“I think it will be an important sign because of what the pope represents, a spiritual leader in the world today, and for this voice, that everyone wants to hear, that says Christ still suffers,” Leo told reporters this week outside of the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo. “I carry all of this suffering in my prayer.”

John Paul II carried the cross for the entire procession from his first Good Friday as pontiff in 1979 until his hip surgery in 1995, when he carried it just part of the way, according to AP reports at the time.

For the first two years of his papacy, Benedict XVI carried the cross for the first station inside the Colosseum, then followed other bearers in the procession that ends on a platform on the Palatine Hill.

Pope Francis never carried the cross, but participated in the procession until his health worsened. He died after a long illness last year on Easter Monday, which fell on April 21.

Pope John Paul II was just 58 when he became pope, and was known as a hiker and outdoorsman. His two successors were in their late 70s when they began their papacies, and Francis was missing part of a lung due to a pulmonary infection as a young man.

At 70, Leo is physically fit and an avid tennis player and swimmer. Before becoming pope, Leo would work out regularly at a gym near the Vatican, with a plan befitting a man in his early 50s, according to his former trainer.

Crowds are expected to gather outside of the Colosseum for the Way of the Cross, which commemorates the final hours of Jesus’ life, from his death sentence to taking up the cross to his crucifixion, death and burial. The procession ends outside the Colosseum atop the Palatine Hill.

The meditations, which are read aloud at each station, were composed by the Rev. Francesco Patton, who was custos (or custodian) of the Holy Land 2016-25, charged, among other things, with looking after sacred sites

“The Way of the Cross is not intended for those who lead a pristinely pious or abstractly recollected life,” Patton wrote in his introduction. “Instead, it is the exercise of one who knows that faith, hope and charity must be incarnated in the real world.”

On Holy Saturday, the pontiff will preside over Easter vigil rites at St. Peter’s Square and lead Roman Catholics into Christianity’s most joyous celebration marking Christ’s resurrection.

On Easter Sunday, the pope will celebrate an open-air Mass in St. Peter’s Square before delivering his Easter message and offer the traditional “Urbi et Orbi” blessing to the city (of Rome) and the world.

The U.S. military launched a rescue operation after Iranian state media reported that an American fighter jet went down and at least one crew member ejected, according to an Israeli military officer. Israel is helping with the operation, said the officer, who was briefed on the information and spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a U.S. announcement.

Social media footage showed American drones, aircraft and helicopters flying over the mountainous region where the Iranian channel said at least one pilot bailed out of the fighter jet. It would be the first time the U.S. has lost aircraft in Iranian territory during the five-week war. The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command didn’t immediately respond to several messages seeking comment. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “President Trump has been briefed.”

The anchor on the Iranian channel urged residents to hand over any “enemy pilot” to police and promised a reward for anyone who did. The channel is in Kohkilouyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, an intensely rural and mountainous region that spans over 15,500 square kilometers (5,900 square miles). An on-screen crawl earlier urged the public to “shoot them if you see them,” referring to social media footage circulating of what appeared to be U.S. aircraft in the area.

The war now entering its sixth week is destabilizing economies around the world as Iran responds to the U.S. and Israeli attacks by targeting the Gulf region's energy infrastructure and tightening its grip on oil and natural gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. President Donald Trump said U.S. forces will keep hitting Iran “very hard” in the next two or three weeks.

Here is the latest:

Tehran resident describes projectile overhead and smoke near medical research center

A resident of central Tehran says she was walking home Thursday when she spotted what appeared to be a missile streaking overhead.

“I saw it go over my head and I heard the explosion,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to media restrictions in Iran.

Then she saw smoke rising from a nearby area of the capital hosting many government buildings, including the offices of Iran’s Supreme Leader, which Israel heavily struck early in the war. Next to that is the Pasteur Institute, which has played a leading role in Iran’s health sector for over a century. An Iranian health ministry spokesman confirmed the institute had been struck on Thursday.

The resident said she’s also seen least two police stations “destroyed” in her area of the capital.

—- Amir-Hussein Radjy

An explosion in southern Lebanon injures three UN peacekeepers amid fighting between Israel and Hezbollah

The peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL reminded Israel, Hezbollah and other actors of their obligation to ensure the peacekeepers’ safety, including by avoiding combat near their facilities and positions.

“This has been a difficult week for peacekeepers working near the central part of UNIFIL’s area of operations,” UNIFIL said.

Three U.N. peacekeepers were injured, two seriously, in an explosion of unknown origin inside their position in El Adeisse on Friday afternoon, UNIFIL said. Three UNIFIL peacekeepers from Indonesia were killed earlier this week and others were injured.

Aircraft was ‘shot down,’ US military says

According to an email from the Pentagon obtained by The Associated Press, the U.S. military said that it received notification of “an aircraft being shot down” in the Middle East. The email did not provide more details.

Iran accuses the UN nuclear watchdog of siding with its enemies

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran denounced on Friday what it describes as the U.N. nuclear agency’s “silence” as the US and Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Iranian agency accused the International Atomic Energy Agency of “not merely inaction but complicity with perpetrators,” according to a statement posted on X. It said it has sent a protest letter to the IAEA’s director. “This historic negligence erodes the IAEA’s little remaining credibility,” read the statement.

The Iranian government has constantly said that it needs to expand its nuclear plants to meet its electricity needs rather than to build weapons.

Jordan and Israel warn of more air attacks

The Israeli military says air defenses are being activated to intercept the fire.

Jordan, the state-owned news agency says alarms are sounding across the country.

One crew member has been rescued after American aircraft went down in Iran, US and Israeli officials say

One crew member has been rescued after an American aircraft went down in Iran, according to one U.S. and one Israeli official, who both spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive ongoing military operations.

US officials are being informed about the rescue operation in Iran

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has been notified about the situation with the pilot in Iran, his office said.

The Defense Department has notified the speaker and said it would provide further updates.

The U.S. military has been conducting a search and rescue operation in Iran, according to three people familiar who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitivity of the situation.

Gas tanker affiliated with Japan makes it through the strait

A liquefied natural gas tanker co-owned by Japanese and Omani companies has passed through the Strait of Hormuz, a first passage of a Japan-affiliated vessel through the waterway since the start of the U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran, Japan’s NHK public television said.

The Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines said the Panamanian-flagged tanker Sohar LNG, also owned by Oman Shipping Company, crossed the strait Friday and is now out of the Persian Gulf, NHK reported.

The tanker was among 45 Japanese-affiliated ships stuck in the area since the start of the war in the region. Mitsui did not disclose other details, such as the ship’s destination, citing security reasons, NHK said.

Four US planes had already gone down during the Iranian war

Four U.S. military planes had gone down during the Iran war before Friday’s search and rescue operation — three fighter jets hit by friendly fire over Kuwait and a refueling tanker plane that crashed in Iraq following an incident with another U.S. aircraft.

The KC-135 refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq while supporting operations in Iran. All six crew members aboard the aircraft died. U.S. officials attributed the crash to an unspecified incident involving two aircraft in “friendly airspace,” and said the other plane landed safely.

Separately, three U.S. F-15E fighter jets were mistakenly targeted by friendly Kuwaiti fire. All six crew members ejected safely.

US has launched a rescue operation after Iranian state media says American fighter jet went down in Iran, AP source says

The U.S. military rescue operation launched Friday after Iranian state media said an American fighter jet went down over southwest Iran and at least one crew member ejected.

Israel is helping the United States with the search and rescue operation, according to an Israeli military officer briefed on the information who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a U.S. announcement.

Social media footage showed American drones, aircraft and helicopters flying over the mountainous region where the Iranian channel said at least one pilot bailed out of the fighter jet.

It would be the first time the U.S. has lost aircraft in Iranian territory during the five-week war. It was not clear if the jet was shot down or crashed. The number of crew on board was not immediately known.

The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command didn’t immediately respond to several messages seeking comment. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “President Trump has been briefed.”

Bahrain cracks down on dissent as Iran war reignites internal unrest

A man detained in Bahrain as the island came under missile attack from Iran vanished for days, until his family was called to a military hospital to retrieve his body, covered in slash marks and bruises. The death of Mohamed al-Mousawi has become a flashpoint in the Sunni-ruled, Shiite-majority country on the war’s front lines, where critics say authorities have revived tactics used to suppress Arab Spring protests in 2011.

Bahrain, a monarchy that hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, has arrested dozens of people for filming airstrikes and demonstrations or expressing support for Iran.

Bahrain’s Interior Ministry said al-Mousawi was arrested on suspicion of spying for Iran — allegations denied by his family — and that images of his wounds were “inaccurate and misleading.” A Bahrain government statement said the country is defending its national security and denied any sectarianism, saying authorities have acted lawfully and that independent bodies investigate allegations of abuse.

▶ Read more

Iranian motorcyclist describes a tale of two cities in wartime Tehran

A woman in her forties says she has made a point of riding a motorcycle around Tehran as “a form of civil resistance.” Cruising the capital’s streets has also shown her two faces of the wartime capital, she said.

Faced with years of protests, Iran’s Islamic rulers have recently eased enforcement of the mandatory veil and other restrictions on women, including harassing female motorcyclists.

A downtown resident, the woman said she rode uptown to the capital’s richest areas, where she found the cafes were packed.

“Now I’m outside on my motorbike. I stopped by the side of the street. There was an explosion. Several people sitting on chairs by the café, looked up, glanced at the sky and started drinking coffee again,” she messaged The Associated Press, communicating anonymously for her safety.

In other parts of Tehran, she said, “the streets where a building has been damaged and destroyed, or the houses around it, are different. It’s like Gaza. Silence. The smell of death.”

— By Amir-Hussein Radjy

Iranian authorities urge expanded search for ejected pilot

Authorities also urged Iranians to search for the American pilot in neighboring Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari province, in addition to Kohkilouyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province.

Tehran resident says the fate of Iranians hangs between two powers that don’t care for the people

The 26-year-old Tehran resident fears an escalation in the war that targets infrastructure could leave civilians without power or water, but said the survival of the Islamic Republic’s theocratic rulers leaves her “more anxious than the bombing.” She spoke on condition of anonymity and through secure channels for security reasons.

“Based on what Trump has been saying, once again I realized that we, the people of Iran are nothing but tools and playthings between these two ideologies and powers of the world,” she said. “Neither our lives nor our well-being matters to anyone. Not to our rulers, who killed (thousands during the January protests) nor to the First World, which has always pursued its own interests.”

The young Pilates instructor has stopped her teaching, she said, because “My body doesn’t want to.” She said the mood in Tehran “is dark” as parts of the city feel empty during the new year holidays, which end Friday. “It is full of checkpoints and there is very little traffic.”

— By Sarah El Deeb

Israeli strikes kill 1,368 since Israel-Hezbollah war began

Over the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes killed 23 people and wounded 98, the Lebanese health ministry said Friday.

The ministry said that the overall death toll includes 125 children and 91 women, since Israel launched intense airstrikes across Lebanon after the Hezbollah militant group fired rockets toward northern Israel in solidarity with Iran on March 2. The strikes have also wounded 4,138 others.

Among those killed are 53 health workers, while Israeli strikes have targeted 83 emergency medical service facilities, the health ministry said.

Trump’s wartime presidency has Republicans in peril in upcoming elections

A year and a half after winning the White House by promising to lower costs and end wars, Donald Trump is a wartime president overseeing surging energy costs and an escalating overseas conflict that many in his own party do not like. And he offered little clarity to a nation eager for answers this week during his prime-time address.

It’s hard to overstate how dramatically the U.S. political landscape has shifted. At this time last year, many Republican leaders believed there was a path to preserve their narrow House majority and easily hold the Senate. Now they privately concede that the House is all but lost and Democrats have a realistic shot at taking the Senate.

“You’re looking at an ugly November,” warned veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “At a point in time when we need every break possible to hold the House and Senate, our edge is being chipped away.”

▶ Read more

United Arab Emirates defends against air attacks

The UAE ministry of defense said on Friday that its air forces engaged with 18 ballistic missiles, four cruise missiles and 47 drones, according to a statement posted on the social media platform X.

Trump calls for $1.5 trillion boost in defense spending alongside cuts in domestic spending

The increase in spending is the largest such request in decades as the president emphasizes U.S. military investments over domestic programs.

Trump’s plans for the Pentagon were confirmed in a White House outline of Trump’s 2027 budget proposal released Friday. The White House summary says Trump’s proposal would reduce nondefense spending by 10% by shifting some responsibilities to state and local governments.

Even before the U.S.-led war against Iran, the Republican president had indicated he wanted to bolster defense spending to modernize the military for 21st-century threats. Separately, the Pentagon last month proposed $200 billion for the war effort and to backfill munitions and supplies.

▶ Read more

Iran keeps attacking with missiles and drones

Israel’s military said Friday afternoon that missiles had been launched from Iran toward the country.

Bahrain’s state-owned news agency said Friday that the country’s air forces intercepted and destroyed 16 drones in the last 24 hours.

Explosion wounds three UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon

The explosion Friday inside a UN position near the southern town of El Adeisseh injured three peacekeepers, two of them seriously, according to a spokesperson for the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

“All are currently being evacuated to hospital,” Kandice Ardiel said, adding that the origin of the blast remains unknown.

Two other peacekeepers were killed Monday when their vehicle was struck by an explosion of unknown origin, a day after another peacekeeper was killed in a separate incident in southern Lebanon, where intense fighting between Hezbollah and Israel is ongoing.

The UN has said the deaths are under investigation, while Israel has denied any involvement.

In another reversal, Trump expresses interest in the U.S. keeping Strait of Hormuz open

The president said in a post on social media Friday morning that “With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE. IT WOULD BE A “GUSHER” FOR THE WORLD???”

Trump’s comments seem to fly in the face of his remarks over the past week, including days ago when he said that ensuring safe shipping through the vital waterway was ’not for us” and instead lashed out at other nations, including America’s allies, for not stepping in to police the strait from Iranian attacks on vessels.

The president’s Friday comment seemed to reflect remarks he made in private this week in which he expressed a desire to continue the war and try to seize Iranian oil, but said it “is unfortunate” that there did not seem to be patience among the American people for such an effort.

Israeli strike hits worshippers leaving mosque in West Bekaa, killing 2

The drone strike also wounded 11 people as they were leaving Friday prayers in the town of Sohmor in eastern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency.

The Lebanese Health Ministry did not immediately release its official casualty count.

Iranian media show American aircraft over area where it said pilot ejected

Iranian state media soon after shared images online of what appeared to be American aircraft flying over the area, including helicopters, planes and drones.

The public request for help suggests the Iranian military, police and security services maintain a small presence in the rural region that spans over 15,500 square kilometers (5,900 square miles).

The province is mainly home to Iran’s Lur people, many of whom are farmers. The extreme south of the province is the start of Iran’s oil fields in the area.

Iranian state TV affiliate claims US pilot ejected over southwestern Iran

U.S. Central Command, the Pentagon and White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

This province is about 500 kilometers (310 miles) southwest of Iran’s capital, Tehran. Its provincial capital is Yasuj. It is an intensely rural, mountainous area of Iran, home to around 600,000 people.

The anchor on the Iranian channel urged residents to hand over any “enemy pilot” to police and promised a reward for anyone who did. The channel is in Kohkilouyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province, an intensely rural and mountainous region that spans over 15,500 square kilometers (5,900 square miles). An on-screen crawl earlier urged the public to “shoot them if you see them,” referring to social media footage circulating of what appeared to be U.S. aircraft in the area.

The Iranian channel showed metal debris in the back of a pickup truck while making the announcement. Iranian state media then shared images online of what appeared to be American aircraft flying over the area, including helicopters, planes and drones.

A major explosion from an airstrike struck Iran’s capital, Tehran, around the same time Friday afternoon. It wasn’t clear what had been hit.

At least 12 people were injured by missile shrapnel in UAE

Shrapnel from a missile interception in Abu Dhabi’s Ajban area on Friday left at least 12 people hurt. Officials said seven of those injured were from Nepal and five from India.

Churches in the UAE also announced they will be closed over Easter Sunday due to orders from the government as the war continued.

Israel says it will occupy new positions inside Lebanon in coming days

Israel’s military said Friday it will soon be able to say it has established new defensive lines in order to prevent direct fire on communities in northern Israel.

Army spokesman Nadav Shoshani said Israel will establish control and defense for its communities coming under “immediate fire” posing an “imminent threat.” Shoshani said Israel has killed at least 1,000 Hezbollah militants since the start of the operation.

French-linked container ship transits Strait of Hormuz

The CMA CGM Kribi, sailing under a Malta flag and operated by French shipping company CMA CGM, became possibly the first vessel with links to France to pass through the strait since Iran effectively closed it, according to the MarineTraffic website.

The ship departed waters off Dubai on Thursday and arrived Friday off Muscat, Oman, MarineTraffic data showed. CMA CGM, the world’s third-largest container shipping company, declined to comment when contacted by AP.

Traffic through the strait has dropped by about 90% since the start of the Iran war. Only about 150 vessels, including tankers and container ships, have transited the strait since March 1, according to data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence. Most were linked to Iran and countries including China, India and Pakistan.

Iran’s civilian casualties are mostly from strikes on state-linked sites, monitor says

Civilian casualties in Iran were clustered around strikes on government-linked sites “rather than indiscriminate bombardment” of urban areas, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, the U.S-based group known as ACLED.

Iran reported at least 1,973 people were killed since the start of the war. The deadliest attack was on Feb. 28 on a school near a Revolutionary Guard base in southern Iran, killing over 160 civilians, most of them children.

ACLED said most of the recorded incidents resulting in civilian casualties happened after strikes on security or military sites in densely populated areas. It documented under 100 such attacks.

Targeted assassinations of government and security officials were the second most documented cause of civilian casualties. ACLED said it documented nearly 50 strikes on specific floors or using heavy ammunitions that destroyed entire buildings. In nearly 40 incidents documented by ACLED, strikes on civilian sites repurposed by security forces, such as sports complexes where they sheltered as their bases come under attack, led to civilian casualties.

British prime minister condemns drone attacks on Kuwait oil refinery

Kuwait blamed Iran for the drone attacks that sparked fires at its Mina al-Ahmadi refinery Friday. There were no injuries reported.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer reiterated the U.K.’s support for Kuwait in his call with Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Khalid Al Sabah, his office said.

Britain’s defense minister said this week that it was deploying an air defense system to Kuwait as part of efforts to protect its interests in the region.

The rescue occurred as the U.S. military was conducting a search and rescue operation, according to three people familiar who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitivity of the situation. Israel is helping the United States with the operation.

According to an email from the Pentagon obtained by The Associated Press, the U.S. military said that it received notification of “an aircraft being shot down” in the Middle East. The email did not provide more details.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a previous statement that President Donald Trump had been briefed but did not offer any additional information.

It was the first time the U.S. has lost aircraft in Iranian territory and constitutes a dramatic escalation in the war since it began five weeks ago.

Iran fired on targets across the Mideast on Friday, as Tehran kept the pressure on Israel and its Gulf Arab neighbors, despite U.S. and Israeli insistence that Iran’s military capabilities have been all but destroyed.

Iran’s attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas transits in peacetime, have roiled stock markets, sent oil prices skyrocketing, and threatened to raise the cost of many basic goods, including food.

US drones and helicopters spotted over mountainous region

Prior to word of the rescue, social media footage showed American drones, aircraft and helicopters flying over the mountainous region where a TV channel affiliated with Iranian state television had said earlier Friday that at least one pilot bailed out of the fighter jet.

An anchor on the channel urged residents to hand over any “enemy pilot” to police and promised a reward.

The number of crew on board wasn't immediately known. The Pentagon and U.S. Central Command didn’t immediately respond to several messages seeking comment.

Throughout the war, Iran has made a series of claims about shooting down piloted enemy aircraft that turned out not to be true. Friday was the first time that Iran went on television urging the public to look for a suspected downed pilot.

An on-screen crawl earlier urged the public to “shoot them if you see them,” referring to the social media footage circulating of U.S. aircraft in the area. The channel showed metal debris in the back of a pickup truck while making the announcement but provided no other immediate details.

Iran targets a desalination plant and a refinery

The claim came after Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery came under Iranian attack, and the state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. said firefighters were working to control several blazes.

Kuwait also said an Iranian attack caused “material damage” to a desalination plant. Such plants are responsible for most of the drinking water for Gulf states, and they have become a major target in the war.

Sirens also sounded in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia said it had destroyed several Iranian drones, and Israel reported incoming missiles.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates shut down a gas field after a missile interception reportedly rained debris on it and started a fire.

Activists reported strikes around Tehran and the central city of Isfahan, but it wasn’t immediately clear what was hit. A day earlier, Iran said the U.S. hit a major bridge, which was still under construction, killing eight people.

In Lebanon, where Israel has launched a ground invasion in its fight with the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militant group, an Israeli drone strike on worshippers leaving Friday prayers near Beirut killed two people, according to the state‑run National News Agency

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran since the war began on Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli strikes. In a review released Friday, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a U.S.-based group, said it found that civilian casualties were clustered around strikes on security and state-linked sites “rather than indiscriminate bombardment” of urban areas.

More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, 19 have been reported dead in Israel, and 13 U.S. service members have been killed.

More than 1,300 people have been killed and more than 1 million displaced in Lebanon. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.

Iran is keeping a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz

World leaders have struggled to end Iran’s stranglehold on the strait, which has had far-reaching consequences for the global economy and has proved to be its greatest strategic advantage in the war.

The U.N. Security Council was expected to take up the matter on Saturday.

Trump has vacillated on America’s role in the strait, alternately threatening Iran if it doesn’t open the waterway and telling other nations to “go get your own oil.” On Friday, he said in a post on social media that, “With a little more time, we can easily OPEN THE HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE.”

Spot prices of Brent crude, the international standard, were around $109 Friday, up more than 50% since the start of the war, when Iran began restricting traffic through the strait.

Iran’s former top diplomat suggests terms to end the war

Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif — a diplomat with long experience negotiating with the West who remains close to a pragmatic wing of Iran’s leadership — wrote on Friday in Foreign Affairs magazine that the time has come to end what he referred to as a stalemate.

The U.S. and Iran have proposed dueling plans, and Zarif's proposal included elements of both in a sign part of Iran's leadership might be willing to negotiate.

Iran “should offer to place limits on its nuclear program and to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to all sanctions — a deal Washington wouldn’t take before but might accept now,” he wrote.

It’s not clear how much to read into the proposal from Zarif, who has no official position in Iran’s government, but would likely not have published such a piece without at least some authorization from senior leaders.

___

Mednick reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, and Toropin reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Tong-hyung Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Michelle L. Price, Lisa Mascaro and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.

