Chwalinska’s array of spins and drop shots.

Whereas Chwalinska would retreat to handle high balls in the wind, Andreeva often would move forward and take balls on the rise.

“She definitely handled wind much better than me,” Chwalinska said. “She was not running away from the ball.”

Andreeva produced 25 winners to Chwalinska’s 10 and also had fewer unforced errors: 26 to 29.

There was a strong Polish presence in the crowd.

When Chwalinska was introduced, fans held aloft red-and-white Polish flags and chanted her name: “Ma-ja, Ma-ja.”

Andreeva had little support from the crowd, although there was a shout of “Davai, Mirra!” (“Go, Mirra”) in Russian late in the match.

Alexander Zverev plays Flavio Cobolli in the men’s final on Sunday to conclude the wildest Grand Slam in recent memory.

___

AP Sports Writer Samuel Petrequin contributed to this report.

___

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

The Navy had selected 31 sailors to promote from the rank of captain to one-star admiral, but Hegseth recently intervened to strike nine people from the list, including three women and two Black men, according to a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information not permitted to be released publicly.

As a result, the Navy is not promoting a single woman to the one-star admiral rank this year even though women make up about one-quarter of all Navy officers and nearly one-third of the sea service's midgrade ranks, according to military data from 2024.

The Associated Press spoke with eight female Navy officers of varying ranks and time in service after Hegseth's cuts, which were reported earlier by The New York Times, became public. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from their superiors.

The more junior officers said they saw the development as a sign that their careers would become politicized if they rose too far in the ranks, and some said they felt they now had a limit on how far they could be promoted. Some said it made them feel less valued within the military and wondered whether that wasn't part of the intent.

The Pentagon has not offered any rationale on why the women, or any of the other six people, were removed from the promotion list.

The Pentagon says promotions are based on merit

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's top spokesman, said on social media this week that “military promotions are given to those who have earned them” and that the Pentagon “will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions." The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request seeking further comment.

The Navy's process for choosing which officers to promote to the one-star rank has been relatively constant and transparent over the years. The service convenes a group of officers, called a promotion board, that examines the records of eligible officers and chooses the most qualified.

The board that selected the initial slate of 31 officers for promotion was directed by then-Navy Secretary John Phelan, an appointee of President Donald Trump, to “recommend for promotion the best qualified officers within their respective competitive category.”

The order from Phelan, who later abruptly departed his post in April, said the board should consider an officer's performance, competence and character, among other traits, as part of those qualifications.

It also said that given China's prominence in the Trump administration's National Defense Strategy, “special consideration shall be given to officers who have excelled in their knowledge of the political military affairs and U.S. strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific region, and operational contingency planning for Indo-Pacific war plans.”

Hegseth has long argued, without offering evidence, that women in the military benefit from preferential treatment and are not suited for combat roles.

"For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” Hegseth told hundreds of military leaders in September.

The approach, he asserted, made the Pentagon “less capable and less lethal.”

Navy leaders and other top officials had approved promotion list

Phelan's order said the Navy cannot discriminate based on criteria such as race and sex, and it specifically noted that “this guidance shall not be interpreted as requiring or permitting preferential treatment of any officer or group of officers on the grounds of race, religion, color, sex.”

The full list of 31 people to be promoted was approved by Phelan, other Navy leaders and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, before it reached Hegseth, who chose to make the changes, the defense official said.

While Hegseth is within his rights to intervene in the list, “it’s just not the norm” and its “a break from tradition” said Katherine Kuzminski, a researcher specializing in military recruiting and retention at the Center for New American Security think tank. She said that promotions historically have been seen “the services’ business.”

Kuzminski noted that “this is a decision that’s not being made by the U.S. Navy — it’s being made by the secretary of defense” and said Hegseth's growing interference in operational aspects of the military services such as promotions is creating “tension" about what “normal” will look like going forward.

Some of the more senior Navy officers who spoke with the AP expressed concerns about the message it sends to the next generation of young sailors.

