The police officer, who is a woman, was riding an ATV when she collided with a colleague, also riding an ATV, on Wednesday evening in South Beach, according to police.

A Nest surveillance video showed the crash and the response at Meridian Avenue and Ninth Street. Angel Urcola was among the witnesses who heard the loud collision and people screaming.

“I looked through the window, and I saw a motorcycle flipped,” Urcola said.

Miami Beach Fire Rescue personnel responded to the crash and rushed the police officer injured to JMH’s Ryder Trauma Center, according to police. The crash remained under investigation on Thursday afternoon.

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Sky 10 was above the area of Coral Ridge Drive and Wiles Road at about 2:15 p.m. as a yellow tarp covered a body in the roadway.

A maroon-colored SUV with its airbags deployed was spotted a short distance away in the intersection along with a motorcycle on its side.

All westbound lanes on Wiles Road are currently shut down from Northwest 110^th Avenue to Coral Ridge Drive, police confirmed.

No other details were immediately released.

Sky 10 sobrevoló el área de Coral Ridge Drive y Wiles Road alrededor de las 2:15 p.m., donde una lona amarilla cubría un cuerpo en la vía.

Una SUV color vino con las bolsas de aire desplegadas fue vista a corta distancia en la intersección, junto a una motocicleta caída sobre uno de sus lados.

Todos los carriles en dirección oeste de Wiles Road permanecen cerrados desde Northwest 110th Avenue hasta Coral Ridge Drive, confirmó la policía.

No se divulgaron de inmediato más detalles.

La investigación judicial al jefe de Gabinete Manuel Adorni golpea el corazón del relato de Milei, quien llegó al poder a fines de 2023 con la promesa de desterrar la corrupción y otros vicios de la “casta” política tradicional.

Milei ve ahora cómo el patrimonio de una de sus principales espadas políticas es escrutado. Viajes al exterior, adquisiciones inmobiliarias y costosas reformas edilicias encienden las alarmas por la aparente falta de correlación con sus ingresos formales.

Adorni quedó aún más expuesto cuando reconoció que ocultó alrededor de medio millón de dólares de sus declaraciones juradas patrimoniales.

El escándalo erosiona la imagen de Milei por negarse a echarlo del gobierno. La crisis estalló cuando los ingresos de muchos argentinos se licúan por el cierre de más de 20.000 empresas, masivos despidos y el tarifazo de los servicios públicos.

Al mismo tiempo unificó a la debilitada oposición, que el jueves próximo debatirá en el Senado si somete al funcionario a una interpelación el 2 de julio con vistas a evaluar su remoción, para lo cual deberán expedirse las dos cámaras.

En medio de esta polémica una pregunta se repite entre políticos, analistas y ciudadanos.

¿Por qué Milei sostiene la mano de su funcionario?

¿Quién es Adorni?

Fue analista económico en medios de comunicación y actualmente es una figura muy cercana al presidente y su hermana, la influyente secretaria general de la Presidencia Karina Milei. Ejerció de vocero presidencial y ahora es jefe del gabinete de ministros.

“Es un destacado ´tuitero' con un estilo provocador que conecta con ese estilo medio altanero de Milei”, señaló a The Associated Press Lucas Romero, director de la consultora Synopsis Consultores.

Polémicas confesiones

Además de la investigación por supuesto enriquecimiento ilícito, Adorni reconoció haber omitido en las declaraciones realizadas al Fisco desde que es funcionario 500.000 de dólares de “ahorros” que generó junto a su esposa en el sector privado.

“No lo declaramos porque la manera de escaparse de la vieja política era tener un ahorro en negro”, argumentó Adorni en una entrevista periodística. Dijo que fue un error involuntario y que pagará la multa.

Su explicación generó un sinfín de dudas. Sostuvo que invirtieron 200.000 dólares y ganaron otros 300.000 dólares en Bitcoin entre 2014 y 2018, un tipo de operaciones que criticó años después.

Milei lo defiende; costo político

“No voy a ejecutar en el altar del ego de los periodistas a una persona honesta”, afirmó el mandatario, cuyo enfrentamiento con los medios ha ido escalando en los últimos meses.

Pero el escándalo lo golpeó. El nivel de desaprobación de su gestión es de 58,1%, superando al de aprobación en 20,2 puntos, lo que supone el pico negativo más alto desde su asunción, según una encuesta de Management & Fit realizada entre el 11 y 22 de mayo, con un margen de error de 2,1%.

Mariel Fornoni, directora de esa consultora, señaló que “obviamente impacta” que mientras “a la gente no le alcanza para llegar a fin de mes” el mandatario se apropia de “un discurso de la ética y defiende al jefe de Gabinete, que se está incriminando en cada aparición pública".

Un gran interrogante; varias hipótesis

“Esta es la gran pregunta: por qué Milei sigue pagando un altísimo costo por sostenerlo cuando el beneficio es nulo", afirmó Romero. Cuestionó que Adorni “no tiene habilidades en el diálogo político con el resto de los actores”, como se espera de los jefes de gabinete.

La misma encuesta de Management & Fit reveló que 42,1% de los ciudadanos cree que Adorni sigue en el gobierno porque tiene información sobre irregularidades de la gestión. Un 21,9% lo atribuye a su cercanía a los hermanos Milei.

Romero apuntó que Adorni “puede ser alguien que sepa mucho” de la estafa millonaria en torno al lanzamiento en 2025 de LIBRA, la criptomoneda que promovió Milei en su cuenta de X. La justicia investiga el rol que cumplió el mandatario y sus allegados.

“Adorni estuvo en el Tech Forum, el evento cripto de 2024 que se indican como el origen de las conversaciones entre Milei y los promotores del token”, apuntó Romero.

Sergio Berensztein, de la consultora Berensztein, indicó que si Adorni siente que lo abandonan “tendría incentivos para cooperar con la justicia en algunas causas que preocupan al gobierno, sobre todo la de LIBRA".

El analista apuntó que además “las cuestiones institucionales son secundarias” para el mandatario y está convencido de que si lo remueve “aparecería respondiendo a una agenda más bien mediática”.

Romero agregó que “es una dinámica muy propia de este tipo de liderazgo; no quiere darle al periodismo lo que entiende que quiere, que es correrlo a Adorni". Acotó que con esa postura el presidente "no está teniendo un correcto diagnóstico del problema”.

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According to a spokesperson for the Florida Forest Service, the man appeared to have suffered an allergic reaction while working as a firefighter near Krome Avenue’s Mile Marker 33.

The FFS firefighter was in the area of two of the three wildfires, one of which MDFR reported started with lightning on Sunday near the Metrowest Detention Center, west of Doral.

The FFS firefighter was alert, and his vital signs were stable before Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel flew him to the HCA Florida Aventura Hospital, according to the FFS.

TRIPLE TROUBLE

There were three active wildfires on Thursday afternoon in Miami-Dade County, according to the FFS and the National Interagency Fire Center.

The wildfire, known as “Quarry 2,” east of Krome Avenue, was the most damaging. As of Thursday afternoon, it had burned 15,900 acres and was 70% contained, according to FFS.

A wildfire, known as “Well,” also east of Krome Avenue, near the Florida Turnpike, had burned 500 acres and was 25% contained, according to FFS.

A wildfire, known as “Coptic,” was west of Krome Avenue and south of the Tamiami Trail. This had burned about 340 acres, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which monitors air quality.

HEALTH RISKS

Aside from the flames’ heat, firefighters were also dealing with a heat index of over 100 degrees and a heat advisory that increased the risks of outdoor activity on Thursday in South Florida.

While southeastern winds may have kept smoke away from the metro area, winds could veer more southernly from Thursday night to Friday morning — and push smoke pollution closer to the metro area, according to the National Weather Service.

MDFR personnel also warned that shifting wind conditions could cause smoke from the wildfires to drift into nearby communities and pollute air quality, so residents should “limit time outdoors, keep windows and doors closed,” and set air-conditioners to recirculate.

This is a developing story. Local 10 News Assignment Editor Carson Merlo contributed to this report.

Related reports

• Florida’s new weapon against blazing brush fire season: Pellet-dropping drones
• Wildfires prompt evacuations and road closures in South Florida

• Fire chief warns Miami-Dade smoke pollution keeps moving to Broward
• 2 wildfires burn 16,400 acres in western Miami-Dade

Related social media posts

3 Wildfires are continuing to burn this afternoon across western Miami-Dade County with smoke visible on traffic cameras & radar.

SE winds have kept the smoke away from the metro today, however winds may veer more southerly overnight bringing smoke back closer to the metro. pic.twitter.com/rWG4Yo3jro

— NWS Miami (@NWSMiami) June 18, 2026

As MDFR and @FlForestService continue battling the grass fires in West Miami-Dade, those in surrounding areas may see a large column of smoke. Stay updated on air conditions by monitoring air quality reports. If wind direction changes and smoky conditions affect your area, stay… pic.twitter.com/t7GW5HSC0f

— Miami-Dade Fire Rescue (@MiamiDadeFire) June 18, 2026

The amateur draft for players residing in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico would be cut from 20 rounds to 12 beginning in 2027 under the proposal Major League Baseball made during a bargaining session with the players' association. An identical 12-round draft would be started for international prospects, a proposal the union has rejected in the past.

Starting in 2028, a prospect for the amateur draft would have to be at least 20 years old by the Sept. 1 of his signing year and two years removed from the graduating year of his high school class.

Raising signing ages would likely lead to players being older when they become eligible for free agency, which currently requires six years of major league service.

For international amateurs, the age to sign would be raised to 18 on the Sept. 1 of their signing year, up from 17.

Each separate draft would have $200 million in signing pools in 2027. There would be hard caps for each draft.

Teams would be able to trade draft picks but a club couldn't trade its first-round pick in consecutive drafts. A team couldn't acquire more than three additional selections among the first three rounds.

Spending on signing bonuses for players eligible for the 2025 amateur draft totaled about $402 million.

Teams have spent about $193 million on signing bonus for international amateurs in 2026. The current signing period starts Jan. 15 each year, but the initial international draft would be no earlier than Sept. 2027.

Bargaining began May 13 and the sides exchanged initial proposals two weeks later as management proposed a salary cap for the first time since 1994, which resulted in a 7 1/2-month strike and the first cancellation of the World Series in 90 years,

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

Thapelo Maseko’s long range shot late in the match caught the hand of Pavel Sulc in the area.

Mokoena, who was caught on camera with tears rolling down his cheeks during the pre-game national anthem, stepped up to the penalty spot and sent his shot low past Czech Republic goalkeeper Matej Kovar in the 83rd minute.

Michal Sadilek had given the Czechs the lead in the sixth minute at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Alexandr Sojka played in Sadilek and he slid a shot past goalkeeper Ronwen Williams.

Both teams lost their opening matches, and both knew another setback would seriously hinder their chances of reaching the round of 32.

South Africa faced some strong criticism following its 2-0 loss to co-host Mexico, which raised the prospect of the country extending its run of never having advanced to the knockout phase of a World Cup — even as host in 2010.

The Czechs lost to South Korea 2-1 in their opening game.

Both teams still have a chance to advance to the round of 32 from Group A. South Africa will next face South Korea on Wednesday, while the Czech Republic will take on Mexico at the same time.

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James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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

Civil society groups including a Christian organization joined the challenge, arguing that the ban violates the rights to life, health, dignity and equality, and that such protections should be extended to pregnant girls and women.

The challenge was filed Wednesday in the country’s Constitutional Court.

The Dominican Republic has one of the strictest abortion bans in the region, criminalizing it without exception and regardless of circumstance. Women face up to two years in prison for having an abortion, while doctors or midwives could face five to 20 years.

“My daughter died because she was denied the medical care she needed. No other mother should have to go through this,” Rosa Herminia Hernández said in a statement.

Rosaura Almonte died in 2012 from leukemia while three weeks pregnant. She was 16 years old, according to the court filing.

The challenge seeks that abortions be allowed in rape or incest cases; when the life or health of a woman or girl is in danger; or when a fetus has fatal abnormalities.

“This action seeks something very simple: that no woman or girl should have to choose between her life, her health and the law,” attorney Patricia Santana Nina said in a statement.

At least 67,455 abortions were recorded from 2019 through late 2024 in the public health sector, according to government data. It did not differentiate between spontaneous and induced abortions.

Meanwhile, from June 2017 to October 2022, prosecutors filed 62 criminal cases for abortion and 16 cases for attempted abortion. The Prosecutor General’s Office has stopped publishing such data since November 2022.

“Is it legitimate to maintain a permanent criminal threat against women in medical emergencies solely to legally express a moral stance?” the challenged filed Wednesday stated.

In 2023, a woman with three children, one of whom was product of a rape, had an incomplete and spontaneous abortion while pregnant, according to the challenge. It noted that authorities detained her for 10 days in inhumane conditions despite her condition, adding that she did not receive adequate medical care.

“The woman went to a health center seeking care and ended up being deprived of her freedom,” it stated.

Human rights activists say that it’s often health providers who report women to authorities.

There are no reliable statistics on how many women in the Dominican Republic have died during or after a clandestine abortion.

In 2024, at least 585 girls from 11 to 14 years old became mothers, according to government data. Meanwhile, at least 681 rapes were reported from January to July 2025, with activists noting that unreported cases are much higher.

The challenge noted that the ban worsens existing inequalities: women with resources can seek private medical care in or outside the country, while those who are impoverished face higher health risks and are more exposed to criminal prosecution.

“The women who are persecuted often share conditions of socioeconomic vulnerability, job insecurity, low educational level, or migratory status,” the challenge read.

Un portavoz del Servicio Forestal de Florida informó que el bombero es un hombre que aparentemente sufrió una reacción alérgica cerca del marcador de milla 33 de Krome Avenue.

El bombero estaba alerta, hablando y sus signos vitales eran estables antes de que MDFR lo trasladara por aire al HCA Florida Aventura Hospital, según el Servicio Forestal de Florida.

Esta es una noticia en desarrollo. El editor de asignaciones de Local 10 News, Carson Merlo, contribuyó a este informe.

“Esta tregua tiene que permitirnos ya habilitar los corredores para que se normalice la circulación”, dijo el ministro José Luis Lupo en conferencia de prensa.

Tras casi 50 días de bloqueos —que han afectado principalmente a La Paz y a su vecina ciudad de El Alto—, el presidente Rodrigo Paz se reunió con la dirigencia de la Central Obrera de Bolivia (COB), el sindicato que lidera las protestas y que reclama al gobierno la liberación de manifestantes detenidos durante choques con la policía a cambio de negociar el fin del conflicto.

El ministro de Gobierno, Marco Antonio Oviedo, dijo a radio Panamericana que la Fiscalía revisa los casos, pero advirtió que “una cosa es que una persona sea detenida protestando, pero otra cosa son los delitos que se cometen”.

En las protestas se han registrado unos 17 fallecidos, en su mayoría por falta de asistencia médica debido a los bloqueos que también han causado escasez de alimentos y oxigeno medicinal.

Las protestas comenzaron el 1 de mayo con demandas salariales de la COB y quejas por gasolina de mala calidad que había importado el gobierno y fueron escalando hasta pedir la renuncia de Paz. Los movilizados acusan al mandatario, que asumió en noviembre, de dilatar las soluciones para resolver la peor crisis económica en 40 años e inclinarse a favor de sectores conservadores en detrimento de los populares.

Los bloqueos se han ido reduciendo, pero las carreteras a La Paz y a la región altiplánica de Oruro, por donde se importa el combustible, permanecen bloqueadas. El departamento de Cochabamba, en el centro del país, es la segunda región con más cortes por afines al expresidente Evo Morales (2006-2019).

En varios puntos se observan kilométricas colas de vehículos alrededor de estaciones de servicio debido a la escasez de combustible y muchos conductores de transportes de carga deben dormir en la fila para abastecerse.

Sectores productivos reclaman a Paz que evalúe un estado de excepción, pero el mandatario conservador ha descartado aplicar esa medida o utilizar la fuerza para despejar los cortes para evitar que el conflicto se profundice.

La Cámara Nacional de Industrias estimó que las pérdidas por los bloqueos y protestas ascienden a 2.000 millones de dólares.

Según funcionarios de Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue, el incendio fue reportado alrededor de las 5:20 a.m. en la cuadra 1800 de Southwest 23rd Avenue.

Los funcionarios indicaron que los bomberos llegaron al lugar unos seis minutos después y encontraron llamas provenientes de una choza tiki ubicada detrás de una propiedad en alquiler, así como de una vivienda vecina.

Los bomberos señalaron que cuatro adultos que viven en la casa lograron evacuar de manera segura junto con sus tres perros.

No se reportaron heridos.

La causa del incendio está bajo investigación y no está claro si se originó en la vivienda o en la choza tiki, dijeron las autoridades.

La Cruz Roja Americana asistirá a los residentes desplazados.

He’s intent on becoming the best. He already may be there.

The 24-year-old is hitting unprecedented velocities for a starter in MLB's pitch-tracking era that began in 2008. Over the last month, he's dominated unlike any pitcher in the last century.

Misiorowski has allowed just one run over his last eight starts heading into his Friday matchup with the Atlanta Braves. He says he can’t come up with a specific moment or decision that sparked this surge.

“It’s more that it finally clicked,” said Misiorowski, who is 8-2 with a 1.34 ERA and 131 strikeouts to lead the majors in the latter two categories. “Everything started settling in and feeling good.”

The fact Misiorowski used the word “finally” to describe an emergence in his first full major league season underscores his exacting standards.

Misiorowski's rise has Brewers manager Pat Murphy comparing him to Forrest Gump, which prompted a social media post by the pitcher his own face over the Tom Hanks movie character’s body.

“It’s for sure meant to be a compliment for a guy who didn’t put in limits on himself and his naiveté,” Murphy said. “It was a factor in a positive way, where he went out and achieved whatever he set his mind to, and didn’t let the outside forces, weren’t even aware of the outside forces, and didn’t let anything hold him back.”

Misiorowski was selected to the All-Star Game last season after only five starts. He struggled late last year before producing a 1.50 postseason ERA during Milwaukee’s run to the NL Championship Series. Now he’s a Cy Young Award favorite.

Misiorowski is more than just a hard thrower

The eye-popping numbers most associated with Misiorowski come from the radar gun. He reached 104.5 mph — the fastest velocity by any starter in the pitch tracking era — and got to 100 mph on a record 58 pitches during the Brewers’ 6-0 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday.

He's thrown 460 pitches at least 100 mph this season, already surpassing the record for a starter set by Cincinnati's Hunter Greene with 337 such pitches in 2022.

But his most impressive statistics have more to do with results than velocity.

According to MLB.com, Misiorowski’s 0.17 ERA since May 1 is the best in an eight-start stretch for any pitcher since earned runs became an official statistic in 1913. Against Philadelphia, he became the third pitcher since 1900 to throw a shutout while striking out 15 and allowing no more than one baserunner.

Opponents are batting just .140 against Misiorowski this season. SportRadar says no starting pitcher has allowed an opponent batting average of .166 or below over a full non-pandemic season since at least 1910. Boston’s Pedro Martinez had batters hitting .167 against him in 2000. Opponents hit .168 against Cleveland’s Luis Tiant in 1968.

Misiorowski’s development into a complete pitcher should come as no surprise, considering who he grew up watching.

The pitchers Miz admires most aren't necessarily smoke throwers

The list of pitchers he admired growing up includes Adam Wainwright, Zack Greinke, Clayton Kershaw and Chris Sale. While Sale is a hard thrower and Kershaw also had outstanding velocity early in his career, Wainwright and Greinke succeeded without overpowering fastballs.

They had one thing in common.

“Every game, you felt like they could trust them to get a win,” Misiorowski said. “That was the big thing. You looked at those guys and they were going out there and going to perform for seven or eight innings to secure the team a win.”

His appreciation for baseball history includes a baseball card collection he says numbers in the thousands, though he probably owns even more Pokemon cards.

“Since I was a kid, my dad got me into it,” Misiorowski said of his baseball card collection. “It’s huge right now. I think I need to downsize it a little bit, but it’s fun.”

His enthusiasm shows on the mound and in his work ethic. He devoted the offseason to upgrading his leg strength to withstand the rigors of a full season and results are showing in his improved endurance and command.

“He could rest on his laurels. ‘Hey, I was an All-Star in my first year. I pitched in the playoffs. I pitched well. I can do it. I’m fine. I’ll be all right,’“ Murphy said. “Or you can say, ‘I’m going home. I’m going to get stronger. I’m going to do whatever I can do to come back and dominate.’ That’s what he’s done.”

He's stabilizing an injury-riddled rotation

Misiorowski’s growth has helped the Brewers overcome numerous pitching injuries to build a comfortable NL Central lead. With Misiorowski and Kyle Harrison (8-1, 2.47) leading the rotation, the Brewers rank fourth in the majors in ERA.

Over his last eight starts, Misiorowski has struck out 80 while allowing nine walks and 14 hits over 54 1/3 innings. The only extra-base hit he’s allowed over his last nine starts was a double by Houston’s Isaac Paredes on May 31.

The low walk totals are notable after Misiorowski battled control issues as a rookie. He walked 31 batters in 66 innings last year, but now constantly gets ahead of hitters.

“He’s winning the 0-0 and the 1-1 (counts) a lot,” pitching coach Chris Hook said. “When he doesn’t, it stands out to be like, ‘Oh, God, he didn’t win the 0-0. He didn’t win the 1-1.’ Like that’s weird, for him to go to a two-ball count.”

Once hitters fall behind in the count, they have little chance.

After facing him for the first time last month, New York Yankees slugger and three-time MVP Aaron Judge noted that “he’s almost basically releasing it in the catcher’s glove” due to the extension Misiorowski gets with his 6-foot-7 frame.

MLB Network analyst and two-time All-Star pitcher Ryan Dempster says Misiorowski reminds him of 6-10 Hall of Fame lefty Randy Johnson in that regard because their hands seem right in front of the plate to the batter when they let go of the ball.

“You can tell yourself to swing, but your brain doesn’t quite compute until it’s out of the hand,” Dempster said. “By the time it’s out of his hand, it’s already on you. I haven’t seen a fastball like this since Kerry Wood.”

Wood’s career was derailed by injuries, leading to worries of hard throwers being susceptible to blowing out pitching arms. Dempster notes Misiorowski is playing in an era with lower pitch counts. Misiorowski also produces elite velocity without overthrowing.

“He sure is repeating his delivery, and when you repeat your delivery, you tend to stay healthy,” Dempster said. “Guys who don’t repeat deliveries and get out of whack and something’s a little off, they struggle with that. I really think he will stay healthy, just me personally.”

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AP freelance writers Jack Albright and Rich Rovito contributed to this report.

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

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Detectives listed eight surveillance videos that showed Ivis Aceituno’s obsessive three-day focus on parked cars that didn’t belong to him, according to incident and arrest reports.

Records show six of the surveillance videos were recorded on May 30 in Coral Gables, one on June 5 in Miami’s Coral Way neighborhood, and another on June 9, also in Coral Gables.

A May 30 video shows Aceituno trying to break into a black 2026 Cadillac Escalade ESV and a gray 2025 Subaru Crosstrek near Sevilla Avenue and Segovia Street, according to police.

A May 30 video show him trying to break into a dark 2024 Ferrari SF90, a red 2025 Lamborghini Urus, and a red 2026 Ferrari 12Cilindri near Sevilla Avenue and Anderson Road, according to police.

In the area of Palermo Avenue and Segovia and Hernando streets, May 30 videos show Aceituno breaking into a silver Chrysler and a black Volkswagen, and trying to break into a Ford Mustang and a green Mercedes-Benz, according to police.

A May 30 video near Northwest 15 Avenue and 19 Street in Allapattah showed Aceituno “exiting” a 2026 Dodge Durango that had been stolen from a driveway near Aledo Avenue and Anderson Road in Coral Gables, according to police.

“The bicycle that Aceituno utilized for multiple vehicle burglaries, that was captured on CCTV, was located in the rear cargo area of the Durango,” a deputy wrote, according to an arrest report.

The June 5 video shows Aceituno breaking into a parked car near Southwest 16th Avenue and 22 Terrace “and taking a set of” Airpods that later pinged in the area of Northwest 18 Avenue and 19 Street in Allapattah, according to police.

The June 9 video shows Aceituno trying to break into cars near to where a 2024 Ford Mustang was stolen near Savona Avenue and South Le Jeune Road before it was abandoned near Northwest 19 Avenue and 16 Terrace in Allapattah, according to police.

Records show Aceituno was living near Northwest 19 Avenue and 19 Terrace in Allapattah, and his alleged crime spree involved the Miami and Coral Gables police departments and the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.

The Coral Gables Police Department had issued a “Be-On-the-Look-Out” alert for a suspect when a Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office deputy recognized Aceituno after an arrest on Monday, records show.

On Tuesday, a Coral Gables detective contacted the MDSO deputy, who “provided a positive ID” for Aceituno, who was at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, according to a police report.

In the 12 cases prosecutors filed, Aceituno faced four counts of grand theft vehicle, five counts of burglary of an unoccupied conveyance, two counts of attempted burglary of an occupied conveyance, five counts of attempted burglary of an unoccupied conveyance, one count of trespass in an unoccupied structure or conveyance, and one count of petit theft.

Local 10 News Assignment Editor Carson Merlo contributed to this report.

Los detectives enumeraron ocho videos de vigilancia que mostraban el enfoque obsesivo de Ivis Aceituno durante tres días en vehículos estacionados que no le pertenecían, según informes de incidentes y arresto.

Los registros muestran que seis de los videos de vigilancia fueron grabados el 30 de mayo en Coral Gables, uno el 5 de junio en el vecindario Coral Way de Miami y otro el 9 de junio, también en Coral Gables.

Un video del 30 de mayo muestra a Aceituno intentando entrar a la fuerza en una Cadillac Escalade ESV negra modelo 2026 y una Subaru Crosstrek gris modelo 2025 cerca de Sevilla Avenue y Segovia Street, según la policía.

Un video del 30 de mayo lo muestra intentando entrar a la fuerza en una Ferrari SF90 oscura modelo 2024, una Lamborghini Urus roja modelo 2025 y una Ferrari 12Cilindri roja modelo 2026 cerca de Sevilla Avenue y Anderson Road, según la policía.

En el área de Palermo Avenue y las calles Segovia y Hernando, videos del 30 de mayo muestran a Aceituno entrando a la fuerza en un Chrysler plateado y un Volkswagen negro, e intentando entrar a la fuerza en un Ford Mustang y un Mercedes-Benz verde, según la policía.

Un video del 30 de mayo cerca de Northwest 15 Avenue y 19 Street en Allapattah mostró a Aceituno “saliendo” de una Dodge Durango modelo 2026 que había sido robada de una entrada residencial cerca de Aledo Avenue y Anderson Road en Coral Gables, según la policía.

“La bicicleta que Aceituno utilizó para múltiples robos a vehículos, y que fue captada por cámaras de vigilancia, fue localizada en el área de carga trasera de la Durango”, escribió un agente, según un informe de arresto.

El video del 5 de junio muestra a Aceituno entrando a la fuerza en un vehículo estacionado cerca de Southwest 16th Avenue y 22 Terrace “y tomando un par de” AirPods que posteriormente emitieron una señal en el área de Northwest 18 Avenue y 19 Street en Allapattah, según la policía.

El video del 9 de junio muestra a Aceituno intentando entrar a la fuerza en vehículos cerca de donde un Ford Mustang modelo 2024 fue robado cerca de Savona Avenue y South Le Jeune Road antes de ser abandonado cerca de Northwest 19 Avenue y 16 Terrace en Allapattah, según la policía.

Los registros muestran que Aceituno vivía cerca de Northwest 19 Avenue y 19 Terrace en Allapattah, y que su presunta ola de delitos involucró a los departamentos de policía de Miami y Coral Gables, así como a la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade.

El Departamento de Policía de Coral Gables había emitido una alerta de búsqueda para un sospechoso cuando un agente de la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade reconoció a Aceituno tras un arresto el lunes, según los registros.

El martes, un detective de Coral Gables contactó al agente de la MDSO, quien “proporcionó una identificación positiva” de Aceituno, quien se encontraba en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight, según un informe policial.

En los 12 casos presentados por los fiscales, Aceituno enfrentaba cuatro cargos de robo mayor de vehículo, cinco cargos de robo en vehículo desocupado, dos cargos de intento de robo en vehículo ocupado, cinco cargos de intento de robo en vehículo desocupado, un cargo de ingreso ilegal a una estructura o vehículo desocupado y un cargo de hurto menor.

El editor de asignaciones de Local 10 News, Carson Merlo, contribuyó a este informe.

The unanimous ruling by the three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge wrongly interpreted Philadelphia's contract claims involving Independence National Historical Park, saying the city merely having standing to sue did not mean its arguments had merit. The panel also praised the plans for the replacement installation, writing that they were, “full of historical context,” despite objections from historians and city officials that the content appears whitewashed.

The ruling comes a week after a Massachusetts federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore sites changed under an executive order calling for the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks to not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” The federal government has asked for a stay on that ruling while it appeals.

It was unclear how the Massachusetts ruling would affect the restoration or replacement of the panels at the President's House Site. About half the large panels at the outdoor exhibit had been restored before a February pause in the work.

Phone and email messages left for attorneys representing the city were not returned early Thursday. Messages to spokespeople for the Department of Interior and the National Park Service also were not returned.

The city of Philadelphia sued in January after the National Park Service, in response to President Donald Trump's executive order, removed the explanatory panels from the President’s House Site, where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital.

The city had worked in tandem with the federal government, historians and private partners to create the exhibit in the early 2000s — as part of a longstanding cooperation agreement over the downtown historical park — and contributed $1.5 million toward its creation.

The city argued that federal government must consult with the city before making changes to the President's House Site. Justice Department lawyers argued the administration alone can decide what stories are told at National Park Service properties.

In its ruling Thursday, the appeals panel said the maintenance portion of the contract between the city and the federal government could not be interpreted to mean the site would remain as it was when it was completed.

“The duty to ‘maintain’ is better understood as a general management obligation that accompanies ownership, not a promise that the exhibits will forever remain in place regardless of the owner’s wishes,” the opinion said.

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Casey contributed from Boston.

Guthrie se encontraba en North Miami para una mesa redonda sobre preparación ante huracanes en el campus Biscayne Bay de la Universidad Internacional de Florida (FIU).

El traslado se produce a pesar de que Guthrie y otros funcionarios habían afirmado previamente que el centro de detención para inmigrantes podría resistir una tormenta débil.

“Así que tendrían que preguntarle a ICE qué ha cambiado”, dijo Guthrie. “Al final del día, el gobernador siempre ha dicho que la instalación de inmigración es temporal”.

Añadió: “Siempre fue diseñada para ser temporal. ICE tomó una decisión. Emitieron ese comunicado. Yo no vi ese comunicado antes de que llegara a los medios”.

Guthrie sostuvo que las estructuras del lugar siguen siendo lo suficientemente resistentes para soportar una tormenta.

“Las estructuras en sí, las estructuras de vigas en I y las estructuras de lona pueden resistir vientos de hasta 74 millas por hora, lo que equivale a una tormenta tropical o un huracán de categoría 1”, dijo Guthrie. “Nunca existió la intención de dejar personas en esa instalación, ni siquiera durante una tormenta tropical. Íbamos a evacuar y teníamos planes de evacuación”.

Anteriormente había dicho que la instalación podía soportar un huracán de categoría 2.

Guthrie agregó que el lugar permanecerá tal como está por ahora y que aún podría volver a recibir detenidos en el futuro.

“En este momento no se nos ha indicado que suspendamos operaciones, por lo que seguimos preparados para recibir detenidos nuevamente, si eso es lo que el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional desea hacer”, afirmó.

El centro de detención improvisado, ubicado en lo profundo de los Everglades, fue construido rápidamente el verano pasado y ha recibido fuertes críticas de varios grupos ambientalistas, que posteriormente presentaron una demanda solicitando su cierre.