If the two sides can’t reach an agreement by the end of Tuesday, March 31, 2026, Memorial Hermann hospitals, facilities and affiliated providers could become out-of-network for certain BCBSTX plans.

What “out-of-network” could mean for patients

If Memorial Hermann becomes out-of-network, patients could see:

• Higher co-pays
• Higher deductible costs
• Unexpected medical bills, depending on the plan’s rules and benefits

It could also disrupt continuity of care, especially for people who are:

• In the middle of treatment
• Pregnant
• Managing a disability, acute condition, or life-threatening illness
• Scheduled for an upcoming procedure

In those situations, patients may have to determine whether they can keep their current doctor and location of care or move to another provider that remains in-network.

A similar situation unfolded in 2022, when the contract expired at the end of February. Negotiations continued after that deadline, and the organizations later announced a four-year agreement that restored in-network access for patients.

What you can do right now

Patients don’t have to wait until they’re at a doctor’s office to find out what their coverage will be.

Here are immediate steps to take:

1. Call the number on the back of your insurance ID card and ask what your options are if Memorial Hermann becomes out-of-network.
2. If you’re pregnant or have a disability, acute condition, or life-threatening illness, ask about “continuity of care.”
3. 1. You may qualify to keep receiving care at in-network rates for a limited time, but you typically must apply.
4. Check your plan’s provider directory to confirm which Memorial Hermann locations and doctors are covered under your specific plan.
5. If you have appointments coming up, call your doctor’s office and ask what they recommend if the network status changes.

Memorial Hermann released the following statement regarding the situation:

“Despite nearly eight months of our best efforts to negotiate fair and reasonable terms, we have yet to reach an agreement with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas. This comes as little surprise, given Blue Cross Blue Shield’s national and statewide playbook of asking for unreasonable demands while dragging out negotiations to the last minute. This approach ignores the financial realities facing health systems and health care providers today, jeopardizes continuity of care and creates unnecessary anxiety for the patients and families who depend on us for their care. We remain committed to serving the Greater Houston community and urge Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas to negotiate a good faith proposal that values patients, respects caregivers and preserves their members’ access to care.”

BlueCross BlueShield released the following statement:

“After months of active negotiations, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas and Memorial Hermann Health System could not reach an agreement that reflects our joint commitment to access to affordable, quality health care for our members and patients. We remain committed to pursuing good faith negotiations that ensure we can fairly and prudently cover the cost of care appropriately on behalf of our members.

“We take any disruption in our network of providers very seriously and are working earnestly to ensure our customers, members and their families have access to undisrupted care now and in the future. Members can visit https://www.bcbstx.com/memorialhermann for the most recent updates.

“Members who are being treated for an acute condition or life-threatening illness, a disability, or pregnancy may qualify for continuity-of-care. This means they could still receive care at Memorial Hermann Health System during treatment at in-network rates. Members can find out if they are eligible by calling the number on their member ID card for more information.”

The lawmakers' failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.

“They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature.

Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes.

But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.

“We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.

Republican House Speaker Jon Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature” on the possibility of a special session.

Kemp spokesperson Carter Chapman said he Republican governor will examine the situation.

“We’ll analyze all bills, as well as the consequence of those that did not pass,” Chapman said Friday.

House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson's plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn't use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.

“The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump's backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.”

A spokesperson for Jones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.

Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.

“This is uncharted territory,” he said.

Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”

Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.

“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said.

Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November.

Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible.

“They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it," Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.

Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.

“If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said.

Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner.

Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so.

Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.

“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”

Readers “will not find a printed Las Vegas Sun insert inside,” the Review-Journal said in an editorial, noting the Sun maintains a website, has a few hundred thousand followers across social media platforms, and is free to produce its own newspaper.

“We encourage them to do so. The Review-Journal competes with countless sources of news and entertainment, but we would welcome one more. We just don’t want to foot the bill. It is time the Sun stood up on its own two feet,” the editorial said, without specifying the cost.

The two publications will be in court Friday and the Sun hopes a judge will order printing to immediately resume, attorney Leif Reid said in an email. It will be the first day in 76 years that the Sun hasn’t been printed, he said.

“This does irreparable harm to our community, as no one benefits when a local newspaper is prevented from being published,” he said.

The now-rare joint operating agreement required the Sun to be printed as a daily insert in the Review-Journal, while both companies remained editorially independent with separate newsrooms and websites.

A lower court had found the agreement was unenforceable because a 2005 update was never signed by the U.S. attorney general, and in February the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the Sun.

The Review-Journal editorial called the Supreme Court decision a decisive victory, saying that halting publication of the Sun on Friday was “a result of 6½ years of litigation between the newspapers, precipitated by the Sun.”

Such agreements between rival publications have dwindled as part of a "long, slow goodbye of newspapers as we knew them,” said Ken Doctor, a news business analyst. The Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News ended a 40-year agreement last year. USA Today Co., which owns the Detroit Free Press, recently announced its plans to purchase the Detroit News.

The two papers are longtime rivals

In 1950, the Sun was founded in response to the Review-Journal’s refusal to negotiate with typesetters from the International Typographical Union. The union started its own newspaper and reached out to businessman Hank Greenspun for financial backing. The Greenspuns still own the paper.

The Review-Journal has been publishing since 1909, first as the Clark County Review. It is owned by the Adelson family, casino magnates and mega GOP donors, and remains the state’s largest newspaper.

The Review-Journal’s editorials lean more conservative, while the Sun’s lean liberal. The 1970 law signed by then President Richard Nixon, called the Newspaper Preservation Act, was designed to save newspapers costs while maintaining competition and editorial variety in cities as newspapers began to financially struggle.

The papers first entered into a joint operating agreement in 1989 when the Sun was struggling to stay afloat financially. The agreement made the Sun an afternoon newspaper during weekdays and a section within the Review-Journal on weekend mornings, while the Review-Journal handled production, distribution and advertising. The Review-Journal also collected all revenue and was required to pay the Sun monthly to cover the Sun’s news and editorial expenses.

In 2005 the agreement was amended to make the Sun an insert in the Review-Journal every morning.

Review-Journal owners sought to end the agreement in 2019, and in response the Sun’s owners filed a lawsuit alleging that ending the agreement violated anti-trust laws.

Readers have more options today

The 1970 law allowing such agreements was signed at a time when news options weren't as prevalent and there was more concern over news monopolies.

Las Vegas — and Nevada as a whole — today have more strong, independent news organizations compared to other places, said Stephen Bates, a journalism and media professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

The Sun also publishes online. But it has argued in court that losing its print product could make it harder to recruit staff, cause a loss in readers, and even force it to close.

Genelle Belmas, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas who specializes in media law, said it would be disappointing if the last joint operating agreement in the country ends. During visits to Vegas, she's enjoyed being able to pick up the Review-Journal and see the Sun folded inside, offering two differing points of view in one place. Online news outlets make it easier for consumers to stay in their echo chambers, she said.

“Every local news outlet we lose — and that includes big towns, small towns, whatever — is a loss of perspective and a loss of a potential alternative view,” Belmas said.

Seven candidates are on the ballot. Whoever is elected will serve through the end of Kamin’s term on Jan. 1, 2028.

District C includes portions of the Heights, Washington Avenue, Montrose, Rice Village, and Meyerland.

Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth said turnout during early voting was low.

“Only 3.8% of District C’s 168,539 registered voters cast their ballots during the early voting period,” Hudspeth said. “We strongly encourage every eligible voter to participate on Election Day, so their voices are fully represented.”

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Voters may cast a ballot at any of the 20 vote centers open on Election Day. A list of locations and estimated wait times is available at HarrisVotes.com, the clerk’s office said.

What to bring: acceptable photo ID

Officials said voters can use one of the following forms of photo identification:

• Texas driver’s license (DPS)
• Texas Election Identification Certificate (DPS)
• Texas personal identification card (DPS)
• Texas handgun license (DPS)
• U.S. military ID with photo
• U.S. citizenship certificate with photo
• U.S. passport (book or card)

Voting by mail: who is eligible

The clerk’s office said eligible voters for mail ballots include:

• People 65 or older
• Voters who are sick or have a disability
• Voters who will be outside the county during the voting period
• Voters expecting to give birth within three weeks before or after Election Day
• Voters confined in jail but otherwise eligible to vote

For a sample ballot, vote center locations, and additional election information, voters can visit HarrisVotes.com and follow @HarrisVotes on social media for updates.

NASA released the crew’s first downlinked images Friday, 1 1/2 days into the first astronaut moonshot in more than half a century.

The first photo taken by commander Reid Wiseman shows a curved slice of Earth in one of the capsule’s windows. The second shows the entire globe with the oceans topped by swirling white tendrils of clouds. A green aurora even glows, according to NASA.

As of midmorning Friday, Wiseman and his crew were 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometers) from Earth and were quickly gaining on the moon with another 160,000 miles (258,000 kilometers) to go. They should reach their destination on Monday.

The three Americans and one Canadian will swing around the moon in their Orion capsule, hang a U-turn and then head straight back home without stopping. They fired Orion's main engine Thursday night that set them on their course.

After Mission Control shifted the position of their capsule, the entire Earth complete with northern lights filled their windows.

“It was the most spectacular moment, and it paused all four of us in our tracks,” Wiseman said in a TV interview.

They're the first lunar travelers since Apollo 17 in 1972.

___

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.

Widespread rain isn’t expected until Saturday when the cold front arrives.

That’s the period to watch, as the heaviest rain and strongest thunderstorms are likely in the evening hours.

Snap any pics of weather in your area? Send them to Click2Pins here.

Track it all on our live radar:

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Pittsburgh selected the 19-year-old shortstop's contract from Triple-A Indianapolis before its home opener against the Baltimore Orioles.

The club tipped its hand on Thursday, featuring Griffin on various social media platforms, including an Instagram post with pictures of Griffin at PNC Park and the caption “KG has arrived in Pittsburgh.”

Pittsburgh created room for Griffin on the active roster early Thursday evening, optioning outfielder Billy Cook to Indianapolis, then opened a spot on the 40-man roster by designating infielder Enmanuel Valdez for assignment on Friday.

Griffin is expected to address reporters on Friday morning at the ballpark where the club hopes he can be a lineup fixture for years to come and the team's most consequential position player since former centerfielder Andrew McCutchen, who won the 2013 NL MVP and helped guide Pittsburgh to three straight playoff berths from 2013-15.

Soto also was 19 when he made his major league debut for the Nationals in 2018.

The question when the season started last week wasn't if Griffin would make his big-league debut this year, but when. The answer turned out to be “not very long” after Griffin hit .438 (7 for 16) with three doubles, an RBI and three stolen bases at Triple-A Indianapolis.

The 6-foot-3 Griffin, taken with the ninth overall pick in the 2024 amateur draft, has rocketed through Pittsburgh's farm system. He batted .333 with 21 home runs, 94 RBIs and 65 stolen bases in 122 games at Class A and Double-A in 2025.

Griffin earned an invitation to Pittsburgh's big-league camp and was among the last cuts before the opening day roster was set. While he showcased his power by smashing three home runs during Grapefruit League play — the most by a teenager in spring training in at least two decades — he also struck out more than a dozen times.

The Pirates broke camp with Jared Triolo at shortstop and Nick Gonzales at third. The addition of Griffin likely means Triolo — a Gold Glove winner as a utility player — will head to third.

While Pittsburgh has been in talks with Griffin about a lengthy contract, the Pirates would benefit if any agreement is not finalized until after he plays. The team would remain eligible to receive an extra draft pick through the Prospect Promotion Incentive if it waits until after Griffin's debut to sign him to a multi-year contract.

To receive the pick — which would come at the end of the first round — Griffin would need to accrue one year of service time as a rookie and either win the NL Rookie of the Year or be a finalist for NL MVP.

The Pirates have invested heavily in the amateur draft since general manager Ben Cherington joined the club in late 2019. Pittsburgh already has the highest signing bonus pool ($19.13 million) in the majors available for the 2026 draft.

Griffin will be joining a team off to a 3-3 start after taking two of three in Cincinnati. The Pirates are anchored by one of the best young starting rotations in the majors, led by reigning Cy Young winner Paul Skenes, who picked up his first victory of the season on Wednesday.

Pittsburgh upgraded its woeful offense in the offseason, trading for All-Star second baseman Brandon Lowe and signing first baseman/outfielder Ryan O'Hearn and designated hitter Marcell Ozuna in free agency. Lowe already has three homers this season for the Pirates, whose 10 home runs through six games are tied with the Los Angeles Angels for most in the majors. Pittsburgh finished dead last in homers by a wide margin last season.

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

Attorney General Ken Paxton says his office has received more than 100 formal complaints, along with thousands more online, tied to companies selling residential solar panel systems.

• Homeowners say solar savings promised, higher bills delivered

At the center of the investigation are potential violations of the Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act. According to the Attorney General’s Office, investigators are examining whether companies “misrepresentations regarding savings for consumers on their energy bills, the efficacy of their solar panel systems, equipment implementations, as well as the companies’ terms and policies.”

Those companies are Freedom Forever LLC, SunRun Inc., Lone Star Solar Services LLC, and CAM Solar Inc.

• After $134K solar bill threat, company agrees to remove panels at no cost

The state has issued Civil Investigative Demands to multiple companies requiring them to turn over documents related to:

• How they calculate and advertise energy savings
• Warranty and service agreements
• Marketing materials
• Customer contracts and billing information

“Thousands of Texans have been targeted… and it’s imperative that these companies are held responsible for any lies or deceptive marketing,” Paxton said in a statement.

KPRC 2 has been reporting on similar concerns.

One of those cases involved Houston homeowner Frances Holt, who signed a contract with Sunrun after a door-to-door sales pitch promised lower energy bills and protection from outages. Instead, she says she ended up facing confusion, installation issues, and a shocking demand for more than $134,000 tied to her agreement.

• How to file a state complaint after solar panel sales concerns

Holt told KPRC 2’s Rilwan Balogun she felt pressured into signing a contract she didn’t fully understand and was never given a printed copy of the more than 40-page agreement.

After KPRC 2’s reporting, Sunrun issued a statement apologizing and agreed to remove Holt’s solar panels at no cost.

Since that report aired, multiple viewers have reached out with similar stories.

Consumer advocates say these complaints are not isolated.

Organizations like AARP Texas have warned that confusion around solar contracts and aggressive sales tactics have surged in recent years. State data shows complaints tied to residential solar issues increased dramatically between 2018 and 2023.

The Attorney General’s investigation does not automatically mean wrongdoing has been proven, but it signals increased scrutiny of an industry that has rapidly expanded across Texas.

If violations are found, the state could pursue legal action against the companies involved.

What you should know

State officials and consumer advocates say the investigation underscores a key message: homeowners should take extra care before signing solar agreements.

That includes:

• Reviewing full contracts, not just summaries on a tablet
• Verifying claims about energy savings
• Researching companies and checking for complaints
• Taking time before agreeing to long-term financial commitments

Consumers who believe they were misled can file complaints with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, which oversees parts of the solar industry.

“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”

The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.

McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.

“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”

McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.

McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.

He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.

“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”

WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.

“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. "There is Greats of the ‘80s, Sounds of the ’70s, '90s Rewind," as well as local news and “specialty programming.”

LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.

“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”

And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.

The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is on the first floor of McIntire’s home.

Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.

They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.

“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.

This news comes hot on the heels of the decision to shutter CBS News Radio after nearly a century in operation. After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.

“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”

They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.

They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”

Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRP-TV and WKRP-DT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.

“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”

Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of “WKRP” in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it’s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word “crap.”

“The value comes from the love of the characters for each other,” he said. “And now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.”

Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.

“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”

___

This story has been updated to correct that the studio is on the first floor of the home, not the basement.

A New England furniture chain is offering to reimburse customers for products purchased earlier this year if both the UConn men’s and women’s basketball teams reach the championship games.

That means some 20,000 Jordan’s Furniture customers could be fully repaid for $50 million worth of sales if the two teams win their Final Four games on Friday and Saturday.

For Brian Mazzilli of Plymouth, Massachusetts, that could mean a $3,800 refund for a living room sofa and coffee table. Not previously a college sports fan, he has declared himself an enthusiastic new follower of the Huskies.

“We thought the chances were pretty slim, but now we're pretty excited," Mazzilli said in the aftermath of the UConn men's stunning buzzer-beater win over Duke in last weekend's Elite Eight. “It just didn’t seem that both teams from one school making it to the finals — that seems kind of a long shot.”

When UConn's Braylon Mullins hit the winning, 35-foot shot to beat Duke, Mazzilli said he was jumping up and down like he did when the Patriots' Adam Vinatieri kicked the winning, last-second field goal against the Rams in the 2002 Super Bowl to give New England its first NFL title.

Jordan's isn't on the hook for the $50 million itself. It got insurance for the promotion like it did in 2007 when it offered a similar deal if the Boston Red Sox won the World Series — which they did. In that deal, more than 24,000 customers were reimbursed about $35 million.

“We want this to happen,” Eliot Tatelman, the retired president of Jordan’s who is still the face of the Massachusetts-based retailer in TV ads, said in a phone interview Thursday. “Whether they win or lose, I got to pay for the insurance."

Tatelman said he came up with the UConn promotion idea while thinking of ways to increase the company's stature in Connecticut, where other furniture businesses have been around longer.

The promotion was offered to customers who bought furniture, mattresses and accessories at Jordan's from Jan. 20 to Feb. 16 of this year, with some exceptions. The company will send out refund checks if both UConn teams make it to the championship games.

Jordan's, incorporated in 1928 in Waltham, Massachusetts, by Tatelman's grandfather, has eight retail locations in New England. The company was sold to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in 1999. It's known for entertainment attractions at its stores — including IMAX 3D movie theaters, a rope course and, in Reading, Massachusetts, depictions of Boston landmarks made of millions of jelly beans.

The undefeated, No. 1-seeded UConn women take on South Carolina in the Final Four on Friday night, while the men's team — a No. 2 seed — plays Illinois on Saturday.

Valerie Archer, 34, an executive director at a cancer research hospital in Houston, said she chose to freeze her eggs to give herself more options in the future.

“I’ve found some people have a negative connotation of egg freezing, but by working with the team at CCRM Fertility of Houston, I learned that taking control of our reproductive health is really an important part of our health journey, no matter what stage of life,” Archer said. “I hope my story empowers others to advocate for more fertility benefits in the workplace, so that everyone has access to these types of treatments and options.”

Archer underwent treatment at CCRM Fertility of Houston with fertility specialist Dr. Beth Zhou. She said it was during that process that she first learned fertility treatments might be covered by her employer.

• ‘Rodeo was insulted’: Harris County commissioners nix call for Hidalgo’s resignation from resolution after tense debate

“The need for fertility treatment crosses all socioeconomic factors, yet the high cost of care remains a significant obstacle,” Zhou explained. “While egg freezing can cost upwards of $15,000, we strive to make it more accessible. Our team collaborates with insurers to maximize coverage, and for patients with supplemental fertility benefits, those out-of-pocket expenses can be reduced substantially.”

Archer said she only discovered the benefit after speaking with her care team and then confirming the details with her human resources department.

Her experience comes as fertility benefits are becoming more common in workplaces across the country. According to a 2024 survey by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, 42% of U.S. employers offered fertility-related benefits, up from 30% in 2020.

There is also a sharp rise in the number of people choosing to freeze their eggs. Data from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology show egg freezing procedures in the United States increased from about 6,000 in 2014 to more than 39,000 in 2023.

• Texas will ban smokeable hemp cannabis on March 31. Here’s what you need to know.

Archer said she hopes sharing her experience helps normalize conversations around fertility and encourages others to ask questions about their own benefits.

She said many people may not realize what is available to them and wants others to understand they could have more options and support than they think.

Ukrainian officials claim the Kremlin is changing its tactics to increase civilian suffering, shifting to daytime barrages and preparing to target more key infrastructure.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signaled Kyiv's openness to a potential Easter truce. The holiday is celebrated on April 12 in Ukraine and Russia.

Zelenskyy also said that Ukraine is preparing for a shift in Russian aerial tactics, with intelligence indicating that future attacks will move beyond energy infrastructure.

Russia's Defense Ministry said 192 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight across Russia and occupied Crimea.

‘I have no words’

“The Kyiv region is once again under a massive Russian missile and drone attack,” said Mykola Kalashnyk, head of the regional military administration, in a Telegram post on Friday.

Kalashnyk said one person died and at least eight others were wounded in strikes on three of Kyiv’s satellite towns — Bucha, Fastiv and Obukhiv. Earlier in the week, residents of Bucha marked the fourth anniversary of atrocities committed in the town by Russia's invading forces.

Obukhiv resident Lesia Podoriako, 37, told The Associated Press she was at work with her child when she learned her building had been struck.

“I found out about it through Telegram channels. Then all my friends and acquaintances started calling me, telling me that our building was attacked. I have no words. The main thing is that everyone is alive and healthy,” she said.

Another person was killed in Ukraine's northern Sumy region after a Russian guided aerial bomb struck an apartment block, local Gov. Oleh Hryhorov reported. Authorities in the Kherson, Zhytomyr, Kharkiv and Donetsk regions also reported casualties from Friday's attacks.

Ukrainian officials highlighted what they said were increased daytime attacks by Russia, which they said could lead to more civilian deaths. For months, Moscow pummeled Ukraine with nighttime missile and drone strikes that could involve hundreds of drones at a time.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Andrii Sybiha, said in a post on X that “almost half a thousand drones and cruise missiles” attacked Ukraine overnight.

“This is how Moscow responds to Ukraine’s Easter ceasefire proposals — with brutal attacks,” Sybiha said.

Kyiv floats an Easter ceasefire

Zelenskyy on Thursday signaled Kyiv's continued openness to a potential truce on Easter, which falls next week according to the Julian calendar followed by Orthodox churches in Ukraine and Russia.

Zelenskyy told reporters that the proposal had been communicated to Moscow through U.S. channels. He added that the Kremlin's response remains unclear.

Zelenskyy has previously offered a ceasefire for the Easter period — but Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week that Moscow wants a lasting peace settlement, not a temporary truce.

President Vladimir Putin unilaterally declared a 30-hour ceasefire last Easter, but each side accused the other of breaking it.

A change in Russian tactics?

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said Russia was increasingly striking the country during the day, an apparent departure from months of nighttime barrages.

Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation within Ukraine's defense ministry, said that the daytime strikes aimed to “increase civilian casualties.”

“That is why the combined attack is carried out on a working day, using a large number of drones and missiles,” Kovalenko wrote on Friday in a Telegram post.

Zelenskyy told reporters on Thursday that Ukraine is preparing for Russian aerial attacks that could target water systems, logistics and other critical networks. After months of sustained strikes on power facilities, Kyiv now expects increased pressure elsewhere.