In addition to pulling the recent promotions of three women to admiral, Hegseth shortly after he took office fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the service's top officer and the first woman to hold the job. He never explained his rationale.

Since then, he also has fired two other female three-star admirals without explanation.

Some of the officers who spoke to the AP said that while they were encouraging female sailors to stick with the Navy, they acknowledged that message is coming at a difficult time.

Kuzminski said the rhetoric and actions surrounding women in the military “affects individual service member decision-making and it also affects family unit decision-making,” including whether people make a career of the military.

Kuzminski said that following the monthslong hold on military promotions by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., during the Biden administration, surveys showed that partisan politics spilling into the day-to-day lives of troops affected their decision-making.

One officer said this impact was not confined to women.

In conversations with other sailors in her unit, she said that male sailors were hesitant to deal with what appears to be a growing politicization of simply following the orders of previous administrations.

As the Misterwives started to play, the drums and saxophones blared from the trembling speakers. Shires soaked in the music — but on the way home, a different sound played in her ears.

“The half hour after the show my ears were like, ‘Are we okay?’” said Shires, a social media coordinator from Houston. “There was some ringing going on.”

Concerts offer that rare, visceral opportunity to hear your favorite song sung live — really really loud — and scream the lyrics alongside diehard fans. Quieting the music with a pair of earplugs might seem to undermine the whole point.

But experts say earplugs turn the volume down, not off. And more young people — Shires included — are embracing them, taking a simple step to protect their ears for many more concerts to come. To overcome concerns some might have about coming across as a killjoy, there are fashion-forward options with attached earrings and bling that blend the plugs more seamlessly with concert attire.

“People think that we are young and invincible, and that’s true to a certain extent,” said Asia Pon, an audiologist at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California, who goes to concerts — and wears earplugs at them. “But repeated exposure over time can certainly accumulate and lead to permanent damage in the long run.”

Earplugs protect against long-term hearing damage

It takes a combination of loud noise and time to damage hearing, experts say. Starting at around 85 decibels — similar to city traffic — hearing can be damaged with prolonged, hourslong listening. The noise at concerts — from both the giant speakers and screaming fans — is often far above that level. The louder the noise, the less time it takes to hurt your ears.

The inner ear is filled with tiny, fragile hair cells that convert sound waves into electrical signals that are sent to the brain.

Pon said to think of the those cells like a field of grass. If trampled once, the blades bend over but eventually stand back up. “But if you keep walking across that same area again and again, eventually that grass doesn’t bounce back,” she said.

Permanently damaged hair cells can lead to longer-term problems like tinnitus and hearing loss.

Ringing happens when hair cells get temporarily stressed from loud noise. But, listen up: No ringing doesn't necessarily mean there's no damage.

Even a simple pair of earplugs can get the job done — if they fit

Many concert venues and festivals offer free earplugs at their guest services desk and there are several over-the-counter options at retail and drugstores.

When picking a pair of earplugs, look for a noise reduction rating, typically labeled NRR on packaging, between 15 and 30 decibels. That strikes a good balance between enjoying the music and protecting the ears.

If the plugs don't fit, they won't do their job — so make sure to find a snug pair. To insert foam earplugs, Pon said to straighten the ear canal by pulling the ear up and back. Roll the plug up and pinch it tight before inserting it as deep as it'll go. Then, hold the plug in place with your finger until you feel the plug expand.

After the plugs are in, look in the mirror and make sure there aren't large chunks sticking out. Play music or watch TV at home to see how it sounds.

If it's tough to find snug earplugs at the store, concertgoers can also see an audiologist and get fitted for a custom pair. While more expensive, these typically include filters that are adjustable based on the venue and are reusable. Foam plugs shouldn't be worn more than once.

Earplugs don't make concerts sound worse

When Shires wore her first pair of earplugs to see the alternative pop band Valley, she wasn't sure what to expect. It took a little adjusting to, but soon everything smoothed out and she could hear the music clearly with some of the crowd noise filtered.