Sky 10 sobrevoló la instalación a principios de esta semana y mostró que las estructuras continúan en el lugar, aunque con menos actividad de la que se había observado anteriormente.

Hasta ahora, ni Guthrie ni el DHS han comentado exactamente a dónde fueron trasladados los detenidos que estaban en Alligator Alcatraz.

Según el teniente de Miami Fire Rescue, Pete Sanchez, el incendio fue reportado a la 1:55 a.m. en Austral Marina, ubicada en 2190 NW North River Drive.

Sanchez dijo que los bomberos llegaron al lugar y encontraron dos embarcaciones atracadas, cada una de más de 30 pies de largo, completamente envueltas en llamas y amenazando a otras embarcaciones cercanas.

Se solicitaron más unidades de rescate de bomberos al lugar y los bomberos utilizaron múltiples líneas de mangueras y realizaron una “operación de supresión con espuma desde tierra en coordinación con el barco de bomberos de Miami operando en el agua”, dijo Sanchez.

Según Sanchez, el incendio fue controlado en menos de una hora y se confirmó que todas las embarcaciones estaban desocupadas.

Sanchez confirmó que cuatro embarcaciones resultaron dañadas en el incendio, incluyendo dos con daños severos por fuego y otras con daños por calor, incluyendo un yate de 60 pies.

Todos los propietarios de las embarcaciones afectadas fueron notificados sobre el incendio y acudieron al lugar, donde hablaron con el comandante del incidente, dijo Sanchez.

La Unidad de Investigaciones de Incendios de Miami está investigando el origen y la causa del incendio.

Sanchez dijo que la Guardia Costera “evaluará cualquier posible impacto ambiental por combustible u otros materiales peligrosos que puedan haber ingresado al agua”.

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Guthrie was in North Miami for a hurricane preparedness roundtable at Florida International University’s Biscayne Bay campus.

The transfer comes despite Guthrie and other officials previously stating the immigration detention facility could survive a weak storm.

“So you would need to ask ICE what’s changed,” Guthrie said. “At the end of the day, the governor has always said that the immigration facility is temporary.”

He added, “It was always designed to be temporary. ICE has made a decision. They came out with that statement. I did not see that statement prior to it hitting the media.”

Guthrie maintained that the structures on the site are still sturdy enough to survive a storm.

“The structures themselves, the I beam structures, the soft-sided structures can withstand up to 74 mile-an-hour winds, that is a tropical storm, (Category 1) hurricane,” Guthrie said. “There was never ever an intent to leave individuals at that facility, even in a tropical storm. We were going to evacuate, we had evacuation plans.”

He previously said that the facility could handle a Category 2 storm.

Guthrie added that the site will stay as it is for now and could still receive detainees again in the future.

“At this point in time, we have not been told to stand down, so we are still in a posture to receive detainees again, if that’s what the Department of Homeland Security wants to do,” he said.

The makeshift detention center, deep in the Everglades, was constructed quickly last summer and has received sharp criticism from several environmental groups who later filed a lawsuit arguing for its closure.

Sky 10 flew over the facility earlier this week, showing structures are still in place but not as busy as they’ve been in the past.

So far, neither Guthrie nor DHS have commented on exactly where those detainees from Alligator Alcatraz have been transferred.

Luego de reunirse con el pontífice en el Vaticano, el mandatario señaló que el pontífice planea un viaje que incluiría las ciudades de Puno, Iquitos, Cusco, Pucallpa, Piura y Chiclayo, ésta última ubicada en la costa norte del Pacífico y donde el papa ejerció su trabajo pastoral por casi dos décadas.

“La primera quincena de noviembre estará en Perú", dijo Balcázar a la radio local RPP desde el Vaticano tras salir de una reunión de dos horas con el papa. Indicó que los detalles de su itinerario se darán más adelante debido a “razones de política religiosa y seguridad”.

El Vaticano no ha confirmado ningún viaje próximo, pero se rumorea ampliamente una visita a Perú para fines de año con posibles paradas en otros países sudamericanos. El propio León XIV ha expresado su deseo de realizar dicho viaje.

“Argentina y Uruguay esperan la visita del papa. Creo que Perú también me recibiría con los brazos abiertos y, si voy a Perú, también visitaría muchos países vecinos, pero el plan aún no está definido”, declaró el pontífice a la prensa en diciembre a su regreso del Líbano.

Chiclayo, a 14 kilómetros del Pacífico, es una ciudad con más de 800.000 habitantes y desempeña un papel vital como eje comercial de la costa norte de Perú. Sin embargo, también enfrenta problemas sociales y alrededor del 20% de su población vive en la pobreza.

Ése fue el hogar de León XIV durante casi una década antes de que partiera a Roma en 2023 cuando el entonces papa Francisco le pidió asumir la presidencia de la Comisión Pontificia para América Latina.

Los habitantes de Chiclayo celebraron emocionados cuando en sus primeras palabras como pontífice, León XIV dijo en castellano a la a multitud que lo vitoreaba en la Plaza de San Pedro: “mi querida diócesis de Chiclayo, en el Perú, donde un pueblo fiel ha acompañado a su obispo, ha compartido su fe”.

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La periodista de AP Nicole Winfield contribuyó con este despacho desde el Vaticano.

The document, which has not yet been made public, will be submitted Thursday to Cuba’s National Assembly. It envisions expanding opportunities for private enterprise, greater autonomy for municipalities and state-owned companies and measures to attract additional foreign investment, including from Cubans abroad.

In recent days, residents in several Havana neighborhoods staged protests, banging pots and pans as power outages spread across the island.

“Cuba resists heroically and creatively, but has endured for too long a barbaric, undeserved and unbearable punishment, to which is now added the threat of military aggression,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel said late Wednesday in the closing speech of the Communist Party session. The speech was published Thursday.

Díaz-Canel said the emergency plan and the policy document prepared by the Communist Party’s Central Committee were shaped by the experiences of China and Vietnam, two communist countries that have introduced market-oriented economic reforms while maintaining one-party rule.

The document will be submitted to the National Assembly for debate during a special session that, like the recent party meeting, was convened without prior public notice.

The announcement comes after months of increasing pressure from the U.S. and high-level talks between the two countries that have included Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro. The U.S. has levied numerous sanctions against Cuba and has indicted Raúl Castro in connection with the 1996 downing of two civilian planes operated by Miami exiles.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said at a White House press briefing that the administration is watching the island’s actions to determine how to respond.

“We’re going to see what they do. And obviously, if they do one thing, we’re going to do something,” Vance said. “If they make smart decisions, we’re going to have a much better relationship with that island.”

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Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this story.

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

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According to Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue officials, the fire was reported at about 5:20 a.m. in the 1800 block of Southwest 23^rd Avenue.

FLFR officials said firefighters arrived at the scene about six minutes later and found flames coming from a tiki hut that was behind a rental property, as well as a neighboring home.

“It was huge -- it was a big tiki hut,” a neighbor identified only as Gigi said.

Firefighters said four adults who live at the home were able to safely evacuate with their three dogs.

No injuries were reported.

“It’s very sad, you know,” Gigi said. “Imagine it was your house that catches on fire.”

The cause of the fire is under investigation and it’s unclear whether the fire originated in the home or tiki hut, authorities said.

The American Red Cross will assist the displaced residents.

But that wasn't the only memorable moment Macron had this week at a G7 summit where the experience and networks he has built over nearly 10 years as president bore fruit.

Perhaps the most remarkable feat was getting Trump to more forcefully back Ukraine in its war with Russia — a win for European leaders and for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following his diplomatic disaster at the White House in March 2025.

“Bravo,” Macron said after Trump signed the Iran war agreement. The signing came as a surprise to most of the officials and other guests at the Versailles Palace dinner, and they responded with a round of applause.

Macron had said the dinner was intended as a celebration of French-American friendship. The unannounced signing ceremony transformed it into a symbolic finale to Macron’s weeklong effort to get Trump more aligned with Europe — perhaps his last big achievements before the end of his term next spring.

Macron used Versailles as an ‘instrument of influence’

Macron had presented Versailles as an “instrument of influence” and suggested the invitation could help keep Trump engaged through the end of the G7 summit held in Evian. Trump left last year’s gathering in Canada before it had concluded.

The Palace of Versailles, which Trump praised as “not gold leaf,” has been a venue for French leaders to honor visiting guests for more than three centuries.

After the signing, Macron praised the Iran agreement as one that “allows for putting an end to the conflict, that allows peace, that allows the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz" and will likely result in lower oil prices.

Macron, who was not involved in the Iran war negotiations, cannot claim success for Trump deciding to sign the deal. But he secured the historic location, helping to put Europe back into the frame of a war that the U.S. and Israel jointly launched without consulting Western allies.

French Economy Minister Roland Lescure, who attended the dinner, described the signing as largely improvised.

Trump said in his remarks that he was going to sign the agreement, Lescure said. Asked whether Macron knew in advance, Lescure said he believed Trump had informed the French president shortly beforehand.

“But for us, ministers in the French government, it was a surprise,” he told French radio RTL.

Trump received backing from European leaders

Trump arrived in France facing pressure at home over Iran, including criticism from some allies about his handling of the conflict and the emerging agreement. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies and a longtime Iran hawk, had expressed skepticism.

As negotiations with Iran advanced, Trump sought backing from leaders at the G7 meeting, according to a European diplomat briefed on the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The G7 includes the U.S., France, the U.K., Italy, Germany, Canada and Japan.

“We certainly gave him some reassurance on the Middle East,” the European diplomat said. “And President Trump, for his part, delivered for us on Ukraine.”

The G7 statement on geopolitical issues referred to a “breakthrough” in the Middle East and mentioned Trump by name three times, praising what it called his “strong leadership.”

Trump has had friction with Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni over failing to consult them before the decision to go to war. He has pushed back on the four members of NATO for their lack of support for the U.S. in the conflict.

Macron, whose bumpy relations with Trump started with an awkwardly long handshake nearly a decade ago, prepared for the G7 summit for months via frequent phone calls focusing on both Iran and Ukraine.

Trump met on the sidelines of the summit with Zelenskyy, who showed Trump photos of the damage caused by Russian bombing of the Dormition Cathedral in Kyiv.

Americans and Europeans align views to support Ukraine

Macron has at times expressed caution about Trump’s shifting positions, particularly regarding Russia and President Vladimir Putin. But European officials argued that this week’s written commitments represented a more durable position because the language had been approved by Trump himself.

“America is with us on Ukraine. That is very important,” Macron said after Trump joined a three-way phone call with Zelenskyy from Versailles.

G7 leaders agreed in a joint statement to increase deliveries of air-defense systems and long-range weapons for Ukraine. They also pledged to increase pressure on Russia through stronger sanctions, including measures targeting the country’s oil and gas sectors.

Macron also used the summit to raise Lebanon’s future with Trump. France has longstanding historical ties to Lebanon and has sought to keep support for Lebanese sovereignty high on the international agenda. During discussions in Evian, Trump repeatedly expressed sympathy for Lebanon while criticizing Israel and describing tensions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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AP reporters Angela Charlton and Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to the story

Romanch Mahajan, 18, jumped out of the carriage after his mother fell out and hit his head on the ground, his father, Deepak Mahajan, told The New York Times.

“He was screaming, ‘Mom!'” the young man’s father told the newspaper. Mahajan said he, his wife and younger son escaped with minor injuries, though their carriage clipped another horse-drawn vehicle and toppled over.

The family arrived in New York from India on Monday, the same day Romanch learned he had been accepted to a university in Jaipur. They had spent the day visiting many of the city’s popular tourist attractions and were unwinding on a carriage ride when the driver got off to photograph them. Moments later, the accident occurred.

“This incident should be taken very seriously,” Mahajan said. “It took my son's dream away.”

The company that owns the carriage involved in the fatal crash has also suspended the driver indefinitely, and the horse will be retired from the business, according to the union representing the industry.

“We’re absolutely gutted and stunned by this tragedy. We’ve never had a fatal accident like this before,” said Alexander Kemp, a vice president with the Transport Workers Union Local 100, the labor union representing carriage drivers and owners. “We have shuttered the stables and ceased operations today while we have extensive internal discussions of safety protocols and how they can be improved.”

The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the 850-acre park, confirmed that Mahajan's death is believed to be the first human fatality involving a horse carriage since they were introduced in Central Park more than 150 years ago.

The organization also called for the industry to be suspended until more protections could be put in place, noting that there have now been eight horse-related incidents in Central Park over the past 13 months.

“If any other activity in the Park posed a comparable risk to visitors, it would be suspended immediately while steps were taken to address those dangers,” the organization said in a statement Thursday.

The influential nonprofit revived the pitched debate over the carriages when it weighed in on the issue for the first time last year, throwing its support behind a long-simmering bill that would ban horse carriages and help drivers transition into new jobs.

The organization argued that the carriages are a public safety hazard in the increasingly crowded park, noting that other U.S. cities, including Chicago and San Antonio, have also recently done away with the nostalgic rides.

New York City leaders, meanwhile, vowed to work to put an end to the 150-year-old industry in the wake of Mahajan’s death.

City Council leaders said they’d hold a hearing next month on Ryder's Law, the bill backed by the conservancy.

“The time to act is now,” Council Speaker Julie Menin posted on the social platform X.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani also reiterated his support for ending the industry, a position he campaigned on last year. He said he’d work with the council, the industry and animal welfare advocates and to “deliver a just transition that protects workers while ending horse-drawn carriages in Central Park once and for all.”

Horse carriages, which cost about $72 for the first 20 minutes, were not running Thursday in the park, which sees millions of visitors every year.

The Transport Workers Union has opposed past efforts to wind down the industry. But on Thursday, it backed legislation introduced last week that would establish hitching posts throughout the park so drivers could safely tether and secure their horses, including at popular tourist photo stops.

The industry has long been seen as a quaint attraction that offers tourists a romantic remnant of a bygone New York, while providing hundreds of jobs to drivers, along with many farm and racing horses. Opponents, though, complain the rides are both inhumane to horses and a danger to people.

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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

The league launched an investigation at the request of the NHL Players’ Association in light of the Edmonton Oilers’ interest in hiring Babcock. The league in a statement said even in the least favorable light, there was no basis to restrict Babcock’s employment.

It was not immediately clear if or when the Oilers would name Babcock coach. They have been looking for a replacement since firing Kris Knoblauch following a first-round playoff exit that came after back-to-back trips to the Stanley Cup Final.

Babcock, 63, has not coached in the NHL since 2019, when he was fired by Toronto 23 games into his fifth season in charge. The Blue Jackets hired him on July 1, 2023, and Babcock resigned in September after his requests for personal photos from players in an attempt to get to know them drew criticism as an invasion of privacy.

A statement from the NHLPA called the allegations very concerning and said, "Moving forward, we expect that Mr. Babcock will uphold the high standards required of NHL head coaches.”

The NHL dropped its planned investigation at the time because Babcock stepped down. It got underway this week after the final ended

Babcock coached Detroit to the Stanley Cup in 2008 and has made two other trips to the final, along with guiding Canada to Olympic gold medals in 2010 and ’14.

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

Although the official certification of the primary race is continuing, McDuffie said in a statement that “it is clear that the voters have chosen a different path.” The former member of the D.C. council said he had contacted Lewis George and congratulated her. He thanked his supporters and urged them to continue working for the city.

"The campaign may be over, but the work of building a safer, more affordable, more prosperous city continues.”

The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the race. Lewis George had a little less than 53% of the vote Thursday morning, which is just a few percentage points above the 50% threshold to avoid ranked choice voting.

The city is scheduled to release preliminary ranked choice voting results on Sunday. AP will call the race before then if it is clear that the ranked choice process will be avoided.

Lewis George has pledged to aggressively stand up to federal intervention into Washington, D.C.’s, affairs, setting up a potential showdown with President Donald Trump over his administration's moves to challenge the city’s limited autonomy.

If the results stand, Lewis George is likely to win November’s general election in the heavily Democratic city. The winner in the general election will replace Muriel Bowser, who decided not to run again after three terms.

Lewis George would join Robert White Jr., who won the Democratic primary for the district’s delegate to Congress, as the top local officials who likely will contend with the federal government’s intentions for the city. They each campaigned on a promise to take a harder line than their predecessors against the Trump administration’s moves on the district, including its deployment of the National Guard on an ongoing, open-ended mission meant to fight crime.

“As mayor, I will work with anyone who makes D.C. safer,” Lewis George told a crowd of cheering supporters Tuesday night, “but I will also stand up to Trump.”

Washington has limited autonomy and federal leaders retain significant control over local affairs, including approval of the budget and laws passed by the D.C. Council.

Trump further encroached on that autonomy last year when he briefly federalized the city’s police force and deployed an ongoing law enforcement surge that included the National Guard. His efforts to downsize the federal government also roiled the capital region, costing thousands of people their jobs. And he has been reshaping the city by renovating storied landmarks and putting his name or image on buildings.

Lewis George, a self-described democratic socialist and a member of the D.C. Council, has already come under fire from Trump, who last week threatened to place the city under federal control if she won.

“Maybe we’d take back Washington, run it on the federal basis,” he said.

Lewis George, 38, and a third generation Washingtonian, has vowed to overrule an executive order by the city’s police chief permitting local law enforcement to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Lewis George argued the order “hurt the trust of our community.”

She also pledged to use any levers available to her through the city’s home rule compact to resist what she called authoritarian infringements on the district’s local governance.

“We have legal tools we can use to fight back,” she told the AP in an interview before the vote. “And we know that when we have gone to court, we’ve won.”

Bowser found herself walking a fine line between staying in Trump’s good graces and responding to the concerns of constituents, many of whom said she didn’t push back hard enough on Trump’s actions. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the 18-term, 89-year-old delegate to Congress, meanwhile, faced mounting concern from critics who said she wasn’t forcefully pushing back on the Trump administration’s moves against the city.

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According to Miami Fire Rescue Lt. Pete Sanchez, the fire was reported at 1:55 a.m. at Austral Marina, located at 2190 NW North River Drive.

Sanchez said firefighters arrived at the scene and found two docked boats, each measuring more than 30 feet in length, fully engulfed in flames and threatening nearby boats.

More fire rescue units were called to the scene and firefighters used multiple hose lines and conducted a “foam suppression operation from land in coordination with the Miami Fire Boat operating on the water,” Sanchez said.

According to Sanchez, the fire was under control without an hour and all boats were confirmed to be unoccupied.

Sanchez confirmed four boats were damaged in the fire, including two with severe fire damage and four with heat-related damage, including a 60-foot yacht.

All affected boat owners were notified about the blaze and they all responded to the scene where they spoke with the incident commander, Sanchez said.

The Miami Fire Investigation Unit is investigating the origin and cause of the fire.

Sanchez said the Coast Guard will “assess any potential environmental impact from fuel or other hazardous materials that may have entered the water.”

A military judge at Fort Stewart handed down his verdict in the court-martial of Sgt. Quornelius Radford, local news outlets reported. Army prosecutors accused Radford of targeting leaders of his supply unit when he opened fire with a personal handgun last August.

Radford, 29, wounded four fellow soldiers and his then-fiancé, Raekwon Smith, who testified during the two-day trial that he had followed Radford onto Fort Stewart fearing the soldier was suicidal. Smith said Radford shot him in the torso before entering his unit's office building and shooting others.

Radford admitted to carrying out the shootings in March when he pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated assault and domestic violence. But he insisted he never intended to kill anyone, and Army prosecutors pressed ahead with trying Radford on charges of attempted murder.

Trial witnesses described how Radford walked to two offices and a conference room as he shot four soldiers, but he told others he encountered to leave, WSAV-TV reported. He was apprehended by military police after being restrained and disarmed by fellow soldiers.

A radiologist who examined X-rays of the soldiers' injuries testified one was shot in the face and another in the chest, while bullets stuck other victims in the back and abdomen. Dr. Morgan Williamson said any of those wounds could have been fatal, WTOC-TV reported.

Prosecutors argued that Radford knew from his military firearms training never to shoot at anyone unless he meant to kill them.

Defense attorneys said Radford was suicidal and opened fire to provoke a showdown with police, hoping they would kill him.

“Radford only wanted one person to die that day, himself,” said Lt. Col. Dylan Mack, one of Radford's Army lawyers.

Radford opted for his trial to be decided by a military judge rather than a jury of soldiers. The judge scheduled a sentencing hearing for Monday. Under military law, attempted murder carries a potential penalty of life imprisonment.

The largest Army post east of the Mississippi River, Fort Stewart is home to thousands of soldiers assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division. It is located about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Savannah.

Radford served as a supply sergeant in the division’s 2nd Armored Brigade. Army records show he enlisted in 2018.

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Authorities said it happened just after 11:45 p.m. near Ninth Street. An arrest report from the Miami Beach Police Department states that a worker at Mango’s nightclub reported that a man, later identified as Juan Luis Rivera Jr., was exhibiting the threatening behaviors.

Police said they were able to track down two victims, who said Rivera approached them, lifted his jacket to show a pocketknife in his waistband and was “mumbling incoherently.”

According to the report, Rivera then followed the victims and was eventually “flanking” them, asking them, “Why y’all walking so fast?” while holding the knife in his hand.

Authorities said after noticing police officers in the area, Rivera took off. They said two witnesses later flagged down two police officers and pointed out Rivera, who was walking nearby.

Police said they detained him and found the folding knife. The report states that Rivera told the officers, “I didn’t do anything. I was just trying to get girls’ numbers.”

Police arrested Rivera, who has an address in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood, on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon just after midnight on Wednesday.

As of Thursday morning, he was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $5,000 bond.

Las autoridades indicaron que ocurrió poco después de las 11:45 p.m. cerca de Ninth Street. Un informe de arresto del Departamento de Policía de Miami Beach señala que un empleado del club nocturno Mango’s reportó que un hombre, posteriormente identificado como Juan Luis Rivera Jr., estaba mostrando un comportamiento amenazante.

La policía indicó que logró localizar a dos víctimas, quienes dijeron que Rivera se les acercó, levantó su chaqueta para mostrar una navaja plegable que llevaba en la cintura y estaba “murmurando de manera incoherente”.

Según el informe, Rivera luego siguió a las víctimas y finalmente comenzó a caminar a su lado, preguntándoles: “¿Por qué caminan tan rápido?”, mientras sostenía el cuchillo en la mano.

Las autoridades señalaron que, al notar la presencia de agentes de policía en el área, Rivera huyó. Posteriormente, dos testigos alertaron a dos oficiales y señalaron a Rivera, quien caminaba cerca del lugar.

La policía indicó que lo detuvo y encontró la navaja plegable. El informe establece que Rivera les dijo a los agentes: “No hice nada. Solo intentaba conseguir números de teléfono de mujeres”.

La policía arrestó a Rivera, quien tiene una dirección registrada en el vecindario Overtown de Miami, por un cargo de agresión agravada con un arma mortal poco después de la medianoche del miércoles.

Hasta la mañana del jueves, permanecía detenido en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight con una fianza de $5,000 USD.

The benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate fell to 6.47% from 6.52% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. One year ago, the average rate was 6.81%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, often sought by borrowers refinancing a home loan, also came down this week. That average rate fell to 5.81% from 5.84% last week. A year ago, it was at 5.96%, Freddie Mac said.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

With inflation still well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, officials at the U.S. central bank left the benchmark interest rate where it was on Wednesday. It was the first meeting with new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who replaced Jerome Powell after his eight-year run as the U.S. central bank’s leader.

A number of Fed policymakers said they are actually willing to consider at least one interest rate hike this year.

Rates have been mostly trending higher since the conflict between the U.S. and Iran began in late February, disrupting the flow of crude oil from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. That’s sent oil prices sharply higher, helping drive up inflation, bond yields and mortgage rates.

However, earlier this week, the U.S. and Iran came to a tentative agreement to end the war and allow Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz and sell its oil freely.

That sent the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note down from 4.53% last week to 4.44% Thursday. It was just 3.97% in late February, before the war broke out.

As recently as late February, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage had slipped just under 6% for the first time since late 2022. It’s hasn’t fallen below that threshold since. Two weeks ago, it climbed to 6.53%, its highest level since Aug. 28.

While average long-term mortgage rates remain lower than they were at this time last year, their mostly upward trajectory and uncertainty over how much higher they may go has kept many would-be homebuyers on the sideline.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes declined in the first three months of the year compared to a year earlier, extending a nationwide housing slump that dates back to 2022 when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Sales were essentially flat in April, but accelerated in May to their fastest pace since December.

Still, sales of existing U.S. homes continue to hovering close to a 4-million annual pace, far short of the historic norm that is closer to 5.2-million.

Though mortgage applications fell according to the most recent Mortgage Bankers Association survey, they jumped 10.8% the week before.

Pending home sales also rose last month, an encouraging sign for the housing market heading into the second half of the year after a lackluster spring homebuying season.

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The forum was hosted by the Urban League of Broward, while questions about representation in the majority-Black district remained front and center.

“There is an attack on Black people in this country and we have to stand up against that and we have to speak out against that,” Democratic congressional candidate Elijah Manley said.

The forum took place in Congressional District 20, where roughly half of the constituents are Black. The seat was formerly held by Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat, who is seeking the seat after resigning under the cloud of an ethics investigation and criminal indictment.

“This is a Black access district, and if we erase the remedy, we erase the past, and that would lead us into a future that would destroy us,” Cherfilus-McCormick said. “So everybody must talk about what is wrong at this time, having someone come into our district forum shopping.”

The comment appeared to be aimed at Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose district was eliminated under a new redistricting map. Wasserman Schultz is now running in District 20 against five other candidates who are Black.

“I think my record speaks for itself,” Wasserman Schultz said. “I’ve been a strong fighter over my entire career to stand up and be a voice for consumers and to push back on businesses and industries who take advantage of consumers.”

Wasserman Schultz said she has fought for minorities, jobs and immigrants during her time in Washington, but candidates throughout the evening continued to emphasize the importance of minority representation.

“When everyone has a seat at the table, we’re better for it. We’re stronger for it,” Democratic candidate Dale Holness said.

The discussion also touched on climate change, healthcare and voting rights.

“We need regulations -- strict regulations -- cut the red tape, promote small local businesses, and that way we can empower our own insurance company locally,” Republican candidate Rod Joseph said.

Cherfilus-McCormick’s ethics investigation also came up during the forum.

One Democratic candidate was notably absent from the event: Luther Campbell. The rapper-turned-political candidate later posted a message on Facebook explaining why he did not attend.

“I love a good fight, but I never confirmed an event,” Campbell wrote. “Nobody on my team confirmed an event.”

A spokesperson for WDFL-TV, which organized and produced the forum in partnership with the Urban League of Broward County, disputed Campbell’s claims to Local 10 News and provided a copy of an email from a man named Kevin Harris, who said he was “helping to support the Luther Campbell for Congress campaign” and confirmed that Campbell would be participating in the forum.

The email was dated April 28.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, said Wednesday night that petitioners have collected more than the roughly 875,000 signatures needed to place the proposed tax before voters. It will qualify June 25 unless proponents pull the measure.

The proposal, backed by the Service Employees International Union Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time, 5% tax on individuals whose net worth exceeds $1 billion and who were living in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. The goal is to generate $100 billion in revenue, mainly to fund the state’s Medicaid system with some money going to food assistance and education programs.

The union didn't respond Thursday to a request for comment on the announcement that the proposal has secured enough support to qualify for the ballot.

States have been debating how to respond to the major tax breaks and spending cuts legislation President Donald Trump signed last year. The proposal has already divided Democrats and major labor unions and triggered an expensive campaign to defeat it. The proposed tax is backed by prominent progressives including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The measure has faced staunch pushback from Silicon Valley tech moguls as well as Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and prominent players in Sacramento. They include the California Medical Association and California School Boards Association, which helped launch a committee this week to oppose it. Newsom also opposed a ballot measure in 2022 to increase taxes on the wealthy, which would have funded programs that help people buy electric cars or install more chargers. Voters rejected it.

Critics say the measure would decrease state revenue over time by pushing the ultrawealthy to leave, taking the money they would contribute in income taxes with them. That would deal a huge blow to a state that relies on its top 1% of earners for nearly half of its personal income tax revenue.

“This flawed measure is the wrong approach for California’s small businesses and working families,” said Roger Salazar, a spokesperson for Golden State Promise, a political committee fighting the tax.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the proposal would generate tens of billions of dollars in the first few years, but that income tax revenues could subsequently decline by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Since the proposal was announced in October, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has donated $82 million to a political committee called “Building a Better California” that backs a variety of initiatives designed to blunt the billionaire tax proposal. It has raised more than $118 million, counting Brin’s contributions, from fewer than a dozen donors.

State lawmakers passed budget bills this week that aim to raise revenue in other ways, including by extending a tax on healthcare providers. Newsom and legislative leaders agree to this approach, Senate President pro Tempore Monique Limón said.

“The budget, as approved by the Legislature and now being negotiated with the Governor, does not include the billionaire’s tax,” the Democrat said in a statement. “Instead, it reflects additional revenues to address our long-term structural deficit.”

In a media briefing, Richard Meade, editor in chief of Lloyd’s List, said for the first time in 110 days, ships owned by major companies were crossing the strait after effectively being marooned there since February.

The strait is a critical passageway for the world’s oil and natural gas. Before the war, the waterway off Iran's coast carried a fifth of the world’s crude oil. Its closure during the war has created a historic energy crisis.

Lloyd’s List did not say how many ships were transiting through or had passed through the strait as of Thursday. It said tankers controlled by major ship owners Grimaldi Group, Cosco, Knutsen and NYK had passed through the strait. Two Iran-flagged, National Iranian Tanker Company-owned, sanctioned crude oil tankers entered the strait, according to Lloyd’s List.

Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the U.S. Navy lifted its blockade of the strait to allow some ships through Iranian ports.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani wrote on X that an Italian merchant ship owned by the Grimaldi Group was among the first vessels to transit the strait after the agreement’s signing.

Maritime data and tracking company Kpler said it observed six verified ship crossings on Wednesday and another 11 on Thursday.

Phillip Belcher, marine director of Intertanko, a trade group for global independent tanker owners, said the main central route of the Strait of Hormuz was still closed and has an estimated 80 mines that need to be cleared. But ships have been passing through the smaller northern route, which goes through Iranian waters, and the southern route, which goes through Omani waters.

“Those two routes now seem to be fully open,” Belcher said.

However, it will take weeks or months to fully reopen the strait, and the two alternative routes don't have as much capacity as the central passage in the Strait of Hormuz.

“This is like a highway where the road in the middle is closed and you’re using that hard shoulder,” Belcher said. “That’s now being used as the main route. We need to get back to having the highway open.”

Lloyd’s List estimated that 550 merchant ships will need to prepare to exit the Persian Gulf, including 160 tankers, 200 bulk carriers, 60 container ships and 10 vehicle carriers.

Here, The Associated Press runs you through some of the more compelling — and controversial — backstories from the kit designs on show in soccer’s biggest event, currently taking place in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Cape Verde's flight paths

For its World Cup debut, the smallest nation by population at the tournament is paying homage to the roughly 525,000 inhabitants who live on 10 volcanic islands off the coast of Africa. A geometric, triangular print across its blue (home) and white (away) jerseys represents the network of flight paths that connect the islands. The idea is that the people of Cape Verde are united behind the players at the World Cup — and that togetherness showed as the team held firm to seal an unlikely 0-0 draw with heavily favored Spain in their first match.

Belgium's surrealism

“This is not a jersey,” reads a message on the collar of Belgium's multicolor away shirt. No, the Belgians aren't losing their minds. It's just a nod to the European nation's surrealist heritage — and notably the work of its master in this artistic movement from the early 20th century. Throughout his career, Belgian artist René Magritte questioned the enigmatic relationship of mind and eye, reality and language, writing under “The Treachery of Images” — his iconic painting of a pipe — the words: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe).” The light-blue jersey features pink patterns and black detailing, incorporating soccer-inspired motifs such as pitch lines and a ball. “True to the surrealism theme, the kit sparks the imagination and invites conversation,” the Belgian federation says.