“According to intelligence documents we have received, the Russians will target logistics – railways and other infrastructure. They will also target the water supply,” Zelenskyy said at a press briefing.

Around midday on Friday, Russian forces dropped five aerial bombs on the city of Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine. At least two people were killed and three were injured, according to a Telegram update by Vadym Filashkin, who heads the regional military administration.

Elsewhere in Ukraine on Friday, a Russian drone strike damaged a bus in the southern city of Kherson, leaving the driver seriously wounded and at least eight passengers hurt, according to regional officials.

Separately, authorities reported sustained attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, beginning on Thursday and continuing into early Friday. Drone strikes near the city center caused several injuries. Two people later died in hospital, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov wrote in separate Telegram updates.

Bohdan Hladykh, head of Kharkiv’s Department of Emergency Situations, said Russia struck the city at least 20 times during the day on Thursday with explosive drones.

Zelenskyy says battlefield situation has stabilized

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy told reporters that the battlefield situation has stabilized, with recent intelligence assessments pointing to the most favorable conditions for Kyiv in months. While fighting remains intense across eastern sectors, Ukrainian forces have disrupted Russian offensives in recent weeks and regained limited ground.

“On Wednesday I received a report from our intelligence and an analysis from British intelligence. I received MI6’s assessment of the situation at the front: right now, it is the best situation for Ukraine in the past 10 months,” the Ukrainian leader said at a press briefing Thursday.

Zelenskyy added that Ukraine has invited U.S. negotiators to visit Kyiv, as part of ongoing discussions on security guarantees and a broader framework for ending the war. Recent talks have involved senior American officials as well as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, with Ukraine seeking clearer commitments on long-term defense support and responses to any future Russian aggression.

Ukrainian drones target Russia

Two people were hospitalized on Friday following a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia's Leningrad region, over 1,100 kilometers (684 miles) from the border, said regional Gov. Alexander Drozdenko reported, who added that the drones also set fire to an “unoccupied” building within the Morozov industrial zone.

The settlement of Morozov houses a state-owned plant that makes explosives and components for ammunition, including solid fuel used in Topol-M missile systems. The plant was put under U.S., EU and other Western sanctions following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Twelve people, including at least three Russian soldiers, were injured in a Ukrainian drone strike late Thursday on Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, local Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov reported.

Four drones were downed during the night on the approach to Moscow, mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported Friday. He did not reference any casualties or damage.

___

Associated Press journalists Vasilisa Stepanenko in Obukhiv and Derek Gatopoulos in Kyiv contributed.

Zendaya, surprising precisely nobody on the planet, showed up in dazzling blue at Thursday’s New York premiere of “The Drama,” after teasing the bridal theme for weeks by wearing something old, then something new, then something borrowed.

Her strapless Schiaparelli Haute Couture ball gown, accompanied by sapphire earrings, completed the sartorial series just in time for the opening of her movie — a film that has attracted considerable controversy and mixed reviews. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play a couple whose wedding plans go seriously awry following a dark revelation.

The high-fashion appearances have also echoed the bridal theme of Zendaya’s own life, with unconfirmed speculation flying — fed in part by rings she’s been wearing — that she’s already married to partner Tom Holland.

The actor and her stylist, Law Roach, saved the most spectacular outfit for last. Schiaparelli posted on its own Instagram ​​that the gown, which took some 8,000 hours of work, was made of blue and black raw silk “feathers” in satin stitch embroidery, and contained 27 shades of blue.

“Something old” came in Los Angeles on March 17, where Zendaya wore the same white, off-the-shoulder Vivienne Westwood Bridal gown that she’d worn to the 2015 Oscars.

She transitioned to “something new” at the March 24 Paris premiere — a white custom Louis Vuitton gown with a huge black bow and train.

“Something borrowed” came two days later in Rome, a black Armani Privé dress previously worn by Cate Blanchett, with a plunging neckline framed with stones.

Finally on Thursday, Zendaya completed the circle. “SomethingBlue,” posted Roach.

In case nobody had noticed.

The 6-foot-9, 250-pound forward proved tough enough to score through physical play. Rangy enough to space the floor and shoot from outside. Deft enough as a passer to find teammates, whether against constant double teams coming for him as the top name on every scouting report or while running the entire offense from up top.

“You just want to affect winning in whatever way you can,” Boozer said.

The high-end NBA prospect did that all season for a team that won 35 games, reached No. 1 in the AP Top 25 poll, claimed the top overall seed for March Madness and reached the NCAA Tournament's Elite Eight. Now he's The Associated Press men’s college basketball national player of the year, only the fifth freshman to earn the honor and the second in a row for a Duke program that keeps adding to the longest list of winners in the country.

“It just goes to show more about what our team has done, just because I think that really helps awards like this, having great team success,” Boozer told the AP. “It’s really just not me.”

Boozer, named unanimous first-team AP all-American last month, received 59 of 61 votes from AP Top 25 voters in results released Friday. BYU freshman AJ Dybantsa, another potential top NBA pick, received the other two votes after averaging a national-best 25.5 points per game.

A short list

Boozer, son of Duke and longtime NBA player Carlos Boozer, ranked averaged 22.5 points (ninth in Division I) and 10.2 rebounds (12th) while finishing tied for the national lead with 22 double-doubles. He also averaged 4.1 assists while posting efficient shooting numbers at 55.6% overall and 39.1% from 3-point range.

He joins fellow Blue Devils star Cooper Flagg last year, another Duke player in Zion Williamson (2019), Kentucky’s Anthony Davis (2012) and Texas star Kevin Durant (2007) as freshmen to win the AP award. Each went No. 1 or No. 2 in the NBA draft that year.

“I’m very grateful just that I’m even in those (NBA) conversations,” Boozer said. “I think a lot of people dream of being where I am. Sometimes you’ve got to take a step back and just remember that once upon a time, you were a kid dreaming to be here. So I think it’s very special.”

His coaches think the same of him.

“We’ve been fortunate enough the last two years to have two of the best freshmen to ever play in college basketball back to back,” Duke associate head coach and former Blue Devils player Chris Carrawell said. “And Cam is right up there.

Boozer is Duke's ninth AP winner, each coming from a different player. UCLA is the next closest with five winners, though that included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1967 and 1969) and Bill Walton (1972 and 1973) as two-time selections.

UCLA, Ohio State and Duke rival North Carolina are the only other programs with as many as three different players to win the award.

Big-game successes

Boozer arrived at Duke alongside twin brother Cayden after the two led Miami's Columbus High to four straight state championships. By late February, the Blue Devils were starting a four-week reign atop the AP Top 25 that would carry to March Madness. Boozer — who said he looks at winning as a skill — routinely posted top performances in Duke's biggest games, including during a rugged nonconference slate.

He matched a season high with 35 points in a November win against Arkansas. He followed with 29 points against defending national champion Florida. He also had big performances at Michigan State (18 points, 15 rebounds) and flirted with a triple-double (18 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists) in a February win against Michigan.

Along the way, he pushed through bumps and shoves. He closed Sunday's season-ending loss to UConn with 27 points and his right eye swollen from a first-half blow.

“There’s no agenda other than figuring out a way to win,” Wolverines coach Dusty May said. “I’ve seen him play a number of times this year where there’s six guys in the paint, and it’s not as if he’s jumping 40, 50 inches off the floor. His desire to rebound the ball, to set physical screens, to play to his advantages, is as impressive as any freshman that I can recall.”

Managing pressure

The other challenge was managing the scrutiny that comes from expectations for greatness. A missed shot. A turnover. The 3-for-17 shooting while battling rising frustration and Virginia shot-blocker Ugonna Onyenso in the ACC title game.

“He does a great job of flushing it and not letting it dwell on him too much,” Cayden said. “That’s something he’s always been able to do since we were younger. Obviously I talk to him when he needs me to. And I sometimes just understood that, hey, he’s going through something, give him some space for a little bit and he’ll figure it out.”

Cameron said getting away for time alone and putting down the phone helps. He points to prayer and even a recent effort to read more.

The rest of the time, though, he'll throw himself into becoming a better player. There's comfort in that routine, the results yet to fail him.

“I think just being prepared alleviates pressure," Cameron said. "Being ready for a game, watching film, working out, knowing you put your time in, being confident in yourself — I think all that takes away a lot of the pressure that people talk about. At the end of the day, pressure really is what you put on yourself.”

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

The phone conversation was not captured on video, but Woods could be heard saying, “Thank you so much,” as he hung up and the deputy approached. It wasn't clear if Woods was referring to President Donald Trump, whose former daughter-in-law, Vanessa Trump, is dating Woods.

Shortly after the golfer's March 27 arrest, Trump was asked about Woods and told reporters: “I feel so badly. He’s got some difficulty. Very close friend of mine. He’s an amazing person. Amazing man. But, some difficulty.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Trump spoke to Woods after the crash.

The footage also shows how Woods appeared to be astonished as he was handcuffed after failing a sobriety test and a video from the back of the patrol car shows the handcuffed golfer hiccupping, yawning and repeatedly appearing to nod off during the 15-minute ride.

Woods told authorities he was looking at his phone and changing the radio station when his speeding Land Rover clipped the back of a truck and rolled onto its side on a residential road on Jupiter Island. No one was injured.

“I looked down at my phone, and all of a sudden — boom,” Woods told an officer as he knelt on a lawn, prior to his arrest.

Body camera footage shows Martin County Sheriff’s Deputy Tatiana Levenar then conducting a roadside sobriety test and telling Woods: “I do believe your normal faculties are impaired, and you’re under an unknown substance, so at this time you’re under arrest for DUI."

“I’m being arrested?” Woods responded.

“Yes, sir,” Levenar said.

After handcuffing Woods, authorities searched his pockets and found two white pills.

“That’s a Norco,” Woods said after an officer pulled out the pills, referring to a painkiller that contains acetaminophen and the opioid hydrocodone. Authorities would later confirm that Woods was in possession of hydrocodone.

In the body camera footage, Woods told Levenar that he had not drunk any alcohol and that he had taken “a few” medications earlier in the day, though Woods’ words are muted in the released video as he describes some of the drugs.

At the sheriff’s office complex, after Woods was escorted into the “DUI room” where drivers are tested for being under the influence, Woods said, “I’m not drunk. I’m on a prescription medication,” according to a supplemental sheriff’s office report released Thursday.

Woods, 50, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to suspicion of driving under the influence. He posted a statement Tuesday night saying that he was stepping away indefinitely “to seek treatment and focus on my health.”

Woods agreed to a Breathalyzer test that showed no signs of alcohol, but he refused a urine test, authorities said. Under a change to Florida law last year, refusing an officer’s request to take a breath, blood or urine test became a misdemeanor, even for a first offense.

During the field sobriety test, deputies noticed Woods limping and that he had a compression sock over his right knee. Woods explained he had undergone seven back surgeries and over 20 surgeries on his right leg, and that his ankle seizes up while walking.

Woods, who was hiccupping during questioning, continuously moved his head during one of the sobriety tests and deputies had to tell him several times to keep his head straight, according to an arrest report.

“Based on my observations of Woods, how he performed the exercises and based on my training, knowledge, and experience, I believed that Woods normal faculties were impaired, and he was unable to safely operate the motor vehicle,” Levenar wrote.

Woods is the most influential figure in golf and has become as recognizable as any athlete in the world. The first person of Black heritage to win the Masters in 1997, he has captivated golf fans with records likely never to be broken.

His injuries have kept him from accomplishing more, including from a 2021 Los Angeles car crash that damaged his right leg so badly he said doctors considered amputation. He has not played an official event since the 2024 British Open. He was recovering from a seventh back surgery in October and was trying to return at the Masters, where he is a five-time champion.

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Associated Press writer Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida, contributed to this report.

That's rare, but it might be this season's reality.

The roster of award-caliber players who won't be winning awards this season continues to grow, with Doncic — the Los Angeles Lakers standout guard and MVP candidate — now out with a left hamstring injury. Minnesota guard Anthony Edwards is certain to miss the league's 65-game award eligibility threshold as well after he was held out Thursday because of illness.

Doncic has played 64 games, so he would fall just short of the mark if his hamstring issue keeps him out for the remainder of the regular season -- which has barely over a week remaining. It's worth noting that BetMGM Sportsbook, among others, took Doncic off the list of MVP betting options following his injury Thursday.

“Health is wealth. ... We'll see what happens,” Lakers star LeBron James said.

Edwards can now only reach a maximum of 64 games as well, so he won’t be on the ballot for most major NBA awards either.

What is the 65-game rule?

It was collectively bargained — meaning the league and the players association agreed on the terms — and this is the third season of it being part of the NBA rules.

It applies to player eligibility for five awards — MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, Most Improved Player, the All-NBA Team and the All-Defensive Team. Players have to either play in 65 regular-season games (with some minutes-played minimums in there as well), or at least 62 games before suffering a “season-ending injury."

But even if Doncic's hamstring keeps him out for the rest of the regular season, it wouldn't be classified as “season-ending” unless a doctor — jointly selected by the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association — says he wouldn't be able to play again through May 31.

There is a grievance process and even a way to challenge the rule citing extraordinary circumstances, but neither would be easily utilized.

Who's out of the award races?

Five of the league's six highest-paid players this season — Golden State's Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler, Philadelphia's Joel Embiid, Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo and Boston's Jayson Tatum — aren't eligible for awards. Denver's Nikola Jokic is the exception on the highest-paid list, and he'd likely be ineligible if he misses another game as well.

There were 23 players on the list of those winning MVP, MIP, DPOY, All-NBA and All-Defense last season. Of those, at least 10 are out of the running for honors this season: Antetokounmpo, Curry, Edwards, James, Tatum, Detroit's Cade Cunningham, Indiana teammates Tyrese Haliburton and Ivica Zubac, Utah's Jaren Jackson Jr. and Oklahoma City's Jalen Williams.

Another four award winners from a year ago — Jokic, Oklahoma City's Lu Dort, Golden State's Draymond Green and Cleveland's Evan Mobley — aren't at 65 games yet this season but, for now anyway, seem on pace to get there.

Will the rule be changed?

Never say never. The union wants changes to the policy, and it's certain to come up in their conversations with the league office. But many players — and even Andre Iguodala, now the head of the players' association — have said in recent years that the 65-game rule is a good thing.

The league doesn't seem inclined to make a change based solely on what would appear to be an extraordinary number of award candidates not hitting the threshold in one year.

“I think it is working,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said last month. “I think if you look at the numbers, the pre-implementation of this rule, numbers were going in the wrong direction. I may have this a little bit off: I think the three years before we adopted this rule, almost a third of the All-NBA players had not played 80% of the games. That was a huge issue for the league.”

Scoring champion ... but not All-NBA?

As we said, it's rare, but it has happened. Twice, to be exact.

— 1968-69: Elvin Hayes won the scoring title as a rookie, then wasn't even All-NBA — and didn't win Rookie of the Year, either.

— 1975-76: Bob McAdoo won his third consecutive scoring title and was second in the MVP race — but didn't make All-NBA. Players voted for MVP in those days, and McAdoo was an extremely close second behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Dave Cowens was third in the MVP vote but got the second-team All-NBA nod at center, with Abdul-Jabbar the first-team pick.

Doncic could join that list. He was scheduled for an MRI on Friday to determine the extent of his hamstring injury. It's not mathematically certain yet that he wins the scoring title, but it would take something extraordinary for it not to happen.

He's averaging 33.5 points per game, with Gilgeous-Alexander at 31.6 per game. For Gilgeous-Alexander — last season's scoring champion — to overtake Doncic, he would need to go on an unbelievable run. An example: He'd need to score 292 points over the final five games to take over the top spot, and nobody other than Wilt Chamberlain has had a five-game run like that.

Of the previous 79 scoring champions, 64 were first-team All-NBA and 13 were second-team.

Jokic is going to win the league's rebounding and assist titles, while averaging a triple-double yet again. But he's also not assured yet of being on the award ballots.

Why can some players win statistical titles but not win All-NBA?

The thresholds are different.

While the award mandate is 65 games in most cases, players are eligible for most statistical awards if they play in 58 games (or 70% of the season). There are different standards for some stat awards, such as field-goal percentage (minimum 300 made), free-throw percentage (minimum 125 made) and 3-point percentage (minimum 82 made).

A player can win a stat award while appearing in less than 58 games.

For example, last season, San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama played only 46 games but still won the blocked shot title. Even if he played in the minimum 58 games and recorded no blocks in the 12 games needed to reach that number he still would have been ahead of the runner-up, Utah's Walker Kessler.

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

The sizable increase for the Pentagon had been telegraphed by the Republican president even before the the U.S.-led war against Iran. The president's plan would also reduce spending on non-defense programs by 10% by shifting some responsibilities to state and local governments.

“President Trump promised to reinvest in America’s national security infrastructure, to make sure our nation is safe in a dangerous world,” wrote Budget Director Russell Vought.

The president’s annual budget is considered a reflection of the administration’s values and does not carry the force of law. The massive document typically highlights an administration’s priorities, but Congress, which handles federal spending issues, is free to reject it and often does.

This year’s White House document is intended to provide a road map from the president to Congress as lawmakers build their own budgets and annual appropriations bills to keep the government funded. Vought spoke to House GOP lawmakers on a private call Thursday.

Trump, speaking ahead of an address to the nation this week about the Iran war, signaled the military is his priority, setting up a clash ahead in Congress.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care,” Trump said at a private White House event Wednesday.

“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things,” he said. “They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.”

Money for immigration enforcement, air traffic controllers and national parks

Among the budget priorities the White House called for:

—Supporting the Trump administration's immigration enforcement and deportation operations by eliminating refugee resettlement aid, maintaining Immigration and Customs Enforcement funds at current year levels and drawing on last's year's increases for the Department of Homeland Security funds to continue opening detention facilities, including 100,000 beds for adults and 30,000 for families.

-- A 13% increase in funding for the Department of Justice to focus on violent criminals and what the budget said is the president's promise to stop what it calls migrant crime.

-- A $10 billion fund within the National Park Service for "construction and beautification” projects in Washington, D.C..

-- A $481 million increase in funding to enhance aviation safety and support an air traffic controller hiring surge.

Cuts to green energy, housing and health programs

— Cancels more than $15 billion from the Biden-era bipartisan infrastructure law, including funds for renewable energy projects, and cuts funds to what the Trump administration calls “woke” environmental justice programs and to the National Oceans and Atmospheric Association, or NOAA, grants on climate change.

— 19% cut in the Department of Agriculture, ending certain university grants, a 13% cut for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and about a 12% decrease to the Health and Human Services department, including cuts to a low-income heating assistance program.

The White House is touting cuts on programs that direct federal investments toward low-income communities.

For example, the administration is looking to cut Community Services Block Grants, which funds activities such as financial and job counseling and helping people obtain adequate housing. The administration says its cuts would target grants “hijacked by radicals" to promote equity-building and green energy initiatives.

The president also seeks to cut $106 million in funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which it says has “pushed radical gender ideology onto children.”

Supporters and detractors

The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate Armed Services committees applauded Trump’s request for defense spending, saying the money would ensure the country’s military remains the most advanced in the world while confronting growing threats from China, Russia, Iran and others.

“America is facing the most dangerous global environment since World War II,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala.

The top Democrat on House Budget Committee, Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, said the president was demanding a massive increase in defense while cutting billions from health care, housing and more.

“This budget represents ‘America Last,’” Boyle said.

Debt, deficits and tough choices ahead

With the nation running nearly $2 trillion annual deficits and the debt swelling past $39 trillion, the federal balance sheets have long been operating in the red.

About two-thirds of the nation's estimated $7 trillion in annual spending covers the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs, as well as Social Security income, which are essentially growing — along with an aging population — on autopilot.

The rest of the annual budget has typically been more evenly split between defense and domestic accounts, nearly $1 trillion each, which is where much of the debate in Congress takes place.

The GOP's big tax breaks bill that Trump signed into law last year boosted his priorities beyond the budget process — with at least $150 billion for the Pentagon over the next several years, and $170 billion for Trump’s immigration and deportation operations at the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration is counting on its allies in the Republican-led Congress to again push the president’s priorities, particularly the Defense Department spending, through its own budget process, as it was able to do last year.

It suggests $1.1 trillion for defense would come through the regular appropriations process, which typically requires support from both parties for approval, while $350 billion would go in the budget reconciliation process that Republicans can accomplish on their own, through party-line majority votes.

Congress still fighting over 2026 spending

The president's budget arrives as the House and Senate remain tangled over current-year spending and stalemated over DHS funding, with Democrats demanding changes to Trump’s immigration enforcement regime that Republicans are unwilling to accept.

Trump announced Thursday he would sign an executive order to pay all DHS workers who have gone without paychecks during the record-long partial government shutdown that has reached 49 days.

Last year, in the president's first budget since returning to the White House, Trump sought to fulfill his promise to vastly reduce the size and scope of the federal government, reflecting the efforts of billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

However, while Trump had sought a roughly one-fifth decrease in non-defense spending, Congress kept such spending relatively flat.

Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, called Trump's new budget morally bankrupt.

“Trump wants to build a ballroom—I want to build more affordable housing, and only one of us sits on the Appropriations Committee,” Murray said.

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Associated Press reporter Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

A year and a half after winning the White House by promising to lower costs and end wars, Donald Trump is a wartime president overseeing surging energy costs and an escalating overseas conflict that many in his own party do not like.

He offered little clarity to a nation eager for answers this week during a prime-time address from the White House, his first since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran more than a month ago, simultaneously suggesting that the war was ending and expanding.

“Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.”

Trump's comments come roughly six months before voters across the nation begin to cast ballots in elections that will decide control of Congress and key governorships for Trump’s final two years in office. For now, Republicans, who control all branches of government in Washington, are bracing for a painful political backlash.

“You’re looking at an ugly November,” warned veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “At a point in time when we need every break possible to hold the House and Senate, our edge is being chipped away.”

Republicans confront evolving political landscape

It’s hard to overstate how dramatically the political landscape has shifted.

At this time last year, many Republican leaders believed there was a path to preserve their narrow House majority and easily hold the Senate. Now they privately concede that the House is all but lost and Democrats have a realistic shot at taking the Senate.

Republicans are also struggling to coalesce around a clear midterm message on Iran.

The Republican National Committee has largely avoided the war in talking points issued to surrogates over the last month. The leaders of the party's campaign committees responsible for the House and Senate declined interview requests. Many vulnerable Republican candidates sidestep the issue, unwilling to defend or challenge Trump publicly.