“After the first few songs, it's like they weren't even there. I was just enjoying the show,” she said. Now, she keeps them in a case attached to her keys and has worn them to see many of her favorite artists including Hayley Williams and Taylor Swift. Many of her concert-going friends wear earplugs too, and she gets asked about them by the friends who don't wear them.

If your ears feel clogged or muffled or ringing persists in the days or weeks following a concert, consider seeing an audiologist to get a hearing test. Also see a doctor if you experience more severe symptoms like dizziness, pain or ear drainage.

A slight change to a concert's sound now can preserve hearing for the future. Audiologist Meaghan Reed with Massachusetts Eye and Ear often sees patients who tell her that music doesn’t sound as clear or natural as it used to.

“It might have a temporary impact of your enjoyment of the music right now, but it’s offset by saving your ability to hear music in the future,” Reed said.

—-

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.

Buyer was sentenced to 22 months in prison in 2023 for trades made while working as a consultant and lobbyist. He was ordered to forfeit more than $350,000, representing the amount of the illegal gains, and pay a $10,000 fine. He was released in 2025.

The Supreme Court in May rejected Buyer's appeal without comment or noted dissent.

In granting “a full, complete, and unconditional pardon,” Trump cited Buyer’s career as a judge advocate general in the Army and in the House that was “distinguished and highly productive.” The pardon was dated Thursday and released by the White House late Friday.

Buyer said the pardon “corrects a politically motivated prosecution” and that it was “horrific to be imprisoned for a crime that I did not commit.” He maintains that he is innocent.

Trump used his Truth Social media platform on May 31 to share a pair of letters requesting a presidential pardon for Buyer, a lawyer and Gulf War veteran who left office in 2011. He was a House prosecutor at Democratic President Bill Clinton’s 1998 impeachment trial and in 2016 he served on Trump’s transition team focusing on veterans’ issues.

A letter signed by more than 40 former Republicans in Congress said Buyer was “targeted by the deep state” because of his involvement in Clinton’s trial.

“Like you, Mr. President, Steve has been the victim of lawfare conducted by the Biden Administration,” they wrote in the April 2025 letter.

A second letter, from five current House Republicans, said pardoning Buyer would bring justice to his case. The June 2025 letter was signed by Tom Cole of Oklahoma, Ken Calvert of California, Marlin Stutzman of Indiana, Jack Bergman of Michigan and Pete Sessions of Texas.

Buyer, 67, was convicted in connection with insider trading involving the $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, announced in April 2018, and illegal trades in the management consulting company Navigant when his client Guidehouse was set to acquire it in a deal publicly disclosed weeks later.

The Constitution gives a president broad power to grant pardons for federal crimes. The pardons do not erase a recipient’s criminal record but can be seen as act of mercy or justice.

The Iranian Football Federation's secretary-general, Hedayat Mombeini, and its vice president, Mehdi Mohammad Nabi, were among 14 backroom staff and officials without U.S. visas before games in Los Angeles and Seattle, according to Iranian state television.

It was unclear whether the federation’s president, Mehdi Taj, had been issued a visa.

The team’s participation in the World Cup has been complicated by the Iran war. Problems with processing visas had earlier led Iran to move its training base from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana, Mexico, which is on the border with California.

The federation accused the U.S. of “vindictive behavior” in refusing visas for “key managerial and administrative members” of the team.

The decision had “effectively denied the Iranian national team the opportunity for a level playing field and a competition free from discrimination,” according to a statement on the federation's website. It added that the federation would pursue the matter through world soccer authority FIFA.

The Iranian Embassy in Ankara, meanwhile, responded to an earlier social media post from U.S. Ambassador Tom Barrack, in which he congratulated his embassy staff for processing the Iran team’s visas.

“You cannot whitewash conduct that violates FIFA regulations and breaches the United States’ host obligations merely by praising yourselves,” the Iranian post read. “This represents the worst possible form of politically biased interference in sport.”

One U.S. official earlier told The Associated Press that all players on the Iranian team were approved for visas, while a second official said visas had been issued for players, coaches, trainers and some support staff. A third official suggested that some applicants affiliated with the team had been rejected for requesting visas “under false pretenses.”