Haiti's battle scene

The original jersey submitted by this Caribbean nation included a depiction of the final battle of the Haitian War of Independence in 1803 on its front. In the words of Colombian sportswear manufacturer Saeta, it was a “tribute to the men and women who contribute every day to Haiti’s future.” It didn't go down too well with FIFA, which rejected the image during its approval process, deeming it too political. So an updated blue soccer kit was needed, one that no longer includes the battle artwork.

Argentina's swirling paint technique

The defending World Cup champion is mixing sporting heritage with artistic expression in its jerseys. The home kit — worn by Lionel Messi for his hat trick against Algeria on Tuesday — features three shades of blue on its stripes, an homage to the South American nation's World Cup-winning uniforms from 1978, 1986 and 2022. As for its dark blue away jersey, that's inspired by a traditional painting technique from capital city Buenos Aires — filete porteño — that's used for ornamental design, combining brilliant, swirling colors with specific lettering styles.

France's American connection

France arrived for the World Cup with an away kit that honors a gift the nation famously gave to the United States: the Statue of Liberty. The jersey has a green hue that resembles the oxidized color of the iconic sculpture designed by a Frenchman — Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi — and given to the United States in 1886 as a symbol of French-American friendship. On the jersey is a logo in copper — the original color of the statue — with the words “Nos différences nous unissent” (Our differences unite us).

Iran's endangered Asiatic cheetah

The most striking imagery on Iran's home (white) and away (red) kits is an Asiatic cheetah low across the front. There also are cheetah spots on the sleeves up to the shoulder. The Asiatic cheetah, an equally fast cousin of the African cat, is one of the world’s critically endangered species — one that Iran has long tried to save. There were as many as 400 in the 1990s but the numbers have dwindled to less than an estimated 70 remaining in Iran.

Norway's runic font

Norway's kit might be the sharpest at the World Cup — literally. The font used for the names and numbers of players is inspired by runic writing — characters in several Germanic alphabets used in northern Europe from ancient times until the adoption of the Latin alphabet. The writing is pointy, geometric and easily visible, representing the Norwegian team's desire to embrace its centuries-old history. Flanking the large blue cross across the chest are Viking art patterns in an Urnes style.

Colombia's yellow butterflies

Look closely at Colombia's typically vibrant yellow jersey and you'll notice a burst of butterfly patterns. That's an homage to the classic novel by the nation's Nobel Prize-winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” and the stories that made him literature’s best-known practitioner of magical realism — the blending of the everyday with fantastical elements such as a man trailed by a cloud of yellow butterflies.

Mexico's Aztec calendar

Mexico's home jersey brings back the Aztec calendar design that was popular in the 1990s. In the run-up to the World Cup, the team visited the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and posed for a photo with the uniforms in front of the Aztec “Piedra de Sol” or Stone of the Sun, best known as the Aztec calendar.

Saudi Arabia's architecture

Dotted across Saudi Arabia's dark green home jersey are symmetrical lavender squares or diamond shapes, a tribute to doorway decoration — namely geometric, triangular architecture — commonly seen in homes in the kingdom. Wild lavender flowers fill Saudi's desert landscapes in springtime, so purple is a celebrated color in the nation and regarded as a symbol of generosity.

Brazil's Amazonian frogs

What might immediately jump out when looking at Brazil's navy blue-and-black away jersey made by Nike is a yellow “Jumpman” logo synonymous with Michael Jordan-promoted sportswear. However, more closely linked to Brazilian culture is the color of the kit, inspired by the skin of the poison dart frog found in the Amazon. It's a nod to the danger posed by Brazil, the record five-time world champion.

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This story has been corrected to remove a reference to Haiti as a World Cup debutant. This is Haiti's second World Cup.

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Associated Press writer Luis Andres Henao contributed to this report.

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

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According to the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, Jasper Frohock was found by deputies with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies did not immediately confirm where in the Keys Frohock was located at.

Investigators said Frohock was reported missing on Monday after last being seen in the 1900 block of Crestview Drive in Fort Pierce.

“Throughout his journey, he was traveling several miles each day by bicycle and camping overnight in a tent, often staying at local parks,” an SLCSO news release states.

It’s unclear why Frohock’s loved ones were unable to get in contact with him.

El documento —que no ha sido difundido públicamente— será enviado el jueves a la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular, el Parlamento cubano, y contempla mayor espacio para la iniciativa privada, incremento de la autonomía de los municipios y las empresas estatales y reglas beneficiosas para atraer inversión extranjera. La víspera se informó que el expresidente Raúl Castro aprobaba las medidas.

“La realidad nos impone cambios urgentes y necesarios. Y cuando la vida del pueblo se vuelve tan dura, el primer deber del Partido Comunista y del gobierno revolucionario no es explicar mejor la crisis, sino cambiar lo que haya que cambiar”, expresó el presidente Miguel Díaz-Canel en el discurso de cierre de la sesión del PCC en la noche del miércoles y que fue publicado el jueves.

Cuba se encuentra bajo un cerco energético y financiero de Estados Unidos que ha agravado la crisis que padece desde hace cinco años y ha tenido un fuerte impacto en la vida diaria, con apagones de hasta 20 horas por día y limitaciones en los servicios de salud, el transporte, la industria y la educación.

En las últimas jornadas se registraron manifestaciones barriales con golpes de cacerolas a medida que la luz se cortaba, constató The Associated Press.

Díaz-Canel dijo que para el plan de emergencia y el documento elaborado por el PCC se tuvieron en cuenta experiencias como las de China y Vietnam, países comunistas con economías de mercado.

El documento será entregado a los parlamentarios para su debate en una sesión especialmente convocada de manera tan sorpresiva como el llamado al plenario del PCC.

La semana pasada, y sin ofrecer plazos, Díaz-Canel había informado que las reformas contemplarían la ampliación de autorizaciones para la creación de empresas privadas —recién permitidas este lustro—, que se admitirá a cubanos residentes en la isla y el exterior como inversores en el sector del turismo y una mayor libertad a las empresas estatales que incluye su asociación con privados.

También anticipó modificaciones en el mercado cambiario y la posibilidad de que negocios privados puedan importar y exportar sin intermediación estatal –como se hace actualmente--.

El presidente estadounidense Donald Trump y su secretario de Estado, Marco Rubio, han dicho que buscan un cambio de gobierno y modelo económico en la isla. Cuba respondió que podría encarar aperturas económicas, pero que no discutirá su modelo político y social.

El PCC, cuyo primer secretario es Díaz-Canel y el único con reconocimiento legal, no es un partido electoral –no se presenta a comicios--, sino que por la Constitución orienta a los otros poderes, incluido el Legislativo, sobre la dirección del país.

Según la Oficina del Sheriff del Condado St. Lucie, Jasper Frohock fue localizado por agentes de la Oficina del Sheriff del Condado Monroe.

Los agentes no confirmaron de inmediato en qué lugar de los Cayos fue encontrado Frohock.

Los investigadores informaron que Frohock fue reportado como desaparecido el lunes después de haber sido visto por última vez en la cuadra 1900 de Crestview Drive, en Fort Pierce.

“A lo largo de su recorrido, viajaba varias millas cada día en bicicleta y pasaba la noche acampando en una tienda de campaña, con frecuencia hospedándose en parques locales”, indica un comunicado de la Oficina del Sheriff del Condado St. Lucie.

No está claro por qué sus familiares y seres queridos no pudieron comunicarse con él.

With 894 confirmed cases so far, the current outbreak is three times worse than a previous outbreak in Uganda in 2000, which had 281 cases at the same point, said Dr. Wessam Mankoula, a medical epidemiologist at Africa CDC.

The latest number of cases is believed to be higher because the outbreak was confirmed on May 15, weeks after it was suspected to have begun. The number of cases has increased 38% since last week and is now in 32 health zones across eastern Congo, said Mankoula.

The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo virus, which has no approved vaccines or treatments and was not tested for in the early days. The more common Zaire virus, for which there is a vaccine, was responsible for most of Congo’s past 16 outbreaks of the disease.

So far 74 patients have recovered from the disease across eastern Congo and Uganda. Experimental treatments like monoclonal antibodies are being developed for Bundibugyo.

The outbreak is concentrated in Congo’s eastern province of Ituri, which accounts for more than 90% of the cases. Cases have also been recorded in the North Kivu and South Kivu provinces and have spread across the border to Uganda, where 19 confirmed cases have been reported and two people have died.

Contact tracing remains an issue due to the area's remoteness and ongoing insecurity in Ituri province, Dr. Mankoula said.

“For those 800 confirmed cases, we should have between 17,000 to 35,000 contacts that should be in our contact list,” said Mankoula. Currently only around 4,000 contacts have been tracked and are being evaluated, less than 15%.

“We are still far from controlling the situation of this outbreak,” said Mankoula.

Nearly a million people have been displaced by years of conflict in Ituri, according to the U.N. humanitarian office, making contact tracing difficult as people flee attacks or move frequently in the vast province with dense forests, poor roads and remote villages that can take days to reach.

Tracing is also difficult among the thousands of miners who regularly move among remote sites in the mineral-rich region.

Of the over $900 million pledged to fight the outbreak, only $90 million has been released to help fight the outbreak, further complicating the ongoing crisis, according to Mankoula.

Africa CDC estimates it needs 540 personnel to fight the outbreak and so far they only have 84.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed those new pledges will be fast tracked, and we’ll be following up with different member states and different partners about their commitment to turn those pledges into actual money released to their affected countries or partners,” said Mankoula.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance announced that he may postpone a trip to Switzerland that had been planned for Friday and included a ceremonial signing of the deal. The visit might have helped start talks on the next, potentially even more critical, round of negotiations between the two sides.

Hours later, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtab Khamenei endorsed direct negotiations with the U.S. in a statement read by state media. It was Khamenei’s first reaction to the deal recently reached between Iran and the U.S. to end hostilities.

“It is obvious that the face-to-face negotiations that will be held in the future will not mean accepting the enemy’s opinion,” he said.

The supreme leader has not been seen in public since he was wounded in a strike at the start of the war.

Uncertain timeline could make it more difficult to promote deal

The now uncertain timeline could raise new questions and make it even more difficult for the Trump administration to promote a deal that many in the U.S. — including some congressional Republicans — have criticized as too favorable to Tehran.

“Our plan is to go to Switzerland. I don’t know exactly when,” Vance said during a briefing with reporters at the White House when asked about not flying, as planned, to the signing ceremony.

“I suspect this weekend, but I’m not sure,” he added.

That injected new doubt into an agreement that President Donald Trump said he signed to avoid “economic catastrophe” in the U.S.

Vance's announcement came a day after Trump signed the pact with Iran while dining with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles. The deal is slated to take immediate effect and extends a ceasefire while giving each side 60 days to hammer out broader agreements on larger issues.

Trump said the deal would avoid continued stress on the U.S. economy after the war caused oil prices to skyrocket, made financial markets skittish and fueled inflation. He repeatedly said he did not want to be compared to Herbert Hoover, whose policies helped exacerbate the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Vance defends U.S.-Iran deal

The vice president, who was initially personally skeptical of the U.S. going to war with Iran, has increasingly become the administration’s face of the conflict and has been outspoken in defending the deal. Asked about concerns it concedes too much, the vice president said repeatedly that the accord would force Iran to “change their behavior.”

Shortly before Vance said his trip was being delayed, Pakistan said it was postponing a visit by its top officials to Switzerland’s resort near Lucerne, where Islamabad was to host the signing ceremony. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and top officials had been set to make the trip, but officials said that a ceremonial signing became less urgent after both sides had already signed.

Vance defended the agreement and shrugged off accusations that its rollout has been piecemeal and sometimes contradictory, saying, “I don’t think our public messaging has been chaotic."

He also offered a surprisingly blunt warning to Israel, which has pushed the U.S. to take a harder stance against Iran and launched attacks on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon throughout the war, including just before the deal extending the ceasefire was reached. Those attacks complicated the peace efforts with Iran.

Trump “is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time," Vance said. “And he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower.”

The vice president said more than 12.5 million barrels went through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday night. That could further soothe oil prices that spiked during the war but have been falling since the U.S. and Iran announced a tentative deal to end the conflict.

He said the U.S. easing its blockade of Iran means "honoring our end of the early part of the agreement on the military side."

U.S. Central Command said American warships “will remain in the general area to make sure that all aspects of the agreement are adhered to, obeyed and in full force and effect.”

Shipping starts to pick up

At least two oil tankers left Iran and crossed the U.S. military blockade without being stopped. A merchant shipping tracking website said the ships were carrying a combined total of 3.8 million barrels of Iranian crude oil.

Iranian state media said shipping had “normalized” at Iran’s southern ports but added that the strait remains supervised and under the control of the Iranian military, and transiting through the vital waterway still requires coordination.

Major shipowners began moving vessels through the strait after the agreement was signed, according to maritime data company Lloyd’s List Intelligence, though Lloyd's did not give data on how many ships have passed through the strait as of Thursday.

In a media briefing, Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List, said for the first time in 110 days, ships owned by major companies are transiting the strait after effectively being marooned there since February.

Tankers controlled by major ship owners Grimaldi Group, Cosco, Knutsen and NYK have passed through the strait. And two Iranian-flagged, sanctioned crude oil tankers owned by the National Iranian Tanker Company have entered the strait, according to Lloyd’s List.

Phillip Belcher, marine director of Intertanko, a trade group for global independent tanker owners, said the main central route of the strait is still closed and has an estimated 80 mines that need to be cleared.

But ships have been passing through the smaller northern route, which goes through Iranian waters, and the southern route, which goes through Omani waters.

Agreement calls for a lasting end to hostilities

The U.S.-Iran deal calls for a permanent end to hostilities and starts a 60-day negotiating clock to reach a final deal on the future of Iran’s nuclear program, though Trump has left the door open to resume attacks. The agreement appears to offer Iran several benefits up front while extracting little in return.

It states that Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under rubble, must at minimum be diluted under international supervision. It also says that Iran shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons — a commitment it has made previously. But beyond stating that the U.S. and Iran will negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program, other commitments still need to be worked out.

The deal also waives U.S.-backed sanctions on the country, immediately allowing Iran to sell its oil freely in a major concession from Washington.

Still, Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said Thursday that the 27-nation bloc would leave its sanctions on Iran in place for now. The bloc had slapped a series of separate sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, human rights violations and the closing of the strait.

“Once the conditions allow, of course, member states will discuss whether the lifting of sanctions is in place, but we are not there yet,” Kallas said ahead of a summit of EU leaders in Brussels.

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Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Pakistan, Aamer Madhani in Zurich, Collin Binkley and Michelle L. Price in Washington and Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this report.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright had urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to act in an effort to help the United States better compete with China for superiority in the fast-growing AI sector. Tech companies and data center developers welcomed the chance to connect faster to the country's power supply.

Utilities, states and regional grid operators had worried that the Republican administration's plan would remove their authority to manage the process, but FERC said the order leaves states in control of retail electric rates, terms and conditions. Clean energy advocates have urged regulators to advance, rather than undermine, state-level efforts to require the use of renewable energies.

The commission's actions come as a backlash grows against data centers over concerns about the massive amounts of energy and water they use and fears about noise and air pollution, water shortages and a loss of open space or farmland.

Unanimous vote and affordability

FERC members voted unanimously to direct six regional grid operators to ensure that AI data centers and other large power users are “able to connect to the transmission system in a timely and orderly manner.”

Laura Swett, an appointee of President Donald Trump who chairs the commission, called the vote historic and said it would push the country’s electricity market into the future while also protecting ratepayers from shouldering the costs of connecting big power users to the grid.

“I know that Americans across the country are concerned about affordability, and so are we,” Swett said, referring to the five-member commission.

“Many Americans are increasingly concerned about the interconnection of large (power) loads, and data centers will increase their bills in that stress," Swett said. "As chairman, I am taking extremely seriously the mission that Congress has entrusted us to ensure that rates are reasonable.''

Data centers would pay the full cost of any grid upgrades needed for their connection, under the commission order. But that order can do little to address the tightening energy supplies that are driving up electricity bills in some areas and raising warnings of blackouts as the construction of data centers outpaces the speed of new power plants coming online to serve them.

The vote comes eight months after Wright asked the independent agency to take more control over ensuring that the vast network of massive computing warehouses needed to power AI are connected quickly to high-voltage transmission lines.

Robert Montejo, a lawyer who represents data centers, said the most important message from FERC’s action is that AI “has fundamentally changed the electricity landscape. The grid and prior policy were not built for the pace and scale of demand we’re seeing from AI infrastructure, and FERC is signaling that standing still is no longer an option.”

The six regional grid operators under the order serve 200 million Americans, or two-thirds of FERC's jurisdiction. FERC, meanwhile, invited utilities that handle their regional transmission systems to also participate.

A search for power

Tech giants are scrambling to find enough power for their data centers and report that, in some places, it will take years to connect to the electric grid.

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned electric utilities, said FERC's order builds on regional and state processes already underway while “supporting flexibility and innovation.”

Besides power bottlenecks, the tech industry is running into widespread opposition from communities where residents don't want to live next to or near a data center.

More than 4,000 data centers now operate in the U.S., according to one estimate, with an additional 3,000 planned or under construction, including some that consume more energy than a small city.

Trump has tried to deflect public concerns about AI, seeing the fast-evolving technology as crucial for the U.S. to attract foreign investment and maintain its economic and military prowess. He signed an executive order this month establishing a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up to a month before their public release.

In December, FERC took an earlier step to help data center operators get electricity quickly, voting to allow tech companies to effectively plug a data center directly into a power plant.

Power demands from data centers

Companies such as xAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, OpenAI and Amazon have signed Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, in which they agreed to build or buy new sources of power generation for their data centers and cover the expense of infrastructure upgrades. They also committed to making backup generation available to prevent blackouts in times of emergency, and to hire locally for their data center build out.

FERC told grid operators to respond within 30 days on how they will ensure there is adequate power supplies for new and future data centers, and within 60 days on plans to integrate large power users in line with the new guidelines. Swett told reporters after the meeting that she hoped faster connection processes are in effect in “as little time as possible.” She did not set an exact timeline.

Rob Gramlich, a Washington-based energy consultant, said states should quickly develop rules to accommodate large power users and prevent cost shifts to residential and business customers. FERC could assert broader jurisdiction over interconnection issues if states don't act quickly, he said.

Data from the Electric Power Research Institute shows that data centers now account for about 5% of U.S. electricity demand, but could triple by 2035. In Virginia, data centers account more than 25% of overall demand and could rise to more than 40% by 2030.

Tech companies have continued to raise their spending on data centers, but there is evidence that construction is lagging.

A J.P. Morgan report last month said that, based on satellite images, over 60% of data center capacity planned for completion in 2027 hasn’t begun construction, and another 7% is delayed. The report blamed permitting delays and difficulty getting gas turbines, transformers and skilled labor.

___

Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pa.

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Records show Jennifer Armenti, 36, was arrested Wednesday by Miramar police while her boyfriend, Brett Anthony Bellera, 25, was charged in the case earlier this month as he was already being held in the Joseph V. Conte facility on other charges.

Both are now charged with aggravated cruelty to animals.

According to their arrest affidavits, a friend of the couple notified Broward County Animal Care on Dec. 15, 2024, that the couple’s cat named Reaper had been found dead.

Police said Armenti claimed that she woke up and found Reaper dead on the bathroom floor.

When Animal Care employees showed up, they said they found Reaper’s body on the back patio inside a plastic laundry basket and a large amount of blood pooling on the bottom of the basket.

Bellera claimed the cat may have ingested cleaning products, his arrest affidavit stated.

According to the affidavits, the cat’s body was sent to the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals where a forensic necropsy was performed and revealed that Reaper had died from “involuntary heat exposure” through either microwave radiation, being submerged in hot water or exposure to hot water vapor.

Police said the analysis by a veterinarian indicated that the cat did not die immediately, but suffered severe pain and suffering prior to his death.

Los registros muestran que Jennifer Armenti, de 36 años, fue arrestada el miércoles por la policía de Miramar, mientras que su novio, Brett Anthony Bellera, de 25 años, fue acusado en el caso a principios de este mes, ya que se encontraba detenido en el centro Joseph V. Conte por otros cargos.

Ambos enfrentan ahora cargos de crueldad agravada contra animales.

Según las declaraciones juradas de arresto, un amigo de la pareja notificó a Broward County Animal Care el 15 de diciembre de 2024 que el gato de la pareja, llamado Reaper, había sido encontrado muerto.

La policía indicó que Armenti afirmó que despertó y encontró a Reaper muerto en el piso del baño.

Cuando empleados de Animal Care llegaron al lugar, encontraron el cuerpo de Reaper en el patio trasero dentro de una cesta plástica para ropa y una gran cantidad de sangre acumulada en el fondo de la cesta.

Bellera afirmó que el gato podría haber ingerido productos de limpieza, según su declaración jurada de arresto.

De acuerdo con los documentos, el cuerpo del gato fue enviado a la Sociedad Estadounidense para la Prevención de la Crueldad contra los Animales (ASPCA), donde se realizó una necropsia forense que reveló que Reaper murió por “exposición involuntaria al calor”, ya fuera por radiación de microondas, inmersión en agua caliente o exposición al vapor de agua caliente.

La policía indicó que el análisis realizado por un veterinario determinó que el gato no murió de inmediato, sino que sufrió dolor intenso y severo sufrimiento antes de morir.

Pino, de 55 años, está acusado de homicidio involuntario y homicidio de embarcación.

Los fiscales acusan a Pino, entonces de 52 años, de ser imprudente cuando perdió el control de una embarcación Robalo de 29 pies en las primeras horas de la noche del 4 de septiembre de 2022 y la estrelló contra un marcador de canal cerca de Boca Chita Key, matando a Lucy Fernandez, de 17 años. Otras dos jóvenes resultaron gravemente heridas, incluida Katerina Puig, de 17 años, quien quedó permanentemente discapacitada.

La esposa de Pino, Cecilia Pino, dijo a los jurados el martes sobre los momentos caóticos después del choque y señaló que después ella “solo pensaba en las chicas”.

Claudia Portocarrero, quien estaba en la embarcación celebrando el cumpleaños 18 de la hija de los Pino, dijo que ella y sus amigas estaban cantando y levantando las manos antes del choque.

La defensa afirma que algo pudo haber obstruido la vista de George Pino del marcador de canal, pero el estado sostiene que ninguna de las jóvenes estaba de pie ni levantando las manos de una manera que hubiera obstruido la vista de Pino.

“Solo recuerdo abrir los ojos después del impacto y ver como mucho blanco”, dijo Portocarrero. “Y lo primero que vi cuando abrí los ojos fue a George, y pensé que estaba muerto. Solo vi mucha sangre brotando y luego mis amigas me decían que tenía que salir de la embarcación, , para cuando iba a bajarme de la embarcación estaba como casi volteada, inclinada, así que en lugar de saltar desde la embarcación, prácticamente como que entré al agua porque estaba muy inclinada”.

Portocarrero dijo que ayudó a una de sus amigas a mantener a Puig a flote en el agua antes de que llegara una embarcación de rescate.

Tanto ella como otro pasajero que testificó el martes dijeron que, aunque cada uno había tomado un par de bebidas alcohólicas, no vieron a Pino bebiendo y señalaron que la velocidad de la embarcación no se sentía excesiva en el momento del choque.

Un testigo que estaba en otra embarcación dijo al jurado que su amigo le gritó a Pino que revisara debajo de la embarcación y Pino “inmediatamente” se metió debajo y luego sacó a Fernandez antes de entregársela al testigo que se había lanzado al agua.

El testigo dijo que luego ayudó a colocarla en otra embarcación que llegó.

El equipo de defensa de Pino afirma que el choque fue un horrible accidente y no el resultado de negligencia.

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Manuel De Jesus Chaveco Delgado, 42, was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center early Wednesday morning. An arrest report indicates that the Hialeah Gardens Police Department filed charges later that afternoon.

The Hialeah Gardens allegations stem from a period when the girl was between 11 to 13 years old, according to the report. The Hialeah allegations cover a period when she was 13 to 15.

Like in the Hialeah case, the girl, whom Chaveco Delgado knows, told investigators of occasions where he inappropriately touched her, according to the HGPD report.

In the Hialeah case, he’s also accused of showing her “a photo of a penis” on his phone at one point.

On top of four charges in the Hialeah case, Chaveco Delgado now faces an additional two felony child molestation charges.

But even more may be coming, the report indicates. Detectives wrote, “The victim stated that more incidents happened in other jurisdictions and that they were going to file police reports with the other agencies.”

Local 10 News contacted HCSO seeking comment on Wednesday. It’s not clear when he began working for the agency.

The agency put out a brief news release on Wednesday acknowledging Chaveco Delgado’s employment, arrest and charges but providing no additional details about his employment or status with HCSO.

As of Thursday, Chaveco Delgado remained at TGK with a bond listed in jail records as “to be set.”

Manuel De Jesus Chaveco Delgado, de 42 años, ingresó en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight la madrugada del miércoles. Según el informe policial, el Departamento de Policía de Hialeah Gardens presentó cargos esa misma tarde.

Según el informe, las acusaciones en Hialeah Gardens se remontan a un período en el que la niña tenía entre 11 y 13 años. Las acusaciones en Hialeah abarcan el período en el que tenía entre 13 y 15 años.

Al igual que en el caso de Hialeah, la niña, a quien Chaveco Delgado conoce, declaró a los investigadores que él la tocó de forma inapropiada en varias ocasiones, según el informe del Departamento de Policía de Hutchinson-Gilford.

En el caso de Hialeah, también se le acusa de haberle mostrado en su teléfono “una foto de un pene” en un momento dado.

Además de los cuatro cargos en el caso de Hialeah, Chaveco Delgado ahora enfrenta dos cargos adicionales por delitos graves de abuso sexual de menores.

Pero, según el informe, podrían producirse más incidentes. Los detectives escribieron: «La víctima declaró que se habían producido más incidentes en otras jurisdicciones y que iban a presentar denuncias ante las demás agencias policiales».

El canal Local 10 News contactó a la Oficina del Sheriff del Condado de Harris (HCSO) el miércoles para solicitar comentarios. No está claro cuándo comenzó a trabajar para la agencia.

La agencia emitió un breve comunicado de prensa el miércoles reconociendo el empleo, el arresto y los cargos contra Chaveco Delgado, pero sin proporcionar detalles adicionales sobre su empleo o su situación dentro de la Oficina del Sheriff del Condado de Harris (HCSO).

Hasta el jueves, Chaveco Delgado permanecía en TGK con una fianza que, según los registros penitenciarios, estaba “por determinar”.

The Midwest, meanwhile, was also dealing with damage after a strong line of storms tore through parts of Illinois, Indiana and northern Kentucky on Wednesday, bringing possible tornadoes and leaving scores of homes without electricity.

Arthur, the first tropical storm of the season in the Atlantic basin, was downgraded to a low pressure area along the upper Texas coast Wednesday night. It will continue to weaken as it moves inland into parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Florida Panhandle, while still dumping heavy rain, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The National Weather Service said rain was falling on southern Louisiana and Mississippi at a rate of 3 inches (8 centimeters) per hour in some places Thursday. TV reports and social media posts showed flooded streets in many areas. Several tornado warnings were posted Thursday morning for southern Louisiana and Mississippi. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were without power.

Arthur's remnants were expected to bring 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) or more of rain to the Gulf states over the course of Thursday and Friday, the weather service said. Parts of Texas saw flash flooding on Wednesday. The region also was hit with heavy rain earlier in the week.

The storm on Thursday left a trail of downed trees, flooded roadways and building damage, as well as several tornado sightings, most heavily concentrated in southeastern Louisiana.

New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno posted a video on Facebook describing her community’s relatively minor damage and the city’s efforts to clean up. Ahead of the storm, police prepared boats and set up barricades in known flood areas while collection points for residents to fill sandbags sprung up around Louisiana.

In the Midwest, there were numerous reports of damage from tornadoes and strong winds, but no immediate reports of deaths or life-threatening injuries. More than 130,000 homes and businesses were without power Thursday afternoon in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, according to poweroutage.us.

A tornado was reported near Effingham, Illinois, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Springfield, shortly Wednesday evening. Several people suffered minor injuries, officials said.

“A tornado caused significant damage in areas north of the City of Effingham, impacting homes, roadways, utilities, and other property throughout portions of Effingham County,” Effingham Fire Chief Brant Yochum said in a statement.

Yochum said firefighters responded to damaged homes, collapsed structures, car crashes, downed power lines, gas leaks and blocked roads.

An automobile museum and auto parts complex in Effingham reported on Facebook that it sustained “catastrophic” damage, but that no one was injured.

About 70 miles (110 kilometers) north of Effingham in Blue Mound, Marla Washburn and her husband, Todd, hunkered down in their basement as a suspected tornado tore through their neighborhood. They could hear debris smacking into their house, which sustained damage to the roof, windows and front door frame while parts of trees in their yard were sheered off.

“The whole house shook," she told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “The roof from the school across the street from us blew off and slammed into our house. And now it’s littered all across my backyard.”

She said the scene in the neighborhood was like Armageddon.

“You don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but we’re OK," she said. “There’s just stuff everywhere. And you look at it and you go, ‘I don’t even know where to start to clean up.’"

Also north of Effingham, the weather service reported that a tractor trailer flipped over in high winds on Interstate 57 north of Effingham, injuring the driver.

Damage from strong winds and a possible tornado were also reported in Florence, Kentucky, near Cincinnati, with local news video and photos showing roofs and siding ripped off buildings, as well as downed trees and power lines.

The weather service said it received numerous reports of wind damage across a wide swath, from Iowa and Missouri to Ohio and West Virginia. Tornadoes also were rep

The strong storms were expected to move through the central Appalachians to New England on Thursday, the weather service said.

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The Czech Republic vs. South Africa, a Group A match, is at noon.

Switzerland vs. Bosnia, a Group B match, is at 3 p.m.

Canada vs. Qatar, a Group B match, is at 6 p.m.

Mexico vs. South Korea, a Group A match, is at 9 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Groups’ stage progress

Group K: Colombia gets 3 points

Group J: Austria and Argentina each get 3 points

Group I: France and Norway each get 3 points

Group H: Every team sits at 1 point

Group G: Every team sits at 1 point

Group F: Sweden gets 3 points

Group E: Germany and Ivory Coast each get 3 points

Group D: Australia and United States each get 3 points

Group C: Brazil and Morocco each get 1 point; Scotland gets 3 points

Group B: Qatar and Switzerland each get 1 point

Group A: Mexico and South Korea each get 3 points

Tournament’s schedule

June 19: There are four matches: The Group D, U.S. vs. Australia, game is at 3 p.m. The Group C, Scotland vs. Morocco, game is at 6 p.m. The Group C, Brazil vs. Haiti, game is at 8:30 p.m. The Group D, Turkey vs. Paraguay, game is at 11 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 2 p.m. to midnight at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

June 20: There are three matches: The Group F, Netherlands vs. Sweden, game is at 1 p.m. The Group E, Germany vs. Ivory Coast, game is at 4 p.m. The Group E, Ecuador vs. Curaçao, game is at 8 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from noon to 11 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Miami Beach fan party: Doors open at 6 p.m. on June 20 at The Bandshell, at 7275 Collins Ave., for an event for Uruguayan fans co-hosted by the Consulate General of Uruguay.

June 21: There are five matches: The Group F, Tunisia vs. Japan, game is at midnight. The Group H, Spain vs. Saudi Arabia, game is at Noon. The Group G, Belgium vs. Iran, game is at 3 p.m. The Group H, Uruguay vs. Cape Verde, game is at 6 p.m. The Group G, New Zealand vs. Egypt, game is at 9 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

June 22: There are four matches: The Group J, Argentina vs. Austria, game is at 1 p.m. The Group I, France vs. Iraq, game is at 5 p.m. The Group I, Norway vs. Senegal, game is at 8 p.m. The Group J, Jordan vs. Algeria, game is at 11 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from noon to 8 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Miami Beach watch party: Doors open at 11 a.m. on June 22 at The Bandshell, at 7275 Collins Ave., for the 1 p.m. Argentina vs. Austria match.