The president remains deeply popular with Republican voters, and he has vocal supporters like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“That was the best speech I could’ve hoped for,” he wrote on social media after Trump's address on Wednesday evening. Graham said Trump “gave the American people a clear and coherent pathway forward.”

Trump made little effort to sell the conflict to Americans before the initial attack. Five weeks later, at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed and hundreds more injured. Thousands more troops have converged on the region, and the Pentagon requested $200 billion in new funding.

The Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for a fifth of the world’s oil, remains closed. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. was $4.08 on Thursday, according to AAA, almost a full dollar higher than on President Joe Biden's last day in office.

On Wednesday, Trump insisted that gas prices would fall quickly once the war concluded but offered no solution for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, he invited skeptical U.S. allies to do it themselves.

He insisted that the war would be worth it.

“This is a true investment in your grandchildren and your grandchildren’s future,” Trump said. “When it’s all over, the United States will be safer, stronger, more prosperous and greater than it has ever been before.”

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who was once among Trump's most vocal allies in Congress, lashed out against his Iran policy.

“I wanted so much for President Trump to put America First. That’s what I believed he would do. All I heard from his speech tonight was WAR WAR WAR,” she wrote on social media. “Nothing to lower the cost of living for Americans.”

Time is not on Trump's side

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say the U.S. military action in Iran has “gone too far,” according to AP-NORC polling from March. Roughly a third approve of how he’s handling Iran overall.

The possibility of sending U.S. forces into Iran also appears politically unpalatable.

About 6 in 10 adults are “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed to deploying U.S. troops on the ground to fight Iran. That includes about half of Republicans. Only about 1 in 10 favor deploying troops.

At the same time, Trump’s approval ratings have remained consistently weak. About 4 in 10 Americans approve of how he’s handling the presidency, roughly in line with how it’s been throughout his second term.

Republican strategist Ari Fleischer, a senior aide in former President George W. Bush’s administration, acknowledged that Trump has not received the polling bump in this war that Bush got after invading Iraq.

Bush, of course, worked to build public backing for the Iraq War before going in. Immediately after the 2003 invasion, Bush's popularity soared, as did the stock market.

Public sentiment and the economy soured only after the conflict stretched on. It ultimately spanned more than eight years, spawning a generation of anti-war Republicans — and sowing the seeds of Trump's “America First” foreign policy.

“My hope is that the Trump experience is the exact opposite of the Bush experience,” Fleischer said.

He said Trump must win the war decisively and quickly to avoid a further backlash, saying there could be a “very significant political upside if things end well, oil comes down and markets rally.”

Fleischer added that Trump's actions will matter much more than his words.

“Ultimately, he is not going to get judged on his persuasion or his explanations or his assertions, he’s going to get judged on results,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

The Labor Department reported Friday that hiring marked a turnaround from the loss of 133,000 jobs in February. The job gains were about three times what economists had forecast. But uncertainty surrounding the war with Iran — and its impact on energy prices — is clouding the outlook for the labor market.

The unemployment rate was down from 4.4% in February. That is partly because the labor force — those working and looking for work — dropped by 396,000 in March so fewer people were competing for jobs. In fact, the percentage of people in the labor force dropped to 61.9% last month, the lowest since November 2021.

Health care companies added 76,400 jobs last month, boosted by the return of 31,000 Kaiser Permanente employees to work after the end of a strike in February. Factories added 15,000 jobs last month but have still shed jobs for 14 of the last 16 months. Construction companies added 26,000 jobs, probably partly because of warmer weather last month.

Average hourly wages were up 0.2% from February. Compared to March 2025, they were up 3.5% — the smallest gain since May 2021 and one consistent with the Federal Reserve's 2% annual inflation target.

Labor Department revisions shaved 7,000 jobs off combined January and February payrolls.

The U.S. job market has been in a slump over the past year. Most economists say the impact of the war and higher energy prices was probably not fully reflected in the March jobs numbers.

“The data is mostly backward-looking, and likely does not incorporate any impact from the recent rise in energy prices, or other risks related to the war in Iran,’’ Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist with the investment firm Jefferies, wrote in a commentary.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG, said that the economy is getting a lift from big tax refunds made possible by President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax cuts. “But those are now being eaten up by higher energy costs,’’ she said.

Last year, employers added an average of just 9,700 jobs a month, the weakest hiring outside a recession since 2002. Businesses have been reluctant to bring on new workers partly because of uncertainty arising from President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports and crackdown on immigration. One measure released by the Labor Department on Monday showed the weakest hiring since April 2020 – in the middle of COVID-19 lockdowns.

But firms have also been reluctant to let go of their existing employees, creating what economists describe as a “no-hire, no-fire’’ scenario that locks young applicants out of the job market. At the same time, there are growing worries that artificial intelligence is taking entry-level jobs.

New jobs are heavily concentrated in health care and social assistance (which includes day care and vocational rehabilitation centers). That combined category accounted for more than half the jobs created last month. The trend reflects an aging U.S. population. A graying Japan saw the same thing in the early 2010s, Vanguard economist Adam Schickling wrote in a commentary ahead of Friday's jobs report.

“The larger-than-expected rebound in nonfarm payrolls in March mainly reflects a reversal of the strike and weather effects that weighed on hiring in February, rather than being a sign that the labor market is rapidly gaining momentum,” said Stephen Brown, chief North America economist at Capital Economics. Citing higher oil prices, he warned of the risk that "the hit to consumers’ purchasing power will weigh on demand and therefore hiring in the near term.''

March’s unexpectedly strong hiring is likely to ease pressure on the Fed policymakers to cut interest rates right away to help the job market, giving them time to assess what impact higher energy prices are having on overall inflation.

Worries about the fallout from the war are likely to limit job gains for awhile. “It’s the nature of uncertainties,’’ said Olu Sonola, U.S. head of research at Fitch Ratings. “Companies typically respond by holding back’’ on hiring decisions.

A lot will depend on how long the conflict lats and what happens to oil prices. The price of benchmark American crude oil closed just below $112 a barrel Thursday. “If that’s $140 next month,″ Sonola said, “God knows what’s going to happen.’’

Mai Truong is the founder of Bo & Mei, which makes games and puzzles designed to celebrate Asian heritage. She’s currently preparing for this year’s holiday shopping season and assessing her hiring plans — but she’s facing lots of unknowns.

The Brooklyn, New York-based company, which had sales of under $500,000 last year, had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in tariffs last year. Truong is not sure what her tariff bill will be this year and whether she will be able to get a refund after the Supreme Court struck down some of Trump's tariffs. The Iran war is also creating unforeseen costs including higher shipping expenses.

Truong is her company's only full-time employee. But she typically hires a couple of contractors, who work in operations, marketing and other areas, to help in the months heading to Christmas.

“It makes everything feel very uncertain,” she said. “On the other hand, there’s so little you can do with the volatility. You just have to stay the course and kind of deal with the variables as they become more clear.”

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Anne D'Innocenzio reported from New York.

Magyar, once an Orbán ally, poses the most serious threat to the nationalist prime minister's hold on power since he took office in 2010.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Magyar said the European Union's longest-serving leader has led the country on a “180-degree turn” in recent years, endangering its Western orientation while cozying up to Moscow.

Yet despite that drift, “Hungarians still see that Hungary’s peace and development are guaranteed by membership of the European Union and NATO,” Magyar said. “I think this really will be a referendum on our country's place in the world.”

Magyar spoke to the AP on Thursday following an election rally by his center-right Tisza party in Kiskunhalas, a small city of around 25,000 on Hungary's southern great plain. It was one of hundreds of rallies he's held in settlements big and small across the country, a campaign blitz that has him visiting up to six towns a day ahead of the April 12 election.

Orbán has gained a reputation as an inveterate disruptor within the EU for his frequent vetoes of important decisions. He has campaigned by sounding the alarm on a myriad of external dangers he says are threatening Hungarians — the war in Ukraine, a cabal of EU bureaucrats and financial elites aligned against Hungary, and an immigration crisis ever on the horizon.

Magyar, who is leading in most polls, has focused on issues that affect voters' everyday lives, like Hungary’s faltering state health care and public transportation sectors and what he describes as rampant government corruption.

At each of his rallies, he charges Orbán and his nationalist-populist Fidesz party with making Hungary the “poorest and most corrupt” country in the EU — and depicts a “peaceful, humane and functioning” country that is within reach.

Yet alongside that domestic message, Magyar has increasingly portrayed Orbán’s brinksmanship with the EU, and his drift toward Russia, as matters of critical importance for the country’s future.

“I think that Tisza will have an overwhelming electoral victory, because even Fidesz voters do not want our country to be a Russian puppet state, a colony, an assembly plant, instead of belonging to Europe,” he said.

‘The Tisza is flooding’

Magyar and his party's meteoric rise caught many Hungarians by surprise. For nearly a decade and a half, a broad slate of fractured opposition parties had tried and failed to mount a serious threat to Orbán's hold on power.

While opposition politicians often slammed Orbán during debates in parliament, they rarely made efforts to win over his base of support in the rural countryside. Frustrated after a string of bitter losses, many opposition voters descended into political apathy.

Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer and former Fidesz insider, was previously married to an Orbán ally who served as Hungary’s justice minister. After working for several years as a diplomat in Brussels, he returned to Hungary and took positions in state institutions, gaining familiarity with the workings of Orbán's system.

But then, in the wake of a political scandal in 2024 involving a presidential pardon to an accomplice in a child sexual abuse case, Magyar publicly broke with Orbán's party, accusing it of overseeing entrenched corruption and capturing Hungary's institutions.

He quickly founded the center-right Tisza party — named for Hungary's second-largest river — which, only four months after Magyar's break into electoral politics, won 30% of the vote in European Parliament elections.

As Tisza's popularity grew, a chant heard at its rallies became a motto for its rise: “The Tisza is flooding.”

While Magyar has cast his task in the election as dismantling Orbán's autocratic system, he has promised to keep some of the prime minister's policies he views as positive, such as a fence along the southern border to keep out migrants, and a popular utility reduction program.

Still, his party — a member of the European Parliament's largest, center-right group — diverges from the constellation of far-right political movements in Europe and beyond that view Orbán as a shining example of nationalist populism in action.

In a sign of U.S. President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement's admiration for Orbán, Vice President JD Vance is set to visit Budapest on Tuesday in support of his reelection.

Constructive, but critical

Many EU leaders are watching Hungary's election in the hopes that Orbán will be defeated.

His frequent vetoes — which most recently included blocking a major, 90-bill euro ($104-billion) EU loan for Ukraine — have often been to please his euroskeptic base, Magyar said, “vetoing just to veto so he can say at home that he is vetoing.”

The prime minister's conduct has led to renewed calls within the EU to reform the bloc’s foundational treaties by reducing the number of decisions that require unanimity — a way to buttress against the paralysis that can be caused by intransigent member states.

Magyar said that under a Tisza government, European leaders can expect a “constructive position,” but one that is “critical and willing to debate. We want to be there at the table.”

Despite Orbán's exploitation of the EU's unanimity rules, the ability to veto important decisions is a “valid option,” he continued, adding: “I think the European leaders have no problem with this, they have a problem with the unnecessary troublemaker role.”

“The task of a Hungarian prime minister at any given time is to represent Hungarian interests, and if necessary, to represent them forcefully,” he said. “Whatever it costs.”

Russian energy

Orbán has confounded, and even angered, nearly every other EU leader with his conciliatory approach to Russia and closeness to President Vladimir Putin. Some EU officials, and many of his opponents at home, have accused him of forsaking his commitments to the bloc on Moscow’s behalf.

As nearly every EU country cut off supplies of Russian fossil fuels following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary, along with Slovakia, maintained and even increased supplies — drawing ire from many countries who accused them of helping finance the war.

While Magyar has condemned Hungary's drift toward Moscow, as well as reports that Russian secret services are meddling in the election to tip it in Orbán's favor, he said his future government will pursue a “pragmatic” approach toward Russia.

“Pragmatism means that we have no say in Russia’s internal affairs, and they don’t have any say in our affairs,” he said. “We are both sovereign countries, and we respect each other, but we don’t have to like each other.”

Magyar has criticized Orbán's government for failing to diversify its energy mix, and advocated for reaching new agreements and constructing new infrastructure to bring oil and gas from other sources into landlocked Hungary.

Still, he said, “this does not mean that we must stop using Russian oil tomorrow. It means that the European Union’s resources must be used well.”

“The consultation process is being steadily implemented and advanced,” said China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. Xi Jinping's government is mediating between Islamabad and Kabul, whose representatives resumed the talks on Wednesday in the western Chinese city of Urumqi.

“The three parties have also reached consensus and arrangements on a specific operational mode, including media coverage,” she added, without giving more details.

“Since the recent escalation of the Pakistan–Afghanistan conflict, China has been mediating and promoting talks in its own way, maintaining close communication with both sides through multiple channels and at various levels, and creating conditions and providing platforms for dialogue", Mao said.

She added that both countries “attach importance to and welcome China’s mediation efforts, and are willing to sit down again for talks, which is a positive development.”

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in attacks in recent years, many claimed by the Pakistani Taliban.

Even as the talks restarted, the police reported that a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a police station in the Bannu district of northwestern Pakistan late Thursday, killing at least five people and wounding several others.

Pakistan often accuses Afghanistan of providing a safe haven to militants who carry out attacks inside Pakistan, especially the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP.

The group is separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban, which took over Afghanistan in 2021 following the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led troops. Kabul denies that it supports the group.

The fighting between the two sides picked up in February, when Afghanistan’s Taliban government said Pakistan launched strikes in Kabul and several other areas, causing mostly civilian casualties. Pakistan has said it targeted hideouts of TTP, but also that it is in “open war” with Afghanistan.

Friday will bring another round of spotty showers, this time they could reach Houston. Widespread rain isn’t expected until Saturday when the cold front arrives. That’s the period to watch, as the heaviest rain and strongest thunderstorms are likely in the evening hours.

Easter weekend forecast:

A cold front moves through SE Texas Saturday afternoon and night. The heaviest rain is expected in Houston around 5pm.

There is a street flooding threat for all of southeast Texas Saturday and risk a low risk for strong to severe thunderstorms. The strongest storms could produce hail and strong winds. Tornado threat is non existent for Houston, the best chance for a spin up will be north across Madison, Walker, Trinity, Polk and San Jacinto counties.

The good news is that it looks like almost all the rain is out by Easter sunrise service time. There may be some light rain along the coast, but the rest of the area will stay damp and noticeably cooler in the low to mid 60s.

Sunday evening showers return mainly near the coast. By Sunday night, waves of rain move through all of SE Texas. It doesn’t look extremely heavy, just steady.

Whatever your plans are Sunday, make sure you dress for the cool. Temperatures range from the 50s in the morning to 60s in the afternoon with a strong north wind. And with the clouds it will feel colder than the actual temperature.

Extended forecast:

Look at the difference in temperatures from Saturday to Sunday. A big cool down with morning temps in the 50s and highs in the 70s early next week. I hope you have a wonderful Easter.

ENOUGH is KPRC 2 News’ commitment to accountability journalism, reporting that asks hard questions, examines systems, and pushes for answers when something isn’t working the way it should.

It starts with a few simple questions:

• Who is responsible?
• Why hasn’t this been fixed?
• What happens next?

Those questions guide the work behind ENOUGH.

How accountability reporting works

Accountability journalism isn’t just about pointing out problems. It’s about understanding how decisions get made and who has the power to fix them.

Our reporting often begins with:

• Listening to concerns from the community
• Examining public records and documents
• Asking officials to explain their decisions
• Following issues until answers are clear

Sometimes the first answer isn’t the full answer. That’s why persistence matters.

The kinds of questions we’re asking

Across Houston, people often ask the same kinds of questions when problems keep happening:

• Why do some problems take years to fix?
• Who is responsible when systems fail?
• What happens after concerns are raised?
• Why do the same issues keep coming back?

If you’ve ever wondered about questions like these, you’re not alone

What questions should be answered?

Is there something in Houston that feels like it never gets fixed?

Is there a decision you think deserves a closer look?

Our team is always listening.

A district spokesperson said administrators at nine schools have expressed interest in joining the program for the upcoming school year, citing the added resources and support tied to the NES model. The district has not yet identified which campuses are under consideration.

• INFO: HISD reveals details for school reassignments, transportation plans after voting to close 12 Houston schools

The potential expansion comes three years into the state’s takeover of HISD, a move that has sparked ongoing debate across the community.

District officials say principals are drawn to the program after seeing improvements at existing NES campuses.

“They see what’s happening at other NES campuses across the district … and they know that the NES model comes with a strategic amount of resources that principals and teachers want to benefit from,” said Kasey Bailey, HISD’s west and central division chief.

• MAIN ARTICLE: HISD outlines next steps after board votes to close 12 campuses

The NES program was launched by Superintendent Mike Miles during the 2023–24 school year as part of efforts to improve academic performance at historically low-performing schools.

The model includes centralized curriculum, extended school hours and increased funding for participating campuses. However, it also reduces autonomy for principals and teachers, making it a point of contention among educators and families.

• FULL EXCHANGE: Mayor Whitmire, Councilmember Pollard share heated debate over HISD closures, superintendent’s absence

HISD officials have not said when a final decision will be made on the expansion.

It’s Friday and it’s the first time in months I have had caffeine, especially while working this 4 a.m. shift today.

I know I am just as ready for Easter weekend as many of you are, but there may be some stormy weather that can delay outside egg hunts.

Let’s jump into some trending news for our area.

KPRC 2’s meteorologists say a cold front is headed our way this Saturday, bringing possible flooding and severe weather. We may even experience wind gust that can reach over 58 mph and quarter size hail in some areas.

Before you start canceling all your plans this weekend, check out our weather timeline to help plan your Saturday.

To read more, click here.

➡️ Love our morning newsletter? Share it with your family and friends!

YOUR MORNING FORECAST ☀️

TODAY: 85° TONIGHT: 73°

KPRC 2 Meteorologist says:

“Friday will bring another round of spotty showers, this time they could reach Houston. Widespread rain isn’t expected until Saturday when the cold front arrives. That’s the period to watch, as the heaviest rain and strongest thunderstorms are likely in the evening hours.”

Get your forecast details here.

TOP STORIES

Man accused of posing as police officer pressures Deer Park coffee shop employee to send $780, records show

A 20-year-old man is accused of impersonating a police officer and convincing a Deer Park coffee shop employee to send hundreds of dollars, part of a case investigators say may involve other victims.

According to court records, Kaden Berriman, of Clear Lake, posed as a Deer Park police officer during a phone call to Sycamore Grounds Coffee in December.

Court documents state that on December 18, 2025, a teenage barista received a call from someone asking to speak with the shop’s owner, Jackie Springer.

Galena Park closes city parks overnight, increases security monitoring following weekend shooting

After a fatal shooting Sunday night where one person was killed and two others were seriously hurt, the City of Galena Park is making changes to ensure safety in the area.

The city says effective immediately, all city parks will close daily from 9:30 PM to 6:00 AM until further notice, without exception.

The city said it is also implementing 24/7 security monitoring stations.

Texas doctor accused of illegally selling millions of opioid pills out of Houston clinic

A Texas doctor is accused of illegally selling millions of opioid pills by recruiting others to pose as patients and reselling the drugs on the black market.

In an indictment unsealed Thursday in the Southern District of Texas, James Robles, 70, of Weslaco, Texas, is charged with operating a cash-only clinic in Houston that he used to sell the controlled substances.

WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

Pam Bondi, a Trump loyalist who oversaw Justice Department upheaval, is out as his attorney general

ARE YOU A KPRC 2 INSIDER? HERE’S SOME EXCLUSIVES

Craving Cajun food in Houston? These restaurants deliver big variety and flavor

CLICK2PINS: SHOW US WHAT YA GOT 📷

See a news story in your neighborhood? Capture a great weather moment? Just want to share a photo of your pet? Send your photos and videos to Click2Pins, and you may see them on air and online!

And by season's end, it's well within reach that the top two 3-point shooters in the NBA this season — at least in terms of makes — both might be wearing Hornets uniforms.

Charlotte rookie Kon Knueppel leads the NBA with his Hornets-record 261 made 3s so far this season, and LaMelo Ball is currently third in the league with 243 makes from beyond the arc. Between them: the Los Angeles Lakers' Luka Doncic, who is set to miss some time with a hamstring injury.

Knueppel already has the NBA record for 3s made by a rookie as well.

“He definitely needs to celebrate,” Hornets coach Charles Lee said.

If Knueppel and Ball finish 1-2 in the final standings for made 3s, they would become the second set of teammates in NBA history to hold down the top two spots on that list for a full season. The other, as one would likely guess, were the “Splash Brothers” — Golden State's Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, who finished first and second in the season standings in four consecutive seasons from 2013-14 through 2016-17 (and nearly did it in 2012-13 as well).

Other pairings have come close. Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce were second and third in made 3s for Boston in 2001-02 (behind Ray Allen, the then-future Celtic who was playing for Milwaukee at the time). And in 1992-93, Phoenix's Dan Majerle tied Indiana's Reggie Miller for the made-3s title, with Suns teammate Danny Ainge finishing third.

Who's in and who's out?

Here's what we know so far regarding the NBA playoff field for this season.

— Eastern Conference playoff teams: Detroit, Boston, New York, Cleveland are in. At this point, Atlanta and Philadelphia would get the other two guaranteed spots but those are not clinched.

— East play-in teams: Nobody is locked into the play-in yet, but entering Friday, the four teams headed there are Toronto, Charlotte, Orlando and Miami.

— East eliminated teams: Milwaukee, Chicago, Indiana, Brooklyn and Washington.

— Western Conference playoff teams: Oklahoma City, San Antonio, the Los Angeles Lakers, Denver and Houston are in. Minnesota is likely to grab the sixth and final guaranteed spot.

— West play-in teams: Phoenix is probably going to the play-in tournament. Portland, the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State definitely are.

— West eliminated teams: Memphis, New Orleans, Dallas, Utah and Sacramento.

Thursday recap

— Hornets 127, Suns 107: Charlotte clinches no worse than a .500 record.

— Pistons 113, Timberwolves 108: Detroit closing in on East No. 1 seed.

— Thunder 139, Lakers 96: Luka Doncic hurt, Lakers tie 7th-biggest loss in team history.

— Cavaliers 118, Warriors 111: Cleveland on brink of clinching top-4 seed.

— Trail Blazers 118, Pelicans 106: Portland made 20 3s, New Orleans made nine.

— Spurs 118, Clippers 99: Victor Wembanyama sits, Spurs win 11th straight anyway.

Friday's schedule

— Indiana at Charlotte: A winning record this season is going to get Hornets’ coach Charles Lee some award votes.

— Minnesota at Philadelphia: Massive implications seeding-wise for both teams.