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the visas publicly.

The squad has been preparing for the World Cup at a training camp in Antalya. The team said that it has already received visas from the Mexican Embassy in Ankara.

The players, dressed in blue blazers over white T-shirts, left the luxury Mardan Palace hotel in Antalya on Saturday afternoon. They boarded a private jet at the Mediterranean city's airport and were due to fly directly to Mexico.

Iran plays its first two games in Inglewood, California, against New Zealand on June 15, and Belgium six days later, then heads to Seattle to face Egypt on June 26. Iran and the U.S. could meet in the round of 32 on July 3 in Arlington, Texas, if both teams come second in their groups.

In March, U.S. President Donald Trump had discouraged Iran from participating in the tournament, saying he didn’t think it was “appropriate” and raising concerns over players’ “life and safety.” A day later, Iran’s national team pushed back, saying “no one can exclude” it from playing.

Iran finalized its team on Monday, including 17 home-based players whose clubs haven't played since February because of the war. Star forward Sardar Azmoun was dropped in March, reportedly because of a social media post that angered Iranian authorities during the war.

Iran’s sports minister said in March that it would “not be possible” for the team to participate in the World Cup, but the republic’s soccer federation said in May that it was moving ahead with a team. The federation had insisted that all players and staff be granted visas, including those who had military service in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

___ Seung Min Kim and Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.

President Emmanuel Macron confirmed her death Saturday, saying he and his wife Brigitte had learned with “great sadness” of the passing of a woman who marked French history, and changed the lives of millions through her charity work.

“A great lady of the heart has departed,” Macron said.

For more than half a century, Chirac was the fixed point in her late husband’s restless climb — through Parliament, two terms as prime minister, 18 years as mayor of Paris and, in 1995, the presidency.

Beyond the ceremonial role of first lady, Chirac became a political presence in her own right, closely watched for her influence around her husband, who died in 2019, and for the dry discipline with which she handled his reputation as a womanizer, a subject she later addressed with unusual frankness.

Swarmed by photographers in Corrèze in 1998 — after rumors that Jacques Chirac had been unreachable the night Princess Diana died because he was with an actress — she stepped from her car and deadpanned: “Calm down. I’m not Claudia Cardinale. Or Lollobrigida.”

She appears in the official photographs with her chin lifted, blond hair lacquered into place, a small handbag on her arm, looking less like a spouse than like an institution.

But the caricature never quite contained her.

The Chanel suits, dark glasses, nasal voice and withering judgments became part of the national image.

Beneath them was a relentless worker and a cold-eyed political operator who, almost alone among the wives of French presidents, built a base of power that was her own.

She was born Bernadette Thérèse Marie Chodron de Courcel on May 18, 1933, in Paris, into money, lineage and Catholic duty.

Her father’s family included soldiers, industrialists and diplomats; an uncle had served as an aide to Charles de Gaulle in wartime London.

But her life would be most marked by her time at the prestigious Sciences Po university in Paris, where she met Jacques Chirac, a handsome and much-courted young man whose appetite for politics would come to define them both.

They married in March 1956. The union lasted 63 years and was, by her own account, a long lesson in endurance.

Jacques Chirac was famous for his warmth, appetite and instinctive connection with crowds. Bernadette’s gifts were different, observers said.

She was controlled, socially formidable, devout, exacting and sometimes devastatingly funny.

The Catholic philosopher Jean Guitton called her the last queen of France, and she did little to discourage the idea.

Her husband’s reputation as a womanizer was an open secret she chose, after much pain, to meet with dry humor.

“At first, it was hard. I was very heartbroken, and then I got used to it,” she said years later in a television documentary. “I told myself that was how things were and that I had to accept it with as much dignity as possible.”

Sent to tend her husband’s rural stronghold in Corrèze while he pursued power in Paris, she did far more than tend it. In 1971, she was elected municipal councilor in Sarran. In 1979, she became a general councilor in Corrèze and held the seat until 2015.