June 23: There are four matches: The Group K, Portugal vs. Uzbekistan, game is at 1 p.m. The Group L, England vs. Ghana, game is at 4 p.m. The Group L, Panama vs. Croatia, game is at 7 p.m. The Group K, Colombia vs. Congo, game is at 10 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from noon to 1 a.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

June 24: There are six matches: The Group B, Switzerland vs. Canada, game is at 3 p.m. The Group B, Bosnia vs. Qatar, game is at 3 p.m. The Group C, Morocco vs. Haiti, game is at 6 p.m. The Group C, Scotland vs. Brazil, game is at 6 p.m. The Group A, South Africa vs. South Korea, game is at 9 p.m. The Group A, Czech Republic vs. Mexico, game is at 9 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Miami Beach watch party: Doors open at 4 p.m. on June 24 at The Bandshell, at 7275 Collins Ave., for the 6 p.m. Scotland vs. Brazil match.

June 25: There are six matches: The Group E, Curaçao vs. Ivory Coast, game is at 4 p.m. The Group E, Ecuador vs. Germany, game is at 4 p.m. The Group F, Tunisia vs. Netherlands, game is at 7 p.m. The Group F, Japan vs. Sweden, game is at 7 p.m. The Group D, Turkey vs. U.S., game is at 10 p.m. The Group D, Paraguay vs. Australia, game is at 10 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

June 26: There are six matcuphes: The Group I, Norway vs. France, game is at 3 p.m. The Group I, Senegal vs. Iraq, game is at 3 p.m. The Group H, Cape Verde vs. Saudi Arabia, game is at 8 p.m. The Group H, Uruguay vs. Spain, game is at 8 p.m. The Group G, New Zealand vs. Belgium, game is at 11 p.m. The Group G, Egypt vs. Iran, game is at 11 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

June 27: There are six matches: The Group L, Panama vs. England, game is at 5 p.m. The Group L, Croatia vs. Ghana, game is at 5 p.m. The Group K, Colombia vs. Portugal, game is at 7:30 p.m. The Group K, Congo vs. Uzbekistan, game is at 7:30 p.m. The Group J, Algeria vs. Austria, game is at 10 p.m. The Group J, Jordan vs. Argentina, game is at 10 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Sunrise watch party: The indoor Amerant Bank Arena is hosting a free watch party for ticket holders at 7:30 p.m. on June 27. Parking is free. Broward County is offering free Express bus transportation from the arena to the Miami Stadium, also known as Hard Rock, in Miami Gardens, to FIFA World Cup ticket holders.

Round of 32 begins

June 28: There is a match at 3 p.m.

Miami watch party: The fan festival opens from 1 p.m to 10 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

June 29: There are three matches at 1 p.m., 4:30 p.m., and 9 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from noon to midnight at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

June 30: There are three matches at 1 p.m., 5 p.m., and 9 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from noon to midnight at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

July 1: There are three matches at noon, 4 p.m., and 9 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

July 2: There are three matches at 3 p.m., 7 p.m., and 11 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

July 3: There are three matches at 2 p.m., 6 p.m., and 9:30 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from 1 p.m to 9 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Round of 16 begins

July 4: There are two matches at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens from noon to midnight at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

July 5: There are two matches at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Miami watch parties: The fan festival opens for the last day from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. at Bayfront Park, at 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

July 6: There are two matches at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.

July 7: There are two matches at Noon and 4 p.m.

Quarterfinals begin

July 9: There is a quarter-final match at 4 p.m.

July 10: There is a quarter-final match at 3 p.m.

July 11: There are two quarter-final matches at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Sunrise watch party: The indoor Amerant Bank Arena is hosting a free watch party for ticket holders at 5 p.m. on July 11. Parking is free.

Semifinals begin

July 14: The fan festival is closed. There is a semi-final match at 3 p.m.

Miami Beach watch party: Doors open at 3 p.m. on July 14 at The Bandshell, at 7275 Collins Ave., for the semifinal match.

July 15: There is a semi-final match at 3 p.m.

Miami Beach watch party: Doors open at 3 p.m. on July 15 at The Bandshell, at 7275 Collins Ave., for the semifinal match.

Finals begin

July 18: The third-place play-off match is at 5 p.m.

Miami Beach watch party: Doors open at 3 p.m. on July 18 at The Sandbowl, behind The Bandshell, at 7275 Collins Ave., for the 5 p.m. bronze final.

Sunrise ride to stadium: The Amerant Bank Arena has free parking for FIFA World Cup ticket holders who ride Broward County’s free Express bus transportation to the Miami Stadium, also known as Hard Rock, in Miami Gardens.

July 19: The final match is at 3 p.m.

Miami Beach watch party: Doors open at 1 p.m. on July 19 at The Sandbowl, behind The Bandshell, at 7275 Collins Ave., for the 3 p.m. final.

Sunrise watch party: The indoor Amerant Bank Arena is hosting a free watch party for ticket holders for the final on July 19. Parking is free.

Related stories

• Key information for fans attending matches at Miami Stadium
• Security guard accused of stealing FIFA referee uniform from Miami Beach hotel

Track FIFA World Cup groups

• Group A
• Group B
• Group C
• Group D
• Group E
• Group F
• Group G
• Group H
• Group I
• Group J
• Group K
• Group L

FIFA

• Standing tables
• Latest men’s world ranking

El partido entre la República Checa y Sudáfrica, correspondiente al Grupo A , se disputará al mediodía.

Suiza contra Bosnia, partido del Grupo B , se juega a las 15:00.

El partido entre Canadá y Qatar, correspondiente al Grupo B , se jugará a las 18:00.

México contra Corea del Sur, partido del Grupo A , se juega a las 9 pm

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans se celebra de 11:00 a 21:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Progreso de la etapa de los grupos

Grupo K : Colombia consigue 3 puntos.

Grupo J : Austria y Argentina obtienen 3 puntos cada una.

Grupo I : Francia y Noruega obtienen 3 puntos cada una.

Grupo H: Cada equipo tiene 1 punto

Grupo G: Todos los equipos tienen 1 punto.

Grupo F : Suecia consigue 3 puntos

Grupo E : Alemania y Costa de Marfil obtienen 3 puntos cada una.

Grupo D : Australia y Estados Unidos obtienen 3 puntos cada uno.

Grupo C : Brasil y Marruecos obtienen 1 punto cada uno; Escocia obtiene 3 puntos.

Grupo B: Catar y Suiza obtienen 1 punto cada uno.

Grupo A: México y Corea del Sur obtienen 3 puntos cada uno.

Calendario del torneo

19 de junio : Hay cuatro partidos: Grupo D , EE. UU. vs. Australia, partido a las 15:00 h. Grupo C , Escocia vs. Marruecos, partido a las 18:00 h. Grupo C , Brasil vs. Haití, partido a las 20:30 h. Grupo D , Turquía vs. Paraguay, partido a las 23:00 h.

Fiestas para ver el evento en Miami : El festival para fans se celebra desde las 14:00 hasta la medianoche en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

20 de junio : Hay tres partidos: Grupo F , Países Bajos vs. Suecia, partido a la 1 pm. Grupo E , Alemania vs. Costa de Marfil, partido a las 4 pm. Grupo E , Ecuador vs. Curazao, partido a las 8 pm.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans abre sus puertas desde el mediodía hasta las 11 de la noche en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Fiesta para aficionados en Miami Beach: Las puertas se abren a las 18:00 horas del 20 de junio en The Bandshell, en 7275 Collins Ave., para un evento para aficionados uruguayos organizado conjuntamente por el Consulado General de Uruguay.

21 de junio : Hay cinco partidos: Grupo F , Túnez vs. Japón, el partido es a medianoche. Grupo H , España vs. Arabia Saudí, el partido es al mediodía. Grupo G , Bélgica vs. Irán, el partido es a las 15:00. Grupo H , Uruguay vs. Cabo Verde, el partido es a las 18:00. Grupo G , Nueva Zelanda vs. Egipto, el partido es a las 21:00.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans se celebra de 11:00 a 21:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

22 de junio : Hay cuatro partidos: Grupo J , Argentina vs. Austria, partido a la 1 pm. Grupo I , Francia vs. Irak, partido a las 5 pm. Grupo I , Noruega vs. Senegal, partido a las 8 pm. Grupo J , Jordania vs. Argelia, partido a las 11 pm.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans abre sus puertas de 12:00 a 20:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Fiesta para ver el partido en Miami Beach: Las puertas se abren a las 11 de la mañana del 22 de junio en The Bandshell, en 7275 Collins Ave., para el partido entre Argentina y Austria que comienza a la 1 de la tarde.

23 de junio : Hay cuatro partidos: Grupo K , Portugal vs. Uzbekistán, partido a la 1 pm. Grupo L , Inglaterra vs. Ghana, partido a las 4 pm. Grupo L , Panamá vs. Croacia, partido a las 7 pm. Grupo K , Colombia vs. Congo, partido a las 10 pm.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans abre sus puertas desde el mediodía hasta la 1 de la madrugada en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

24 de junio : Seis partidos: Grupo B , Suiza vs. Canadá, partido a las 15:00 h. Grupo B , Bosnia vs. Qatar, partido a las 15:00 h. Grupo C , Marruecos vs. Haití, partido a las 18:00 h. Grupo C , Escocia vs. Brasil, partido a las 18:00 h. Grupo A , Sudáfrica vs. Corea del Sur, partido a las 21:00 h. Grupo A , República Checa vs. México, partido a las 21:00 h.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans se celebra de 14:00 a 21:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Fiesta para ver el partido en Miami Beach: Las puertas se abren a las 4 pm del 24 de junio en The Bandshell, en 7275 Collins Ave., para el partido entre Escocia y Brasil que comienza a las 6 pm.

25 de junio : Seis partidos: Grupo E , Curazao vs. Costa de Marfil, partido a las 16:00 h. Grupo E , Ecuador vs. Alemania, partido a las 16:00 h. Grupo F , Túnez vs. Países Bajos, partido a las 19:00 h. Grupo F , Japón vs. Suecia, partido a las 19:00 h. Grupo D , Turquía vs. Estados Unidos, partido a las 22:00 h. Grupo D , Paraguay vs. Australia, partido a las 22:00 h.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans abre de 15:00 a 01:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

26 de junio : Hay seis partidos: Grupo I , Noruega vs. Francia, partido a las 15:00 h. Grupo I , Senegal vs. Irak, partido a las 15:00 h. Grupo H , Cabo Verde vs. Arabia Saudita, partido a las 20:00 h. Grupo H , Uruguay vs. España, partido a las 20:00 h. Grupo G , Nueva Zelanda vs. Bélgica, partido a las 23:00 h. Grupo G , Egipto vs. Irán, partido a las 23:00 h.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans se celebra de 14:00 a 23:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

27 de junio : Seis partidos: Grupo L , Panamá vs. Inglaterra, partido a las 17:00 h. Grupo L , Croacia vs. Ghana, partido a las 17:00 h. Grupo K , Colombia vs. Portugal, partido a las 19:30 h. Grupo K , Congo vs. Uzbekistán, partido a las 19:30 h. Grupo J , Argelia vs. Austria, partido a las 22:00 h. Grupo J , Jordania vs. Argentina, partido a las 22:00 h.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans se celebra de 16:00 a 01:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Fiesta para ver el partido al amanecer : El Amerant Bank Arena, un recinto cubierto, organiza una fiesta gratuita para quienes tengan entrada a las 19:30 h del 27 de junio. El estacionamiento es gratuito. El condado de Broward ofrece transporte gratuito en autobús exprés desde el estadio hasta el Miami Stadium, también conocido como Hard Rock, en Miami Gardens, para los poseedores de entradas para la Copa Mundial de la FIFA.

Comienza la ronda de 32.

28 de junio : Hay un partido a las 15:00.

Fiesta para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans se celebra de 13:00 a 22:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

29 de junio : Hay tres partidos a la 1 pm, 4:30 pm y 9 pm.

Fiestas para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans abre sus puertas desde el mediodía hasta la medianoche en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

30 de junio : Hay tres partidos a la 1 pm, a las 5 pm y a las 9 pm.

Fiestas para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans abre sus puertas desde el mediodía hasta la medianoche en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

1 de julio : Hay tres partidos a las 12:00, a las 16:00 y a las 21:00.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans abre de 11:00 a 23:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

2 de julio : Hay tres partidos a las 15:00, 19:00 y 23:00.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans se celebra de 14:00 a 22:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

3 de julio : Hay tres partidos a las 14:00, 18:00 y 21:30.

Eventos para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans se celebra de 13:00 a 21:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

Comienza la ronda de octavos de final.

4 de julio: Hay dos partidos a la 1 pm y a las 5 pm.

Fiestas para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans abre sus puertas desde el mediodía hasta la medianoche en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

5 de julio : Hay dos partidos a las 16:00 y a las 20:00.

Fiestas para ver el partido en Miami : El festival para fans abre sus puertas el último día de 15:00 a 23:00 en Bayfront Park, en 301 Biscayne Boulevard.

6 de julio : Hay dos partidos a las 15:00 y a las 20:00.

7 de julio : Hay dos partidos a las 12:00 y a las 16:00.

Comienzan los cuartos de final

9 de julio : Hay un partido de cuartos de final a las 16:00.

10 de julio : Hay un partido de cuartos de final a las 15:00.

11 de julio : Hay dos partidos de cuartos de final a las 17:00 y a las 21:00.

Fiesta para ver el partido al amanecer : El Amerant Bank Arena, un recinto cubierto, organiza una fiesta gratuita para ver el partido a las 17:00 horas del 11 de julio para quienes tengan entrada . El aparcamiento es gratuito.

Comienzan las semifinales

14 de julio : El festival de aficionados ha finalizado. Hay un partido de semifinales a las 15:00.

Fiesta para ver el partido en Miami Beach: Las puertas se abren a las 3 pm del 14 de julio en The Bandshell, en 7275 Collins Ave., para el partido de semifinales.

15 de julio : Hay un partido de semifinales a las 15:00.

Fiesta para ver el partido en Miami Beach: Las puertas se abren a las 3 pm del 15 de julio en The Bandshell, en 7275 Collins Ave., para el partido de semifinales.

Comienzan las finales

18 de julio : El partido por el tercer puesto se jugará a las 17:00.

Fiesta para ver la final en Miami Beach: Las puertas se abren a las 3 pm del 18 de julio en The Sandbowl, detrás de The Bandshell, en 7275 Collins Ave., para la final de bronce de las 5 pm.

Viaje al amanecer al estadio : El Amerant Bank Arena ofrece estacionamiento gratuito para los poseedores de entradas para la Copa Mundial de la FIFA que utilicen el servicio de autobús exprés gratuito del condado de Broward para llegar al Miami Stadium, también conocido como Hard Rock, en Miami Gardens.

19 de julio : El partido final es a las 15:00.

Fiesta para ver la final en Miami Beach: Las puertas se abren a la 1 pm del 19 de julio en The Sandbowl, detrás de The Bandshell, en 7275 Collins Ave., para la final que comienza a las 3 pm.

Fiesta para ver el partido al amanecer : El Amerant Bank Arena, un recinto cubierto, organiza una fiesta gratuita para ver la final el 19 de julio para los poseedores de entradas . El estacionamiento es gratuito.

Historias relacionadas

• Información clave para los aficionados que asistan a los partidos en el Estadio de Miami.
• Un guardia de seguridad fue acusado de robar un uniforme de árbitro de la FIFA de un hotel en Miami Beach.

Seguimiento de los grupos de la Copa Mundial de la FIFA

• Grupo A
• Grupo B
• Grupo C
• Grupo D
• Grupo E
• Grupo F
• Grupo G
• Grupo H
• Grupo I
• Grupo J
• Grupo K
• Grupo L

FIFA

• Mesas altas
• Última clasificación mundial masculina

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Nevertheless, intense tropical rainfall well east of Arthur’s remnant circulation spread over parts of southeastern Louisiana overnight into the pre-dawn hours Thursday, causing significant, widespread flash flooding across parts of the New Orleans metro and River Parishes of southeastern Louisiana by daybreak.

Radar indicates rainfall rates exceeding 3 inches an hour in the New Orleans metro at points early Thursday, with official 6-hourly rainfall totals at New Orleans International Airport nearing 8 inches by 7 AM local time.

According to radar and storm reports, Lafourche, Jefferson, and Orleans Parishes south of Lake Pontchartrain in southeast Louisiana have seen the worst flooding so far, especially around places like Houma, Thibodaux, St. Rose, Kenner, Metairie, and parts of New Orleans. Flooding was also reported north of Lake Pontchartrain around Slidell.

Additionally, another pocket of extreme rainfall was observed southeast of Alexandria in south-central Louisiana. A reporting station in Plaucheville, Louisiana, had reported an incredible 10 inches of rain in a 3-hour period from around 5 AM to 8 AM local time Thursday.

More flooding ahead today for the central Gulf Coast

As Arthur’s remnants spread farther inland today, the flood threat will extend along the central Gulf Coast into central Georgia.

The National Weather Service issued a rare high risk of excessive flooding (flood threat level 4 out of 4) for parts of southern Mississippi, South Alabama, and the western Florida panhandle. A high risk of excessive rainfall indicates the possibility of extreme impacts from flash flooding. While only issued on about 4 percent of days, so-called “high-risk days” account for about a third of all flood deaths and a remarkable 80 percent of flood-related damages.

Places in the high-risk flood zone today include McComb, Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula, Mississippi, as well as Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida.

Those living in these areas especially will want to monitor flash flood warnings issued by local National Weather Service offices today through local media outlets or your preferred weather app.

The flood threat will persist across parts of the southeast in the wake of Arthur’s remnants through early Saturday, as abundant tropical air ahead of an approaching cold front will mean the possibility of continued heavy rainfall, especially from eastern Mississippi to southern Alabama.

Additionally, isolated severe storms and a few tornadoes may accompany the weather along the Gulf Coast today.

Slight chance Arthur re-develops off the U.S. East Coast this weekend

As we mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, as Arthur’s remnants emerge off the Carolinas Friday into Saturday, it could try to briefly re-develop as it accelerates eastward over the western Atlantic.

As of Thursday morning, NHC puts those odds at only 10 percent. If development happens, it’ll likely be associated with non-tropical processes, as the system will be mixed up with an approaching cold front. Regardless, the low pressure will be swept quickly out to sea, so a second act of Arthur poses no direct threat to land.

The Atlantic will settle down otherwise, with no development expected elsewhere through the latter part of next week.

Merlin Lu admitted to a TV station this week that he was responsible for the cross burning in Grant Park on June 9. But he insisted that he was protesting President Donald Trump and was not using the cross as a historical symbol of hate and intimidation against Black people.

Lu has been charged with four felonies and four misdemeanors, including a hate crime and burning a cross to intimidate, police said in a statement released Wednesday night.

“I understand why it was interpreted that way, and I apologize for that, but no, the intent was not there,” Lu told WMAQ-TV before his arrest.

It was not immediately known Thursday if Lu has an attorney who could speak on his behalf. He was scheduled to appear in court for a detention hearing.

“I did know about this historical relevance beforehand. But I didn’t know the severity, how racially motivated it may seem from what I did,” Lu told the TV station. “Cause my protest has nothing to do with race, nothing to do with gender.”

Lu said he was protesting the “ruling class” and Christian nationalists who support Trump.

Someone put a large, multicolored, glass fiber heart with the word, “resilient,” in the place where the burning cross stood in the park.

Lu's LinkedIn page says he has attended college in Indiana and Chicago and was studying chemistry.

Sin embargo, intensas lluvias tropicales muy al este de la circulación remanente de Arthur se extendieron sobre partes del sureste de Luisiana durante la noche y las horas previas al amanecer del jueves, provocando inundaciones repentinas significativas y generalizadas en partes del área metropolitana de Nueva Orleans y las parroquias ribereñas del sureste de Luisiana al amanecer.

Los radares indican tasas de lluvia superiores a 3 pulgadas por hora en algunos sectores del área metropolitana de Nueva Orleans durante las primeras horas del jueves, con acumulados oficiales de lluvia en seis horas en el Aeropuerto Internacional de Nueva Orleans acercándose a las 8 pulgadas para las 7 a.m., hora local.

Según los radares y los reportes de tormentas, las parroquias de Lafourche, Jefferson y Orleans, al sur del lago Pontchartrain en el sureste de Luisiana, han registrado las peores inundaciones hasta ahora, especialmente en áreas como Houma, Thibodaux, St. Rose, Kenner, Metairie y partes de Nueva Orleans. También se reportaron inundaciones al norte del lago Pontchartrain, en los alrededores de Slidell.

Además, se observó otra zona de lluvias extremas al sureste de Alexandria, en el centro-sur de Luisiana. Una estación de monitoreo en Plaucheville, Luisiana, reportó unas impresionantes 10 pulgadas de lluvia en un período de 3 horas, aproximadamente entre las 5 a.m. y las 8 a.m., hora local del jueves.

Más inundaciones en camino hoy para la costa central del Golfo

A medida que los remanentes de Arthur continúan avanzando tierra adentro hoy, la amenaza de inundaciones se extenderá a lo largo de la costa central del Golfo y hasta el centro de Georgia.

El Servicio Nacional de Meteorología emitió una rara alerta de alto riesgo de inundaciones excesivas (nivel 4 de 4) para partes del sur de Mississippi, el sur de Alabama y el oeste del Panhandle de Florida. Una alerta de alto riesgo de lluvias excesivas indica la posibilidad de impactos extremos por inundaciones repentinas. Aunque solo se emite en aproximadamente el 4 por ciento de los días, los llamados “días de alto riesgo” representan cerca de un tercio de todas las muertes por inundaciones y un notable 80 por ciento de los daños relacionados con inundaciones.

Entre los lugares incluidos en la zona de alto riesgo de inundaciones hoy se encuentran McComb, Gulfport, Biloxi y Pascagoula, en Mississippi, así como Mobile, Alabama, y Pensacola, Florida.

Quienes viven en estas áreas, especialmente, deben mantenerse atentos a las advertencias de inundaciones repentinas emitidas por las oficinas locales del Servicio Nacional de Meteorología a través de los medios de comunicación locales o su aplicación meteorológica de preferencia.

La amenaza de inundaciones persistirá en partes del sureste tras el paso de los remanentes de Arthur hasta las primeras horas del sábado, ya que la abundante humedad tropical delante de un frente frío que se aproxima mantendrá la posibilidad de lluvias intensas, especialmente desde el este de Mississippi hasta el sur de Alabama.

Además, tormentas severas aisladas y algunos tornados podrían acompañar estas condiciones meteorológicas a lo largo de la costa del Golfo hoy.

Leve posibilidad de que Arthur se reorganice frente a la costa este de Estados Unidos este fin de semana

Como mencionamos en nuestro boletín de ayer, cuando los remanentes de Arthur emerjan frente a las Carolinas entre el viernes y el sábado, podrían intentar reorganizarse brevemente mientras aceleran su desplazamiento hacia el este sobre el Atlántico occidental.

Hasta la mañana del jueves, el Centro Nacional de Huracanes (NHC) estimaba esas probabilidades en apenas un 10 por ciento. Si el desarrollo ocurre, probablemente estará asociado con procesos no tropicales, ya que el sistema estará interactuando con un frente frío que se aproxima. En cualquier caso, la baja presión será arrastrada rápidamente mar adentro, por lo que una segunda etapa de Arthur no representa una amenaza directa para tierra firme.

Por lo demás, el Atlántico permanecerá tranquilo, sin desarrollo ciclónico previsto en otras áreas hasta la segunda mitad de la próxima semana.

Group stage matches

JUNE 17: DAY 1

Colombia gets 3 points after 3-1 victory against Uzbekistan

• Game analysis: Luis Díaz sparks Colombia to a 3-1 win over Uzbekistan in its World Cup opener

Portugal and Congo each get 1 point after 1-1 draw

• Game analysis: Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal held to a 1-1 draw by Congo at the World Cup
• Pre-game coverage: Ronaldo looks to make history by scoring in 6th World Cup

The next matches

JUNE 23: DAY 2

Portugal vs. Uzbekistan is at 1 p.m.

Colombia vs. Congo is at 10 p.m.

JUNE 27: DAY 3

Congo vs. Uzbekistan is at 7:30 p.m.

Track the groups’ progress

• Group A
• Group B
• Group C
• Group D
• Group E
• Group F
• Group G
• Group H
• Group I
• Group J
• Group L

El foro fue organizado por la Urban League of Broward, mientras las preguntas sobre la representación en el distrito de mayoría negra continuaron ocupando un lugar central.

“Existe un ataque contra las personas negras en este país y tenemos que levantarnos contra eso y tenemos que alzar la voz contra eso”, dijo Elijah Manley, candidato demócrata al Congreso.

El foro se llevó a cabo en el Distrito Congresional 20, donde aproximadamente la mitad de los electores son negros. El escaño está actualmente ocupado por la representante Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, demócrata que busca la reelección.

“Este es un distrito de acceso para la comunidad negra, y si eliminamos el remedio, eliminamos el pasado, y eso nos llevaría a un futuro que nos destruiría”, dijo Cherfilus-McCormick. “Por eso todos deben hablar sobre lo que está mal en este momento, al permitir que alguien venga a nuestro distrito buscando una oportunidad política”.

El comentario pareció estar dirigido a la representante demócrata Debbie Wasserman Schultz, cuyo distrito fue eliminado bajo un nuevo mapa de redistribución electoral. Wasserman Schultz ahora compite en el Distrito 20 contra otros cinco candidatos que son negros.

“Creo que mi historial habla por sí solo”, dijo Wasserman Schultz. “He sido una firme defensora durante toda mi carrera para alzar la voz por los consumidores y enfrentar a las empresas e industrias que se aprovechan de ellos”.

Wasserman Schultz afirmó que ha luchado por las minorías, el empleo y los inmigrantes durante su tiempo en Washington, pero los candidatos continuaron enfatizando durante toda la noche la importancia de la representación de las minorías.

“Cuando todos tienen un asiento en la mesa, todos nos beneficiamos. Somos más fuertes por ello”, dijo el candidato demócrata Dale Holness.

La discusión también abordó el cambio climático, la atención médica y los derechos al voto.

“Necesitamos regulaciones, regulaciones estrictas, eliminar la burocracia, promover las pequeñas empresas locales y de esa manera podemos fortalecer nuestra propia compañía de seguros a nivel local”, dijo Rod Joseph, candidato republicano.

La investigación ética contra Cherfilus-McCormick también surgió durante el foro.

Un candidato demócrata estuvo notablemente ausente del evento: Luther Campbell. El rapero convertido en candidato político publicó posteriormente un mensaje en Facebook explicando por qué no asistió.

“Me encanta una buena pelea, pero nunca confirmé un evento”, escribió Campbell. “Nadie de mi equipo confirmó un evento”.

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The video shows a woman in blue sitting in a park before police say she violently pushed down the young child.

“She hit my child with such a force and with anger and hatred in her eyes,” the mother said after being shown the footage.

The attack happened June 8 at 172nd Street and Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach. The little girl was being watched by her grandmother at the time.

“My 5-year-old, she fell to the ground, she rolled on the floor, and she had severe bruises all over her body after the fall,” the mother said.

She described the moment in disbelief, saying the suspect was simply sitting near her child gathering toys before the assault.

The aftermath has taken an emotional toll on the child, the mother said.

“She’s asking me about that lady, why she was so evil, what I did wrong, and it’s like every time I have that emotional conversation with my child since then,” the mother said.

Sunny Isles Beach police launched an investigation after a witness told them the child was thrown to the ground. Officers caught up with the suspect, Natalia Hordiienko, on Saturday and arrested her on a charge of child abuse without great bodily harm.

It remains unclear what prompted the attack. The mother told Local 10 News she is speaking out because she doesn’t want this to happen to any other child, and she’s grateful to police for conducting a thorough investigation and making an arrest.

“She deserves the absolute maximum penalty possible allowed by law,” the mother said.

El video muestra a una mujer vestida de azul sentada en un parque antes de que, según la policía, empujara violentamente al suelo a la menor.

“Golpeó a mi hija con tanta fuerza y con ira y odio en sus ojos”, dijo la madre después de ver las imágenes.

El ataque ocurrió el 8 de junio en la intersección de la calle 172 y Collins Avenue en Sunny Isles Beach. La niña estaba bajo el cuidado de su abuela en ese momento.

“Mi hija de 5 años cayó al suelo, rodó por el piso y sufrió hematomas severos por todo el cuerpo después de la caída”, dijo la madre.

La mujer describió el momento con incredulidad y señaló que la sospechosa simplemente estaba sentada cerca de su hija recogiendo juguetes antes de la agresión.

La madre indicó que las secuelas han tenido un fuerte impacto emocional en la menor.

“Me pregunta sobre esa mujer, por qué era tan mala, qué hice mal, y es como si cada vez tuviera esa conversación emocional con mi hija desde entonces”, dijo la madre.

La policía de Sunny Isles Beach inició una investigación después de que un testigo les informara que la menor había sido arrojada al suelo. Los agentes localizaron a la sospechosa, Natalia Hordiienko, el sábado y la arrestaron por un cargo de abuso infantil sin causar lesiones corporales graves.

Aún no está claro qué provocó el ataque. La madre dijo a Local 10 News que decidió hablar públicamente porque no quiere que esto le ocurra a ningún otro niño y agradeció a la policía por realizar una investigación exhaustiva y efectuar un arresto.

“Ella merece la pena máxima absoluta permitida por la ley”, dijo la madre.

The justices decided unanimously in favor of Ali Danial Hemani, a Texas man who argued that a law barring guns from anyone who regularly uses illegal drugs violates the Second Amendment.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that his opinion narrowly limits the government's power to take guns away from drug users who are not considered dangerous. Hemani, who was not charged with any other crimes or accused of using the weapon under the influence, is thankful he “finally has closure,” lawyer Zachary Newland said.

The decision is a loss for President Donald Trump’s Republican administration, which had defended the 1968 law despite arguing against other gun restrictions. Its core argument “fails under every measure,” Gorsuch wrote.

The law was originally meant to keep guns away from dangerous people, but millions of people now use marijuana, Gorsuch wrote. It is broadly legal in about half the states and has gained widespread use for health purposes.

“Whatever one thinks of these developments, the federal government has not just tolerated them; it helped fuel them,” Gorsuch wrote. “All of which leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous.”

The law was also used in a case against Hunter Biden, who was convicted in Wilmington, Delaware, of buying a gun while addicted to cocaine in 2018. He was later pardoned by his father, Democratic President Joe Biden.

Someone addicted to an illegal drug could potentially still be prosecuted after Thursday’s decision.

“We do not address efforts to ban addicts, or those presently intoxicated, from possessing a firearm,” Gorsuch wrote. Prosecutors could charge a marijuana user if they had evidence the person was dangerous, he said.

Recreational use remains illegal on a federal level even after the Trump administration reclassified medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug in April.

The case made for some unusual political alliances.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association supported Hemani’s case, as did cannabis legalization groups such as NORML. On the other side were gun safety groups including Everytown that usually oppose the administration on Second Amendment issues.

The ACLU applauded the ruling, saying that nearly half of Americans have reported using marijuana at some point in their lives.

“The court has sent a strong message that the government cannot criminalize the conduct of large numbers of people by making categorical and unfounded assumptions about whether they are dangerous,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director at the ACLU.

The Second Amendment Foundation called it a “major victory for gun owners.”

The group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes legalization of the drug, condemned the court's decision.

“While the justices in this case appear to be most concerned with historical battles over Second Amendment rights, public health and safety are the collateral damage in this decision,” said CEO Kevin Sabet.

Gun control groups were more muted, with Everytown saying that the decision still recognizes that “drugs and guns can make for a dangerous mix.”

It is rare to see standalone criminal charges filed against people accused solely of owning guns and using drugs. The charge is more often filed against people also accused of other crimes.