— Atlanta at Brooklyn: Hawks closing in on Southeast Division title, possibly No. 5 seed.

— Chicago at New York: Knicks nearing the 50-win mark yet again.

— Utah at Houston: The Rockets know they can’t afford a slipup in this spot.

— Toronto at Memphis: Raptors need a few wins down the stretch to avoid play-in.

— Boston at Milwaukee: Bucks coach Doc Rivers faces his former team, a day before expected Hall of Fame formal announcement.

— Orlando at Dallas: Magic coach Jamahl Mosley enjoyed a lot of nights when he was on the Mavs’ staff. He desperately needs one of those good nights here.

— New Orleans at Sacramento: A pair of teams building for the future.

Saturday's schedule

— Washington at Miami: Bam Adebayo scored 83 against the Wizards last month. The rematch!

— San Antonio at Denver: Wembanyama vs. Nikola Jokic in potential West playoff pairing.

— Detroit at Philadelphia: Sorry, Detroit. Michigan-Arizona Final Four game tips off during this one.

National TV schedule

Friday on NBA TV: Chicago-New York.

Saturday on Prime: San Antonio-Denver.

Saturday on NBA TV: Detroit-Philadelphia.

Betting odds

Oklahoma City (+135) is favored to win the NBA title, according to BetMGM Sportsbook, followed by Boston (+550), San Antonio (+550), Denver (+1100), Cleveland (+1200) and New York (+1600). Detroit, on its way to the No. 1 seed in the East, is +2500.

Key dates

— April 10: All 30 teams play their 81st games of the season.

— April 12: All 30 teams play their regular season finales.

— April 14, 15 and 17: NBA play-in tournament dates.

— April 18 and 19: NBA playoff series openers.

— May 2, 3 or 4: Conference semifinals begin.

— May 10: NBA draft lottery.

— May 10-17: NBA draft combine.

— May 17 or 19: Eastern Conference finals begin on ESPN and ABC.

— May 18 or 20: Western Conference finals begin on NBC and Peacock.

— June 3: Game 1, NBA Finals on ABC. (Other finals dates: June 5, June 8, June 10, June 13, June 16 and June 19).

Numbers watch

The Thunder had 14 different players score in their win over the Lakers on Thursday night. There have been only seven games in NBA history, including playoffs, where a team saw more players score at least one point in the same game.

Stat of the day

The Spurs are 27-2 since Feb. 1 — and have picked up only 3 1/2 games on Oklahoma City (23-5) in that span. (By the way, the best record in the East since that date belongs to Atlanta at 20-6.)

___

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

Equities markets are closed for Good Friday, but futures markets were trading into Friday morning, albeit quietly.

Futures for S&P 500 dipped 0.3%, futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.2% and Nasdaq futures were down 0.4%.

American employers added a surprisingly strong 178,000 new jobs last month, rebounding from a dismal February that saw 133,000 job losses. The unemployment rate dipped to 4.3% from 4.4%.

Energy markets were closed Friday following big price surges the day before on fears that the Iran war will drag on longer than expected. U.S. benchmark crude rose 11.4% to $111.54 a barrel on Thursday. The price of Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 7.8% to $109.03 per barrel.

U.S. President Donald Trump late Wednesday vowed the U.S. will continue to attack Iran and failed to offer a clear timetable for ending the conflict in the Middle East.

“A more extended conflict raises the threat to physical infrastructure, extends disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz, and will entail a longer postwar recovery period, with price impacts spilling over later into the year,” according to a report from BMI, a unit of Fitch Solutions.

The U.S. relies on the Persian Gulf for only a fraction of the oil it imports, but oil is a commodity and prices are set in a global market.

The situation is very different in Asia. Japan, for example, needs access to the Strait of Hormuz for much of the nation’s oil imports or would need alternative routes. But some analysts say Japan and other nations are counting on an agreement with Iran to allow fuel to be transported through the strait.

Trading was closed in France, Germany and Britain for the Good Friday holiday.

In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 1.3% to finish at 53,123.49. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.7% to 5,377.30. The Shanghai Composite sank 1.0% to 3,880.10. Trading was closed in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia and India for the Good Friday holiday.

___

Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama

The written ruling by Judge Lewis J. Liman in Manhattan came after Lively, who starred in and produced the film, sued her co-star and director in December 2024. A trial is scheduled for May 18.

Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer Studios had countersued Lively and her husband, “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds, accusing them of defamation and extortion. The judge dismissed Baldoni’s claims last June.

In his ruling, Liman determined that Lively was an independent contractor rather than an employee. On that basis, he said she was not entitled to bring sexual harassment claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law prohibits employment discrimination on various grounds, including gender.

As to retaliation, the judge said some evidence might enable a jury to conclude that Baldoni's production company planned not only to damage Lively's reputation but to destroy her career amid fear she'd file a discrimination claim. Lively alleges a smear campaign has been “devastating for her reputation and career,” the judge noted.

In an analysis of the sexual harassment claims, the judge said Lively's claims had to be viewed in the context of the movie they were working on.

“Lively claims that during filming, Baldoni leaned in and gestured as if he was intending to kiss her, and that he kissed her forehead, rubbed his face and mouth against her neck, put his thumb to her mouth and flicked her lower lip, caressed her, and leaned into her neck, saying ‘it smells good,’” the judge wrote.

He said there was no question that the conduct would support a hostile work environment claim if it happened on a factory floor or in an executive suite.

However, the judge noted, Baldoni was “acting in the scene” and his "conduct was not so far beyond what might reasonably be expected to take place between two characters during a slow dancing scene such that an inference of hostile treatment on the basis of sex would arise. At least in isolation, the conduct was directed to Lively’s character rather than to Lively herself.”

Liman added: “Creative artists, no less than comedy room writers, must have some amount of space to experiment within the bounds of an agreed script without fear of being held liable for sexual harassment.”

Despite those findings, the judge said some sexual harassment claims may be put to a jury to support two retaliation claims that survived the ruling, including one against It Ends With Us Movie LLC and Wayfarer Studios, and a third claim that was left intact alleging breach of a contract rider agreement against It Ends With Us Movie LLC.

The judge noted that Baldoni once said “pretty hot” after asking Lively to remove her jacket, exposing a lace bra underneath, and that when he was warned that it was inappropriate and distracting to make such comment, he allegedly rolled his eyes and responded: “Sorry, I missed the sexual harassment training.”

Liman also cited a scene in which Baldoni pushed for Lively to perform a birth scene naked and then the scene was filmed over several hours without the set being closed to nonessential personnel.

In a statement, Lively attorney Sigrid McCawley wrote that Lively “looks forward to testifying at trial and continuing to shine a light on this vicious form of online retaliation so that it become easier to detect and fight.”

She added: “This case has always been and will remain focused on the devasting retaliation and the extraordinary steps the defendants took to destroy Blake Lively’s reputation because she stood up for safety on the set and that is the case that is going to trial.”

Bryan Freedman, a lawyer for Baldoni, said the defendants in the case were “very good people who have not engaged in this sexual harassment as alleged.”

“It is gratifying to see that the courts ruling confirms what the legal team believed from day one,” Freedman said in an email to The Associated Press.

“It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel that begins as a romance but takes a dark turn into domestic violence, was released in August 2024, exceeding box office expectations with a $50 million debut. But the movie’s release was shrouded by speculation over discord between Lively and Baldoni.

Lively appeared in the 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and the TV series “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012 before starring in films including “The Town” and “The Shallows.”

Baldoni starred in the TV comedy “Jane the Virgin,” directed the 2019 film “Five Feet Apart” and wrote “Man Enough,” a book challenging traditional notions of masculinity.

We don’t have any organized weather systems near us so any rain that falls will be isolated. A few streamer showers will move through Houston in the morning into the early afternoon. Temperatures climb to the mid-80s with a 30% chance of rain.

Saturday: street flooding threat:

A cold front moves through Houston Saturday evening. The day will start warm and muggy with a few spotty showers possible, but the main event comes at between 3pm and lasts through 11pm.

This cold front is tapping into enough upper-level energy that the storms may turn severe. Wind gusts could reach over 58 mph, and some storms may drop quarter sized hail.

Because of the high moisture content and slow movement of the cold front, there is a street flooding threat for all of southeast Texas. Rain totals could climb as high as 3″-4″. The hope is we get a good soaking to help our drought conditions without anything more than minor low level and street flooding.

Easter Sunday, chilly and dry in the morning:

Some lingering light rain may be around early Sunday morning along the coast. The rest of us wake up to temperatures in the upper-50s with cloudy skies and strong north winds. This will make it feel colder than the actual temperature.

Temperatures warm to the upper 60s and most of the day will be dry but not all of it. One more area of low pressure moves through Houston Sunday night. The below image is the futurecast for 4pm Sunday. This rain will not be as intense as Saturday.

The good news, we need this rain. Southeast Texas has been stuck in drought, so this will definitely help, even if it doesn’t fix everything overnight.

With several rounds of rain and a potential for heavier downpours this weekend, make sure you’re checking back in for updates as we fine-tune the timing.

The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.

As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.

Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.

“He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy, framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city's efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law."

To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building.

“It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.”

Their situation is hardly unique. As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.

The practice, which has also been spreading nationally, is legal. But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.

“There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even worse for tenants.”

‘They treat us the same as the rats’

For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding their landlord is one of many problems afflicting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.

Heat and hot water outages are regular enough that some tenants keep a thermometer on their fridge and the city’s complaint hotline on speed dial. Common areas are often filthy, and increasingly populated by drug users. Getting help with an urgent maintenance issue “feels like waiting for Christmas in July,” said Maitin.

During a monthslong elevator outage, a tenant who uses a wheelchair, Tommy Rodriguez, said he was forced to “slide down the steps, like a kid.” Calls to the building management about a repair timeline went unanswered, he said.

Growing up in the building in the 1980s, Rodriguez recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and responsive neighborhood presence.

“This felt like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “Now they treat us the same as the rats.”

A large rodent had recently chewed a hole through his couch cushion. He handled the extermination himself, with a two-by-four.

A distressing breakthrough

Recently, tenants received a clue about their landlord, following the partial collapse of another Bronx building. The man identified in news stories as the owner of that building, David Kleiner, shared a Brooklyn office with their building manager, Binyomin Herzl.

A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, logging an array of decrepit conditions and unusual alterations.

“We didn’t want to become the next news story,” said Yuldosheva, pointing to a crack in the wall of a bedroom shared by her three children — a result, she feared, of the subway that rumbles just below her windows.

Lawsuits show that Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations across at least six Bronx buildings, several of which were found by a judge to pose an imminent hazard.

Reached by phone, Herzl said he didn't own any of those properties, but simply acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whom he declined to list. “There’s no one landlord,” he said. “It’s a group of investors.”

Kleiner, who was previously featured on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed his partial ownership of 705 Gerard in a brief phone call, but declined further comment.

Herzl, meanwhile, attributed the tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing, rather than going after private landlords.

“Our buildings look like five star hotels against his,” he added.

From fines to seizures

When landlords refuse to address a serious violation, like heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs, then bill the owner directly.

In the last three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings that list either Herzl or Kleiner as an owner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men have been billed $446,521 for those repairs.

Mamdani has proposed using such fines as a vehicle to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship, by aggressively pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying up their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.

Just as the city can shut down unsanitary restaurants, Mamdani has said, landlords that “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions."

In reality, the process is resource-intensive and legally fraught. It is made more complex by the nest of LLCs often used by landlords to obfuscate the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.

“It’d be great to have a better sense of who owns the buildings that we are regulating and overseeing,” she said.

State legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul amid pressure from landlords.

New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords

Kenny Burgos, the CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant proposals — including freezing the rent for regulated tenants — would force landlords to cut back on maintenance and services.

“That’s going to take away from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a question of math: These buildings are crumbling because of policy, not because of bad landlords.”

He characterized the rental rip-off hearings as “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Despite the combative branding — “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” blares one promotion — the Bronx event mostly resembled a standard constituent service night: City officials fielded questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.

Maitin left feeling “glad to be heard by someone who can actually do something about the problem,” but felt it was too early to tell “if it’s all talk."

The next morning, she was surprised to find the building’s superintendent applying a fresh coat of paint to a staircase. Outside, workers were removing scaffolding that had been in front of the building for years.

“I think they caught wind of the rental rip-off,” Maitin said. “They’re scared.”

The Texas Department of State Health Services said the warning applies to 29-ounce bags of Great Value dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets with a best by date of Feb. 10, 2027. The nuggets were distributed through Walmart stores nationwide.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued the health alert Wednesday after routine public health sampling detected what officials described as a potentially harmful level of lead in the product.

“There is no safe level of lead in food,” the Texas health department said, noting the greatest risk is to children under 6 and women who are pregnant or may become pregnant.

The affected packages have been pulled from store shelves, but officials say consumers may still have the nuggets in their freezers. Anyone who has the product should not eat it and should either throw it away or return it to the store where it was purchased.

More information on lead exposure risks is available at dshs.texas.gov/lead, the agency said.

The city says effective immediately, all city parks will close daily from 9:30 PM to 6:00 AM until further notice—without exception.

The city said it is also implementing 24/7 security monitoring stations.

• RELATED: 1 dead, 2 seriously injured after shooting at basketball court in Galena Park

“These measures will provide a strong, visible presence, continuous oversight, and a direct digital link to dispatch, ensuring immediate communication and rapid response at all times,” the city said.

Authorities say violations will also be enforced.

“These initial actions reflect our unwavering commitment to the safety and well-being of all residents. Expectations are not optional—compliance is required. We will not tolerate any actions that threaten the peace and security of our community,” the city said.

The shooting happened Sunday night at a basketball court located on Keene Street and 14th Street.

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Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said a group of men was gathered at the basketball court playing basketball when a possible fight broke out between two groups, and multiple shots were fired.

One person was found shot to death at the park, and two others attempted to run away but were found collapsed a short distance away.

Gonzalez said those two men were transported to the hospital in critical condition.

In February, the Trump administration waived over two dozen environmental laws to clear the way for a 150-mile-long border barrier through West Texas, including Big Bend National Park and the adjoining state park, a rugged and scenic stretch with unscalable canyons along the Rio Grande.

But as word spread that the Trump administration planned to erect a 30-foot-tall barrier to deter people from crossing the border illegally, people and officials from both political parties have made their opposition clear.

“A border wall in the Big Bend region is an absurd, wasteful, counterproductive idea that is loathed by nearly every person who has ever lived or visited there,” said Isaac Saul, who writes a political newsletter called the Tangle and has a home in Brewster County, where Big Bend is located.

The sheriffs of Brewster, Culberson, Hudspeth, Presidio and Terrell counties — a mix of Democrats and Republicans — wrote an open letter that said: “Based on decades of combined experience working with this terrain, we believe that construction of a continuous physical border wall in the Big Bend region would not represent the most practical or strategic approach to border security in this area.”

Local officials in nearby Alpine, along with Presidio and Hudspeth counties, have approved resolutions opposing the wall.

After strong opposition, the Trump administration apparently changed its plans: a map on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website no longer indicates that a border wall will be constructed in the Big Bend region from the state park to the Amistad National Recreation Area in Del Rio, as of April 2.

A spokesperson for the Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector told Marfa Public Radio last week that there are “currently no plans for border wall construction” in the state park, which borders Big Bend National Park.

While the Trump administration hasn’t made any official announcement about its plans, the CBP website now shows the agency instead plans to install “virtual wall” technology through the rugged region that would alert Border Patrol agents when people cross the border.

It’s unclear if these plans are final, since the map legend has continuously changed in the past few weeks.

Advocates and residents say they are happy their efforts have apparently helped halt the plans to build a border barrier through the state park. But the fight isn’t over, they say.

“I don’t consider this a win yet because there’s still a lot of unanswered questions,” said Anna Claire, 29, a photographer who lives near Terlingua and led an online petition with more than 100,000 signatures opposing a barrier. “I would say a win is no border wall, period. The whole basis for this wall is that there is a crisis, but there isn’t a crisis and their own data doesn’t back that up.”

Documents obtained by Inside Climate News show the Border Patrol has sought access to Big Bend Ranch and other state parks to lay the groundwork for border barrier construction. Letters sent by the Border Patrol to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department included detailed maps of where the border barrier would go within Big Bend Ranch, Seminole Canyon and Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley state parks.

The Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector, which encompasses 517 miles of the 1,950-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, has historically been the least busy of the nine sectors. In fiscal year 2025, Border Patrol recorded 3,096 apprehensions in the Big Bend sector — accounting for just 1.3% of the 237,538 apprehensions recorded across the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

Last year, Congress approved $46.5 billion for the Trump administration to erect border barriers and add detection technology in different parts of the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border. Contractors have started construction in parts of California, Arizona and New Mexico. But in Texas, where land along the border is privately owned, the administration has faced obstacles and opposition.

The government has sent letters to some landowners along the river, threatening to condemn some of their land through eminent domain if owners don’t willingly allow the federal government access to their land.

Luis Armendariz, 83, who owns about 1,000 acres of farmland and a hardware store in Presidio, about 100 miles upriver from Big Bend, said he received one of those letters and doesn’t see the need for a barrier in the area. He worries that a barrier would cut off his access to irrigation water from the river..

“If the wall is going to get in my way, I don’t want it,” he said.

Disclosure: Texas Parks And Wildlife Department has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Office of the Ombudsman, housed within the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and led by a gubernatorial appointee, was created last year to address GOP concerns that universities had become too focused on promoting liberal viewpoints instead of preparing students for the workforce.

The ombudsman accepts complaints from students, faculty and staff alleging violations of two state laws:

• A 2017 ban on diversity, equity and inclusion offices, programs and training at public colleges and universities.
• A 2025 law limiting faculty’s role in some curriculum, grievance and discipline decisions.

The stakes are high: If the office finds a university violated a law and the school does not fix the problem within a set time, the ombudsman can recommend that lawmakers cut access to state funds until the school complies.

State law requires the office to provide complainants and subjects of complaints with a copy of its policies and procedures for complaint investigation and resolution. But when The Texas Tribune asked for those documents, Ombudsman Brandon Simmons pointed to a page on the office’s website that describes how complaints are filed and sets deadlines for when universities must be notified and respond and when the office must issue reports. It is unclear whether that satisfies the law’s requirements.

The webpage does not explain how the office decides an investigation is warranted, what standard of proof it applies in reaching findings or what recourse universities or employees have if they believe the ombudsman’s findings are wrong.

Clear, written policies can ensure investigations are conducted fairly and consistently, higher education experts say.

Neal Hutchens, a professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Education who studies higher education law and policy, said people also need to understand how the system works to have faith in it. Without that clarity, the office’s authority could feel open-ended and intimidating to institutions and faculty members alike.

“It just has a big question mark for everyone,” he said.

The ombudsman office also asked the Texas attorney general for permission to withhold from the Tribune basic complaint data, including how many complaints it has received, when they were filed, the laws allegedly violated and the status of investigations.

Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Simmons as the office’s first ombudsman in October. Records obtained by the Tribune show he was the only person considered for the job. Simmons, a former technology executive, venture capitalist and corporate attorney, stepped down as chair of the Texas Southern University System Board of Regents to take the position. He had served on the board since 2023, part of a period later examined by a state audit that found significant weaknesses in Texas Southern’s financial controls, contracting and reporting processes.

His office began accepting complaints through an online portal Jan. 9.

That same month, Simmons agreed to an interview with the Tribune but canceled and instead responded to questions in writing.

Asked how the office planned to investigate complaints, he did not provide specifics. Asked how Texans should judge whether the office is working as intended, Simmons offered no concrete benchmarks, saying: “This office seeks to increase public confidence in higher education and to support the continuing ascent of Texas universities’ student success and research and development.”

Later, in response to a public records request, the office said it did not possess written policies or procedures for conducting investigations. The Tribune followed with 10 emails — the majority sent over the past two weeks — asking how the office was handling complaints but did not get an answer until two days before publication, when Simmons pointed to the office’s web page detailing how to file a complaint and listing deadlines.

“Additional policies and procedures will continue to be developed as outlined by Texas law,” Simmons added.

The law does not define when an investigation is necessary, but it says if the office determines one to be necessary, it can request information from a university, which has 30 days to respond. Afterward, it must submit a report to the institution’s board of regents determining whether a violation occurred and recommending corrective action if needed.

If a university does not resolve a violation within 180 days, the office can refer the matter to the state auditor and recommend that lawmakers block the institution from spending state funds until it complies.

The law also requires the office to keep a file on each complaint and submit annual reports to state officials, including the governor and legislative leaders, summarizing how many complaints it received, how many investigations it conducted and what it found.

Unable to get information from the ombudsman, the Tribune asked the state’s public university systems whether the office had sent them any notices of complaint and for related records. Six systems said they had not been notified of any complaints, one had not answered by publication, and the University of Texas System indicated it had responsive records but asked the attorney general if it could withhold them.

The lawmakers who helped shape the office offered different views on how it should function and how much it should disclose.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, the new chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, told the Tribune the office will need to develop “some type of complaint procedure” and said Simmons should come prepared to talk about it at a Higher Education Committee hearing this summer. He said the office should disclose the number of complaints filed, adding he had already asked for those counts.

Asked what protections should exist for universities or employees accused in complaints, including what standard of proof should apply and whether there should be an appeals process, Bettencourt said, “I’m going to leave that one open.”

He said he saw the ombudsman as more than an enforcement arm — a “neutral place” where people could bring problems for resolution that also could keep disputes from being “adjudicated on social media,” pointing to last year’s Texas A&M controversy, which began after a state representative shared a student’s secret recording of a classroom discussion about gender identity.

In a separate interview, state Rep. Matt Shaheen, House sponsor of the bill that created the office, said he was “very satisfied” with the process described on the office’s website, which restates the law’s complaint timeline and reporting requirements but does not explain key investigative standards or procedures. He cautioned against disclosing information about pending complaints, saying they could be false or “malicious in nature,” though he said he would be comfortable with releasing complaint data after the process played out.

Asked about a lack of appeals, Shaheen said those who believed the ombudsman’s findings were unfair could raise their concerns with lawmakers and would have “the opportunity to have their side of the story heard.”

Before the ombudsman office was created, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board handled a narrower set of student complaints, typically reviewing whether universities followed state rules on issues like tuition and financial aid, consumer protections and certain academic requirements. Students generally had to first exhaust a university’s internal grievance process before the board would review a complaint, and the agency did not have the authority to direct universities to change policies or recommend they be blocked from spending state funds.