Her influence grew after Jacques Chirac became president in 1995. The role of first lady in France has no constitutional power, but she made the Élysée a place where her approval mattered.

She could be loyal, cutting and unforgiving, and understood that campaigns are made not only of speeches and polls but of debts, slights and resentments.

Yet she also carved out a space for female authority inside a male political culture that had little interest in sharing power — making it quietly clear that she would not be reduced to “the wife of.”

By 2023, her severe glamour and political instincts had become familiar enough for Catherine Deneuve to play her in “Bernadette,” a comic movie about her years at the Élysée.

Her deepest grief stayed mostly private.

The Chiracs’ elder daughter, Laurence, developed severe anorexia after meningitis in adolescence and attempted suicide more than once. She never fully recovered and died in 2016 at 58.

That ordeal pushed Chirac toward the charitable work that reshaped her public image.

In 1994, she took over a medical charity that collected coins to support children in hospitals. To millions of French viewers, the woman once mocked for hauteur became the face of hospitalized children and families living around hospital beds.

She continued running it until 2019, when she handed it to Brigitte Macron, the wife of France's current president, and became honorary president.

By then, she had long since become a political force in her own name.

“My husband no longer does politics, but I do,” she said to journalists, after Jacques Chirac left office in 2007.

She famously nicknamed Dominique de Villepin, the Élysée official she distrusted, “Nero,” yet also reportedly helped engineer her husband’s reconciliation with Nicolas Sarkozy, the former protégé who had betrayed him politically.

Her 2001 memoir, “Conversation,” written with journalist Patrick de Carolis, sold hundreds of thousands of copies and introduced the French to a franker, funnier and more independent woman than many had assumed.

After Jacques Chirac left the Élysée, his health declined and his public voice faded. Hers remained sharper for longer. Asked how he was, according to French media, she answered in her flat, unmistakable voice: “He keeps the dog.”

Age and grief eventually drew her out of public view.

By the time Jacques Chirac died in 2019, she was too fragile to take part in the public farewell where France and foreign leaders honored him.

The Élysée said Saturday that Macron was inviting the public to pay tribute to Bernadette Chirac opposite the presidential palace.

Puerto Rican sensation Bad Bunny is performing two shows of his 10-concert Spanish tour in the capital.

Speaking to reporters aboard the papal plane before his arrival in Madrid on Saturday morning, Leo acknowledged the appeal of Bad Bunny when he referred to anecdotal reports of a newfound spiritual awakening, especially among young people in Spain.

The American pope said he understood that young adults are sensing a lack of meaning in their lives and mused that his visit might help “awaken” something in them.

“If they are confronted with the question ‘Do you want to go see Bad Bunny or do you want to go to see the pope?’ I think many will see Bad Bunny,” Leo said. “But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope. And that says something, you know.”

He's wasn't wrong: About 500,000 people, many of them young Spaniards, poured into a Madrid plaza for an evening prayer vigil on Saturday. They shouted “This is the youth of the pope!” as Leo zoomed around in his popemobile, and then jammed to a Spanish rendition of the 1970s American musical “Godspell.”

Leo is opening a weeklong visit to Spain on Saturday. After Madrid, the trip will also take him to Barcelona and the Canary Islands. He’s hoping to bring a message of unity in a country polarized with political and church scandals.

Leo was also asked about news that plans are moving ahead for his beloved Chicago Bears to move to Hammond, Indiana. The board of the team voted this week to move forward with a stadium development project in Hammond.

Asked if he had any words of consolation for Illinois, the Chicago-born pope quipped: “That’s out of my pay (scale).”

In other sporting comments, Leo confirmed that he would root for the United States in the upcoming World Cup, and showed his true team colors when asked about whether supports Real Madrid or the Barcelona soccer team: “That’s easy,” he said. “The pope is for all teams, but Prevost is Real Madrid,” he said, referring to his birth name.

Pope recalls his father's service on D-Day anniversary

Leo fielded a host of questions as he greeted journalists traveling with him. He spoke about Ukraine and Lebanon and his recent proclamation that the Catholic Church’s “just war” doctrine — which establishes the criteria when war can be morally justified — was “outdated.”