The opinion is the latest in a series of firearm cases to reach the Supreme Court since its landmark ruling expanding gun rights in 2022 led to a wave of challenges around the country.

Since then, the high court has upheld a law aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence and strict regulations on ghost gun kits but has struck down a ban on bump stocks, an accessory that enables rapid fire. The justices are also considering a second firearm case this term over strict regulations on carrying guns in Hawaii.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

Luis Díaz had a goal and an assist in his debut on soccer’s biggest stage, sparking Colombia to a 3-1 win over Uzbekistan on Wednesday night.

“That’s what we came here to do. It’s very important to win this first game. We controlled the first half, but they played better in the second,” said Díaz, who plays for Bayern Munich. “We must improve.”

Daniel Muñoz, also playing in his first World Cup, opened the scoring in the 40th minute after a pass from Díaz, who scored the tiebreaking goal in the 65th when his strike from close range deflected off the hands of diving goalkeeper Utkir Yusupov and trickled across the line.

“We knew that it was going to be a tough match,” Colombia coach Nestor Lorenzo said.

Fayzullaev Abbosbek scored in the 60th minute for Uzbekistan, which made its World Cup debut in front of a heavily pro-Colombia crowd of 80,824 at Estadio Azteca.

“It is a wonderful joy, but emotionally, I think it weighed on some of the players who suffered physically,” Lorenzo said. “It has to do with the emotional burden generated by the opening match and the setting in which we played — especially since we were expected to take the initiative and were under pressure to win.”

With the White Wolves’ defeat, three of the four debuting teams at this year’s World Cup lost their first match. Cape Verde played Spain to a draw, while Curaçao and Jordan lost.

“For a small team like ours, to lose 3-1 is too much,” said Uzbekistan coach Fabio Cannavaro, an Italian who took over the team in October 2025. “We have good quality for an Asian team, but we need to grow. It was a good experience.”

Jaminton Campaz added a goal in second-half stoppage time for the Colombians, who are ranked 13th in the world and were heavy favorites over 50th-ranked Uzbekistan. Colombia’s best World Cup finish was a run to the quarterfinals in Brazil in 2014.

“We needed to hit the ground running. Now we can enjoy the rest of the night,” midfielder Gustavo Puerta said.

Colombia moved atop Group K, ahead of Portugal and Congo, who played to a surprising 1-1 draw earlier Wednesday.

The Colombians will face Congo next Thursday at Guadalajara, Mexico, while Uzbekistan will take on Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal at Houston.

“We are going to play against a tough team that played great against one of the best teams in the world. It is going to be hard,” Lorenzo said.

Colombia finished third in South American qualifying behind Argentina and Ecuador. Uzbekistan was second in its Asian qualifying group behind Iran.

___

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

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The crash happened near Ninth Street and Meridian Avenue as the officer was responding to a separate traffic crash.

Cellphone video captured the aftermath of the crash involving the officer as Miami Beach police and fire rescue crews flooded the scene.

Another view showed what appears to be a damaged police ATV in the middle of the road.

The officer was transported by Miami Beach Fire Rescue to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center in critical condition.

Police shut down the scene for hours as detectives worked to piece together what happened.

The crash remains under investigation and investigators have not said whether any other vehicles were involved.

El accidente ocurrió cerca de Ninth Street y Meridian Avenue mientras el agente respondía a otro accidente de tránsito.

Un video grabado con teléfono celular captó las secuelas del accidente que involucró al agente mientras unidades de la policía de Miami Beach y equipos de rescate de bomberos acudían en gran número al lugar.

Otra toma mostró lo que parece ser un vehículo todoterreno (ATV) policial dañado en medio de la vía.

El agente fue trasladado por Miami Beach Fire Rescue al Ryder Trauma Center del Jackson Memorial Hospital en estado crítico.

La policía cerró la zona durante horas mientras los detectives trabajaban para reconstruir lo ocurrido.

El accidente continúa bajo investigación y los investigadores no han informado si otros vehículos estuvieron involucrados.

El incendio forestal más grande, que comenzó el lunes, estaba contenido en un 30% y había quemado 13,400 acres. El incendio más pequeño, que comenzó el martes, estaba contenido en un 25% y había quemado 500 acres.

Carolina Herrera dijo que vive con una condición autoinmune que aumentó su sensibilidad al humo. Estaba paseando a su perro en su comunidad cerca de la autopista Turnpike en Miami-Dade.

“Mis ojos han estado más irritados de lo normal”, dijo Herrera.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue desplegó alrededor de siete docenas de unidades en el área de la avenida 137 del noroeste y la calle 25, según el registro de llamadas activas.

Conductores reportaron que el humo afectó la visibilidad temprano el miércoles por la mañana a lo largo de la autopista Florida Turnpike cerca de Hialeah. Agentes cerraron temporalmente Krome Avenue en la milla 23.

Enlace útil: Posibles cierres temporales de carreteras

La contaminación afectó la calidad del aire en el sur de Florida, por lo que se desaconsejaron las actividades al aire libre, según la Agencia de Protección Ambiental de Estados Unidos.

El personal de MDFR advirtió que el humo se disipará a medida que aumenten las temperaturas y sugirió a los residentes “limitar el tiempo al aire libre, mantener puertas y ventanas cerradas y configurar los sistemas de aire acondicionado para recircular el aire interior.

Enlace útil: Mapa para verificar la calidad del aire en su área

Publicaciones relacionadas en redes sociales

MDFR continues to work alongside the @FlForestService to battle the two brush fires in western Miami-Dade County.

MDFR has deployed multiple resources to support firefighting efforts, including water tender trucks to provide steady water supply, and fire engines working to… pic.twitter.com/zy1dASlLYN

— Miami-Dade Fire Rescue (@MiamiDadeFire) June 17, 2026

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The land holds the fuel facility that supplies PortMiami.

Commissioner Raquel Regalado was the only dissenting vote.

Ahead of the vote, she expressed concern that with eminent domain, they would be inheriting a “dinosaur,” due to the aging facility.

Commissioner Oliver Gilbert, on the other hand, said he believes it will be less costly to upgrade the existing site than it would be to build a new one.

“Last fall, the board of county commission authorized the administration to enter into negotiations for this property and should those negotiations not be successful to enter into eminent domain proceedings,” Miami-Dade Deputy Mayor Roy Coley told Local 10 News after the vote. “Since that time, and the mayor has determined the negotiations to not be successful, it has been identified that the legal description of the property could be reduced to a slightly smaller footprint than our original resolution. And so, it’s really a cleanup item that reauthorizes what’s already been authorized with a more accurate legal description.”

The fuel bunker on the exclusive Fisher Island has been the subject of several lawsuits and a high-profile dispute over its future.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the county’s goal is to ensure a reliable fuel supply for PortMiami’s operations.

As for the next steps in the related federal case, Coley said the county will now pursue eminent domain and Florida law “requires negotiations.”

“There’s a 30-day statutory negotiation period where we hope we can sit down with the new property owners, the developers, and negotiate out a final deal that the mayor can support,” he said.

Coley said he wouldn’t be able to say whether the plaintiffs who have filed suit will have a seat at the negotiating table.

“Well, Fisher Island has sued us, as you know, and they’ve also sued the developers,” he said. “And so, any negotiations would be confidential in nature, just like all the negotiations up to now that we’re talking about are confidential by requirement. So whether or not everyone’s willing to sit down at the table together, we’ll find out after we file our eminent domain.”

Roberto Perez, the CEO of HRP Group, released the following statement to Local 10 News on behalf of HRP Fisher Island, LLC:

“Today’s action to pursue the seizure of private property is the direct and entirely avoidable consequence of Miami-Dade County’s decades-long failure to plan. The County knew this property existed and were approached repeatedly by the former owner before it ever went to market and during the public sale. They proactively passed on the opportunity to purchase it again and again.

“The former owner provided extensive notice to the County and Port that the property would ultimately be sold to a developer given the highest and best use of the land in one of the country’s most expensive zip codes and provided alternatives for fuel supply location and financing. Moreover, the property was marketed to real estate developers in the public sale.

“HRP ultimately acquired the property through a fully transparent, publicly advertised process and made our intentions to build a world-class residential development clear from day one.

“When the County first threatened eminent domain - just weeks before the closing of our two years of development efforts to unlock the value of a $2.5 billion project - we came to the table and spent eight months participating in a confidential mediation process requested by the County. According to the County’s own public statements, that process resulted in a mediated resolution that would have allowed the County to secure the property immediately at no cost or risk to the taxpayers.

“HRP will aggressively fight this unconstitutional seizure of our property and we will build One Fisher Island. The only question now is how much of the public’s time and money the Mayor is willing to waste to obscure the numerous poor decisions her administration and the County have made for decades.”

]]>https://www.local10.com/news/local/2026/06/18/grappler-technique-helps-hollywood-police-nab-alleged-car-thief-wanted-on-multiple-warrants/https://www.local10.com/news/local/2026/06/18/grappler-technique-helps-hollywood-police-nab-alleged-car-thief-wanted-on-multiple-warrants/Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:32:18 +0000A “grappler deployment” helped a Hollywood police officer nab a man who was driving a stolen Mercedes-Benz last week, authorities said.

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According to an arrest report obtained Thursday by Local 10 News, Reuel Claude Sculley, 28, of Miramar, who was wanted on multiple warrants in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, was arrested last Friday, June 12, in Hollywood.

Hollywood police said an officer stopped Sculley at about 3:45 a.m. in the area of North State Road 7 and Lucky Street after using a grappler, which is a tool that deploys a tethered net from the front of the police car to entangle the rear tire of a fleeing suspect.

According to the report, Sculley was then taken into custody on multiple charges, including grand theft of a motor vehicle, possession of a vehicle with altered numbers and driving with a suspended or revoked license.

The report states that Sculley also had an active warrant in Broward County for resisting/obstructing without violence, and two warrants in Miami-Dade County for numerous charges, including burglary, grand theft of a vehicle, providing a false name after arrest, resisting an officer without violence, interference with or disruption of an educational institution, criminal mischief and driving without a valid license.

As of Thursday morning, he was being held at the North Broward Bureau without bond.

Según un informe de arresto obtenido el jueves por Local 10 News, Reuel Claude Sculley, de 28 años y residente de Miramar, quien era buscado por múltiples órdenes de arresto en los condados Broward y Miami-Dade, fue arrestado el viernes 12 de junio en Hollywood.

La policía de Hollywood dijo que un agente detuvo a Sculley alrededor de las 3:45 a.m. en el área de North State Road 7 y Lucky Street después de usar un grappler, que es una herramienta que despliega una red sujeta desde la parte frontal del vehículo policial para enredar la llanta trasera de un sospechoso que huye.

Según el informe, Sculley fue detenido bajo múltiples cargos, incluyendo hurto mayor de un vehículo, posesión de un vehículo con números alterados y conducir con una licencia suspendida o revocada.

El informe indica que Sculley también tenía una orden activa en el condado Broward por resistirse/obstruir sin violencia, y dos órdenes en el condado Miami-Dade por numerosos cargos, incluyendo allanamiento, hurto mayor de un vehículo, proporcionar un nombre falso tras el arresto, resistirse a un agente sin violencia, interferencia o alteración de una institución educativa, daño criminal y conducir sin una licencia válida.

Hasta la mañana del jueves, permanecía detenido en el North Broward Bureau sin derecho a fianza.

The heat wave is showing no signs of stopping with well above average temperatures and humidity well into next week. What could help is an increasing chance for thunderstorms Friday and especially this weekend. It doesn’t look like a washout for Father’s Day weekend, but expect scattered thunderstorms to develop each afternoon. They will be hit or miss.

Kast impulsó un recorte del gasto público que generó cuestionamientos al tiempo que controversias en el área de seguridad precipitaron la caída en mayo de la entonces ministra Trinidad Steinert.

Esos factores combinados llevaron a un desplome de la aprobación presidencial desde el 47,5% con la que Kast debutó en marzo hasta el 31% a inicios de junio, según la firma Pulso Ciudadano.

“Kast ganó las elecciones presentando mensajes simplistas sobre seguridad, vinculados a la migración y la economía", pero ya en el poder no ha cumplido sus promesas, comentó a The Associated Press, Catalina Calderón, analista política del Women’s Equality Center.

Aquí un vistazo a la gestión de Kast.

Seguridad

Poco se ha avanzado en el combate a la delincuencia y una serie de errores del Ministerio de Seguridad, entre ellos haber admitido que carecía de un plan para combatir el crimen organizado, llevó a la caída de Steinert.

El nuevo ministro Martín Arrau tampoco ha presentado una hoja de ruta y reconoció que la Política Nacional de Seguridad promulgada durante la administración del progresista Gabriel Boric (2022-2026) sigue vigente.

Hasta la fecha la cartera no ha enviado al Congreso los proyectos de ley anunciados para fortalecer la seguridad.

Además, se produjo un "estancamiento de medidas críticas como el aumento de penas para miembros de organizaciones criminales y el reforzamiento de la tipificación del delito de pertenencia a una entidad criminal”, detalló un informe sobre el cumplimiento del programa de gobierno publicado en junio.

El estudio elaborado por una docena de centros progresistas —entre ellos el alemán Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung— analiza regularmente el cumplimiento de las promesas de cada administración.

Inmigración

Otra de las principales banderas de Kast en la campaña fue el combate a la inmigración irregular que muchos en Chile vinculan con el aumento de la delincuencia.

El entonces candidato había prometido convertirla en un delito, construir zanjas y barreras físicas en las fronteras e impulsar expulsiones masivas. Sin embargo, se ha encontrado con trabas legales y administrativas.

“Muchas de las cosas que se prometieron eran de dudosa aplicación”, dijo a AP el analista político Gilberto Aranda. “El Ejecutivo no cuenta ni con los instrumentos ni las herramientas jurídicas para expulsiones exprés".

Ello porque en la actualidad los extranjeros se encuentran en una situación irregular, pero no delictiva. Asimismo, el proceso de expulsión depende de la cooperación entre los países involucrados, lo que dificulta las deportaciones a naciones como Venezuela, cuyas relaciones diplomáticas con Chile están congeladas.

“Lamentablemente muchos de los que cometen delitos son extranjeros y el gobierno debería tener un mayor control sobre ellos”, dijo la comerciante Ana María Torres, de 47 años. “Pero lo que vemos hasta ahora es que todo sigue igual”.

Kast incluso anunció una "cuenta regresiva" para la deportación de los cerca de 300.000 inmigrantes sin papeles — en gran parte venezolanos— que viven en el país, pero luego reconoció que era una "metáfora”.

“Si alguien creyó que en un día vamos a expulsar a 300.000, creo que entendió mal el mensaje”, dijo hace algunas semanas.

En términos concretos el gobierno comenzó la construcción de una zanja simbólica en la frontera norte del país y encabezó recientemente una reunión regional donde firmó, junto a otros cuatro países, un compromiso para incrementar los esfuerzos conjuntos en el combate al crimen organizado y el monitoreo de pasos fronterizos no habilitados.

Economía

El tercer pilar del gobierno de Kast es el que hasta ahora ha mostrado avances más concretos.

El buque insignia de su administración es el proyecto de Reconstrucción Nacional y Desarrollo Económico y Social que prevé un paquete de reformas tributarias, laborales y habitacionales que se encuentra en discusión en el Congreso.

Kast anunció que seguirá adelante con medidas con las que espera “ordenar las finanzas públicas”, pero reconoció que algunas de ellas podrían generar molestias. Eso incluye una reducción de cerca del 3% del presupuesto ministerial, sobre todo en las carteras de Salud, Educación, Vivienda y Trabajo.

La medida generó una ola de críticas y llevó a miles de personas a las calles en los últimos meses.

“Nos quieren callar, pero nosotros no vamos a parar”, dijo la estudiante de Pedagogía, Magdalena Correa. “Nos están quitando recursos y derechos y tenemos que contraatacar”.

The news emerged as Ukraine launched one of its biggest drone attacks since Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor more than four years ago, Russian officials said Thursday. A major Moscow oil refinery was hit for a second time in a week and commercial flights at Moscow airports were disrupted.

Against the backdrop of conflict, the EU has been quietly seeking to reopen communications with Moscow even as it doubles down on its support for Kyiv. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has tried to cut out Europe and Kyiv and negotiate Ukraine’s future with Washington.

“⁠In the past few weeks, brief contacts were made at diplomatic level to open communication channels but nothing was discussed on substance,” an EU official with knowledge of the approach said on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive move. A second official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the matter, confirmed the Russia outreach is taking place but declined to comment further.

“In any future scenario, the EU has specific interests that will need to be defended, therefore it is important to have established diplomatic channels with Russia. The EU is not a mediator. It supports Ukraine in its efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace,” the first official added.

The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Putin has repeatedly said Europe cannot play any kind of mediation role in settling the conflict but has not ruled out speaking to the EU.

“We have never refused contacts with representatives of the European Union in any format,” he said earlier this month. “We are not rejecting contacts. If they want to talk, they know how to reach us. They can pick up the phone and call. If they want to come, they are welcome to do so. It is not Russia that is refusing engagement.”

According to the officials, European Council President Antonio Costa “has been coordinating closely with European leaders on possible engagement with Russia and the issues to be discussed when the right moment comes.”

News of the moves came as EU leaders were heading to Brussels for their summer summit, where Ukraine will be high on the agenda. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to address the 27 leaders, who are seeking closer ties with Kyiv.

On Monday, Ukraine officially opened negotiations to join the EU, launching a process that will require its government to commit to years of political reforms even as it fights the Russian invasion.

It also closely follows this week's meeting of the world's seven leading industrialized nations in the French spa town of Evian-Les-Bains, where Europeans managed to get Trump to join G7 leaders in offering “unwavering support for Ukraine.”

Zelenskyy said his country won key pledges of further support from world leaders attending the G7 summit in France, including the United States.

___

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.

U.S. applications for unemployment benefits in the week ending June 13 dropped by 4,000 to 226,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s in line with the 225,000 new applications forecast by analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet.

Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are considered representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

Despite concerns that the conflict in the Middle East would further squeeze a flagging labor market, hiring has picked up in recent months following a miserable 2025 that saw fewer than 200,000 job gains. For comparison, about 1.5 million jobs were added in 2024.

U.S. employers delivered a surprising 172,000 new jobs in May and the economy is averaging 188,000 job gains in the three months since the Iran war began in late February. That’s the best three months of hiring since early 2024. The unemployment rate remains historically low at 4.3%.

Job openings also rose in April as employers posted 7.6 million vacancies, up from 6.9 million in March and the most since May 2024.

The government reported last week that rising gas prices — triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s southern border — pushed U.S. consumer inflation in May to 4.2%, its highest level in three years. Despite recent declines, prices for oil and gas remain elevated, which can squeeze consumers’ budgets and make businesses think twice about hiring.

Earlier this week, Iran and the U.S. agreed to a deal to end the war and allow Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and sell its oil without restrictions.

With inflation still well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, officials at the U.S. central bank left the benchmark interest rate where it was on Wednesday. It was the first meeting with new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, who replaced Jerome Powell after his eight-year run as the U.S. central bank’s leader.

Lower interest rates can boost the economy and hiring, but also tend to stoke inflation, leading a number of Fed policymakers to say they are actually willing to consider at least one interest rate hike this year. That could potentially help bring inflation down, but higher borrowing costs generally make businesses more reluctant to hire.

Optimism over artificial intelligence has also injected a degree of uncertainty about the job market due to the investment required to develop it and because the powerful technology could alter or even replace some jobs.

Among the companies that have cut jobs recently are Verizon, UPS, Amazon, Disney, Starbucks and Walmart.

Weekly jobless aid applications have stabilized in a range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. economy emerged from the pandemic recession. However, hiring began slowing about two years ago and tapered further in 2025 due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates meant to control inflation.

The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that the four-week moving average of jobless claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, rose by 4,000 to 223,250.

The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending June 6 rose by 24,000 to 1.81 million, slightly more than analysts predicted.

The warnings were followed by sweeping airstrikes on the city, which Israel said targeted the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group.

What Kaour found back in Tyre, shattered his hopes — his dream family apartment overlooking the shimmering Mediterranean Sea was a heap of rubble and shattered glass.

His return coincided with the announcement of an agreement between the United States and Iran to end the war in the Middle East. The deal also calls for an end to the war in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting Hezbollah, but it's unclear what that means in practice.

Israel and Hezbollah are not parties to the agreement. Iran insists Israel must withdraw from the large swath of southern Lebanon it is occupying, but the wording of the interim deal doesn’t explicitly require that and only ensures Lebanon’s “territorial integrity.”

Later Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s military will stay in southern Lebanon as long as "Israel’s security needs require it.” The remarks were his first comment since the U.S.-Iran deal was signed.

For its part, Hezbollah has said that it's committed to resisting Israel. Fighting between the two sides, which was still underway on Wednesday in villages and towns of southern Lebanon, could derail the deal.

Many hope the US-Iran deal signals better times

For residents in the south of crisis-battered Lebanon, hopes of better times are mixed with skepticism —there had been too many ceasefire announcements that had failed to halt the fighting.

Kaour lives in Germany, but spends most of the summer in Tyre. Last month, when an Israeli strike hit their street without warning, he was a abroad with his family.

When he returned, he saw his building, with a popular sweets shop and an electronics store on the ground floor, was still standing, unlike surrounding structures — buildings that were all leveled to the ground.

But the walls and the windows of his apartment had been blasted out. He was relieved his family had not been there, he said. They all survived.

“I’m hopeful for peace, and God willing this is the end of the war, and everyone can go back to their homes," he said. “We are living abroad, but our minds are here in our country.”

Outside, the street filled quickly with people trying to clear the rubble.

Kaour's neighbor one floor above, Samih Haidar had also just returned and found his door bolted by wooden boards.

He tried to kick them down, but failed, then anxiously waited as two men who had been clearing rubble on another floor came and unscrewed the bolts.

Through a gap, Haidar climbed in. He didn't know what to expect — he had rented the apartment out to a family displaced from another area in the south, people who were close to a trusted friend of his.

Then his anxiety turned into shock: broken furniture, shattered glass, rubble and a burned out kitchen. Neighbors told him the kitchen caught fire after the strike. He slowly walked through each room, quietly filming with his phone. He doesn't know what became of the family — displaced from Tyre like scores of others, he presumed.

He wants to hope, he said.

“We want things to work out and live in safety, so there can be stability for us and everyone else,” Haidar said.

Morning strikes pierce a tenuous ceasefire

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported several Israeli drone strikes on Thursday morning in the country's south, including one on a car in the town of Kfar Tebnit that killed one person and critically wounded another.

Israel did not comment on the strikes.

To the north, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) away, displaced families huddled along the waterfront in Beirut, Lebanon's capital. Most of them have sleeping in tents for months, living day-to-day in limbo. For others, it's a bench or a mattress on the ground.

Many said they're not convinced that the U.S.-Iran deal will hold or that they will be able to return to their homes — if they still have homes to return to. In the border area close to Israel, many Lebanese villages have been almost completely demolished.

“I haven’t felt relieved at all,” said Mohammed Ashmar, displaced from the border village of Deir Seryan, holding a cup of coffee and sitting near his tent on the waterfront. “Until I get back to my home ... I won’t be convinced of anything.”

The Israel-Hezbollah war has displaced more than 1 million people in Lebanon, and killed nearly 3,900, according to Lebanese officials. About 30 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon, and two civilians have been killed in northern Israel, according to Netanyahu’s office.

In his remarks Thursday, Netanyahu reiterated that Israel’s military will stay in southern Lebanon, where it has occupied up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border. Israel must “maintain a security zone in southern Lebanon, and it requires that we must not leave there as long as Israel’s security needs require it,” he said.

Speaking during a visit by foreign dignitaries on Thursday, Lebanon’s Social Affairs Minister Haneen Sayed said the country faces urgent humanitarian needs but also the daunting task of planning for the return of displaced families and reconstruction of the destroyed areas.

“The Lebanese people deserve peace," she said. "They deserve to return safely to their homes, rebuild their communities, and look to the future with confidence and hope."

___

Associated Press journalists Fadi Tawil in Beirut and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

But filling up is still more expensive than it was before the conflict began.

According to motor club AAA, a gallon of regular gasoline is now averaging at $3.999. It's the first time since March that prices have been that low. And the drop aligns with easing crude oil costs overall, with some optimism about an initial agreement between the U.S. and Iran to end their war.

Still, American drivers are collectively paying about $1 more per gallon than they were before the U.S. joined Israel to attack Iran in February — and prices are 25% higher than they were at this time last year. That's caused many households to tighten their budgets in other areas, or rethink where they want to spend their money more broadly.

More expensive bills beyond gas

Gas isn't the only thing that's gotten more expensive over the course of the war. Groceries, airline tickets and even condoms and shoes cost more amid global supply chain disruptions.

Even if oil and other core necessities — like fertilizer — begin flowing from the Middle East again, experts warn that the sticker shock will likely outlast the fighting.

“Product prices across the United States are projected to keep climbing for the rest of 2026," Pat Penfield, a professor of supply chain practice at Syracuse University, said Thursday.

Penfield pointed to depleted inventories and ongoing supply chain consequences spanning from the war — noting that farmers, for example, already had to pay higher costs for fertilizer and other supplies in the spring that will “ripple through to increased food prices by autumn.” And at the gas pump, he noted that limited refinery capacity in the U.S. “remains a significant bottleneck” towards bringing down prices.

What prices at the pump look like nationwide

Steep fuel costs have already pushed U.S. inflation to its highest level in three years. And many consumers are still filling their tanks for much more than $4 a gallon.

That price is a national average, with costs varying between states due to factors like proximity to supply and differing tax rates. In California on Thursday, prices averaged about $5.64 for a gallon of regular gas, per AAA, followed by $5.57 in Hawaii. Meanwhile, prices in Indiana and Texas sat at about $3.40 and $3.49 a gallon, respectively.

Recent relief for fuel prices arrived with cooling costs for crude oil — the main ingredient in gasoline.

Brent crude, the international standard, fell under $78 per barrel Thursday. And U.S. benchmark crude tumbled to just over $74 per barrel. That's still a little higher than the roughly $70 price tag before the war, but far below the $100-plus price from just a few weeks ago.

Why oil costs are falling

Prices fell overnight after President Donald Trump signed an agreement with Iran. The tenuous agreement calls for Tehran to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and waives U.S.-backed sanctions on the country — immediately allowing Iran to sell its oil freely in a significant concession from Washington.

Major ship owners have also begun moving vessels through the key Strait of Hormuz since the memorandum of understanding was signed Wednesday, according to maritime data from Lloyd’s List Intelligence, although some reported that only more limited side routes were open. And U.S. Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the Navy has lifted its own blockade to allow some transit to and from Iranian ports.

Still, it could take weeks or months for traffic to return to pre-war levels. Before the war, the strait carried a fifth of the world’s crude oil. And Gulf oil producers that throttled back production will need time to get the oil moving again.

Some ship captains may take their time to determine if the passage is safe. The agreement between the U.S. and Iran calls for a permanent end to hostilities and starts a 60-day negotiating clock to reach a final deal on the future of Iran’s nuclear program, though Trump left the door open to resume attacks.

Refineries also typically pay for crude oil a month or more in advance, so even after oil prices drop, they won’t immediately be processing cheaper products. Energy shocks have been even starker in places that rely more heavily on imports from the Middle East — notably countries across Asia and Africa.

A century of broken treaties already had spawned distrust of the federal government, and widespread forced assimilation was accelerating. With shifting cultural and social circumstances came declining populations. Survival was hanging in the balance.

Renowned for their masterful beadwork, Lakota women had a strategy.

Incorporating symbols of American patriotism into their work was more than a simple embrace of the stars and stripes. It was an act of quiet resistance that provided an avenue for conserving their values as U.S. policies unraveled their communities.

So with America's 250th birthday come mixed emotions rooted in pain, pride and even patriotism. Native youth are writing essays about what 1776 means to them. Museums are displaying elaborate beadwork as a window into that past, while contemporary Native artists are offering critics in paintings on more modern political struggles.

It's a milestone marking resilience — and a fresh opportunity to look at the nation's history through an unexpected, and perhaps less varnished, lens.

Native Americans and the US have a unique relationship

Curators and tribal scholars say the Native experience cannot be overlooked or minimized when talking about the complex tapestry that is America.

“The United States could not exist without Native history having been here first,” said Aaron Carapella, who is of Cherokee descent and creates maps of Indigenous territories. “There’s so many influences that Native people embedded into the fabric of what we call America.”

A student of history, Carapella finds it unlikely that most of the Founding Fathers would have expected tribes to persist as sovereign entities. Rather, they thought tribes would be absorbed into American society.

Implementation of laws like the 1830 Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson and the 1887 Dawes Act enacted by President Grover Cleveland led to forced relocations through brutal journeys like the Trail of Tears. Land grabs resulted when millions of acres of tribal landholdings were broken up.

Bounties in Minnesota and the Southwest along with militias in California further eroded tribal territories. Then came the boarding schools, where Native children were sent in an effort to erase their connections to culture, language and religion.

It's not ancient history. Tribal leaders say their people are still living with the effects of those policies.

Today, there are 575 tribes with inherent sovereignty recognized by the U.S, with the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina joining the list in December. The government-to-government relationships are unlike arrangements many other countries have with Indigenous populations.

N. Bruce Duthu, chair of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Dartmouth College and a member of the United Houma Nation, has taught and lectured around the globe. He said it’s hard for Indigenous leaders in Bolivia and elsewhere to believe that tribes in the U.S. have been able to build power over the last half-century. It’s an ongoing fight, but Duthu points to successful efforts to influence environmental policies and pass major legislation to hold nontribal citizens accountable for crimes committed in Indian Country.

“The U.S. is routinely at the top of the heap in terms of a country that, despite all the flaws, at least now in the last 50 years or so, seems to have gotten it right,” Duthu said.

There's a deep history of influence

Native influences span from the notions of democracy shared with the Founding Fathers to the warrior ethos exhibited by the fierceness with which tribal nations fought to protect their land — from other tribes, foreign nations and the federal government.

It's not unlike the patriotism many Americans feel today. And for some Native Americans, it's a fundamental part of who they are; they have one of the highest per-capita rates of military service in the country.

At the center of the “Stars, Stripes and First Americans” exhibit at New Mexico’s Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is a painting by Kee Yazzie titled Diné Code Talker. The brushstrokes pay homage to the Navajo Code Talkers, who used their language to create an unbreakable code that played a critical role in U.S. victories during World War II.

Danyelle Means, the museum's executive director and a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, said other tribes also had code talkers. That included the Choctaw Nation and Comanche, Kiowa, Hopi, Muscogee, Sioux and Seminole recruits.

“Veterans are a huge part of celebration and ceremony within Native communities and are often revered and have their own societies within these communities,” Means said. “So it is something — that aspect of the U.S. and being a warrior for this country — that is very deep-seated in so many Native communities.”

Influence has permeated art and culture

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., is commemorating the 250th with an installation of two dresses that highlight heritage and Native American servicewomen.

Made a century apart, one is a Lakota beaded dress likely made for a July Fourth celebration and the other is a modern jingle dress worn by members of the Native American Women Warriors that includes a patch honoring Lori Piestewa, who is believed to be the first Native woman killed in combat on foreign soil. The Hopi soldier died from injuries following an ambush in Iraq in 2003.

Those military operations came after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Navajo artist Pauline Thomas called it a scary time, knowing that more Native soldiers would be heading off to war. The 73-year-old created a weaving following 9/11 that is now part of the exhibition in New Mexico.

For Thomas, her weavings mark moments in time, but they're also a way for Navajo customs to live on. Her 12-year-old granddaughter already is winning blue ribbons for her weavings.

“I think it’s very, very important,” Thomas said from her hometown of Naschitti on the Navajo Nation. “I don’t want my people to lose their culture. I want them to learn more about their ancestors, where they came from.”