So far, Simmons has drawn from conservative legal and policy circles to staff the ombudsman office. On April 1, Simmons announced that Ryan D. Walters, a former deputy attorney general for legal strategy and former attorney at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, had joined as deputy director and general counsel. Simmons also hired Edgardo Mondolfi, also a former Texas Public Policy Foundation employee, as his assistant.

Other Texas agencies are more transparent about how they investigate complaints. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation says investigators typically interview the complainant, the respondent and pertinent witnesses, gather relevant documents and can visit a business or site tied to the complaint before submitting a report to a prosecutor. If the agency seeks penalties, it weighs factors such as the seriousness of the violation, whether it was intentional, whether the respondent tried to address the violation after it was discoveredfix it and whether stronger punishment was needed to deter future misconduct. Respondents can then request a hearing before an administrative law judge and later seek rehearing or judicial review.

Critics fear what an office with broad authority and unclear procedures could mean for teaching, research and open inquiry at public universities.

Liliana Garces, a professor at UT-Austin’s College of Education, said such fear is not theoretical.

In a study of how the state’s anti-DEI law was implemented at UT-Austin, she and her research team interviewed nearly 100 administrators, faculty and students over more than a year and found that the flagship went beyond what the law required. For example, university officials encouraged faculty to have their research proposals reviewed by a university lawyer and to avoid using certain language, even though research was exempt.

Garces said the overcorrection was driven in part by undercover videos that appeared to show university employees discussing ways to continue DEI initiatives, followed by pressure from Republican state leaders suggesting universities were not complying. She said that created an environment in which universities felt they were being watched and became more likely to go beyond the law’s requirements.

“Compliance became this moving target where just any kind of visibility created liability for the institution,” she said.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Texas Public Policy Foundation, University of Texas System and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The Chevron Championship is the LPGA Tour’s first major of the 2026 season.

• How will the Houston Open prepare golfers for The Masters?

The Chevron Challenge showcases investments in community organizations to enable human progress, including focus areas such as STEM education, diversity and inclusion, and women’s excellence.

For every birdie on the Par 3, 15th hole during The Chevron Championship competition rounds, Chevron U.S.A. Inc. will donate $10,000 to community partners.

For the first hole-in-one, Chevron will donate an additional $1,000,000. The Chevron Challenge leaderboard will be located on Hole No. 15 to display real-time results for fans.

The @LPGA Chevron Championship
(@Chevron_Golf
) is back but debuts at @memorialparkgc April 23-26. #KPRC2 pic.twitter.com/yejyqZAX8J

— Randy McIlvoy (@KPRC2RandyMc) April 3, 2026

The objective of The Chevron Challenge is to generate excitement around Chevron’s community partners and to amplify awareness and visibility of the impact these inspiring organizations have in the community. Since its title sponsor debut in 2022, Chevron has contributed more than $12 million to a variety of organizations that drive human progress across communities in the greater Houston area and beyond.

• PGA Tour targets bigger fields in bigger markets as it moves closer to new model

Featured community partners in 2026 include: Catalyst, Fab Foundation, DonorsChoose, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, LPGA Foundation, Brothers in Arms, Women in Golf Foundation, Prairie View A&M University, LPGA USGA Girls Golf (all three local chapters), Cameron Champ Foundation, American Heart Association, First Tee – Greater Houston, Western Golf Association / Evans Scholars Foundation, American Cancer Society, AJGA (Nelly Invitational), Memorial Park Conservancy (Fuel Your Park).

Funding for Memorial Park Conservancy’s Fuel Your Park program is a new initiative at The Chevron Championship. Through Fuel Your Park, Chevron will direct a portion of the Tournament’s charitable proceeds to the Memorial Park Conservancy. The Tournament enjoys a shared vision with Chevron and the Memorial Park Conservancy to preserve, restore, and enhance Memorial Park for the enjoyment of all visitors.

In addition to charity dollars, The Chevron Championship provides opportunities to amateur golfers that money cannot buy. The Tournament announced the first four of the Tournament’s eight amateur exemptions. Joining the 2026 field is Shauna Liu, winner of the Nelly Invitational; Paula Martin Sampedro, winner of the Women’s British Amateur; Megha Ganne, winner of the U.S. Women’s Amateur; and Yunseo Yang, winner of the Women’s Amateur Asia Pacific (WAAP) – providing pathways for junior golfers from around the world.

The remaining exemptions will be announced in the coming weeks and will complete The Chevron Championship’s commitment to providing a pathway for amateur players to fulfill their dreams and inspire greater interest and participation in the women’s game. Joining the Tournament field will be the winners of the Women’s Amateur Latin America (WALA), Augusta National Women’s Amateur (ANWA), Chevron Silverado Showdown, as well as one sponsor invitation.

The Chevron Championship is the first of five majors on the 2026 LPGA Tour schedule that includes 33 total tournaments in 13 different countries and follows the Race to CME Globe, a season-long points competition used to qualify for the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship in Naples, Florida.

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The LPGA Tour majors carry 30% more points value, with the winner of each major receiving 650 Race to the CME Globe points versus the standard 500 points. The player who wins the CME Group Tour Championship will be named the “Race to the CME Globe Champion.”

All four rounds of The Chevron Championship will be broadcast on television, with Thursday’s and Friday’s opening rounds airing on Golf Channel and NBC hosting weekend broadcast coverage.

LPGA Tour events annually reach television audiences in more than 220 countries across the globe.

The move marks a nominal return to an elected government but is widely considered as an effort to keep the army in power after an election organized by the military that opponents and independent observers deemed neither free nor fair, and as civil war rages.

Transitioning to an elected government is also seen as a way to improve frosty relations with some Southeast Asian neighbors following the military takeover. China and Russia have supported the military administration, while Western powers imposed sanctions.

Min Aung Hlaing won an expected lopsided victory

Min Aung Hlaing was one of three nominees for the president’s post, but was virtually guaranteed the job as lawmakers from military-backed parties and appointed members from the army hold a commanding majority in parliament.

The vote was held in the newly renovated parliament building in the capital, Naypyitaw, which was damaged in last year’s earthquake.

Aung Lin Dwe, speaker of parliament’s combined upper and lower house, announced that Min Aung Hlaing won 429 out of the 584 votes.

The two runners-up become vice presidents. Nyo Saw, a former general, had served as an adviser to Min Aung Hlaing, and Nan Ni Ni Aye, an ethnic Karen politician from the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party, will be the country’s first female vice president. All three are expected to be inaugurated next week.

Min Aung Hlaing, who holds the rank of senior general, earlier this week relinquished his post of commander-in-chief because the constitution prohibits the president from simultaneously holding the top military position. A close aide, Gen. Ye Win Oo, took over the powerful job.

Meanwhile, much of the country remains enmeshed in a bloody civil war.

Opposition group says struggle for real change continues

Nay Phone Latt, a spokesperson for the National Unity Government — Myanmar’s main opposition organization, which views itself as the country’s legitimate government — charged that Min Aung Hlaing is responsible for numerous war crimes, and his easy assumption of the presidency proved that the political change some countries had hoped for will not materialize.

“Myanmar people do not accept it. The revolution will continue with great momentum,” he told The Associated Press..

The 69-year-old Min Aung Hlaing had been the military chief since 2011. Under the military-imposed constitution, he held significant powers even before overthrowing Suu Kyi’s government.

Parliament members were elected in three phases in December and January. Major opposition parties, including Suu Kyi’s former ruling National League for Democracy, were either blocked from running or refused to compete under conditions they deemed unfair. Suu Kyi, 80, is serving a 27-year prison term on charges widely viewed as politically motivated.

Myanmar was under military rule from 1962 to 2016, when Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide election victory. It won an even greater mandate in the 2020 polls, but the army staged a takeover in 2021 before the new parliament could convene.

Peaceful protests against military rule were then put down with deadly force, pushing pro-democracy activists to turn to armed resistance and ally themselves with ethnic minority groups who have been battling for greater autonomy for decades.

Deadly repression birthed ongoing civil war

Security concerns meant voting in the recent election could be held in only 263 of the country’s 330 townships.

Nearly 8,000 activists and civilians have been killed since the 2021 army takeover, and some 22,872 political detainees are imprisoned, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent group that tracks rights violations.

The military’s major reliance on airstrikes — 1,140 strikes in 2025 alone, according to the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project — accounts for hundreds of civilian casualties.

“If Min Aung Hlaing thinks that an official civilian title will shield him from prosecution for the many grave violations of international law that he is accused of overseeing as head of the military, that is not how international justice works," Amnesty International Myanmar researcher Joe Freeman said in statement.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague in 2024 began an investigation into charges of crimes against humanity after the chief prosecutor applied for an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing over the military’s brutal persecution of the Rohingya minority.

At long-awaited hearings at the International Court of Justice in January this year, Myanmar defended itself against accusations that it was responsible for genocide against the Rohingya. The West African country of Gambia first filed the case in 2019.

The crash was reported around 12:20 a.m. at the intersection of Pierce and Hutchins streets.

Sgt. Mike Barrow with HPD’s Vehicle Crimes Division said both vehicles, a Toyota Corolla traveling on Pierce Street and a Dodge Charger on Hutchins Street, were approaching the intersection when they collided in a T-bone crash.

Police said there were five occupants in the Toyota and one person in the Charger. All six people were transported to a hospital.

Barrow said a male passenger from the Toyota died at the hospital, while another occupant remains in critical condition.

It is unclear whether either driver ran a stop sign or if impairment was a factor.

The crash remains under investigation.

Taiwan’s first Olympic boxing champion beat Thananya Somnuek of Thailand 5-0 in the first round in the 60-kilogram lightweight division earlier this week.

She backed that up Friday with another 5-0 win over Ayaka Taguchi of Japan, the top-seeded woman in the division. Lin won every round on all five judges’ scorecards, securing a perfect score of 10 in each round.

The 30-year-old Lin had not competed internationally since winning the women’s 57-kg featherweight title at the Paris Olympics in August 2024.

World Boxing took over as the sport’s Olympic-level governing body last year, and it implemented a sex eligibility policy in August requiring all fighters to take a one-time genetic test designed to identify the presence of a Y chromosome.

World Boxing didn't confirm Lin's eligibility until March 19.

It was not clear whether Lin will have to undergo further gene testing if she wants to compete again at the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee announced last week new rules banning transgender athletes and a mandatory gene test once in an athlete’s career.

Lin and Imane Khelif of Algeria won gold medals at Paris amid international scrutiny and misconceptions over both boxers’ sex. While both met the eligibility rules followed at the time by the IOC, which ran the Paris tournament, the two fighters’ success sparked a politically charged debate over those standards.

Lin is expected to fight in the Asian tournament semifinals on Monday.

___

AP boxing: https://apnews.com/boxing

Redick said Doncic had an issue with the hamstring in the first half of the 139-97 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder and was tended to at the break.

“We checked him out, he got work done, he was cleared," Redick said.

Doncic returned to action briefly. On his final play of the game, he spun before trying to go up for a shot against Oklahoma City's Jalen Williams. There was no contact before Doncic stopped, then lay down on the floor while wincing in pain. He left the game for good with 7:39 remaining in the third quarter.

“Those things happen,” Redick said.

Williams, an All-Star in 2025, has missed 27 games this season because of a right hamstring strain. He felt badly for Doncic.

“It’s very, like, spooky in a way to see it happen to him, and I’m the one guarding him," Williams said.

Williams could have stolen the ball after Doncic let it go, but he chose not to take advantage of the situation.

“I tried to let it go out of bounds and give them time to figure it out,” Williams said. “That injury sucks. So I wish him a speedy recovery. Hope it's not anything serious.”

Doncic had scored at least 40 points in five of his previous seven games. He was held to 12 on 3-for-10 shooting against Oklahoma City's relentless defense.

The Lakers trailed 90-58 when Doncic was hurt, so the injury made a bad night worse.

“I mean, it’s something you never want to see as a teammate,” Lakers forward Jake LaRavia said. “So especially in a game like this, it was tough to see him go down. All the prayers for him ... but yeah, you never want to see that.”

Lakers guard Austin Reaves hurt his back during the game, but continued to play. He sat out the fourth quarter with the game out of reach.

“He was in a weird position, stretching for a basketball, loose ball," Redick said. "And he just felt something intercostal, somewhere in his back, in between the ribs. He was able to play through it ... we’ll see how he feels tomorrow.”

The Lakers will host a rematch with the Thunder on April 7.

___

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

An Iowa State transfer, Onyedim is a Richmond native and former all-district selection at Foster High School.

Onyedim also has visits with the Carolina Panthers, Los Angeles Chargers and Arizona Cardinals.

Onyedim had 48 tackles and 2 /12 sacks with 8 1/2 tackles for losses for the Aggies.

He had 90 tackles, 13 tackle for losses and three sacks at Iowa State where he was an honorable mention All-Big 12 conference.

He was a teammate of Texans players Jayden Higgins, Jaylin Noel and Xavier Hutchinson.

He had 12 sacks as a high school senior.

Onyedim (6-foot-3 1/2, 292 pounds) has posted a 32-inch vertical leap with a 9-3 broad jump.

The Texans will host Aggies running back EJ Smith at their local pro day workout April 10. He worked out for the Dallas Cowboys at their local prospect day Thursday.

Smith is the son of Cowboys Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith.

A Stanford transfer, Smith averaged 7.4 yards per carry during a road win over Arkansas. He scored touchdowns against Missouri, South Carolina and Texas.

At his Pro Day, he had 10-0 broad jump, a 35 1/2 inch vertical and bench pressed 225 pounds 20 times.

Aaron Wilson is a Texans and NFL reporter for KPRC 2 and click2houston.com

He was designated by the Secretary of State and was joined by his family, including his mother.

Marks is holding his first annual charity bowling tournament in May at Lucky Strike in Houston to benefit the community.

“You can get involved just by going on my foundation page,” Marks said. “Put smiles on people’s faces.”

His message to the community?

“Just stay level-headed,” Marks said. “Stay in school. This world we live in, we need everybody. Just stay in school, get good grades, and then see what life takes you on to that with whatever major you want to go into, whatever you want to do in life, no matter if it’s a football player or a doctor, just do what’s good for you, and just strive to be the best

Marks went bowling with the Texans’ running backs and running backs-assistant head coach Danny Barrett.

“That was pretty fun,” Marks said.

Marks won the bowling competition versus his teammates, but the standout was Barrett.

“Coach DB, he pretty good,” Marks said. “Yeah, he got it. He was pretty good.”

#Texans running back Woody Marks @JoquaviousMarks is holding his first annual charity bowling tournament in May at Lucky Strike in Houston. Woody says he's an excellent bowler, owns two custom bowling balls. Event to benefit community, students@KPRC2 pic.twitter.com/qyqwIReFgX

— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) March 4, 2026

Aaron Wilson is a Texans and NFL reporter for KPRC 2 and click2houston.com

The win marked the first Cougar win over the Red Raiders since 2014 and the first in Lubbock in nearly 30 years.

Houston (14-14, 2-8 Big 12) blasted three home runs in the series opener. Catcher Riley Jackson began the scoring with a solo homer in the second inning before right fielder Xavier Perez launched a 400+ foot three-run shot in the fifth inning and first baseman Cade Climie hit a two-run blast in the seventh.

The Cougars hung crooked numbers on the board in three different innings, scoring three in the second and fifth, and two in the seventh.

In his best start against a Big 12 Conference opponent, right-handed pitcher Connor Udland (2-2) struck out five over 5.0 innings for his second win of the year. Left-handed reliever Ryne Rodriguez picked up his third save with a 4.0 inning relief outing.

Three different Cougars recorded multiple hits and five different Cougars drove in runs, including former Texas Tech Red Raider (17-12, 4-6 Big 12) Antonelli Savattere who plated a run in the second inning on an RBI single.

UP NEXT

The Cougars look to win their first Big 12 series of the season on Friday at 2 p.m. from Rip Griffin Park in Lubbock, Texas. The game can be streamed on ESPN+. Houston is seeking its first series win in Lubbock since 1980.

So did Jess Michaels, one of the legions of women who have said they were sexually assaulted by the late financier and convicted sex offender with a roster of powerful friends in business, politics and beyond.

“I thought, ‘Well, maybe a woman stepping into this role will finally, finally get the truth,’” Michaels recalled Thursday, after President Donald Trump announced Bondi was out of the nation's top law enforcement job.

“She had this opportunity to be a hero and to really do right by survivors of sexual violence and trafficking,” Michaels said, "and she chose not to.”

The furor over the “Epstein files,” as the trove of investigative records came to be known, wasn't the only controversy of Bondi's tenure. But the arc — first raising expectations for a big reveal, then declaring there was nothing to see, and ultimately a forced, flawed document dump — was a stubbornly problematic storyline that ran through her time as attorney general.

Bondi rejected criticism of her handling of the matter, and Trump on Thursday praised her as “a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend.”

Michaels and other Epstein victims watched it all with shaken trust that Bondi's departure alone won't likely rebuild.

“This is not about a single person,” accuser Annie Farmer said Thursday. “It is about a government and judicial system that has repeatedly failed Epstein survivors.”

Here's a glance at Bondi's part in the Epstein saga:

February 2025: The binders

Freshly confirmed as attorney general for a president who had suggested on the campaign trail that he'd open more government documents on Epstein, Bondi whetted appetites by declaring on Fox News that “you’re going to see some Epstein information released.” And when a host asked about "releasing “the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients” — a long-rumored, never-seen sex trafficking roster — she replied that it was “sitting on my desk right now.”

A day later, conservative commentators and content creators were brought to the White House to get DOJ binders emblazoned with “The Epstein Files: Phase 1” and “Declassified.”

The attempt to showcase transparency soon backfired, once it emerged that the contents largely were already public. Bondi demanded that the FBI give her “the full and complete Epstein files,” and she later said that she'd unearthed a "truckload” of previously withheld material and that “everything is going to come out to the public.”

July 2025: The walkback

After months of anticipation, the Justice Department said it wouldn't release any more Epstein material. A court had sealed much of it to protect victims, and “only a fraction” would have come out if Epstein had gone to trial, the agency said in an unsigned memo. It added that authorities hadn't found evidence that merited new charges or investigations and that “perpetuating unfounded theories about Epstein” wouldn't help victims get justice.

And, it said, there was no “client list.” As for Bondi's prior comment that it was on her desk, officials said she had meant the overall case file.

Conservative influencers, among others, blasted the turnabout and questioned Bondi’s capability. But Trump stood by her, scolding a journalist for attempting to ask her a question about Epstein at a White House Cabinet meeting.

Trump had himself raised questions for some years after Epstein's 2019 death in jail as the financier faced federal sex trafficking charges. After the Justice Department memo, however, the president suggested there was nothing more to say about Epstein and the country, including his own supporters, should simply move on.

November 2025: The legislation

Amid a drumbeat of disclosures that begin to exact consequences for some powerful people — particularly Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Britain's former Prince Andrew — Congress passed legislation to force the Justice Department to disclose its investigative files on Epstein. Trump signed it into law, casting the quest for Epstein information as a Democratic-led distraction from the Republican agenda.

Meanwhile, at his urging, Bondi announced that the U.S. attorney in Manhattan would investigate Epstein’s ties to some of the Republican president’s political foes, including Democratic former President Bill Clinton. None has been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s accusers; nor has Trump, another former Epstein friend. Both Clinton and Trump have said they knew nothing about Epstein's misconduct and cut ties with him many years ago.

December 2025: The first batch

At the statutory deadline for making the Epstein files public, the Justice Department released only some of them. While the records included some material the public hadn't previously seen, including some candid photos of Clinton, the documents didn't break major ground and included little about Trump.

The department said it was continuing to review other Epstein records to make sure that victims were protected.

But Democrats cried cover-up, bill sponsor Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., accused the Justice Department of breaking the law by missing the deadline and redacting too much, and some Epstein accusers also questioned the extensive redactions.

January 2026: The big release

The Justice Department began releasing a huge cache of additional Epstein documents, videos and photos, though others remained under wraps.

The records pulled back a curtain on favor-trading and frank communications in a chummy elite that looked past Epstein's 2008 guilty plea to solicitating prostitution from an underage girl in Florida. Some high-flying Epstein friends resigned or lost jobs in corporate America, academia, big law firms, the British, Slovakian and Norwegian governments and beyond.

But the documents disclosed highly personal information about some victims while redacting the names of Epstein correspondents in, for example, emails that appeared to refer to the sexual abuse of underage girls.

Gloria Allred, an attorney for numerous Epstein victims, said Thursday that Bondi betrayed them by failing to protect personal information in the files.

“She has destroyed the trust in the DOJ that victims had a right to expect, and her termination may be the only type of justice that survivors will receive from the DOJ,” Allred said by email.

February 2026: The hearing

At a congressional hearing, a combative Bondi tried to quell the Epstein files controversy. She defended how the Justice Department dealt with it, lobbed personal insults at Democrats and lauded Trump over, among other things, the performance of the stock market.

Bondi said she was deeply sorry for what Epstein victims suffered. But she declined a request from Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., to face and apologize to them for the Justice Department's actions, and Bondi dismissed Massie’s critiques of the release of victims’ personal information.

March 2026: The subpoena

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform subpoenaed Bondi to answer questions on April 14 about the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein investigation and file release. With five Republicans joining Democrats to support the subpoena, it reflected widespread discontent, including in the GOP base, over Bondi’s management of the matter.

The future

For now, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will be the acting attorney general.

Michaels, who traveled to the Capitol last year to press for the files’ release, wanted Bondi gone. But will Blanche do better?

"We can only hope. But given that they worked together, I don’t have great expectations,” she said.

The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Michaels has done.

Robert Glassman, an attorney for a woman who testified as “Jane” in the 2021 criminal trial of Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, noted that agency leaders come and go.

“For victims of sexual abuse, what matters is whether the institutions meant to protect them actually do their job,” he said.

Iran is firing more missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab states, with a spokesperson for its military insisting Thursday that Tehran maintains hidden stockpiles of arms, munitions and production facilities.

In Lebanon, where Israel has launched a ground invasion against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, Israeli strikes have killed 27 people in a single day, Lebanon's Health Ministry said.

Stocks recovered most of their losses from earlier in the day, though oil prices remained elevated after Trump failed to offer a clear timetable for ending the conflict in his address. U.S. crude oil was up 8.4% at $108.82 per barrel, pulling back from over $110.

In his address Wednesday night, U.S. President Donald Trump said U.S. forces will keep hitting Iran “very hard” in the next two or three weeks and bring the country “back to the Stone Ages,” even as he touted the success of U.S. operations and argued that all of Washington’s objectives have so far been met or exceeded.

Here is the latest:

Bangladesh implements austerity measures

Bangladesh is curtailing office hours and enforcing early closure of malls and shops beginning Friday to handle its energy crisis related to the war.