With Saturday marking the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, Leo also told a French journalist that he would like one day to visit Normandy, France, as pope.

“My father was there,” he said.

It was a reference to Leo’s father, Louis Prevost, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and participated in the D-Day landings at Normandy as part of Operation Overlord, according to the Pentagon.

Prevost also commanded an infantry landing craft, and after 15 months overseas, attained the rank of lieutenant junior grade, according to a note on the Pentagon website published soon after Leo’s election.

After the war, Prevost became a teacher and school principal in Chicago, got married and he and his wife, Mildred, had three boys. The future pope, Robert Prevost, was the youngest, born on Sept. 14, 1955.

___

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

Iran said that it targeted American military assets in both countries, after the U.S. attacked surveillance facilities on Qeshm Island and near Sirik that Iran said were used to protect borders and “ensure the security of navigation in international waters." Tehran called the attack a ceasefire violation.

Later Saturday, U.S. Central Command said U.S. forces had shot down two Iranian attack drones over the Strait of Hormuz.

The latest exchanges came as the Trump administration presses Iran to make a deal to end the war, which has strained the global economy and threatened a hunger crisis in some of the world's most vulnerable countries.

Pakistan’s interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, arrived in Iran on Saturday as part of mediation efforts.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is seeking to ratchet up economic pressure on Iran. The U.S. Treasury Department is considering allowing Gulf allies to tap into frozen Iranian assets to pay for damages they sustained in the war, according to a person familiar with Secretary Scott Bessent's thinking who spoke Saturday on condition of anonymity to share internal deliberations.

Iran says it targeted US air base and Navy

The U.S. military said earlier that it had shot down several Iranian missiles and drones launched toward the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf Arab allies, and struck some of the Islamic Republic’s coastal surveillance radar sites in response.

“The attack drones posed an immediate threat to regional maritime traffic,” U.S. Central Command said.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it had targeted the Ali Al Salem air base, which hosts U.S. forces in Kuwait, and the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet in Bahrain, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

The U.S. military said there were no reports of harm to U.S. personnel.

Earlier in the week, Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal at Kuwait’s main airport, killing one person and wounding dozens.

The U.S. military kept up its blockade on Iranian ports in response to Tehran’s grip on the strait, a crucial corridor for global oil and natural gas shipments. Energy prices have spiked, posing political problems for U.S. President Donald Trump's Republican Party before the midterm congressional election.

Deals remain elusive

Trump increasingly appears to be boxed in. U.S. and Iranian negotiators reached a tentative agreement a week ago to extend the ceasefire by 60 days and start a new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program. Trump, however, has called for unspecified changes, and Iranian officials have shown no public sign of agreeing to the deal.

The fighting in Lebanon, where Israeli forces have seized large swaths of the south while saying it targets the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group, also challenges efforts to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has demanded that any lasting truce extends to Lebanon.

The Trump administration has touted the latest ceasefire agreed to earlier in the week by the Lebanese government and Israel after U.S.-brokered talks in Washington. However, Hezbollah has rejected the agreement.

Ratcheting up financial pressure

Miad Maleki, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Iranian sanctions expert at the Treasury Department, said it's significant that the U.S. is signaling it could allow Gulf countries to access some of the $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets stored abroad.

Iran had been seeking some of the funds as part of a deal, and rather than offering Tehran that concession, the U.S. is pressuring them to move quickly.

“So the U.S. government is saying: ’Hey, not just that we’re not going to give you these funds. As a matter of fact, we’re going to take these funds from you, and we’re going to help Gulf states to take it,” Maleki said.

Allowing Gulf states to use the frozen assets would also bolster U.S. ties there, he said. It would send a clear signal that America is sticking with its partners as they've sustained attacks and repercussions from the war.

However, Maleki said some Gulf states may be reluctant to use the funds out of concern that they could face retaliation from Iran for doing so.

___

Michelle L. Price reported from Bridgewater, New Jersey. Munir Ahmed contributed to this report from Islamabad.