The way forward has many paths

Jami Powell, curator of Indigenous art at Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art, uses the phrase “colonial entanglements” to describe the complexity of U.S.-tribal relations. She tells her students that things aren't always black and white.

“And it is OK to have feelings of ambivalence around these issues and the difficult histories that led to this current moment,” said Powell, a citizen of the Osage Nation.

The Hood Museum is displaying the work of Native artists as part of its 250th commemoration. Both subversive and pointed, the pieces broaden the conversation and get visitors thinking about the next two centuries, Powell said.

Ensuring Native youth have a voice in that future is a driving force for Tracy Canard Goodluck, executive director of the Center for Native American Youth.

A member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and of Mvskoke Creek heritage, Goodluck said the power of those voices rang loud and clear in essays submitted for a recent competition focused on the 250th. They touched on sovereignty, self-determination and maintaining a connection with land and culture.

“They know who they are, where they come from, their identity, their culture, their history,” Goodluck says, “and we need to create pathways for them to be able to share that with everyone.”

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This story is published through the Global Indigenous Reporting Network at The Associated Press.

Fourteen players managed to post scores — no birdies among them — before the horn sounded to stop because of low visibility. They were kept on the course for 15 minutes, and when it didn't get any better, they were brought back in.

The first round finally resumed after a two-hour delay. It was the first time the opening round of the U.S. Open was delayed by fog since 2021 at Torrey Pines in San Diego, which is notorious for its “June Gloom.” That one lasted 90 minutes and the first round was not complete until the next morning. That will be the case again at Shinnecock Hills.

The problem was evident at the start. James Nicholas was to hit the opening tee shot, and he walked over to the starter to ask if they were still on time.

“I just wanted to make sure,” Nicholas said. “I can't see the fairway.”

The fairways are wide enough — an average width of 48 yards this year — that no one had any trouble finding their golf balls. But when the par-3 11th green and some landing areas were hard to see, officials had no choice.

Scottie Scheffler, the world's No. 1 player who is trying to complete the career Grand Slam with a U.S. Open title, and Rory McIlroy were among those on the range ahead of their morning tee times.

The USGA prepared the course for the anticipation of strong wind, with gusts potentially approaching 40 mph. The wind Thursday morning wasn't strong enough to move the fog.

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

The bipartisan Protect College Sports Act aims to regulate payments to players, limit them to one free transfer over their careers and create a rule to restrict coaches from changing jobs during a season. It advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee on a 19-9 vote Thursday and now heads to the full Senate for consideration.

The legislation is the product of months of negotiations between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee, and comes as lawmakers in both chambers of Congress are grappling with whether it's time for them to intervene in college sports.

“The greatest risk facing college athletics today is not any single controversy, court decision, or headline. The greatest threat to college sports is inaction,” Cruz said in opening remarks.

Bill moves forward without Big Ten and SEC support

The committee vote advancing the bill — which included Senate Majority Leader John Thune voting in favor — followed endorsements from several athletic conferences, the NFL and its players union, and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee. The Olympic committee backed the revised measure after lawmakers added additional protections for women’s and Olympic sports.

Yet the two most powerful conferences in college sports — the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten Conference — are not supporting it. In a joint statement released Thursday morning, the two conferences wrote that “revisions are needed to secure our support for the bill.”

“What we did today was say we’re not going to let the most powerful, richest conferences dictate to the rest of America what’s going to happen to 500,000 athletes,” Cantwell said after the committee vote.

Earlier this month, the Congressional Black Caucus also urged the Senate to suspend action on the bill in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that effectively disabled a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Democratic Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, a member of the CBC, voted against the legislation Thursday.

Support and opposition for the bill does not fall neatly along party lines, reflecting the national reach of SEC and Big Ten schools and broader divisions in Congress.

While President Donald Trump has backed the bill, multiple Republicans opposed the legislation Thursday, while several Democrat supported it.

Some of the senators who voted against the bill represent states that are home to prominent SEC and Big Ten programs, including Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat, and Republican Sens. Todd Young of Indiana and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

"We still are trying to get some changes that the Big Ten would like to see,” Peters told The Associated Press late Wednesday.

A long road ahead

Clearing the committee is just the first step in a long process.

Passage through the Senate is far from guaranteed, as leaders already have a packed schedule and a dwindling number of legislative days left before the November election. The bill would need to clear a 60-vote threshold in the 53-47 Republican-controlled chamber.

The bill will also still need to clear the House. Earlier this year, House Republican leadership had been working toward a vote on its own college sports bill, known as the SCORE Act, before the Congressional Black Caucus announced its unanimous opposition.

Still, supporters on Thursday touted the committee action as a massive step forward.

“Today we are proving that we are resilient in keeping this product moving,” Cantwell said.

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AP National Writer Eddie Pells in Southampton, N.Y., contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP's coverage of college sports at https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports.

The killing is the latest act which Polish authorities believe could be part of a campaign of Russian sabotage aimed at sowing fear and demoralizing Ukraine's closest allies. Poland, a NATO and European Union member, has in recent years become a place of refuge for political dissidents from Russia and Belarus, as well as Ukrainian war refugees.

“Early this morning, police apprehended a suspect in the murder of a Russian man — a murder that shocked all of Poland,” Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński told a news conference in Warsaw.

He said the suspect is a 36-year-old man who carried a passport belonging to the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia with links to organized crime and crimes committed in Poland dating to 2022. The arrest took place in a hostel housing foreigners in Piastów, near Warsaw, he said.

Robert Kuzovkov, a 44-year-old known by the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, was killed on Monday morning near his home in the eastern Polish city of Biala Podlaska, near the border with Belarus. Prosecutors said the perpetrator fired two shots at him, then shot him three more times at close range before fleeing.

Kuzovkov, who died of gunshot wounds to the head, chest and back, had painted unflattering caricatures of Putin, Kadyrov and other high-ranking Russian officials. One depicts Putin being cradled in the arms of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. He had refused offers of protection by Polish authorities.

Polish officials said Russia was under suspicion due to the profile of the victim and the way he was killed, though they stressed that they are still investigating.

“We are treating this case very, very seriously because, frankly, there is reason to suspect that there may have been people who commissioned this potential assassin,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in Brussels, where he arrived for a summit on Thursday.

“I do not need to convince anyone that this concern involves the possibility of state-sponsored terrorism. This would not be the first such case in Europe, as Europe has seen incidents of this kind before. However, in Poland it would be the first case of a politically motivated assassination carried out on behalf of a foreign state.”

Since it invaded Ukraine in 2022, Russia has been accused of trying to assassinate its opponents abroad, including targeting exiled activists in France and Lithuania.

Officials in Germany have also broken up plots targeting the head of a German weapons supplier to Ukraine and a Ukrainian military official.

Polish authorities arrested a man in 2024 in what they said was a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That same year, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected was killed in Spain, with Russian operatives as the prime suspects.

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The incident occurred around 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday near 24302 SW 107th Ave.

Investigators said 24-year-old Elio Jesus Rodriguez Garcia was at his home when a man he had been arguing with through WhatsApp messages appeared at the front gate of his apartment complex.

Rodriguez Garcia heard the man yelling from outside and exited through the back of his apartment to see what was happening.

After seeing the man, Rodriguez Garcia went back inside, armed himself with a rifle and returned to his rear balcony, where the two continued arguing.

During the confrontation, Rodriguez Garcia fired two warning shots, investigators said.

One of the shots traveled across U.S. 1 and struck the passenger side of a Miami-Dade Transit bus as it was traveling north near Southwest 132nd Avenue and the Busway, authorities said.

The bus was carrying passengers at the time, deputies confirmed.

According to the arrest form, the bullet entered the bus, shattered a side window and caused minor glass injuries to the right side of a passenger’s head and face.

Deputies said a woman was seated on the driver’s side of the bus, a few feet from where the bullet entered. The bullet was recovered intact from inside the bus and appeared to be a rifle round, authorities said.

The woman was treated at the scene by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel.

As deputies responded to the report of an occupied bus being struck by gunfire, dispatchers also received a separate call about a man firing a weapon at Pine Grove Apartments, authorities said.

Deputies said they responded to the second scene and took Rodriguez Garcia into custody without incident.

According to the arrest form, deputies recovered a spent .300 Blackout casing behind Rodriguez Garcia’s apartment. From the rear of the apartment, investigators said they could see across heavily-congested U.S. 1 to the Miami-Dade Transit bus that had been struck.

Rodriguez Garcia was transported to MDSO’s South District station for an interview. Investigators said he was advised of his Miranda rights and he agreed to speak without an attorney present.

He was later arrested and transported to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.

He faces multiple charges, including four counts of attempted manslaughter with a deadly weapon and unlawfully discharging a firearm in a public place or residential property.

Rodriguez Garcia remains jailed on an immigration hold, according to online jail records, however his arrest report states that he is a U.S. citizen who was born in Florida.

The agreement calls for at least $60 million in humanitarian aid, provided by the Trump administration, to be controlled by the Cuban Catholic Church. Another $40 million would be handled by trusted non-governmental organizations, though still under challenging conditions.

But getting that aid where it needs to go is easier said than done.

“I spoke to the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba not too long ago and he says the logistics of it is -- they have no gasoline to deliver some of the humanitarian aid. Even in the region of Santiago de Cuba, it is very difficult,” said Local 10 News Cuba analyst Andy Gomez.

Gomez believes Cuba is on the brink of a historic change.

“At this instance, the situations are so bad that they’re gonna need help from the outside,” he said.

There is some talk of the U.S. military stepping in to help fill the gap in delivering foreign aid, but that scenario is unlikely to have the blessing of the Cuban regime.

“By allowing the U.S. military to go in, then you’re gonna have 8.3 million Cubans demanding much more and that is the fall of the regime -- and they know that. And that’s what Cuba does not want,” Gomez said.

Meanwhile, a meeting is set for Thursday with Cuba’s National Assembly, economists and President Miguel Diaz-Canel, billed as a meeting to evaluate proposals for economic and social transformations. Gomez isn’t buying the framing.

“I think it’s basically saying behind closed doors -- uh oh, where do we go with this?” he said.

When asked if it amounts to a crisis meeting, Gomez didn’t hesitate.

“I think it’s a crisis meeting,” he said.

Gomez questions what economic reforms Cuba could realistically introduce in that meeting besides approving new laws to attract foreign investment. Multiple analysts agree that Raul Castro, Diaz-Canel and the rest of the regime know their power is on the verge of collapse.

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The vote comes as the district faces a new reality -- for the first time in generations, there are more school seats than actual students. District leaders cited declining enrollment and changing demographics as reasons they had no choice but to re-evaluate how some school buildings are being utilized.

“It is never an easy decision to consolidate schools, but when done properly it benefits our students,” said school board member Robert Alonzo, who represents District 4.

Nine schools are set to be closed and/or repurposed, including Miami Springs Middle School, Richmond Heights Middle and Lorna Smith Elementary, among others.

“We’re not seeing those numbers coming in. We have also seen a decline in birth rate. We are just not seeing that many students within our communities,” Alonzo said.

Parents and community activists who spoke out at Wednesday’s school board meeting say changes in immigration policy are partially to blame for the drop in enrollment.

“I also want to urge the board to recognize how concerns around immigration enforcement have impacted school enrollment in our district,” said community activist Luna Plaza.

Others warned the closures carry consequences beyond just numbers.

“School closures affect far more than enrollment numbers -- they affect families, local businesses, property values and the overall stability of our communities,” said community activist Cassie Creed.

There were also those who pushed back on the closures themselves, saying those schools make up the fabric of their community. But district leaders say the changes will benefit students, and they pledged not to leave any community without the resources it needs.

“We are never going to leave a community that is going to be underserved or not having the resources that they are going to need -- our goal is to provide the best education that they can receive,” Alonzo said.

Students from closed schools will join others that continue to operate as the district consolidates buildings and facilities, with leaders saying the move is necessary to maintain quality.

“It’s something that we have to do in order to continue to provide our students with the best services out there and the best facilities,” Alonzo said.

As for what happens to the now-vacant properties, the district says that will vary on a case-by-case basis.

Below is a list of the closures:

North Region:

• Parkway Elementary

• Rainbow Park Elementary

Central Region:

• Lenora B. Smith Elementary

• Miami Springs Middle

• Phillis Wheatley Elementary

South Region:

• Mandarin Lakes K-8 Academy

• Pine Villa Elementary

• Richmond Heights Middle

• Robert Russa Moton Elementary

Below are the combinations:

Central Region:

• Georgia Jones-Ayers Middle School and Lenora B. Smith Elementary School will combine to become a K-8 Center.

• Miami Springs Middle School and Miami Springs Senior High School will combine to become a 6-12 School.

South Region:

• Arthur & Polly Mays Conservatory of the Arts and Pine Villa Elementary School will combine to become a K-12 School.

• Richmond Heights Middle and BioTech 9-12 will combine to become a 6-12 School.

Moderna is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval of its new shot, dubbed mFlusiva, as an option for people 50 and older. The FDA advisory committee meeting is a step toward a final decision ahead of the winter flu season.

Tens of thousands of Americans die from influenza every year, and older adults are among the most vulnerable. There are various types of flu vaccines already available in the U.S., including three specifically recommended for people 65 and older. But vaccines made with the Nobel Prize-winning mRNA technology are faster to manufacture than other types — something experts say might help if the shape-shifting flu virus mutates in a way that requires suddenly brewing new doses to match.

In a study of 40,000 people age 50 and older, Moderna’s mRNA vaccine reduced flu cases by about 27% compared to those given another routinely used vaccine brand. Ahead of the meeting, FDA published a favorable review of that data and reported no safety concerns.

Moderna is seeking full approval for the vaccine’s use in the 50- to 64-year-old population — along with authorization for use in those 65 and older while it conducts additional testing. If the vaccine is cleared for use, Moderna plans a follow-up study of 400,000 people 65 and older, half given the mRNA version and the rest given today’s senior-targeted flu vaccines.

Moderna’s Dr. Rituparna Das told panelists that the company’s ability to quickly manufacture mRNA vaccines that closely match the latest flu strains could prevent thousands of hospitalizations in older Americans.

Severe flu cases in the U.S. generally rise in years when the flu shot doesn’t closely match the circulating virus. Moderna officials said flu strains for the fall vaccines now are chosen in February -- several months sooner than the yearly recipe update for COVID-19 shots that mostly are mRNA-based — and there can be a mismatch if the flu virus mutates after the recipe is made.

At the meeting, FDA vaccine reviewer Dr. Timothy Brennan suggested the agency was open to approving the vaccine for seniors ahead of the coming flu season, despite gaps in data.

Earlier this year, Moderna’s data was at the center of a highly unusual public dispute as a then-top FDA official blocked the company’s application for its first-of-its-kind shot.

The embattled vaccine chief at the time, Dr. Vinay Prasad, said the company should have compared its shot to a high-dose flu vaccine recommended for seniors rather than a standard-dose brand. It was a sign of FDA’s heightened vaccine scrutiny under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Moderna challenged that decision, noting that FDA staff had approved that main study’s design and citing a separate, smaller study comparing the mRNA shot with a high-dose vaccine for seniors. Days after the spat, the FDA accepted Moderna’s application.

The expert panel also will assess that smaller study, which found Moderna’s shot generated flu-fighting antibodies similarly to a high-dose senior shot. The FDA’s initial review noted the new vaccine lacks data on very frail older adults and those with weak immune systems.

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

Thursday’s decision was widely anticipated after figures showed inflation did not rise as had been expected in May, holding steady instead at 2.8%.

Though that remains above the bank’s target of 2%, it raised hopes that the upward pressure on prices emanating from the spike in oil and gas prices after the start of the Iran war on Feb. 28 may have been less than anticipated.

Economists think rate-setters will opt against hiking rates over coming months, but only if the recent fall in energy prices is sustained. The pressure on central banks since the outbreak of hostilities in the Persian Gulf has been to raise rates. The European Central Bank hiked last week while on Wednesday, half of the policymakers at the U.S. Federal Reserve said that they could support a rate hike later this year.

Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England governor, said the recent decline in oil prices has been “encouraging” while noting they are still higher than before the war, a steer to markets that higher U.K. borrowing costs are possible.

“Whatever happens in the future, the higher energy prices of the past four months mean there’s already some inflationary pressure in the pipeline,” he said. “The Bank’s job is to make sure that doesn’t turn into sustained inflation above our 2% target.”

Two of the nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee remain concerned enough about those pipeline pressures that they voted for a quarter-point increase.

Because of the recent pullback in oil and gas prices, the bank has trimmed its forecast for inflation in the final quarter of the year to 3.25%. The hope is that inflation then starts to drop next year, freeing up the bank to cut rates, allowing mortgage lenders to offer cheaper home loans.

“If energy prices continue to moderate then the debate could once again turn again to rate cuts, but that might have to wait until next year,” said Luke Bartholomew, deputy chief economist at asset management firm Aberdeen.

Ivory Coast faces Germany on Saturday in Toronto.

The federation said Wahi, who is under investigation in France, will not be able to travel with the squad because “the necessary administrative authorizations for his entry into Canadian territory could not be obtained at this stage.”

Wahi started in attack for Ivory Coast when it beat Ecuador 1-0 in its opening game in Philadelphia on Monday. He will remain in the United States pending the team’s return, the federation said.

The French soccer league said on Wednesday that an “unusual amount of bets” were placed internationally on Wahi receiving a yellow card during a Ligue 1 game with Nice in May. The French league was alerted by partners monitoring betting markets about suspicious betting activity at international level concerning Nice’s home game against Metz on May 17, which ended 0-0, and in which Wahi was shown a yellow card.

The French league (LFP) said it passed this information to relevant police and gambling authorities, as well as the French Football Federation.

Asked whether Wahi was questioned by police, the Marseille prosecutor's office told the Associated Press that “a 23-year-old professional football player, competing in France’s Ligue 1 championship, was arrested on May 29, 2026, as part of their investigation."

The office added “the investigation concerns alleged offenses of organized fraud, organized sports corruption, receiving stolen goods, and money laundering.” The player was questioned while in police custody and was released without being detained. The office added the investigation was ongoing.

Wahi’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Ivory Coast Football Federation (FIF) said it has not been officially notified “of any judicial or administrative proceedings” concerning Wahi.

“During this particularly delicate period, the FIF offers its full support to the player and reaffirms its confidence in him,” it said. “Elye Wahi remains an important member of the Ivory Coast national team.”

May 17 was the last round of the Ligue 1 season. Less than two weeks later, Wahi helped struggling Nice stay in Ligue 1 when he scored twice in a 4-1 win over Saint-Etienne in the second leg of their promotion-relegation playoff.

The 23-year-old Wahi had joined Nice on loan from German club Eintracht Frankfurt in January and scored nine goals in 18 games overall, helping Nice reach the French Cup final.

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

Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, the first woman to lead the church and the person seen as the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, issued the apology as the church released a report on conditions at the homes from 1949 to 1976.

Many women and girls were forced to do menial labor as a form of “correction’’ for having children out of wedlock, and their babies were sometimes described as commodities available to meet the demand for adoption, the report found.

“We are profoundly sorry for the pain, trauma and stigma experienced — and still carried — by many people because of historical adoption practices in homes affiliated to the Church of England,’’ Mullally said. “We have heard firsthand the accounts of mothers who were separated from their babies in circumstances where they had very few meaningful choices.”

During the period covered by the report, about 185,000 children born to unmarried mothers were put up for adoption in England and Wales. It was a time when a “culture of shame, stigma and secrecy” surrounded unmarried mothers and their children, even as attitudes about sex and marriage were beginning to change, the report said.

While church policies emphasized that unmarried women had the right to keep their children and the children had a right to remain with their mothers, staff often ignored this guidance and worked closely with adoption agencies, researchers found.

The guidance “sat alongside language which expressed dehumanizing and dismissive attitudes, falling short of what would be expected towards anyone in the church’s care, not least people who were rendered especially vulnerable by their circumstances,” the report said.

Security forces were deployed to repel the attack after the gunmen breached the airport security, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the situation. It was not immediately clear who the attackers were.

Several hours after the attack, Niger's National Civil Aviation Agency said that activities at the airport were continuing as normal. The Nigerien government did not immediately release any statement about the events.

An Associated Press journalist said soldiers were searching people on the road to the airport in the aftermath of the gunfire.

It was the second attack at Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey this year, after the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a similar attack in January that targeted Niger's drone assets.

Niger, led by a military junta since a 2023 coup, has struggled to contain deadly jihadi violence that has battered parts of Africa’s Sahel region, including neighbors Burkina Faso and Mali that are also run by military juntas.

The airport is a strategic hub that hosts a Nigerien air force base as well as the headquarters of the Niger-Burkina Faso-Mali joint military force.

The military has beefed up the airport security following the January attack, but jihadis in Niger and the wider region continue to pose serious threats, analysts say.

"The symbolism of the airport as headquarters for AES will drive intent by militants to target it,” said Beverly Ochieng, a senior security analyst at Control Risks, referring to the regional Alliance of Sahel States.

The Sydney-based airline on Thursday unveiled the first of its specially-modified Airbus A350-1000 jets that will regularly make the 17,015-kilometer (10,573-mile) journey from October next year. The flights between cities on opposite sides of the world are expected to take between 19 and 22 hours.

The current longest regularly scheduled direct flight is Singapore Airlines’ route between its city-state base and New York City. The distance of 15,349 kilometers (9,537 miles) is flown in under 19 hours.

A significant difference in passenger comfort between the airlines is that Singapore’s Flight SQ24 doesn’t fly economy passengers.

While a standard Airbus A350-1000 can carry up to 480 passengers, Qantas ’ customized version A350-1000ULR will carry only 238, with 140 of those in what is colloquially termed “cattle class” on flights between London and Sydney.

The farthest an economy passenger can currently fly on a direct flight in the world is with Qantas between London and Perth on Australia’s west coast. That’s a distance of 14,499 kilometers (9,009 miles) flown 16 and 18 hours. Sydney is on Australia’s east coast.

Sharon Petersen, chief executive officer of AirlineRatings, an Australia-based website that ranks airlines around the world on their products and safety, said Qantas economy seats between London and Sydney would have more leg room than most long haul airlines.

Economy passengers would also have access to a so-called Wellbeing Zone between economy and premium economy cabins where they could stretch their limbs and help themselves to drinks and snacks.

Qantas has said passengers will pay more for direct flights when tickets go on sale in February than they do for flights that make a stop in Singapore. Qantas says the direct flights will save up to four hours of travel time.

Petersen said flying business class direct was a great option for passengers who could potentially sleep for eight hours without the interruption of disembarking at Singapore.

But she would prefer to break up the journey than fly 22 hours in economy.

“The reason for that is 22 hours is really daunting. If you get sat next to someone who’s smelly, is perhaps really unwell and coughing, perhaps there’s a baby sitting next to you that’s having an uncomfortable flight or an oversized passenger who really needs two seats,” Petersen said.

She regards two shorter flights as a safer option in economy.

“If you’ve got it wrong on one flight, you might be okay on the next. You get a break,” she said.

Petersen said the smaller passenger configuration of Qantas’ A350-1000ULR was to enhance comfort and to compensate for an additional tank carrying 20,000 liters (5,283 gallons) of fuel.

Such long haul flights rely on premium passengers to make profits, she said.

“Because the flight is so long, they can’t rely on cargo because of the weight. So it really is a passenger-heavy aircraft and a premium passenger-heavy aircraft at that to get the profit margin,” Petersen said.

Once the Sydney-London direct route was established, Qantas said its next ultralong-haul direct service will be Sydney-New York, a shorter distance of 16,013 kilometers (9,950 miles).

Monroy lleva tatuada en un brazo una balanza, la misma que tenía su hijo de 19 años y que fue usada para identificar su cuerpo tras ser víctima de una ejecución extrajudicial. López asegura que conoció el “inframundo” al ser secuestrado por la guerrilla Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC).

Ambos elegirán en el balotaje entre dos propuestas diferentes sobre cómo abordar el conflicto armado, pero con un temor común: volver a un pasado de mayor violencia.

Cepeda, quien ha servido de facilitador en varias negociaciones de paz, defiende el diálogo y consideraría continuar las negociaciones que inició el actual presidente Gustavo Petro, su padrino político, intentando disminuir la violencia que persiste en el país pese a que hace una década las FARC abandonaron las armas tras un histórico acuerdo de paz con el Estado.

De la Espriella, en tanto, ha dicho que acabará las negociaciones de paz e incrementará las operaciones militares. “Los voy a acabar como unas cucarachas”, dijo a The Associated Press recientemente el candidato, simpatizante de los presidentes Donald Trump y Nayib Bukele.

Para Yann Basset, profesor de Ciencia Política de la Universidad del Rosario, aunque hay una mayoría de colombianos inclinados a buscar el diálogo, el país suele oscilar entre las políticas que lo priorizan y las de mano dura. A su juicio, la política de Petro “fracasó” y generó “indignación en la opinión pública”.

La Fundación Ideas para la Paz, un centro de investigación sobre el conflicto, calcula que el año pasado el país tenía 27.000 armados ilegales dentro de ocho estructuras que en su mayoría se han fortalecido pese a la política de paz de Petro y que aumentaron sus filas en 5.000 integrantes con respecto al año previo.

Miedo por los “falsos positivos”

La vida cambió para Monroy en marzo de 2008 cuando su hijo Julián Oviedo Monroy desapareció en Soacha, una localidad al sur de Bogotá. Salió a encontrarse con una persona que le había ofrecido trabajo y fue asesinado en Ocaña, en el noreste del país.

Su hijo es uno de los 6.402 “falsos positivos”, como son conocidas las víctimas de ejecuciones extrajudiciales que militares presentaron como guerrilleros muertos en combate. La mayoría de los casos ocurrieron durante el mandato de Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), quien niega haberlos ordenado.

Por su asesinato y los de otros reconocieron su responsabilidad al menos 10 exmiembros de la fuerza pública y un civil ante el Tribunal de Paz de Colombia, creado tras la firma del acuerdo con las FARC.

“Ellos (exmilitares) me decían: ‘doña Blanquita, nosotros nos ofrecimos voluntariamente para matar a su hijo’”, relató a AP Monroy, quien decidió perdonarlos.

Ahora, cuando el país decide de qué manera enfrentar a los ilegales, dice que Cepeda debe actuar contra ellos sin exterminarlos.

“Tiene que tener mano dura, pero no como dice este señor (De la Espriella)... que porque este es un guerrillero y es lo peor, lo vamos a coger, lo vamos a matar. Así no se va a hacer una paz”, dijo desde el centro de Bogotá.

Así como Monroy, otras madres de los “falsos positivos” han apoyado activamente la campaña presidencial de Cepeda.

Filósofo, exmiembro de las Juventudes Comunistas y actual congresista, Cepeda encauzó su vida en la defensa de las víctimas del Estado tras el asesinato en 1984 de su padre Manuel Cepeda Vargas que era legislador de la Unión Patriótica, un partido constituido en 1985 tras un infructuoso diálogo de paz entre el gobierno y las FARC.

Monroy teme que De la Espriella implemente una política que termine por afectar de nuevo a los civiles. “Dios quiera y ponga su mano y este señor… no suba (al poder), porque los ‘falsos positivos’ van a volver a ser una realidad”.

Miedo a los grupos armados

López fue secuestrado en 2002 con sus 11 colegas diputados de la Asamblea del Valle del Cauca, en el suroeste de Colombia. Tras casi siete años de cautiverio fue el único que sobrevivió.

“Lo más duro para mí fue cuando supe del asesinato de mis compañeros; (entré) en una depresión que me duró mucho tiempo. Estaba como perdiendo la razón”, recordó López, quien aún tiene secuelas psicológicas y sufre de artrosis como consecuencia de las inclemencias de la selva. “Eso es realmente el inframundo. Lo más parecido al infierno”.

El exdiputado es una de las 21.000 víctimas de secuestros cometidos por las FARC durante el conflicto armado de cinco décadas. La última cúpula de la guerrilla recibió una sanción por esos delitos, que no implicó cárcel, a cambio de contar lo que sabía y reconocer su responsabilidad.

Desde Cali, la misma ciudad donde fue secuestrado, López advirtió que la inseguridad se está agravando y sostuvo que la política de paz de Petro “fracasó” y que los armados ilegales se expanden en el territorio.

“Colombia está siendo secuestrada... no solamente el secuestro tradicional que conocimos y que vivimos personas como yo y miles más, sino que tienen secuestradas a las personas porque en su territorio, por ejemplo, hoy no pueden votar libremente”, aseguró a la AP López, quien tiene un esquema de protección por amenazas a su vida.

Contó que ha tenido su “corazón a la izquierda”, pero decidió apoyar a De la Espriella porque promete devolverle la seguridad a la ciudadanía y “entendió que la paz total no se logra negociando con los criminales, sino ejerciendo la fuerza legítima del Estado”.

Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Russian oil facilities, aiming to cut Moscow’s revenue for the war and make Russians feel the consequences of the invasion. Some areas have reported fuel shortages.

The attack by dozens of drones came hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had held “an important coordination call” with the presidents of the United States and France and had won key pledges of further support from this week's G7 summit.

“If Ukraine is going to burn, your Moscow will burn too," Zelenskyy said, adding that the attack was part of Kyiv's effort to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. "It is time to end the aggression, time to end this war.”

Ukrainian attack embarrasses Putin again

The Moscow attack was the latest embarrassment for Putin. Ukrainian drones attacked his hometown of St. Petersburg earlier this month as he welcomed foreign VIPs to his showcase economic forum in the city.

Putin on Thursday was in Kazan, some 700 kilometers (430 miles) east of Moscow, hosting leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as Russia seeks to bolster business and other ties with the regional bloc.

Russia’s state-controlled TV channels only briefly mentioned the attack on Moscow. Pro-Kremlin newspapers reported it, with some praising the performance of air defenses while noting that the strike highlighted the need to further strengthen the defensive shield around the capital.

Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of Russia’s parliament, warned that Moscow would respond by ramping up its strikes.

“Their action will lead to our counteraction and launching harsher blows, with more powerful weapons,” Volodin said in televised remarks.

Some Russian hawks urged the Kremlin to respond with nuclear weapons. Nationalist Konstantin Malofeyev criticized the military for “fighting at half-strength in a gentlemanlike way.”

“War means victory at any cost,” Malofeyev wrote on his Telegram channel, suggesting the use of “the nuclear weapons that our ancestors created and stockpiled while mobilizing the entire country’s strength precisely for this purpose -– to win."

Fires rage at Moscow refinery

Thick, black smoke and occasional flames spewed from the Moscow Oil Refinery amid its red-and-white smokestacks on the southeastern edge of the city, about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the Kremlin. Sooty, black rain fell on cars, according to local video.

“One of the most popular questions asked by Muscovites this morning is ‘What is going on?’" Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X. "I can answer. Your country started a war of aggression against ours. For years, it has been killing our people. Now that you know what’s going on, ask Putin when he is planning to end it.”

The refinery is one of Russia’s biggest, according to its website, producing more than a third of the Moscow region's fuel. It was last attacked by Ukraine on Tuesday, but officials said that fire was swiftly put out.

Thursday's fire at the refinery was “largely contained,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said hours afterward, adding that remaining hotspots were being extinguished.

As Ukraine pressed its strikes on Russia's energy infrastructure, fuel supplies appeared to be under strain. Gas station chains in multiple regions have introduced restrictions on what drivers could buy. Russian independent news outlet Agentstvo reported that one out of every four gas stations has introduced some kind of restrictions.

Authorities in the capital said in a statement hours after the attack that “supplies of oil products to Moscow and the work of all gas stations in the city continue as normal.”

The attack also temporarily halted flights from four Moscow airports, transport and aviation authorities said. The Russian business daily Kommersant counted more than 500 delayed or canceled flights at the airports, based on their online flight information.

In the greater Moscow region, a drone hit a residential building in the town of Zhukovsky, according to Gov. Andrei Vorobyov. Buildings elsewhere were damaged by drone debris, injuring 17 people, including two children, he added.