The country’s cabinet ordered 30% spending cuts for fuel and power at government offices, suspended some staff training and stopped purchases of new vehicles, ships and aircraft. Decorative lighting will not be allowed for celebrations.

Bangladesh, a nation of more than 170 million people, is seeking alternative fuel sources and $2.5 billion in external financing for imports, which account for 95% of its fuel.

Australia urges weekend motorists to refuel in cities

Australian Energy Minister Chris Bowen on Friday urged motorists getting away for a long weekend during the Easter holiday to fill up in cities because most of the nation’s fuel shortages are in rural areas.

Among 2,400 gas stations in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, 182 had run out of diesel by Friday.

In Australia’s second-most populous state, Victoria, 76 gas stations were out of diesel. In the remaining states ranked by the most populous first, Queensland had 75 stations without diesel, Western Australia had 37, South Australia had 28 and in Tasmania there were seven.

“For those Australians planning a road trip this weekend, given our shortages are predominantly in rural and regional Australia, it makes sense to fill up in the city to help the country if you can,” Bowen said in Sydney.

The government, which blamed regional shortages on panic buying and distribution problems, is concentrating on delivering fuel to farmers for planting crops.

Iran claims to be drafting proposal to ‘monitor’ Strait of Hormuz with Oman

Thursday’s comments by Kazem Gharibabadi, an Iranian diplomat, quoted by the state-run IRNA news agency, described the proposal as “intended to facilitate and ensure safe passage and provide better services to ships passing through this route.”

Iran’s attacks on shipping in the region, as well as reportedly demanding as much as $2 million for passage through the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, have created a stranglehold on the route.

It is unclear what the proposal would mean. Oman did not immediately acknowledge it. The strait runs through Iranian and Omani territorial waters but is considered an international waterway that should freely allow ships to pass.

“Naturally, when we face an act of aggression, navigation encounters serious problems, and this is the result of the aggressive act,” Gharibabadi said. “We are currently at war and cannot expect pre-war rules to govern wartime conditions.”

USS Gerald R. Ford leaves Croatia

The largest American aircraft carrier in service sailed out of Split and “remains poised for full mission tasking in support of national objectives in any area of operation,” the Navy’s 6th Fleet announced.

It was unclear where it was going. It went to Croatia after a stop in Souda Bay, Greece, for repairs after a fire in its laundry room. It underwent further repairs in Croatia and saw its sailors take liberty while at port.

The Ford left Norfolk, Virginia, on June 24, 2025, making its deployment one of the longest in Navy history.

If it heads to the Middle East, it would have to pass through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, have entered the war and begun firing on Israel, meaning the Ford could face fire from them.

The USS Abraham Lincoln remains in the Arabian Sea. The U.S. military’s Central Command said Friday that it “continues to conduct flight operations, both day and night.”

The USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier departed Norfolk on Wednesday to head to the Mideast.

Russian state-run nuclear power company prepares for more evacuations from Iran’s Bushehr plant

The state-run news agency Tass quoted Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev as saying Moscow was preparing for “the final wave of evacuations” from Bushehr, which would include more than 200 people. The company plans to leave a small number of “volunteers” behind to run the reactor.

Likhachev said Russia would request a ceasefire from the Americans and the Israelis to allow the evacuation. Russia and Iran say there have been multiple incidents of fire on the plant, but the International Atomic Energy Agency say there has been no damage to the reactor or radiological release from the site.

Bushehr took decades to build and finally open, with its power plant connecting to the Iranian grid in 2011 with Russian assistance. It runs a pressurized-water reactor that generates up to 1,000 megawatts of electricity. That can power hundreds of thousands of homes and other businesses and industries. But it contributes only 1% to 2% of Iran’s power.

Iranian soccer makes World Cup progress in talks with FIFA chief as war darkens June trip to US

A first face-to-face meeting with FIFA President Gianni Infantino since the U.S. and Israel started a war against Iran on Feb. 28 made genuine progress in soccer diplomacy at the end of a fraught month.

The Iranian soccer federation’s upbeat readout of the meeting in Turkey made no mention of moving World Cup games to Mexico — a subject Infantino has repeatedly shut down for the past two weeks.

Infantino also offered tangible help for the squad to prepare for the World Cup in the next two months. Most Iran players are with clubs in the national league that has shut down during the war.

Iran’s World Cup hosts in Arizona said this week that they were pressing on with training camp upgrades plus local and federal security plans — echoing the “stick to the schedule” mantra FIFA has used.

The Iranian delegation is due in Tucson no later than June 10.

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Pentagon not offering a reason for Army chief’s departure amid Iran war

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson, said Gen. Randy George “will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately.”

The ouster is the latest of more than a dozen firings of top generals and admirals by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. As with many of those, Pentagon officials are not offering a reason for George’s departure, which comes nearly five weeks into U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and with no clear timeline from the president on when the war may end.

George has held the post of Army chief of staff, which typically runs for four years, since August 2023, under the Biden administration.

He is a graduate of West Point Military Academy and an infantry officer who served in the first Gulf War as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. He was former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s top military aide from 2021 to 2022.

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Iran war disrupts US small businesses with shipping complications and higher costs

The war is making life more difficult for small business owners across the country, who are grappling with shipping complications, higher costs and consumers tightening their grip on their wallets.

A shoe designer is struggling to import its shoes from Vietnam; a pistachio grower has millions of dollars worth of pistachio exports sitting in the water; a home landscaper in Kansas City is stockpiling fertilizer as prices skyrocket; and a Chicago electronics store owner is facing pain at the pump.

Small business owners say the severe supply chain disruptions during the pandemic were worse — but they fear that if the war stretches on for months, it might start to come close.

“The costs are rising, the routes are changing, and capacity is tightening. It’s all happening at the same time, and that’s a perfect storm for small businesses,” said Brandon Fried, executive director of the Airforwarders Association, a trade group for U.S companies that move cargo through the supply chain on all modes of transport.

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Strikes on an Iranian bridge killed 8, local authorities say

The strikes also wounded 95 people who had gathering under the bridge and along the riverbank to celebrate “Nature Day,” Iran’s state media said, citing authorities in Alborz province.

Trump referenced the strike on the B1 bridge, which he called Iran’s biggest, in a social media post saying “much more to follow.” Iranian officials condemned the destruction of civilian infrastructure. The bridge was still under construction.

Hegseth asks the Army’s top uniformed officer to step down while US wages war against Iran

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has asked the Army’s top uniformed officer, Gen. Randy George, to step down, the Pentagon said Thursday, as the United States wages a war against Iran.

A Pentagon official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, confirmed that George has been asked to take early retirement from the post of Army chief of staff, which he has held since August 2023.

The ouster of George is just the latest of more than a dozen firings of top generals and admirals by Hegseth since he first took office last year.

CBS News was first to report the ouster.

— Konstantin Toropin.

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UN to vote on using ‘all defensive means’ to secure navigation in Strait of Hormuz

The U.N. Security Council has scheduled a vote at 11 a.m. EDT Friday on a Bahrain-sponsored resolution authorizing use of defensive means — but not offensive — to secure international navigation in the Strait of Hormuz which has been mostly blocked by Iran.

The final draft to be voted on, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, makes significantly waters down earlier proposals.

Previous drafts would have authorized countries “to use all necessary means” — U.N. language including possible military action — to secure passage and deter attempts to interfere with international navigation.

The final draft authorizes countries “to use all defensive means necessary and commensurate with the circumstances in the Strait of Hormuz and adjacent waters” to secure passage and deter attempts to interfere with international navigation “for a period of at least six months.”

Russia and China had strongly opposed the previous drafts authorizing possible offensive action.

US oil tops $110 a barrel and stocks recover

Stocks overcame early losses to finish Thursday’s trading with slim gains and close out their first winning week since the start of the Iran war.

Oil prices remained elevated, however, at $111.54 for a barrel of U.S. crude, having soared following Trump’s national address late Wednesday, where he vowed the U.S. will continue to attack Iran and failed to offer a clear timetable for ending the conflict.

“For markets, a prolonged conflict increases the risk of sustained pressures on inflation, global growth, interest rates, and equity valuations,” wrote Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial, in a note to investors.

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Blowing up bridges ‘will not compel Iranians to surrender,’ top diplomat says

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday evening that striking civilian infrastructure “only conveys the defeat and moral collapse of an enemy in disarray.”

Araghci’s comments came after Trump shared footage on social media of a section of a bridge collapsing in Iran, threatening more attacks. Araghci’s post on X contained a photo of what appeared to be the same bridge.

“Every bridge and building will be built back stronger. What will never recover: damage to America’s standing,” he wrote.

A leading Iranian rights lawyer was detained after giving an interview

The daughter of a leading Iranian human rights lawyer is confirming her mother was detained by Iranian intelligence agents in Tehran overnight.

Attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh is renowned for defending activists, opposition politicians and women prosecuted for removing their headscarves. She has been imprisoned multiple times. Her activist husband, Reza Khandan, is behind bars in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison.

Their daughter Mehraveh Khandan spoke with The Associated Press from Amsterdam. She said her mother has a heart condition, and she’s worried both because U.S.-Israeli attacks may hit detention facilities and because “our regime became even more brutal after this war started.”

Iranian authorities have intensified their crackdown on dissent. Hundreds of people have reportedly been arrested, often for communicating with foreign media. Days before her arrest, Sotoudeh told an interviewer with a Persian media outlet that the Islamic Republic’s policies “have exposed us to death.”

Yemen’s Houthis claim missile attack against Israel

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels said this was a joint operation with Iran and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.

Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a Houthi military spokesman, said in a prerecorded statement that the group’s intervention in the war is “a gradual one,” and they will “deal with future developments according to the enemy’s escalation or de-escalation.”

Earlier Thursday, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen.

The Houthis had remained on the war’s sidelines until Saturday, when they claimed a missile attack against Israel.

There are growing concerns that the Houthis could start attacking shipping in the Red Sea, as they did during the war in Gaza, or oil facilities in the Persian Gulf, as they did previously during Yemen’s civil war.

Trump sons’ drone venture denies conflicts of interest

This latest Trump venture, Powerus, has its sights on $1.1 billion set aside by the Pentagon to build up a U.S. manufacturing base for armed drones to fill a hole left when the Trump administration banned such imports from China.

The Florida-based company denied any conflicts when it announced the Trump brothers’ deal. Asked about potential Powerus conflicts of interest specifically, Eric Trump sent the AP a statement last month saying, “I am incredibly proud to invest in companies I believe in. Drones are clearly the wave of the future.”

The company recently raised $60 million from investors and hopes to tap additional financing by doing a “reverse merger” with a Trump company listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange that owns a few golf courses. Such a merger allows a private business to quickly go public, shortening the process of filing paperwork and meeting various requirements of a regular initial public offering.

Company backed by Trump sons is pitching drone interceptors to Gulf states being attacked by Iran

A drone maker backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. is trying to sell to countries that now depend on the U.S. military led by their father, positioning them to benefit from the war he began.

Powerus co-founder Brett Velicovich told The Associated Press that the company is making sales pitches that include drone demonstrations in several Gulf countries to show how its defensive drone interceptors could help them ward off Iranian attacks.

“These countries are under enormous pressure to buy from the sons of the president so he will do what they want,” said Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush. “This is going to be the first family of a president to make a lot of money off war — a war he didn’t get the consent of Congress for.”

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Pakistan hikes fuel prices by 42% amid global oil price surge linked to Iran war

The Pakistani government called Thursday’s increase unavoidable as global oil costs climb because of the Iran war. The government raised prices by 137 rupees (49 cents) per liter, after already increasing prices by roughly 20% last month.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the conflict has hit Pakistan’s economy hard and that he is trying to bring Washington and Tehran to the negotiating table.

War crimes investigation of Israel is sought in France

The complaint filed Thursday with France’s war crimes unit in Paris involves an Israeli strike on a Beirut apartment building in November 2024, well before the current war. The International Federation for Human Rights says it killed seven civilians, including the parents of a French-Lebanese artist, Ali Cherri.

The human rights group said the strike hit just hours before a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect, and that bombing a civilian building could constitute a war crime under French criminal law and international humanitarian law. Amnesty International said its own investigation found no evidence of a military objective in or near the building, and that civilians received no effective advance warning.

Israel ’s Foreign Ministry referred questions to Israel’s military, which did not immediately respond Thursday, but has said it follows international legal norms and strikes only legitimate military targets.

War deals a heavy blow to Iraq’s oil-dependent economy

Iraq relies on oil revenues for roughly 90% of its budget, and most of it is exported through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed since the Iran war began with U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Tehran. The war also has led to a sharp reduction in the volume of imported goods reaching southern Iraq’s ports, and halted traffic at Iraq’s border with Iran.

Unlike other countries in the Middle East touched by the war, Iraq hosts both entrenched Iran-aligned forces and significant U.S. interests, exposing it to attacks from both sides.

Iran has offered assurances that Iraqi crude can safely transit the Strait of Hormuz, said Bassem Abdul Karim, the head of Iraq’s Basra Oil Company.

However, because Iraq lacks its own tanker fleet and depends on chartered vessels, shipments ultimately hinge on whether tanker owners are willing to accept the heightened risks. Most are not.

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US-Israeli strikes on civilian infrastructure threaten to set back Iran ‘generations’

An Iranian human rights activist has described attacks on her area of eastern Tehran.

“For two or three nights the sky was full of drones. I constantly saw them,” she said, speaking with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for her safety.

A dissident and former political prisoner, she said U.S.-Israeli strikes are doing growing harm. Trump’s threat to send Iran back to the Stone Age was “offensive” and recalled the brutal 13th century Mongol invasion of Iran, she added.

“The truth is: their problem isn’t with the Islamic Republic, it’s with Iran,” she added, pointing to what she said were recent strikes on steel plants, a pharmaceutical company and a landmark Tehran health institute.

She described seeing “completely” destroyed homes scattered across the capital, especially in a low-income neighborhood, Resalat. Iran’s Red Crescent has reported extensive damage to homes and civilian sites.

— Amir-Hussein Radjy in Cairo

Gulf nations back UN resolution authorizing ‘all necessary measures’ to guarantee shipping through Strait of Hormuz

“All necessary measures” is language used by the United Nations that includes military action.

At a U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday, the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council said Iran’s retaliatory attacks on its neighbors had exceeded “all red lines.”

Jassim Albudaiwi also stressed that the six GCC nations must be included in any discussions or agreements with Iran on ensuring regional security.

Bahrain, the current U.N. Security Council president and a GCC member, has said it wants a vote Friday on a resolution calling on countries “to use all necessary means” to ensure international transit “in the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.”

It faces opposition from veto-wielding Russia and China.

Dizzying US fuel prices mostly benefit companies that extract and refine crude

The near-daily changes in U.S. gas prices have been dizzying for drivers. Experts say differences in price aren’t typically decided by any individual gas retailer, and most of them aren’t pocketing the extra pennies when prices rise.

U.S. gas prices are climbing fast, and drivers are paying the highest pump prices since 2022 as the Iran war shakes oil markets.

The national average jumped past $4 a gallon this week. The Energy Information Administration says about half the price covers crude oil, and about 20% goes to refiners.

The near-daily changes in U.S. gas prices are dizzying for drivers, who are left feeling frustrated and cash-strapped as the Iran war pushes up prices worldwide. In his speech on the Iran war, Trump asked Americans for patience.

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Gulf nations back UN resolution authorizing ‘all necessary measures’ to guarantee shipping

“All necessary measures” is language used by the United Nations that includes military action.

At a U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday, the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council said Iran’s retaliatory attacks on its neighbors had exceeded “all red lines.” Jassim Albudaiwi also stressed that the six GCC nations must be included in any discussions or agreements with Iran on ensuring regional security.

Bahrain, the current U.N. Security Council president and a GCC member, has said it wants a vote Friday on a resolution calling on countries “to use all necessary means” to ensure international transit through the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

It faces opposition from veto-wielding Russia and China.

Democrats say Trump is losing the war

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said the president’s speech Wednesday night was “grounded in a reality that only exists in Donald Trump’s mind.”

“We are losing this war,” Murphy said. “We cannot destroy all their missiles or drones, nor their nuclear program. Iran projects more power in the region than they did before the war, especially if they now permanently control the Strait of Hormuz. We are spending billions we don’t have and losing American lives in a war that is destabilizing the world and making us look feckless.”

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Iran's oldest medical research institution is hit

Hossein Kermanpour, a spokesperson for Iran’s Health Ministry, said on X that the strikes on the Pasteur Institute of Iran were “a direct assault on international health security” and called on the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross to respond.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei on X called it “heartbreaking, cruel, despicable, and utterly outrageous.” Both shared photos of destruction and rubble.

Israel’s military said it was not aware of the strikes, and U.S. Central Command did not respond to questions.

The institute is a large laboratory complex that opened more than a century ago and has a staff of more than 1,300 working on the development and manufacture of vaccines and biopharmaceuticals. The Paris-based Pasteur Network, a global health alliance spanning 32 centers worldwide, did not immediately respond to questions when contacted after business hours.

The Institute would not be the first medical facility hit during the war. Tehran's Gandhi Hospital was damaged by shrapnel and debris. Israel has previously claimed Iran struck the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. And Lebanon's health ministry said Thursday that nine hospitals have been targeted by Israeli airstrikes so far.

The Sacramento State commit has put up some impressive number, both on the mount and in the batter’s box. Bey’s performances have not only dominated opposing lineups but also inspired her teammates, helping drive the team towards a winning record of 16-6.

Her dedication, skill, and leadership make her a player to watch as she closes out an outstanding high school career.

The so-called translunar ignition came 25 hours after liftoff, putting the three Americans and a Canadian on course for a lunar fly-around early next week. Their Orion capsule bolted out of orbit around Earth right on cue and chased after the moon nearly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am so, so excited to be able to tell you that for the first time since 1972 during Apollo 17, human beings have left Earth orbit,” NASA’s Lori Glaze announced at a news conference.

The engine firing was flawless, she noted.

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen said he and his crewmates were glued to the capsule's windows as they left Earth in the rearview mirror, taking in the “phenomenal” views. Their faces were pressed so tightly against the windows that they had to wipe them clean.

“Humanity has once again shown what we are capable of, and it’s your hopes for the future that carry us now on this journey around the moon,” Hansen said.

NASA had the Artemis II crew stick close to home for a day to test their capsule’s life-support systems before clearing them for lunar departure.

Now committed to the moon, the Artemis II test flight is the opening act for NASA’s grand plans for a moon base and sustained lunar living.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Hansen will dash past the moon then hang a U-turn and zip straight home without stopping on land. In the process, they will go the farthest humans have ever traveled from Earth, breaking the Apollo 13 distance record set in 1970. They also may become the fastest during their reentry at flight’s end on April 10.

History already made

Glover, Koch and Hansen already have made history as the first Black person, the first woman and the first non-U.S. citizen to launch to the moon. Apollo’s 24 lunar travelers were all white men.

“Trust us, you look amazing. You look beautiful," Glover said in a TV interview after beholding the globe from pole to pole. "And from up here you also look like one thing: homo sapiens as all of us no matter where you’re from or what you look like, we’re all one people.”

To set the mood for the day’s main event, Mission Control woke up the crew with John Legend’s “Green Light” featuring Andre 3000 and a medley of NASA teams cheering them.

“We are ready to go,” Glover said.

Mission Control gave the final go-ahead minutes before the critical engine firing, telling the astronauts that they were embarking on “humanity’s lunar homecoming arc” to bring them back to Earth. The capsule is relying on the gravity of Earth and the moon — termed a free-return lunar trajectory — to complete the round-trip figure-eight loop. The engine accelerated their capsule to more than 24,000 mph (38,000 kph) to shove them out of Earth's orbit.

“I’ve got to tell you, there is nothing normal about this," Wiseman said. "Sending four humans 250,000 miles away is a herculean effort, and we are now just realizing the gravity of that.”

Flight director Judd Frieling said he and his team were all business while on duty but will likely reflect on the momentousness of it all once they go home.

“I suspect everybody understands that this is a once-in-a-lifetime moment," he told reporters.

Savoring views of Earth

The next major milestone will be Monday’s lunar flyby.

Orion will zoom 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) beyond the moon before turning back, providing unprecedented and illuminated views of the lunar far side, at least for human eyes. The cosmos will even treat the Artemis II astronauts to a total solar eclipse as the moon temporarily blocks the sun from their perspective.

While awaiting their orbital departure earlier Thursday, the astronauts savored the views of Earth from tens of thousands of miles high. Koch told Mission Control that they can make out the entire coastlines of continents and even the South Pole, her old stomping ground.

NASA is counting on the test flight to kickstart the entire Artemis program and lead to a moon landing by two astronauts in 2028.

The so-called lunar loo may need some design tweaks, however.

Orion's toilet malfunctioned as soon as the Artemis crew reached orbit Wednesday evening. Mission Control guided astronaut Koch through some plumbing tricks and she finally got it going, but not before having to resort to using contingency urine storage bags.

The urine pouches are serving double duty. Mission Control ordered the crew to fill a bunch of the empty bags with water from the capsule’s dispenser on Thursday. A valve issue arose with the dispenser following liftoff, and NASA wanted plenty of drinking water on hand for the crew in case the problem recurred. The astronauts used straws and syringes to fill the pouches with more than 2 gallons (7 liters) worth before pivoting to the moon.

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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.

A group of kids from BEAR Houston (BE A Resource for CPS Kids) was given $200 of Academy store credit per child to go on a shopping spree with Hader. The Academy also donated $1,000 to the organization to support its mission, which Hader sees as a wonderful part of his career as a major league baseball player.

#Astros pitcher Josh Hader held a shopping spree at @Academy in Bunker Hill with kids from BEAR (BE A Resource for CPS Kids) who each got to spend $200. Hader shared that he and his family couldn’t be happier to give back. More tonight at 10 on @KPRC2 #chasethefight #Houston pic.twitter.com/xqmOJrNurj

— KPRC Nick Mantas (@KPRCNick) April 2, 2026

“You know, obviously we play baseball, that’s something we like to do, but more importantly, it’s to give back and be able to spend time with the community,” said Hader. “To be able to impact kids at such a young age and maybe inspire them to do what they love to do, whether that’s baseball or any other sport, you know, just to achieve greatness in their life, and ultimately that’s the goal.”

Hader also mentioned that he’s going to be increasing his bullpen activity, getting his reps in, and getting stronger as soon as possible. There’s no timetable for his return.

And it happened millions of years earlier than researchers thought.

More than 700 fossils found in southwestern China’s Yunnan province offer a window into life from 539 million years ago, during the waning end of the Ediacaran period, a time of simple but strange animals that lived two-dimensionally in the oceans, never going up or down, researchers said.