Ukraine seeks more help from NATO, EU

“Russia is on the back foot: militarily, economically and politically,” ‪EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas‬ said on X after meeting Thursday with Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. “Now is the time to provide Ukraine with even greater support and to exert even more pressure on Russia to end the war.”

Zelenskyy held talks Thursday in Brussels with NATO and European Union leaders, and the German and Ukrainian defense ministers signed an agreement to jointly develop an air defense system to counter ballistic missiles. Zelenskyy described it as the start of an “anti-ballistic missile coalition” and invited others to join.

Russia has relentlessly struck Ukraine with those types of missiles, which air defenses struggle to counter.

Russia says it downed over 500 Ukrainian drones

The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses overnight shot down 555 Ukrainian drones over multiple regions, with almost 200 intercepted as they approached Moscow. That was roughly double the number of drones that Russia launched at Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force.

“If Putin does not want to end this war and wants to continue it, we will not sit quietly — we will respond,” Zelenskyy said in a voice message to a group chat with journalists.

He has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump, but Putin has refused, and U.S.-led peace efforts have fizzled.

Ukraine disrupts Russian supply lines

Along with pledges of more diplomatic and military help at the G7 summit, Ukraine recently has gained momentum on the battlefield against Russia’s bigger army, thanks to its high-tech drones, Western officials and analysts say. Longer-range drones are choking Russian supply lines in occupied regions of Ukraine, in addition to disrupting oil production.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the G7 summit was “very important for Ukraine” because its supporters — crucially including the U.S. — vowed to help it, although he provided no details. The U.S. under Trump has cut back assistance to Ukraine, leaving the Europeans as the biggest suppliers of military and financial aid. Trump and Zelenskyy have had a sometimes strained relationship.

“America is with us on Ukraine, that is very important,” Macron said as he and Trump left the Palace of Versailles near Paris.

In other developments Thursday, Russia struck the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine with two glide bombs that killed a 64-year-old man who was fishing in a river, said Oleh Hryhorov, head of the regional military administration. A Russian strike on the central city of Dnipro killed one man and wounded nine, said Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration.

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For Blanca Nubia Monroy, it’s a black-and-white scale of justice tattooed on her forearm, identical to the one used to identify her 19-year-old son's body after he was kidnapped and killed by Colombian soldiers in 2008.

For Sigifredo López, it's flashbacks from the seven years he was held captive by guerrillas in the South American country's dense jungles and the trauma of surviving after his companions were massacred in 2007.

Both have radically different views of who should win Colombia’s presidency on Sunday, with Monroy throwing her support behind peace activist Iván Cepeda and López backing Trump-endorsed Abelardo de la Espriella, who has promised a scourge on crime.

But their fear is the same: Returning to a more violent past.

“It all takes a toll, both physically and emotionally,” said López. “Emotionally, there’s the fear that still simmers deep down, something you don’t openly express, the fear that everything we’ve already lived through could happen again.”

Polarization ‘brewing for decades’

In Colombia’s most polarized presidential election in years, voters will choose between de la Espriella and Cepeda – two candidates with sharply different visions for how to find peace in a country long marked by war.

The armed struggle between Marxist guerrillas, Colombian military forces and right-wing paramilitaries has resulted in more than 10 million people — one in five Colombians — becoming victims of conflict, according to a government registry documenting killings, kidnappings, forced displacement and more.

The trauma of war and the fight for peace are embedded in Colombian politics. Despite a 2016 peace pact with Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, conflict rages in many parts of the Andean nation, becoming a defining theme in Sunday's vote.

Polarization within Colombian society over how to handle violence has “been brewing for decades,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, Bogotá-based deputy Latin America director of International Crisis Group.

“Increasingly on both sides, there's an us and a them. That's very dangerous in a country like Colombia with a long history of political violence. ... The spark could light at any moment."

On one side is Cepeda, who has pledged to continue Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” agenda of negotiating peace pacts with a range of criminal groups, from drug mafias to insurgent fighters. That strategy sought to rewire how Colombia deals with conflict, but has largely failed, stoking a rebuke as armed groups have taken advantage of ceasefires to grow in strength.

On the other is de la Espriella, a lawyer who has promised an all-out offensive on crime, echoing El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s war on gangs. While Bukele’s crackdown has drawn attention across the region for sharply cutting homicide rates, it also fueled allegations of human rights abuses.

Fears of state violence

The 67-year-old Monroy is reminded of the civilian toll from past military offensives every time she thinks of her son, Julián Oviedo Monroy, or looks at the tattoo on her arm.

Her son, who had dreamed of joining Colombia’s military to lift his family out of poverty, disappeared in 2008 along with other poor young men on the fringes of Bogotá. Months later, his body was unearthed in a clandestine grave in the conflict-torn northeast. His body was identified by his tattoo.

“It’s like still having him here,” she said, looking down at the tattoo she got as an homage to her son and his photo that she keeps in her wallet.

Monroy's son became one of 6,402 victims in one of the worst atrocities of Colombia’s conflict. Colombian military officers carried out extrajudicial executions against civilians in a scandal known as “false positives” carried out largely between 2002–2008 under ex-President Álvaro Uribe. Officials then falsely said the murdered civilians were enemy combatants killed in the war with FARC rebels.

Around a dozen high-ranking security officers later acknowledged they killed Monroy's son and asked for forgiveness in a peace tribunal established after the 2016 peace pact to unearth the ugly truths of the war — a court that de la Espriella has promised to dismantle.

Monroy criticized the mounting violence under incumbent president Petro, saying Cepeda would have to come down with a heavier hand on criminal groups.

But what outweighed her criticism was fear of the military campaign promised by de la Espriella, who has vowed to wipe out “anyone who I’ve declared a military target like cockroaches, like rats.”

“God willing, this man doesn’t come to power, because ‘false positives’ will become a reality again,” she said of de la Espriella.

‘Colombia is being kidnapped’

For López, 62, the fear is returning to the “hell” he lived in for seven years from 2002-2009 when he was kidnapped by FARC guerrillas and held captive in the jungles they controlled.

López was working as a local assemblyman in western Colombia at a time when the rebels had declared politicians military targets. They kidnapped him and 11 other lawmakers.

López was being held in solitary confinement in 2007 when his companions were massacred by rebels. He heard the gunshots echo over the rebel camp, a memory that haunts him. The case turned López into a symbol — a survivor of the FARC's kidnapping of over 21,000 people over five decades of conflict.

Now in Cali, the city where he was kidnapped, he lives with a state-appointed security detail because of threats against his life. He's watched with fear over the past four years as violence has mounted. Because of that, López, a self-declared leftist, said de la Espriella has his support.

“Colombia is being kidnapped,” López said. “I’m with Abelardo because his priority is to restore safety to Colombians. He understands ‘total peace’ isn’t won by negotiating with criminals, but by exercising the legitimate force of the state.”

Under current president Petro, armed groups have used weapons like drones to wage war, bombings have racked up a civilian toll and one presidential candidate was assassinated in June 2025. In May, the International Red Cross said the impact of armed conflict on civilians in Colombia over the past year had reached the worst point in a decade.

This week, the country's largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), announced a temporary ceasefire in order to not interfere in Colombia's elections. Other criminal groups made no such promises.

With the wave of violence, López said, “victims are being revictimized."

Just as Monroy fears what could come from a sharp swerve to the right, López worries about what could happen if Colombia continues on its current path.

“My fear is for the new generation, that the same thing that happened to me could happen to them if the country keeps being handed over to guerrillas and organized crime,” López said.

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

The review was yet another surprise for European allies and Canada as they learn to deal with an increasingly unpredictable ally. U.S. officials and senior military officers had promised to coordinate closely with the Europeans as America draws down.

In recent months, U.S. President Donald Trump and the Pentagon have sent conflicting signals about whether America is reducing or increasing its military footprint in Europe, as well as threatening to annex Greenland, a semiautonomous island that is part of ally Denmark. Just weeks ago, the Trump administration said that it would no longer provide as much military support should any NATO member come under attack.

“This will be a real review. It will be designed to ensure that NATO is moving fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading, stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defense of Europe,” Hegseth told his NATO counterparts. “It’s a review that some countries will fail and others will pass with flying colors.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz later said the allies have long been aware of U.S. plans to pull troops from Europe at some point and that they must take care of their own security.

“We know that we must do more and we are doing it,” Merz said.

Public dressing down over bases, gender and migration

In a fiery speech at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Hegseth lambasted European allies for failing to provide U.S. forces access to bases in Europe to launch attacks on Iran, calling it “shameful.”

“These allies, they put America’s sons and daughters, our sons and daughters, at risk by denying them the predictable access, basing and overflight that never should have been in question at all,” he said. The review would also assess whether the U.S. has full access and overflight “when we need it.”

While defense ministers and military officers sat in silence, Hegseth railed against migration and gender equality policies in Europe, in remarks reminiscent to those of Vice President JD Vance in February last year that angered many Europeans.

“Instead of tanks and fighters and air defenses, the focus has been on gender equity and climate change and defense austerity. Europe’s borders flew wide open, welfare states expanded, defense budgets cratered, along with Europe’s belief in itself and its civilization,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth's comments largely mischaracterized European policies today. On defense, European allies and Canada have launched an unprecedented effort to boost defense spending and expand their armed forces. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte noted on Thursday that they spent $90 billion more on defense last year, a 20% increase over 2024. And while Europe accepted large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers more than a decade ago, most countries have tightened their borders since.

It does not augur well for a summit of NATO leaders in Turkey on July 7-8.

A rare and short visit to NATO

It was a rare visit to NATO by Hegseth, his first this year after skipping a meeting in February. The Pentagon chief did not stay long, leaving well before the gathering was over and hours before Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to press allies for more weapons for his country.

Speaking to reporters at Brussels airport before flying home, Hegseth said, “It was great to hear country after country say, ‘We’re going to meet our target. We’re going to meet our target.’ There are still a few outliers, and we will be clear with them as we do this review.”

NATO’s supreme allied commander, an American, is working on backup plans to defend Europe after the U.S. signaled on June 3 that it would no longer supply an aircraft carrier and support ships, aerial refueling planes and dozens of fighter jets, among other military assets, in a crisis.

The Trump administration insists that it needs to be able to plan for two simultaneous conflicts and wants more military resources at hand should it clash with China in the Indo-Pacific region.

Under NATO’s collective security guarantee – Article 5 of its founding treaty – the 32 allies pledge that an attack on one of them will be considered an attack on all. It does not oblige them to provide military support, although many likely would.

In essence, the United States is scaling back how it might help should an ally trigger Article 5.

US nuclear weapons will stay

The U.S. has by far NATO’s biggest armed forces. It does not intend to withdraw its nuclear weapons in Europe, which are key to NATO’s deterrence. To underscore that point, NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group issued its first statement in 19 years after Thursday’s meeting.

In the statement, it “recalled that the strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance remain the supreme guarantee of Allied security and underpin NATO’s extended deterrence architecture.”

The ministers “agreed to continue enhancing NATO’s nuclear deterrence mission by modernizing NATO’s nuclear capabilities, strengthening its nuclear planning capacity, and adapting to achieve its security interests.”

Rutte played down the impact of the U.S. decision, saying that the NATO Force Model – the system for organizing what forces member countries will provide commanders in times of peace, crisis or conflict – is just “a planning tool,” and not a reflection of what would actually happen.

“If war breaks out, we will all max out what we need to do to make sure we can fight the war,” Rutte told reporters. “In the planning phase, it is important to know what we can count on. What is in theory there.”

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Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed.

“A lot of things came to me from the past,” Díaz said after Colombia beat Uzbekistan 3-1 on Wednesday night. “I worked for this. I fought to be here at this moment.”

First, Colombia failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup. Then his parents were kidnapped.

In late 2023, Luis Manuel “Mane” Díaz and his wife, Cilenis Marulanda, were captured by armed guerillas at the Colombia-Venezuela border. Marulanda was quickly rescued, but Mane Díaz was not.

Luis Díaz, playing for Liverpool at the time, missed two games to return home to Barrancas and advocate for his father’s freedom. Upon his return to the club, he scored and revealed an undershirt with the words “Freedom for Papa” printed in Spanish.

The gesture garnered international support and increased pressure on the Colombian government to act. Mane was released after being held for 12 days, and father and son had an emotional embrace when they reunited.

This week, Díaz’s father posted a viral video of himself praying over his son’s jersey ahead of his first World Cup game.

Díaz, who now plays for Bayern Munich, scored the go-ahead goal shortly after Uzbekistan equalized to lift Colombia to its first World Cup victory since 2018 while his father watched from the stands.

“I think there was always something that kept us from being at ease,” Díaz said. “I think that today, I am at my best.”

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Jack Little is a student in the University of Georgia’s Carmical Sports Media Institute.

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

La policía del condado de Spokane anunció el miércoles que su unidad forense encontró lo que parecían ser restos humanos dentro de una vivienda destruida por el fuego. Un familiar había solicitado una visita de control a la casa porque uno de los residentes se había negado a evacuar y no se le podía localizar, señalaron las autoridades en un comunicado. Estaban trabajando para confirmar si los restos pertenecían a una persona y, de ser así, identificar quién era y cómo murió.

Las autoridades no han reportado heridos.

Muchos residentes en vecindarios con una elevada densidad de población tuvieron que huir sin previo aviso —a veces después de que un agente tocara a su puerta—, dejando atrás sus pertenencias y, en algunos casos, medicamentos esenciales, dijo el jefe de la policía del condado de Spokane, John Nowels, en una conferencia de prensa.

Un agente escoltó el miércoles a los vecinos hasta sus casas, una por una, para que pudieran acceder a esos artículos esenciales, pero luego debían abandonarlas de nuevo, indicó Nowels.

La orden de evacuación para los 1.500 residentes seguía vigente el miércoles, informó Chandra Fox, subdirectora de la Oficina de Manejo de Emergencias del condado de Spokane.

“Nuestra preocupación es la intensificación de los vientos el miércoles por la tarde”, expresó Fox.

El portavoz del cuerpo de bomberos, Robert Gray, explicó que el incendio comenzó poco después del mediodía del martes y avanzó rápidamente por una colina. Luego los vientos cambiaron, lo que dirigió las llamas hacia un vecindario, agregó. Spokane está a unos 450 kilómetros (280 millas) al este de Seattle, cerca de la frontera con Idaho.

John Leavell, jefe de batallón del Departamento de Bomberos de Spokane Valley, fue una de las primeras personas en detectar el fuego. Contó que conducía cerca de la Interestatal 90 cuando vio una columna de humo.

“Cuando me acerqué, pensé que esto iba a ser grave, se propagaba rápido", relató. "Parecían olas de fuego subiendo la colina”.

Dijo que se detuvo en un camino de acceso y encontró una casa completamente envuelta en llamas, por lo que se comunicó con agencias de la zona y con el departamento de bomberos local y asumió el mando mientras su equipo empezaba a levantar líneas de contención. Leavell apuntó que no sabía si el incendio comenzó en la vivienda o si la consumió rápidamente. La causa del incendio sigue bajo investigación.

Brigadas de bomberos de Washington e Idaho combatieron el incendio por tierra y aire, pero este creció rápidamente hasta 225 acres (0,35 millas cuadradas). Estaba contenido en un 10% el miércoles por la mañana, según el Centro Nacional Interagencial de Incendios. Avista cortó el suministro eléctrico en la zona a medida que avanzaba el fuego por la seguridad de los bomberos. En algunas zonas, el servicio seguía suspendido el miércoles.

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Bellisle informó desde Seattle. Las periodistas de The Associated Press Rebecca Boone en Boise, Idaho, y Hannah Schoenbaum en Salt Lake City contribuyeron a este despacho.

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

The phenomenon is particularly notable among Western European teams, which for most of soccer’s history were overwhelmingly white and Christian. As those societies have increasingly diversified, so have the national team rosters — featuring Christian and Muslim players who are open about their faith.

England’s national squad, for the first time, includes a Muslim player. France’s roster has multiple players from Protestant, Catholic and Muslim backgrounds. Spain’s emerging superstar, 18-year-old Lamine Yamal, is a practicing Muslim. So is Sweden’s Yasin Ayari, who prostrated himself on the field to thank God after the first of his two goals in a victory Sunday over Tunisia — his father’s homeland.

All four of those nations — like several others in Europe — have experienced political polarization related to the arrival of large numbers of Muslim immigrants. Does the diversity of the World Cup teams send a potentially helpful message?

“Absolutely,” said Eboo Patel, who — as president of Interfaith America — advocates for religious pluralism and cooperation. “It is symbolic yet also substantive.”

He evoked the images of Christian players crossing themselves, and Muslim players cupping their hands in prayer. Their message, Patel said, is, “My identity really matters to me and it makes me a better soccer player.”

“They score, they each say their respective prayers, and then they’re hugging each other,” he added. “You’re cooperating to build a community and a team. … It’s not a contrived television ad or a condescending afterschool special. It’s the way you build an excellent soccer team.”

These are some of the World Cup players whose openness about their faith has drawn attention:

Mohamed Salah (Egypt)

By far the best known of Egypt’s players, Salah is a Sunni Muslim who practices his faith openly, on and off the field. After scoring goals, he often prostrates himself to give thanks to God. His positive impact has been tangible: After he joined Liverpool in the Premier League, researchers reported that anti-Muslim tweets by fans dropped by half.

Luka Modrić (Croatia)

Playing in his fifth World Cup, Modrić, 40, is set to surpass 200 international appearances during the tournament. A Catholic, Modrić has often worn shin guards depicting Jesus and the Virgin Mary. A few days before he and his teammates traveled to the United States, they gathered to celebrate Mass at a chapel in the Croatian town of Icici.

Djed Spence (England)

Although the Football Association has not kept records of players' religions, the BBC — among other news outlets — has identified Spence as the first Muslim to play for the senior England team. A fullback with Tottenham, Spence played six times for England’s under-21 squad. “It’s good to make history and hopefully inspire young kids around the world that they can make it as well,” Spence told the BBC. “They can do what I am doing.”

Lamine Yamal (Spain)

Yamal, a Muslim whose father is Moroccan, attracted headlines worldwide when he waved the Palestinian flag during Barcelona’s celebrations after it won the Spanish league in May. Barcelona coach Hansi Flick questioned the decision at the time; Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, later criticized Yamal by saying he was inciting “hate.”

Marc Guéhi (England)

The son of a Christian minister in London, Guéhi, 25, is playing his first season with Manchester City and was selected to be one of England’s defenders for the World Cup. While captain at his previous club Crystal Palace, Guéhi defied the Football Association’s rules by writing religious messages on his uniform during a Premier League campaign celebrating LGBTQ+ inclusion. Guéhi avoided punishment, though the FA prohibits players from displaying religious messages.

Aimar Sher (Iraq)

Religious minorities have long faced persecution in Iraq. Yet this year’s World Cup team includes Kurds, Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims, and several Christians — notable since Iraq’s Christian population is estimated to have fallen from 1.5 million in 2003 to about 150,000 now. One of those Christians, midfielder Aimar Sher, has eagerly shared his faith, posting photos on social media of him wearing an “I Belong to Jesus” T-shirt.

Christian Pulisic (US)

U.S. forward Pulisic has spoken openly about his Christian faith and often wears a cross necklace given by his mother. He has led team Bible studies; his Instagram posts have included photos of the Bible, showing passages he has underlined. Several of Pulisic’s teammates also are open about their Christian faith, including Weston McKennie and goalkeeper Matt Freese. McKennie’s Instagram bio contains just four words: “All glory to God.”

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

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

From a distance, Ivan Franco thought it must be a car. But as he approached in his tow truck, he saw it was a plane — broken in half, its fuselage resting on its side, bright fire beginning to rise above. He stopped and rifled through the rescue kit his company keeps in the truck, grabbing a sledgehammer as well as three fire extinguishers, which he handed off to police officers.

“At that moment, you don’t think much about what to do, because I knew the plane could explode since it was on fire,” Franco told The Associated Press in Spanish. “My idea was to try to break the windows because the pilots hadn’t come out yet.”

Franco was one of several motorists who happened across the crash in Laredo, Texas, late Tuesday night and rushed to help — putting their own lives in danger to help those on board escape as smoke filled the cabin.

Passersby helped save lives

Police were also on the scene quickly, and their teamwork with the good Samaritans undoubtedly saved lives, officials said.

“The officers and the good Samaritans that went to the scene, our firefighters that responded — I do also want to commend each and every one of them,” Laredo Police Chief Mike Rodriguez said during a news conference Wednesday. He said he asked his staff to track down all the civilians who helped.

The Cessna Citation Latitude twin jet departed Tuesday evening from the Mexican resort city of San José del Cabo and was bound for Austin, Texas, the FAA said in a statement. The plane was operated by NetJets, a company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway that lets people buy part ownership in private jets. NetJets said in a statement that it was cooperating with authorities.

The crash occurred after its pilots reported mechanical problems while requesting an emergency landing at a nearby airport. The fuselage came to rest across a concrete barrier, while its tail broke off and fell to a lower section of roadway.

One person was killed: Joshua Baer, a leader in Texas’ technology and startup sectors. Three teenage passengers and two pilots survived, as did a person in a truck struck by the plane as it crashed. Authorities have not released more detail about the passengers' connections to one another.

Investigators combed through wreckage Wednesday for clues to the cause.

It was the third significant aviation accident in as many days in the U.S. A B-52 crashed Monday during a test flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California and killed all eight people aboard, while on Sunday, 12 people were killed when a plane on a skydiving outing in Missouri crashed.

‘It looked like part of a movie’

Among the motorists who stopped in Laredo was Zayra Garza, an esthetician who was driving her co-workers home when she saw the wreckage. She recorded video as her husband ran to help.

“It looked like part of a movie. I was in shock,” Garza said. Most worrisome was the fire: “I was concerned that it could have just exploded at any time.”

Garza saw people leave their cars to try to smash the cockpit glass. Her video shows the aircraft's door popping open slightly from inside as a voice cries “Help! Help! Help!” The rescuers strain to lift the door farther open as the three teenagers dart out, followed quickly by one pilot and then by another.

Franco, a 23-year-old from Laredo, frantically swung the sledgehammer through heavy smoke. Others struck at the window with a shovel and tools from their own vehicles.

Cockpit windows are designed not to shatter

They accomplished little more than spiderwebbing the cockpit window with small cracks: Airplane windshields have multiple layers of glass and are designed to remain structurally sound even if the outer layer shatters. The windows must be able to withstand a bird strike at cruising speed and hold up to extreme pressure differences at high altitudes.

“They are basically bulletproof,” said retired airline pilot John Cox, who is CEO of Safety Operating Systems.

Police officers tried to remove the final person inside — Baer — as the smoke grew thicker. Officers doubled over coughing after turning away from the smoke.

Eventually firefighters with oxygen masks were able to get inside.

Firefighters also removed a dog from the plane that was suffering from smoke inhalation. The dog was turned over to animal control and was expected to survive, said Jose Baeza, an investigator with the Laredo Police Department.

Five officers were treated for smoke inhalation; the five people who survived the crash were also released from a hospital.

As the plane crashed on the northbound lanes of the highway, its wing hit a truck traveling southbound. The driver of that vehicle also survived, Baeza said.

There has been an outpouring of support on social media for those who stopped to help, heralding their bravery and selflessness.

Laredo Mayor Victor Treviño called it “nothing short of a miracle that this tragedy did not become a mass fatality event,” thanks in part to the late hour when the crash occurred and the quick action of first responders.

Franco said that as he tried to help, all he could think of was getting people out of the plane. But to do it, he had to conquer another feeling.

“You’re in constant fear," he said. "You don’t know what situation you’re in.”

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Johnson and Golden reported from Seattle. Taxin reported from Santa Ana, California. AP journalists Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed.

Some experts have warned that this summer's World Cup — co-hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada — could be the hottest in the tournament's history. In response to concerns about extreme heat, FIFA implemented three-minute hydration breaks midway through each half regardless of temperatures or whether stadiums are enclosed or air conditioned. But some critics say they're interrupting the game's flow and give coaches a chance to shift momentum in their team’s favor, while some scientists have said the breaks are too short to make a significant impact on cooling and rehydration when conditions are sizzling.

“When we look at the three-minute hydration breaks, we're really looking at this as a way to mitigate anything that could potentially lead to an incident or an emergency,” said Joshua L. DeVincenzo with Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

FIFA's mandatory breaks, regardless of temperatures

FIFA said the mandatory breaks are to “ensure equal conditions for all teams, in all matches,” and the rules draw upon the experiences of past tournaments, including the FIFA Club World Cup in the U.S. last summer when temperatures soared.

Some coaches said the breaks make sense when temperatures are extreme, but they questioned whether they were necessary at every match. The pauses have also been criticized for interrupting the spectacle for fans, with broadcasters cutting to commercials.

Mexico coach Javier Aguirre said they're making the most of the hydration breaks.

“You can’t get on the field but the players can come near you while drinking water and we can give them instructions,” he said. “We take advantage to try to correct something during the game, it’s something good for the coaches.”

Even highly-trained, elite athletes can get heat stress

Athletes pushing themselves physically in hot and humid conditions risk getting what's called exertional heat illness. It happens when the body gets too hot and is accompanied by significant strain on the heart, nerves, muscles and central nervous systems.

Symptoms include muscle cramps, extreme fatigue, impaired performance, headache, irritability, nausea, dizziness, cramping and dehydration.

When internal body temperature exceeds 105 F (40.5 C), athletes might feel confused, aggressive or lose consciousness, said Yuri Hosokawa with the Faculty of Sport Sciences in Japan’s Waseda University, in an email, “all of which are characteristic signs of exertional heat stroke and require immediate medical attention.” She co-signed a letter to FIFA in May urging stricter heat guidelines for player safety, including that cooling breaks be at least six minutes.

Exertional heat stroke is among the leading causes of death in athletes.

Dehydration also exacerbates the risk. Athletes in the heat can sweat 1 to 2 liters (50 to 67 ounces) an hour, and most drink less liquids than they expel. Losing as little as 2% of one's body weight to dehydration can impair physical performance.

Ryan Calsbeek, professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth College, said the human body performs better when it’s warmer, but there’s a critical threshold above which that improvement in performance not only stops, but precipitously drops off.

“Your body starts to really fall apart, you lose the ability to cool off fast enough,” he said. “And the physiological mechanisms just break down.” That happens when the wet bulb globe temperature, which includes temperature, humidity, cloud cover and wind, reads above about 95 F (35 C), though some people will be more heat tolerant.

The increased confusion from extreme heat could impact an athlete’s ability to make strategic decisions, he said.

“It’s these marginal differences in performance that I think can determine the outcome of a match,” Calsbeek said. “If you have individuals that do better in extreme conditions, whether it’s extreme heat or high altitude or whatever the case may be, those small differences could play a critical, pivotal role in determining the outcome.”

Hydration breaks should be longer, some experts say

The three-minute mandatory hydration breaks are meant to protect players, and referees, from extreme heat illness and help them maintain their physical performance.

Players can cool off and replenish lost water and salt from sweating.

That could mean putting wet, cold towels on parts of a player's body. If done well, that could reduce their body temperature by about 0.22 F (0.12 C) per minute, said Douglas Casa, CEO of the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute who also co-signed the letter.

“Some people can tolerate a little more fluids comfortably and then do intense exercise. Some people can’t because it sloshes around in their stomach and they don’t feel super comfortable, so they might not drink as much in such a short period of time,” he added.

In a 2024 study, researchers found that three minutes lowered athletes' core temperature by about 0.72 F (0.4 C) during simulated soccer running in a heat chamber. But this happened in ideal conditions where they drank 350 to 400 milliliters of cold water and draped a cold towel on their shoulders.

Draping ice towels over a player's shoulders can be helpful, but only if they rehydrate as well, said Julien Périard in an email, a study co-author and director of the University of Canberra Research Institute for Sport and Exercise who also signed the letter.

That’s why it’s important the three minutes be well planned, but “even in ideal settings, the breaks can slightly help but will not eliminate the risk of heat illness in response to a rise in core temperature,” he said.

Casa said time dictates the volume of impact, whether from fluid or cooling.

How much time a player needs to recover also varies. “Depending on your body, you might need more or less time. But those kinds of breaks are crucial so that your body isn’t just being forced to keep trying to play catch up... to keep trying to cool you down without any kind of rest or a break,” said Bharat Venkat, director of the Heat Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles.

As our planet gets hotter, mandating hydration breaks and changing where, when and how sports are played will be necessary.

“No matter what sport you play, there’s going to be adjustments that have to be made in the face of climate change, ” he said.

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Tales Azzoni contributed from Guadalajara, Mexico.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Now that the department is offloading civil rights enforcement and special education, some parents and advocates warn a process that has largely been stalled since President Donald Trump took office will see only more chaos and roadblocks.

“It’s to the point I don’t even check in anymore with the attorney,” said Nicole May, an Ohio mother. May filed a complaint in spring 2024 with the department’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging her teenage daughter was bullied over her hearing aids and was getting in trouble in class because she couldn’t hear her teachers. More than two years later, the case lacks a resolution.

Under the changes announced Tuesday, the Department of Justice will take over civil rights enforcement in schools, and the Department of Health and Human Services will oversee special education. The moves help fulfill Trump’s campaign promise to dismantle the Education Department. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, pitched the changes as a way to get more help to families of kids with disabilities.

Advocates said special education doesn’t belong in a health department, which usually treats disabilities as conditions to manage, instead of differences in how children learn. The top Republican on the Senate education committee agreed, saying he’d pursue legislation to keep special education out of Health and Human Services.

Some families already are taking discrimination cases elsewhere

For many, though, the response to the announcement was a sigh of resignation.

The Education Department’s civil rights office had long been the last resort for parents who believe their child is facing discrimination at school, with a mandate to review all complaints. Under Trump, the backlog of cases has ballooned, and resolutions have dwindled. Increasingly, attorneys say they are turning elsewhere to try to obtain justice for children.

The reaction is a marked change from a year ago, when parents and attorneys were in a panic as Education Department staff and attorneys were slashed.

The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has shrunk by roughly a third since 2024, and the Office for Civil Rights is roughly 40% smaller. Meanwhile, in the Department of Justice, the Education Opportunities Section has shrunk by half, according to estimates provided by Justice Connection, a network of department alumni.

“I think a lot of people are mad, but they are like, ‘What are we going to do?’” said Emily Harvey, the co-legal director at Disability Justice, formerly Disability Law Colorado, who has watched her cases languish.

When Trump took office, she had a federal complaint pending, alleging some Colorado schools were illegally rejecting enrollment from kids outside their neighborhood boundaries because they had disabilities. Harvey also has a case pending at the Department of Justice, alleging a district south of Denver restrained and secluded disabled students hundreds of times, even though the practice is supposed to be reserved for emergencies.

“I feel like they’re probably collecting dust on a virtual shelf somewhere,” Harvey said.

In response to the federal backlog, she helped to push for a new state law that expands the types of civil rights cases Colorado education officials can pursue.

States across the U.S. already investigate various special education complaints, including when parents allege schools aren’t following a child’s individualized education program, or IEP. But the Colorado legislation, signed into law in May, allows the state to pursue the types of cases typically handled at the federal level, such as those involving allegations of discrimination and harassment.

Harvey said she didn’t think the federal civil rights office was ever perfect. “But I think it’s become even less help for people who are trying to resolve issues,” said Harvey, who worked as an Education Department civil rights attorney in 2020 and 2021.

Boston-area special education advocate Craig Haller said he’s heard nothing on a complaint he filed early last year with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Ever since the Trump administration started dismantling the department, he has leaned more on Massachusetts’s state system for resolving special education matters.

He recently used that system to help a student whose high school didn’t take into account his special education plan when it suspended him.

“I got it fixed for my client,” Haller said. But without the federal Office for Civil Rights, “I can’t get it fixed systematically.”

Department workers say the dismantling has made their jobs harder

While only Congress can close the Education Department, McMahon, a billionaire and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has signed 10 additional agreements to give department functions to other federal agencies.

So far, those agreements have not reduced the number of employees working on specific programs. But the union that represents department workers says staff have run into issues with equipment and access at their new postings.

“It’s hard to describe how inefficient the implementation of the (agreements) has been,” said Rachel Gittleman, the union’s president.

The Education Department said Wednesday the latest agreements will help the Office for Civil Rights run “more effectively and efficiently.”

“Compliance and enforcement of federal civil rights laws will remain a priority,” the department said in a written statement.

Taken together, the fracturing of programs, enforcement and oversight for disabled students across multiple agencies raised questions of what would fall through the cracks, special education advocates said.

Robyn Linscott, who directs education and family policy at The Arc of the United States, a major disability rights group, recalled attending a three-hour listening session the Education Department hosted in January. Families, educators and advocates described barriers to accessing proper support and services. Although they acknowledged breaks in the system, not a single parent advocated for moving oversight of special education to Health and Human Services.

Still, she isn’t surprised the Trump administration moved the program anyway.

“It has only been 24 hours, but I think we anticipated this move for over a year,” she said on Wednesday.

In Congress, senators from both sides of the aisle said they would try to stop the move to put special education in Health and Human Services.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said he would “publicly commit” to working with his Democratic colleague, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, on legislative action that would push the administration to change course. Cassidy, who lost a primary election this spring and has less than six months left in his Senate term, has personal knowledge of the education challenges faced by kids with disabilities: His wife co-founded a network of charter schools for students with dyslexia.

If special education is moved, he said Wednesday, it should go to the Labor Department. That agency, he said, is better positioned to support people with disabilities as they learn and work.

Ultimately, what matters to parents is whether they can get the services their children need, said Rob Harris, an IEP advocate in Colorado. Families spend an inordinate amount of time navigating systems that should be working together to serve children, but often aren’t. Harris has navigated those systems himself: His 19-year-old daughter is blind.

“Families don’t experience the government through organizational charts,” Harris said. “We experience it through the services our children receive.”

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Associated Press writers Bianca Vázquez Toness and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press’ education 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.

“Damn, New York, we really did it,” Brunson, the finals MVP, said at a celebration at City Hall. “Somehow, someway I knew we were going to find a way to get this done.”

Moments later, Mayor Zohran Mamdani presented keys to the city to the Knicks' players, coaches, owners and staff. Wearing a team jersey under his suit jacket, Mamdani said he and other fans “waited because we knew deep down in our sick, suffering hearts” the Knicks would someday win.

Confetti in Knicks blue and orange swirled through the air during the parade. Massive cheers of “Let’s go, Knicks!” and “Knicks in five!” kept erupting.

And OG Anunoby, who scored the go-ahead basket in Game 4 of the finals on a tip-in with 1.2 seconds left, left his parade float to interact with fans, holding the NBA Cup in-season championship trophy in one hand and a bottle of Patron tequila in the other.

Film director Spike Lee, perhaps the team’s most iconic fan, was on a float with Brunson, savoring the moment. “I’ve never been to a parade — ever — and I’m glad it’s this one,” Lee said.

The MVP’s mom, Sandra Brunson, wore a shirt with photos of Jalen and husband Rick, who played for the Knicks. She echoed her son’s words, saying: “It was all worth it.”

Karl-Anthony Towns hoisted the Eastern Conference championship trophy and a cigar on top of a parade bus while Mamdani danced. On a nearby float with other alumni, Carmelo Anthony had a victory cigar of his own.

“The whole city won,” Anthony said. “New Yorkers are, as they say, ‘lit’ right now.”

Knicks fans turn out in force

People streamed into lower Manhattan on crammed subways. Even several blocks from the parade route, fans stood shoulder to shoulder — sometimes on each other’s shoulders — or climbed traffic lights and sanitation trucks. Far away on the Brooklyn Bridge, people gathered just to hear the loudspeakers.

“I had to be here today,” said Shareefa Wallace, 34, who got up at 3 a.m. to make her way from suburban Long Island. She grew up in the city going to Knicks games, and she sported the souvenir jersey of one of the legends from that era, Patrick Ewing.

Owner James Dolan thanked fans for waiting more than a half-century.

“Let’s keep this energy going, baby,” coach Mike Brown said, “because this championship is about you guys.”

‘The New York vibe’

Nearby bars and delis filled with fans, some wishing they’d arrived at dawn. But many seemed at peace with the fact that they would only experience the parade from a distance.

“We’re fine with the fray, we just want to be with the New York energy and the New York vibe,” said Jean Strong, who came to the parade from Harlem with his nephew and sister.

Terrell Emerson, a chef who grew up in Queens, said he drove from Maryland with his daughter Madison – named in honor of the Knicks' home arena, Madison Square Garden.

Beaming, Madison held a handwritten sign announcing she’d skipped her fifth-grade graduation to be there.

Stars and Knicks legends

Knicks great Walt “Clyde” Frazier — a member of the ’70s champion teams — led the parade in a stylish convertible and wearing his NBA title rings. Frazier had late teammates and coaches on his mind.

“They would be amazed at what has happened to the Knicks and how they’ve really captivated the city this year,” Frazier said. “This has exceeded any expectations I ever thought that we’d have.”

Timothee Chalamet, Jon Stewart, Ben Stiller, Mariska Hargitay and other celebrities joined the party. Knicks play-by-play announcer Mike Breen emceed the City Hall ceremony.

Alicia Keys, the singer who collaborated with Jay-Z on the New York-loving 2009 hit “Empire State of Mind,” performed a montage with that song, mixing it with the classic “New York, New York."

A parade decades in the making

The mere fact that the parade is happening is historic in itself. Although the Knicks won the championship twice in the 1970s, the city didn’t host a parade for them either time. Then-Mayor John Lindsay had cut down on ticker-tape extravaganzas for financial and other reasons, and he instead honored the Knicks at a 1970 reception at the mayoral mansion and a jam-packed 1973 ceremony outside City Hall.

This time, the city went all out. A police officer could be seen holding a sign reading, “This is really happening.”

And a massive security operation

Police plan to deploy 10,000 officers to secure the event, which follows ebullient but sometimes chaotic street celebrations and some violence during the Knicks' title run, including a five-game final against San Antonio.

The Fire Department said at least nine people were taken to hospitals but didn’t immediately respond to a request for more details.

At one point before the parade, a small group of people were crushed against a barrier near Fulton Street, a key subway hub, pinned between a swelling crowd and a group of police officers shoving the barrier.

Some 650 sanitation workers were assigned to clean up what could be tens of thousands of pounds (kilograms) of debris, if recent history is any guide.

Why does New York throw ticker-tape parades?

Ticker-tape parades derive their name from the narrow strips of paper used by telegraph-era “stock ticker” machines. New York brokerage firm workers tossed the paper from office windows during parades in the late 19th century, adding a swirling spectacle.

Over the years, especially up to the mid-1960s, the city rolled out ticker-tape parades for visiting foreign leaders, historic anniversaries and feats in aviation, war, sports, music, space travel and more.

The Knicks' parade is the 210th, coming after a ticker-tape bash for the WNBA's New York Liberty in 2024.

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz and Julie Walker in New York and AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney in Southampton, New York, contributed.

Always a darling of the far left, he has earned praise from both President Donald Trump and former Democratic critics like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. He has emerged as the face of the region's sports renaissance. And days before New York's primary elections, Mamdani is testing the limits of his newfound political muscle in a bid to reshape the Democratic Party — in his state capital and in Washington — even if it means challenging his own party's leadership.

Mamdani will join Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. at a get-out-the-vote rally in Brooklyn on Thursday. The event is designed to elevate a slate of candidates aligned with Mamdani's values, including two running against Democratic incumbents in Tuesday's primary.

“He’s seeing that opportunity — that we can radically change the Democratic Party,” said Faiz Shakir, a senior adviser to Sanders and a friend of Mamdani's. “Like Bernie, he's not saying I'm doing this out of spite against you, dear leadership. He's saying, I am supporting these candidates who have a better vision, and I am prepared to lose if it has to be the case.”

The Mamdani slate

Establishment Democrats are not pleased with the mayor's decisions.

Mamdani endorsed political organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier over Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in New York's 13th District, which includes parts of upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

He is also backing former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running against incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in New York's 10th District. And in New York's 7th, he's supporting democratic socialist state Assembly Member Claire Valdez against outgoing Rep. Nydia Velazquez’s handpicked successor.

The Mamdani slate, in addition to several state Assembly candidates, will be featured at Thursday's rally.

Valdez says the election is about advancing the political movement Mamdani ignited on his way to City Hall.

“Right now there’s really mass dissatisfaction with the way the party leadership has been operating and not standing up strongly enough to Trump,” she told The Associated Press, contrasting the malaise to the way the mayor energized voters last year.

She said she hopes to “bring a partner to Zohran to Washington.”

Valdez's primary opponent, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, said he feels like the underdog in the race, even though he was endorsed by the outgoing incumbent. He said Mamdani “has a celebrity status that we haven’t seen the likes of since I’ve been alive.”

“He’s going to be our champion for the foreseeable future and he’s doing a great job, and when he says that he’s endorsing someone, it matters,” Reynoso said in an interview. “I believe that this community has seen me work, they know I’m a progressive champion, and in any other circumstance I would be a favorite to win this race, but I’m not because he has tipped the scale.”

The candidates are largely aligned on the biggest issues, although there are modest differences.

Israel’s war with Gaza has featured heavily among the Mamdani slate, with Lander, Valdez and Avila Chevalier casting their Democratic opponents as too soft on Israel. They're echoing the mayor’s steadfast criticism of the country’s leaders and harnessing what they believe could be a driving force in this year’s elections.

The mayor’s candidates have also sought to replicate much of the platform that sent him to City Hall, focusing on the city’s high cost of living and framing themselves as fresh faces not beholden to powerful business interests.

The view from Washington

On Capitol Hill, Democrats are pleasantly surprised that Mamdani has become less of a political liability for the party in swing district seats than they once feared.

But Mamdani’s endorsements have aggravated intraparty fissures, especially among moderates who worry that Mamdani's far-left brand may eventually tarnish the entire party.

And House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a fellow New Yorker, has tried to push back against the Mamdani-backed democratic socialist challengers, endorsing and campaigning for the embattled incumbents in a proxy fight with the mayor.

But Jeffries and Mamdani have opted to wrestle only in primaries rather than bicker publicly and feed into GOP narratives of Democratic disarray.

“Democrats must understand, and both the leader and Mamdani appreciate this, how to yell in areas where we agree and whisper in areas where we diverge,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist who works with House Democrats.

For now, Jeffries' allies acknowledge that Mamdani has energized Democratic voters and may be able to reach some Americans who have checked out of the political process. They also prefer that Mamdani is hyper-focused on New York City’s governance rather than traveling across the country nationally.

Republicans, however, have plans to elevate Mamdani's profile whether Washington Democrats want them to or not.

The GOP hasn't made Mamdani a central feature of its broader national messaging as it once threatened, but Republican operatives have sought to link Mamdani to Democratic House candidates in swing districts across California, Colorado and Wisconsin. They also believe the specter of the New York City mayor will loom large in pivotal House races in New York and New Jersey.

The Republican bet is that vulnerable Democrats cannot afford to break with Mamdani too cleanly for fear of alienating progressive voters, even as they cast him as a radical.

“Zohran Mamdani’s socialist brand is as toxic as it comes,” said Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, House Republicans’ campaign arm. “And during a time when Democrats don’t have a leader or a message, he’s exactly the kind of bogeyman we can use against Democrats to truly show who is leading their party and the crazy policies they all support.”

Meanwhile, Sanders' adviser Shakir encouraged the Republicans to try. He noted that Sanders mentions Mamdani in almost every speech as he tours the nation rallying voters ahead of the midterms.

“The crowd just goes nuts,” Shakir said. “He certainly is not a political liability.”

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Brown reported in Washington.

Bono, John Legend, Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony and Eddie Vedder took turns on the stage ahead of planned performances by Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder.

“I hope this center will serve as an affirmation of just how special, how precious our democracy truly is and remind us what we can achieve when we embrace our shared responsibilities as citizens,” Obama told the crowd.

Reflecting on his arrival in Chicago in 1985 as an untested political organizer, Obama said he could not built the center anywhere else. He said he met his future wife Michelle nearby, their wedding reception was within walking distance of the center, his children were born in the neighborhood and he launched his first candidacy not far away.

“It’s an expression of thanks, an acknowledgment that so much of what I hold most dear I owe to the people of this city and the people of the surrounding neighborhoods,” Obama said.

Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters were seated on stage with former presidents Joe Biden, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton along with former first ladies Jill Biden, Laura Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Former Vice President Kamala Harris was also in attendance.

President Donald Trump was not in attendance. He called the $850 million center a “total disaster” in a social media post in February.

Michelle Obama spoke directly to her husband when she stepped up to the podium. “Eight years in the crucible and not once did you melt in the heat. Not once did you let it harden you.

“Instead, you used it to reveal your truest essence,” she said. “Your stubborn optimism and unflinching courage. Your dazzling brilliance and unpretentious decency. Your ferocious work ethic and absolutely unshakable moral fiber. And to do it all as a first.”

She ticked off highlights from her husband's eight years in office, including ordering the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, “standing up for marriage equality” and “listening to science.”

“And you did it all with such grace and class and cool,” she said. “You made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park.”

Obama appeared to wipe away a tear as she praised him.

Michelle Obama also referenced the current “anxious and divisive times” and warned against being cynical or complacent as “everything feels so upside down.” She pitched the center as “a respite from all that.”

Jennifer Hudson sang the national anthem and Aguilera delivered a rousing rendition of “What a Wonderful World.” Pearl Jam’s Vedder, joined by Chicago teenagers in the nonprofit Guitars Over Guns program, sang an original song called “Better Believe,” written just for the dedication.

Legend sang “Someday We’ll All Be Free” and was joined by the rapper Common and Uniting Voices Chicago for their Academy Award-winning song “Glory.”

Bono, who said he was there representing the Irish, joined with The Edge in singing the U2 song “City of Blinding Lights.” The Roots served as the house band.

The invite-only celebration was livestreamed and kicks off a weekend of events centered around the Obama Presidential Center, which opens to the general public on Juneteenth. Thousands more watched from a nearby park.

Those at the event included California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate; civil rights leaders Andrew Young and Al Sharpton; Oprah Winfrey; comedians David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Stephen Colbert; actor Tom Hanks; tennis legend Billie Jean King and Chicago Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts.

Former world leaders in attendance included former Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“This is not a monument to the Obamas,” said Valerie Jarrett, the Obama Foundation’s chief executive and former Obama top adviser. “This is a tribute to all those who made this journey possible.”

The opening, like the ribbon-cuttings of other presidential libraries over the years, had a heavy focus on accomplishments. This former president also expressed some regrets — such as the increase in political polarization during his two terms. “It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency — that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better,” Obama said in his final State of the Union.

“Some of the exhibits reflect unfinished business,” Obama said Thursday. “In some cases, my own shortcomings and mistakes.”

Martin Nesbitt, chair of the Obama Foundation board, wore a tan suit in a joking nod toward the outfit Obama wore in 2014, drawing criticism over his fashion choice.

General admission tickets for the center are sold out through the end of October. But tens of thousands of people have already been offered a sneak peek of the nearly 20-acre campus on Chicago's South Side in Jackson Park.

The center, located near where Obama lived and began his political career, is expected to attract more than 1 million visitors annually. It is adjacent to the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry in the lakefront park, and not far from the University of Chicago.

The campus includes a towering museum that covers the political and personal realms of the nation’s first Black president and first lady, while public spaces include a branch of the Chicago Public Library, a playground and athletic center, basketball courts and a picnic area with grills.

The tower’s design is meant to depict four hands coming together in solidarity. Wrapped around one side are 5-foot tall concrete capital letters, an excerpt of Obama’s 2015 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march. It begins, “You are America.”

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Associated Press writer Mike Catalini contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

Supporters and opponents alike view the effort as a major litmus test for tapping the AI-powered software on a U.S. public transportation system, positioning Kansas City as the latest epicenter of a fierce debate over whether the safety benefits of artificial intelligence are worth the privacy costs.

“The idea of running face recognition on a camera that is pointed on live spaces in public is a line that until recently has never really been crossed in the last 25 years,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the Project on Speech, Privacy and Technology at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The state of Missouri declined to help fund the project as expected due to concerns with the facial recognition component. Still, the city is pushing ahead with local and federal money, said Tyler Means, chief mobility and strategy officer at the Kansas City Transportation Authority.

“Privacy is always a tricky thing,” Means said. “We’ve always had cameras on our buses. It’s just new technology. I think in time it’ll smooth over and people will realize, ‘Well, it didn’t really feel any different.’”

Cameras that recognize a face

SafeSpace Global, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based company partnering with Kansas City to run the cameras, started using live facial recognition years ago to alert nursing homes when residents left the building, then brought the technology to correctional institutions and schools. Kansas City’s buses represent the company’s inaugural venture in transportation.

Images captured by cameras aboard the buses would immediately be checked against any active alerts, generated when a missing person, banned rider or someone on a law enforcement watch list designated by the transportation authority is identified.

If no match or safety issue is detected, the facial data won't be retained. After the buses return to the depot, the transportation authority would archive the regular video footage on a local server for up to five years.

“It’s not sitting there filming all the time,” SafeSpace Global CEO Scott Boruff said. “It just captures the face and goes away.”

But Stanley with the ACLU warned that it's nearly impossible to limit the scope of a surveillance project when artificial intelligence is involved.

“It may be used for a very narrow watch list today, but there are very good reasons to think it’ll expand over time,” he said.

Backers of the effort point out that security cameras are already found nearly everywhere — even on Kansas City's buses — and some law enforcement agencies have used facial recognition software to identify suspects spotted on video.

Cameras with other types of AI-powered software have been installed on public buses and school buses in other cities to read the license plates of nearby vehicles and ticket the ones spotted committing infractions such as illegally parking in a bus lane. Privacy advocates are concerned about those devices as well, but they're particularly alarmed by cameras that could actively record faces even when no crime is committed.

“City residents should not be guinea pigs for transit systems to test Silicon Valley’s latest unproven, biased surveillance tech,” said Will Owen, communications director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

Lessons from elsewhere

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, police in Tampa, Florida, used facial recognition cameras in the Ybor City neighborhood to search for crime suspects, but there was immediate opposition and the program was soon abandoned, Stanley said.

More recently, New Orleans police secretly relied on facial recognition surveillance cameras run by a private company despite a city ordinance prohibiting the technology, The Washington Post reported last year. Although the program was believed to have been paused, Stanley wrote a report for the ACLU last month that found it was still operating in some capacity, citing emails an activist obtained through an open records request.

Detroit partnered with some gas stations and liquor stores in 2016 to install high-definition cameras that relayed live feeds of violent crimes directly to the police department. But after a New York Times investigation found footage was paired with facial recognition software to make arrests, some of the accused filed successful lawsuits claiming they were wrongly targeted due to faulty technology that misidentified Black suspects.

James Craig, the police chief at the time, said officials felt the backlash and changed the rules over how facial recognition could be used without scrapping the program entirely. But he still advocates for the technology, provided it’s used correctly, and says it would be a shame for cities to abandon one of their best tools for securing the streets.

“If the police department or the city doesn’t have the insights to build in strong policies, transparent policies and accountability, the knee jerk reaction is, ‘Well, let’s just ban it,’” Craig said.

KC delays rollout, eyes ‘bigger’ plan

The cameras were expected to be installed on Kansas City's buses this spring, but organizers halted the effort just before launch, derailing hopes that they would be up and running in time for the World Cup matches the city began hosting this week.

The delay was partly technical — a need to upgrade Wi-Fi routers to support both the cameras and a new fare collection system on the buses — and partly financial due to state government funding falling through, illustrating the headwinds U.S. cities often encounter when seeking to deploy facial recognition.

Despite the delays, Means said he's confident the program will launch this year and “a little bit bigger” than initially planned, with potentially as many as 30 buses instead of the nine that had been planned under the pilot.

Boruff, the SafeSpace Global CEO, said the company is ready to start installing the Kansas City cameras as soon as the money comes through, although it'll likely take three to four months to configure the software for the city's specific needs.

Ryana Parks-Shaw, a City Council member serving as mayor pro tem, said she's not disappointed that the rollout has been delayed.

“I think they need to take their time and do it right,” Parks-Shaw said. “I believe that any use of this kind of technology must be approached carefully, transparently and with clear guardrails.”

As for securing buses during the World Cup without the facial recognition cameras, Means said the reconfigured plan includes up to 40 more officers patrolling stops and transit centers.

“We're kind of going old school to address what we hoped the technology would do,” he said.

Then, in 2025, she slipped a disk in her back, requiring medication and physical therapy. Suddenly, the medical bills were so overwhelming that Weaver, an adult learner working toward a leadership degree on the side, had to delay graduation by a year.

“I had to start calculating, am I going to be able to afford to pay my tuition, as well as my books, as well as my living expenses, and continue to care for my family?” the 43-year-old in Sanford, Florida, said in an interview. “It makes you feel powerless as a consumer.”

Weaver’s experience is familiar to a growing number of Americans, according to new data from the West Health-Gallup Affordability Index, which shows only about half of U.S. adults could afford their healthcare and had access to quality care last year. Concerns about affording healthcare in the year ahead were at a record high since tracking began in 2021, signaling that many were feeling anxious about rising healthcare costs as 2025 ended.

The new findings published Thursday draw on a survey conducted from October to December 2025 — before major recent changes to health policy, like Congress’ Medicaid cuts or its decision not to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, took effect. It demonstrates how the country's fraught healthcare system is increasingly straining Americans at a time when inflation is driving high costs and affordability concerns are top of mind as midterm elections approach.

Americans are worried they won’t be able to pay for care

The index used the responses from multiple questions to place Americans into three categories depending on their access to quality care and ability to pay for care and medicine. In the new data, 49% of U.S. adults were considered “cost secure,” meaning that they had access both to high-quality, affordable care and they had recently been able to afford the care and medicine they needed. In 2021, when the measurement began, 56% of U.S. adults were “cost secure.” That rose to 61% in 2022 but has been falling ever since.

In the survey, about three-quarters of U.S. adults said healthcare costs were a “major” or “minor” financial burden for them and their family. Only about 3 in 10 said they’re not a burden.

Meanwhile, about half of respondents were “extremely concerned” or “concerned” that their household would be unable to pay for needed healthcare services in 2026, up from 42% who said that in 2022.

Inger Perez, 59, from Encino, Texas, is one of those worried Americans. She has a family history of diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer. She said she did blood work recently, and while she wants to know the results, she’s bracing herself for what they could show.

“I literally was crying last night because I’m nervous about what I’m going to find out and how much care that is and how much money that is,” she said in an interview. “I’m terrified that I’ll start a plan of treatment but won’t be able to afford to keep up with it.”

More than half of survey respondents said the cost of healthcare contributes “a lot” or “some” to stress to their daily lives. That’s compared to about 3 in 10 who said these costs contribute “very little stress” and about 2 in 10 who said they contribute “no stress at all.”

Perez said she is also frustrated by the quality of the care she receives, in part because she lives in a rural area about an hour from a doctor’s office. To fit her budget, she had to choose a lower-cost Affordable Care Act marketplace plan with a limited network of covered providers, creating another obstacle to finding good care.

Healthcare affordability is declining across demographics

Younger adults, older adults and women were among several groups of Americans that saw drops in healthcare affordability and access in 2025, according to the findings.

Among Americans under 30, only about one-third were categorized as “cost secure,” down from 46% in 2021. Women were already less likely to be “cost secure” than men, but the gap widened last year. About 57% of men were “cost secure” in the 2025 survey — down from a high of 67% in 2022 — compared to 42% of women.

Older Americans, most of whom are covered by the government's Medicare health insurance program, are generally more likely to be “cost secure.” However, this group saw meaningful decreases as well, falling from 73% in 2021 to 61% in 2025.

Patients make sacrifices to pay the bills

Several survey respondents who talked to The Associated Press discussed things they have had to give up to pay their health bills.

About 2 in 10 U.S. adults in the 2025 poll said there had been a time in the prior three months when they or a member of their household was unable to pay for medicine or drugs that a doctor had prescribed because of costs. About 3 in 10 said they or someone in their household did not seek treatment for a health problem because of the expense.

One dad in Arizona, 55-year-old Xavier Chapa, said his 50-year-old wife has been fighting her insurance company over a preventive colonoscopy that her doctor had recommended.

He said the company verbally assured her it would be covered, but didn’t honor that after the procedure was completed.

The looming $3,000 bill means they've had to cut back their 8-year-old son’s summer camp schedule from full-day to half-day programs, along with trimming their budget elsewhere.

“It’s a lot to deal with,” said Chapa, who moved back to the U.S. from Europe three years ago. “What point does it serve if you're living in this country and having to pay such a high price and you can't get some of the basic things?"

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Swenson reported from New York.

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The West Health-Gallup Center poll of 5,660 adults was conducted Oct. 27-Dec. 22, 2025 using a sample drawn from Gallup's probability-based Gallup Panel. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

The 1,200-year-old Major Oak in Sherwood Forest is believed to have died after it didn’t sprout leaves this spring, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said Thursday.

Visitors over the past two centuries who viewed the tree's gnarled limbs and sprawling canopy in Nottingham compressed the soil, making it difficult for rain to reach its roots, the conservation group said.

The forest has been under threat for years and the tree had been rumored to have died in the past — only to have the group confirm it was still alive.

That is no longer the case.

“The tree’s failure to produce leaves this year is heartbreaking for everyone,” Hollie Drake of the RSPB said in a statement announcing the death.

The tree is said to have sheltered Robin Hood, the legendary 13th-century bandit who stole from the rich and gave to the poor and took refuge in the forest when being pursued by the sheriff of Nottingham.

It got its name after being mentioned in a book on oaks by Major Hayman Rooke in 1790 that led to the first wave of fans who flocked to the forest.

It's impossible to say what killed the tree, but the footprints of millions contributed to its downfall, along with intervention to shore up its massive limbs using cables and poles. Climate change that has brought heat waves and drought was also blamed.

Tree experts found the root system strangled and starved.

“Ancient trees like the Major Oak are the ‘conservation white rhinos of the U.K.’ but their decline is far less visible,” said Ed Pyne, of the Woodland Trust. “Saving them is vital to the health of the world we live in and yet most disappear quietly, without the recognition or care given to the Major Oak.”

In addition to its place in folklore, the forest is known for Sherwood oaks that floated the ships of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson’s Royal Navy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and as timbers in the roof of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

The Major Oak was spared from the saw and has been protected by a fence since the 1970s.

“The Major Oak will continue to stand at the heart of Sherwood as a natural monument for visitors to come and see, living on in the legend of Robin Hood and continuing to provide as much support to the forest’s ecosystem in death as in life,” Drake said.

Instead, the rollout of Vance’s second book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” has been largely crowded out by something else he’s put his name on: the deal to end the Iran war.

The Republican vice president has embraced the role of chief defender of the agreement he and President Donald Trump signed with Tehran, giving a series of interviews touting it as a success, releasing a video championing it and parrying questions about it during a briefing at the White House.

It’s a striking emergence for a politician who's known for his skepticism of foreign military interventions and who seemed reluctant to speak on the conflict when Trump launched it in February.

The vice president is poised to yoke himself further to the conflict’s outcome, when he’s expected to kick off a new phase of negotiations with Iran — though when that will occur was still up in the air Thursday.

Vance becoming a hype man for the agreement seems to be an all-in gamble that, should he decide to seek the White House in 2028, voters will reward him for being the face of ending an unpopular conflict.

It’s also setting Vance up as the presumptive fall guy should the deal with Iran falter.

Trump joked about such a possibility on Wednesday.

“If it works out, I’m going to take the credit," Trump said. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.”

Officials release text of the deal after backlash

Vance on Thursday referred to Trump's comment as a joke and said he wasn't worried. He added: “Look, the entire team has worked very well on this, and we’ve got this thing to a very good place for the American people.”

The White House in a statement called Vance the president's “right-hand man and an invaluable member of the President’s talented national security team.”

"That’s why the Vice President was trusted to lead these negotiations alongside Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner," White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said. "What President Trump and his team achieved on the battlefield and at the negotiating table is nothing short of remarkable and will strengthen American security for years to come.”

But backlash, including from conservatives, began growing this week after the U.S. digitally signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran on Sunday.

Vance spokesman Luke Schroeder said in a statement: “It’s unfortunate that some Republicans are attempting to undermine the President’s efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East and ensure Iran never has a nuclear weapon.”

Officials gave shifting answers about when they would release the text, but leaked copies of a draft were quickly met with anger and skepticism from Democratic and Republican U.S. lawmakers, as well as Israel and pro-Israel advocates. Their criticisms included concerns that the deal, meant to open a two-month negotiating period, seemed to offer Iran wins up front while guaranteeing little in return and that Trump’s stated reason for launching the conflict, to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, remains unresolved.

Vance has reiterated that Iran must meet its obligations.

In response to the backlash and mounting questions, the U.S. on Wednesday provided the text of the agreement to journalists.

The agreement states that Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under rubble, must at minimum be diluted under international supervision. It also states that Iran shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons — a commitment it has made previously. But beyond stating that the U.S. and Iran will negotiate over Iran's nuclear program, other commitments still need to be worked out.

Criticism on the right persisted after the text was released.

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson, a hawk who has defended the war, said Wednesday: “This is an American surrender.”

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, another potential 2028 presidential candidate, criticized the agreement and said to reporters, “I think the president, unfortunately, is receiving bad advice.”

Trump's Operation Epic Fury has angered wings of his movement

The conflict, which has stretched into its fourth month, has cleaved Trump’s broad Make America Great Again coalition and angered both those who favored a harder line against Iran and those drawn to Trump’s “America First” foreign policy underscored by a message of “no new wars.”

Critics, including Republicans, have already started pointing fingers in Vance's direction, questioning whether the deal resembles the 2015 nuclear agreement struck by Democratic President Barack Obama and whether this new agreement achieves Trump’s stated objectives for launching the war, dubbed Operation Epic Fury.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump ally and Iran hawk, had been skeptical of the agreement and referred to Vance on social media as “the architect of the deal."

After the agreement was released, Graham issued a tepid statement of support, saying, “I see little downside to trying.”

Ben Domenech, The Daily Wire’s opinion editor, said on Fox News that everything he was hearing about the deal “seems bad” and appeared to cast blame on Vance by alluding to his first book, “Hillbilly Elegy."

“Are we going to backslide into being some kind of ‘hillbilly Obama’ kind of GOP?” Domenech said.

GOP allies say Vance can navigate the politics

The Trump administration has not offered formal briefings to Congress on the details of the memorandum, but Vance has quietly started doing outreach to some Republican senators on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, a close ally of Vance's, said the vice president would be able to assuage even critics within his own party who are skeptical of the deal because “JD is just the president’s messenger, and the president’s going to prove them all wrong.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said the deal “certainly adds to the national security and geopolitical chops” of Vance, who spent two years as a U.S. senator for Ohio before ascending to the vice presidency.

But Cramer acknowledged the risks if the agreement goes awry.

“I guess the nice thing is, if you’re not the No. 1 person, you can take credit and avoid risk, avoid the criticism, but probably not so easily,” Cramer said.

Vance argues Iran is not a quagmire like the Iraq war

In interviews this week, Vance has sought to speak directly to the skeptics in his party, a preview of the difficult explanations he may be pressed to make as a candidate on the war.

On Megyn Kelly's show, the vice president said the critics “believe Iranian propaganda” about the deal. But he acknowledged some of the frustrations on the hawkish right while trying to reassure the anti-interventionists that the Iran conflict isn't the war in Iraq, where he served as a Marine.

Democrats have stressed that even as Vance becomes the face of the Iran deal, the fate of any administration official who harbors presidential aspirations — particularly hawkish Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has largely been quiet in the agreement's final phases — will be tied to its outcome.

“I think any member of this administration is going to rise or fall on the basis of the Iran war and the handling of the economy,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii.

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Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed to this report.