But a study in Thursday’s journal Science said many of the fossils in this trove are remnants of more complex animals that lived three-dimensional lives, traveling up through the water and eating. Those are traits that had been thought to only spring to life at least 4 million years later in the Cambrian period, during what was called the Cambrian explosion of complex and recognizable animal life.

“This really is the first window we have into how basically the modern animal-dominated biosphere was formed and developed and came through this weird Ediacaran transitional interlude,” said co-author and paleontologist Frankie Dunn of the Museum of Natural History at Oxford University. “We go from a two-dimensional world, and within the geological blink of an eye, animals have diversified. They’re everywhere. They’re doing everything, and they’re changing biogeochemical cycles. They’ve changed the world.”

The new finds were a short distance from a United Nations Chengjiang world natural heritage site for other fossils in an exposure along a roadside that’s not glamorous, but has different layers “where you can literally walk through time, geological time, in a landscape,” Dunn said. And one of those areas provides a “snapshot” where evolution brings forces together.

Complex animals with symmetry developed

In that spot, Dunn said, the group of fossils includes both bizarre examples of life that existed in earlier periods and disappeared, along with early examples of organisms that would evolve into modern animals. What's important in those more modern animals are that their bodies are mostly the same on the left and right.

Nearly all of the animal life on Earth now have similar features on left and right sides, as well as a head and an anus. Before the fossils discovered in China, scientists saw traces of this symmetric body type in fossil tracks, but not the critters themselves.

“Now we know what's making them because we have those fossils for the first time,” said study co-author Ross Anderson, also of Oxford's Museum of Natural History.

Help in settling ‘rocks versus clocks’ debate

Until now, there was a conflict in the field of paleontology. Genetic analysis of how fast traits mutated and evolved suggested that humans and starfish had their earliest common ancestor in the Ediacaran period, but the fossils or rocks weren't there to show it happening, Dunn said. It was called a debate of “rocks versus clocks,” she said.

“What our new fossil site tells us is that actually perhaps the rocks and the clocks are in closer agreement than we thought,” Dunn said.

Emily Mitchell, a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge who wasn't part of the research, said the new study “makes a huge amount of sense because the Ediacaran contains animals, we know there must have been a transitional stage between them and the Cambrian fauna. But until now we didn't really have any evidence of this.”

Some outside scientists, such as Jonathan Antcliffe at the University of Lausanne, questioned whether there's enough evidence to call these fossils of complex animals, but most experts contacted by The Associated Press felt they were.

Trying to figure out how and why

Now that scientists know when this life explosion happened, they’ve got more questions and some theories.

“I’m really interested in understanding, not just when it happened, which is interesting, but how it happened and why it happened the way that it happened,” Dunn said. “So whether there are feedbacks that we can disentangle between Earth and life or between life and life. Once you have Ediacaran on the sea floor, is it inevitable that you’ll end up with something approaching a Cambrian explosion? They’re the kinds of questions that I find really interesting.”

Life on Earth started 3 billion years ago, but it took another 2.4 billion years before complex animals developed. Then they multiplied, diversified and took over rapidly, Dunn said.

That's probably because Earth had to build up oxygen levels high enough and evolution had to kick in with genetic changes, said University of California at Berkeley paleontologist Charles Marshall, who wasn’t part of the research.

Marshall said, "The Cambrian explosion was sudden because of the already rich developmental system that was in place.”

“What fundamentally changed across this period is the way the animals on the planet interacted with each other," said Duncan Murdock, curator of Oxford's museum, where many of the authors work. "Once animals turned up and started eating each other and churning up the sediment, they changed the planet forever. And the planet that we live on is very much built on the foundations from the Ediacaran and Cambrian.”

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Associated Press journalist Siobhan Starrs contributed from London.

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

Authorities say the discovery was made by a land surveyor in a wooded area along Highway 3 on Wednesday. The surveyor was unsure of whether the bones belonged to a human or an animal and contacted La Marque police for assistance.

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On Thursday, authorities determined the bones do in fact belong to a human. Authorities from the La Marque Police Department, as well as Texas EquuSearch, have returned to the area to conduct a search of the area for potentially additional remains. A cadaver dog is also assisting crews with the search.

“This investigation is in the initial stages and is being worked very thoroughly. Currently, we do not have additional information regarding the identity of the remains or how long they have been at this location,” the La Marque Police Department said.

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Any new information will be released at a later time.

Under the guard of heavily armed, balaclava-clad police, prosecutors unveiled the 2,500-year-old Cotofenesti helmet, one of Romania’s most revered national treasures from the Dacia civilization, during a news conference in the eastern Dutch city of Assen.

“We are incredibly pleased,” Corien Fahner of the prosecution service told reporters. “It has been a roller-coaster. Especially for Romania, but also for employees of the Drents Museum.”

The helmet was on display at the small museum in January 2025, the last weekend of a six-month-long exhibition, when thieves broke in and grabbed it, along with three golden wristbands.

There were fears the helmet may have been melted down because its fame and dramatic studded appearance made it virtually unsellable.

Two of three missing armbands were also recovered as part of a deal prosecutors reached with three men arrested for the heist shortly after it occurred. Their trial will begin later in April.

Fahner said the search for the remaining armband would continue.

The helmet did not return unscathed.

“The helmet is slightly dented, but there will be no permanent damage,” Drents Museum director Robert van Langh said during the news conference. “The armbands are in perfect condition.”

Thieves used a homemade firework bomb and sledgehammer to break into the museum. Grainy security video distributed by police after the raid appeared to show three people opening a museum door with a large crowbar, followed by an explosion.

The theft put a strain on relations between the Netherlands and Romania

Romanian Justice Minister Radu Marinescu last year called the incident a “crime against our state” and said recovering the artifacts “is an absolute priority.”

———

Associated Press writers Molly Quell and Mike Corder contributed from The Hague, Netherlands.

New apartments, new businesses, and increased attention are transforming the area surrounding White Oak Music Hall. Developers are calling the evolving corridor along North Main Street the “White Oak District,” a mixed-use destination focused on housing, retail, and entertainment.

Supporters say the changes are bringing new energy and opportunity. But for many longtime residents, growth also raises important questions about how the neighborhood’s character will be preserved.

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“Being neighborly means inviting the community to be part of what is happening,” said Victoria Villanueva, a lifelong Near Northside resident who now serves on the area’s Super Neighborhood Council.

Villanueva says her commitment to the neighborhood is personal, following in the footsteps of her grandfather, a well-known community leader.

For years, tensions over development and quality of life have been building. Many residents point to 2016 — when White Oak Music Hall opened its outdoor stage — as a turning point.

Neighbors filed lawsuits over noise, saying bass from concerts rattled windows and disrupted sleep. A judge temporarily halted amplified performances, and a later settlement placed limits on shows and required sound monitoring.

• Man armed with butcher knife ignored police commands, advanced towards officers before fatal shooting, HPD says

Despite those measures, some residents say challenges remain, including ongoing noise complaints and heavy traffic during major events.

In nearby Glen Park, resident Jeff Trevino says the neighborhood was never designed to handle that kind of congestion.

“We’re not a pass-through,” Trevino said. “We might be a pass-by, but not a pass-through.”

Steven Bermudez, who has lived in the area for more than 50 years, says the neighborhood’s close-knit feel is what makes it special — and worth protecting.

“Success is sustainability,” Bermudez said. “Not being afraid of new development, but keeping the small-town feel we have here.”

Residents say they welcome new businesses and neighbors, but emphasize that how development happens matters just as much as what is built.

“It’s about being a thoughtful neighbor,” Trevino added.

Community members point to examples of businesses that listen and adapt when concerns are raised — something they say should be the standard as growth continues.

As the White Oak District evolves, leaders are working to keep longtime residents involved in the conversation. And across the Near Northside, there’s a shared hope: that even as change arrives, the unity and character that define the community will endure. KPRC 2 reached out to the developers behind the White Oak District for comment about their plans and is awaiting a response.

The 12-member National Capital Planning Commission, the agency tasked with approving construction on federal property in the Washington region, took the vote because U.S. District Judge Richard Leon’s ruling — which came two days earlier — affects construction activities but not the planning process, said the commission's Trump-appointed chair, Will Scharf.

A vote of 8-1, with two commissioners voting present and one absent, allowed the plan to move forward.

Despite the agency’s approval, the judge’s ruling and a legal fight over the ballroom could stall progress on a legacy project that Trump is racing to see completed before the end of his term in early 2029. It’s among a series of changes the Republican president is planning for the nation’s capital to leave his lasting imprint while he’s still in office.

Before the vote, Scharf, a top White House aide, noted that Leon's order has been stayed for two weeks as the administration seeks an appeal. He said, as he understood the decision, it “really does not impact our action here today.”

Reading from notes, Scharf also delivered an impassioned defense of the project that reviewed the full history of changes and additions to the White House that were criticized when they were made but have become beloved with the passage of time. He spoke about the addition of the north and south porticos and the balcony added by President Harry Truman.

Scharf suggested that Trump’s proposed ballroom will similarly come to be viewed as a wise addition — despite drawing contemporary opposition from some members of the public and government officials.

“I believe that in time this ballroom will be considered every bit as much of a national treasure as the other key components of the White House,” Scharf said.

Scharf also said the project has been viewed negatively because of opposition to Trump, instead of the merits, saying, “I feel that we’ve been unfairly slighted in the press and otherwise for the way we’ve gone about reviewing this particular project.”

The vote by the commission, which includes three members Trump gets to appoint, had initially been scheduled for March but was postponed to Thursday because so many people signed up to comment at the commission’s meeting last month. The comments were overwhelmingly in opposition to the ballroom.

The lone “no” vote was cast by Phil Mendelson, a Democrat who chairs the Council of the District of Columbia. Linda Argo and Arrington Dixon, the two commissioners appointed by Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, voted present.

Mendelson criticized the design of the ballroom addition and how fast it was approved.

“It’s just too large,” he said.

Criticism also came from Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization. One of its attorneys, Jon Golinger, said the commission had discounted opposition from city officials and thousands of people who commented against the project, and ignored the judge's ruling. Several commissioners, including Scharf, had said they took the public feedback seriously.

“This approval is illegitimate and this vote is a joke," Golinger said.

Trump, in a statement after the vote, thanked the commissioners and said he was honored.

“When completed, it will be the Greatest and Most Beautiful Ballroom of its kind anywhere in the World, and a fabulous complement to our Beautiful and Storied White House!” the president said on social media.

Trump tweaks the ballroom design

Before voting, the commission considered design changes to the 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom addition that the president announced aboard Air Force One on Sunday, as he flew back to Washington from a weekend at his Florida home.

He removed a large staircase on the south side of the building and added an uncovered porch to the southwest side. Architects and other critics of the project had panned the staircase as too large and basically useless since there was no way to enter the ballroom at the top.

A White House official said the president had considered comments from the National Capital Planning Commission and another oversight entity, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which approved the project earlier this year, as well as members of the public.

The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the ballroom design and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said additional “refinements” had been made to the exterior.

The ballroom, now estimated to cost $400 million, has expanded in scope and price tag since Trump first announced the project last summer, citing a need for space other than a tent on the lawn to host important guests. Trump demolished the East Wing in October with little warning, and site preparation and underground work have been underway since then.

Two other Trump-appointed commissioners, Stuart Levenbach and James Blair, voted for the project.

Levenbach, who serves as vice chairman and is the federal government’s chief statistician, said the White House is currently “not suited” to accommodate large numbers of guests and the addition will improve the “utility” of the compound.

He said tunnels and other structures underground at the White House made it impossible to place many features of the ballroom there, too, as some have suggested might be possible. Levenbach said the addition is a “multipurpose facility,” noting that, in addition to a ballroom, it will also have offices for the first lady, kitchen space and a theater.

“This is not an expansion for its own sake,” Levenbach said.

Blair, a deputy to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, said visitors and guests of the president deserve a “better experience."

Scharf and Blair also said Trump will get “very limited use” of the ballroom before his term ends.

Judge says Trump isn't the owner of the White House

Trump went ahead with the project before seeking input from the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts, which he reconstituted with allies and supporters.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private nonprofit organization, sued after Trump demolished the East Wing last fall to build the ballroom addition — a space nearly twice as big as the mansion itself.

Trump says it will be paid for with donations from wealthy people and corporations, including him, though public dollars are paying for underground bunkers and security upgrades.

The trust sought a temporary halt to construction until Trump presented the project to both commissions and Congress for approval. Leon agreed but said that his order would take effect in two weeks and that construction related to security would be allowed.

Yet he wasn't the main attraction.

That's because across the room, an even bigger gaggle of reporters waited for freshman guard Braylon Mullins — the Indiana kid who hit an all-timer of a shot to send the Huskies back to the sport's biggest stage — to return for his own round of interviews.

“Guards are the ones that hit the big shots,” Reed said Thursday when asked about big men getting their due, adding with a grin: “We just do our job, we do the dirty work — and we're used to doing it our whole life so we have fun doing it.”

Maybe so, but there's no minimizing the impact of size this week in Indianapolis. Not with the Final Four boasting its biggest quartet of teams going back roughly two decades, starting with guys such as Reed, Michigan's Aday Mara, Arizona's Koa Peat and Illinois' 7-foot Ivisic twins as anchors to lineups with size radiating all the way out to the perimeter.

Length, height and bulk

The average height of the Final Four teams is nearly 79.1 inches, or roughly 6 feet 6, according to KenPom’s analytics site. That edges last year’s average of nearly 78.3 inches for the biggest of any Final Four going back to the start of KenPom’s data in 2007.

Illinois (28-8) is Division I's tallest team with an average roster height of nearly 6-7 (80 inches), while Arizona (36-2) is seventh at nearly 6-6 (79 inches). Michigan (35-3) and UConn (33-5) are in the top 30 nationally with nearly identical averages slightly behind the Wildcats.

Consider it a sign of the premium each team put on building a roster to overwhelm teams inside, on the glass and with game-altering length spanning the gaps between.

That kind of size, strength and wingspan creates trouble cascading through the matchups. ACC Network analyst Luke Hancock said teams are also thriving by finding power forwards and centers capable of stepping outside to stretch defenses further and create space, eliminating the ability for a defense to simply collapse on a lone big man.

“Guards still win in March,” said Hancock, the most outstanding player of the 2013 Final Four in Louisville’s later-vacated title run. "But I think these guys have become almost like a necessary component. If you want to win championships, you need a big 4 and a monster 5.”

And it's manifesting in several ways as March Madness reaches its final act.

Defensive edge

The Illini have had the best defensive tournament efficiency of the Final Four teams while dominating the glass to complete those stops. Their roster includes an influx of European talent, including Tomislav (7-1) and Zvonimir Ivisic (7-2), as well as 6-9 forward David Mirkovic from Montenegro.

The Illini also brings 6-9, 235-pound graduate Ben Humrichous off the bench, while the outlier in the big lineup is 6-2 senior guard Kylan Boswell as a strong backcourt defender.

The South Region champion has allowed .976 points per possession in the NCAA Tournament to lead the remaining four teams. Throw in the fact that Illinois is outrebounding opponents by 16.3 per game, and it's been a perfectly timed boost to an already elite offense with those forwards and centers capable of hitting from behind the arc, too.

"Playing in the summer, you could tell it’s a little bit harder to do some things just because you’ve got Z at the rim, who’s 7-foot-2 and a great shot blocker," 6-6 forward Jake Davis said. “You got Tommy down there. So anybody you’re going up against in practice is super tall. ... We’ve just got a bunch of length everywhere. And you could tell early on that we could cause problems for other teams.”

Reed’s presence

The Illini will be tested against Reed, a 6-foot-11, 265-pound senior whose scoring (21.8) and rebounding (13.5) averages in the tournament are the best of any player still standing.

That included opening the tournament with a video game-type stat line of 31 points and 27 rebounds against Furman, making him the first player with 30-plus points and 25-plus rebounds in an NCAA Tournament game since Houston’s Elvin Hayes did it twice in 1968.

He’s coming off a 26-point showing in the comeback from 19 down to stun Duke in the Elite Eight.

“He’s a monster,” said UConn senior Alex Karaban, who was part of the Huskies’ 2023 and 2024 title winners. “He’s been so dominant. He’s really playing like the most dominant player in college basketball right now.”

Wearing them down

When it comes to the No. 1 seeds, the Wolverines have hummed with 90-plus points in four tournament wins. The Wildcats have been right behind in offensive efficiency despite being shooting fewer 3-pointers than just about every other Division I team all season.

Their meeting Saturday matches strengths.

Michigan has used the 7-3, 255-pound Mara to protect the paint, flanked by a pair of versatile 6-9 forwards in Associated Press first-team All-American Yaxel Lendeborg (240 pounds) and Morez Johnson Jr. (250).

“Our size definitely makes it tougher for smaller guards,” Lendeborg said. “Because we’re so versatile ... we can switch and guard point guards, make their life a little harder. And you know, we’re all strong bodies too. So we try to wear down teams.

“And then, toward the end of the game, that’s when we usually make our runs when we need it.”

Michigan will be tested against the Wildcats with 7-2 center Motiejus Krivas (10.4 points, 8.2 rebounds) and Peat, a 6-8, 235-pound freshman considered a strong NBA prospect.

“If you don't have the big to defend other bigs, you can't compete at this level in my opinion,” Hancock said.

“How do you make it so you're really tough to guard and you have an advantage? It’s the 4-men in this Final Four who are just so talented and the diversity of their skill sets — they can do so many things. That is the ultimate to me.”

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

The announcement said the pardons were a “humanitarian gesture” in connection with Holy Week and didn’t mention mounting pressures with the U.S.

The government said the prisoners affected are foreigners and Cubans, including women, the elderly and young people. It didn't say when they were being released or under what conditions, nor did it mention the crimes they were accused of committing.

Authorities also provided no details on whether any of those pardoned were protesters convicted and sentenced for terrorism, contempt or public disorder.

Cuba’s government denies holding political prisoners, but the activist group Prisoners Defended registered 1,214 people imprisoned for political reasons in Cuba as of February.

Cuban authorities said the decision “was based on a careful analysis of the characteristics of the crimes committed by those sanctioned, their good behavior in prison, having served a significant portion of their sentence, and their health status,” according to a statement published in state media.

The release comes as the Trump administration has placed extreme pressure on Cuba’s government, imposing an oil blockade for months that has fueled blackouts and left many civilians suffering.

Cuba periodically frees prisoners at key moments.

In January last year, Cuba’s government released 553 prisoners as part of talks with the Vatican, a day after the Biden administration announced its intent to lift the U.S. designation of the island nation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Last month, Cuba released 51 people from the island’s prisons in an unexpected move that officials said stems from a spirit of goodwill and close relations with the Vatican.

The government said Thursday's announcement was the fifth prisoner release since 2011, and that it has freed more than 11,000 people.

The announcement come just months after the U.S. deposed ex-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and pressured that nation's government to make radical changes, including releasing prisoners detained for political reasons and passing an amnesty law.

He has played in 59 games, but just 58 count toward the league's record of games and Minnesota has six games left in the regular season.

Edwards did not play in Detroit, one game after he scored 17 points in 23 minutes in a win over Dallas in his first game in two weeks. He returned against the Mavericks after missing six games due to his right knee ailment.

Following Detroit's 113-108 win, Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said Edwards' illness is what kept him out of the game.

The four-time All-Star, and two-time all-league guard finished seventh in NBA MVP voting in each of the last two seasons.

Edwards is averaging a career high with 29.3 points per game, but won't play 70-plus games as he did in each of his first five seasons in the league.

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

Tehran continued to demonstrate its ability to strike its neighbors even as U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the threat from the country was nearly eliminated and cheered the collapse of the bridge on Thursday, reportedly the tallest in the Middle East.

Iran decried the strike on the bridge, which also injured 95 people celebrating Nature Day, when Iranians gather for picnics and other celebrations outdoors on the last day of Nowruz, the Persian new year.

“Striking civilian infrastructure only conveys the defeat and moral collapse of an enemy in disarray,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote Thursday in a post on X.

Iran’s attacks on Gulf states along with its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted the world’s energy supplies with effects far beyond the Middle East. That has proved to be Iran’s greatest strategic advantage in the war. Britain held a call with nearly three dozen countries about how to reopen the strait once the fighting is over.

Trump has insisted the strait can be taken by force — but said it is not up to the U.S. to do that. In an address to the American people Wednesday night, he encouraged countries that depend on oil from Hormuz to “build some delayed courage” and go “take it.”

Before the U.S. and Israel started the war on Feb. 28 with strikes on Iran, the waterway was open to traffic and 20% of all traded oil passed through it.

Iran continues to strike Israel and Gulf countries

Iran responded defiantly to Trump’s speech, in which the American president claimed U.S. military action had been so decisive that “one of the most powerful countries” is “really no longer a threat.”

A spokesman for Iran’s military, Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, insisted Thursday that Tehran maintains hidden stockpiles of arms, munitions and production facilities. He said facilities targeted so far by U.S. strikes are “insignificant.”

Trump, in his address, said U.S. “core strategic objectives are nearing completion.”

Iran state media reported the attack on the B1 bridge, which was still under construction, citing authorities in Alborz province.

Trump posted footage on social media showing what he said was the collapse of Iran's biggest bridge and threatening, “Much more to follow.” It was not immediately clear if the footage Trump shared was the B1 bridge.

In Lebanon — where Israel has launched a ground invasion against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants — Israeli strikes killed 27 people over 24 hours, the Health Ministry said.

More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed.

More than 1,300 people have been killed and more than 1 million displaced in Lebanon. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.

Nearly three dozen nations talk about securing the Strait of Hormuz

Iranian attacks on about two dozen commercial ships, and the threat of more, have halted nearly all traffic in the waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.

Since March 1, traffic through the strait has dropped 94% over the same period last year, according to the Lloyds List Intelligence shipping data firm. Two ships are confirmed to have paid a fee, the firm said, while others were allowed through based on agreements with their home governments.

Saudi Arabia piped about 1 billion barrels of oil away from the Strait of Hormuz in March, according to maritime data firm Kpler, while Iraq said Thursday that it had started to truck oil across Syria to avoid the strait.

The 35 countries that spoke Thursday, including all G7 industrialized democracies except the U.S., as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed a declaration last month demanding Iran stop blocking the strait.

Thursday’s talks were focused on political and diplomatic measures, but British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said military planners from an unspecified number of countries will also plot ways to ensure security once fighting ends, including potential mine-clearing work and “reassurance” for commercial shipping.

No country appears willing to try to open the strait by force while the war is raging. French President Emmanuel Macron, while on a visit to South Korea, called a military operation to secure the waterway “unrealistic.”

But there is a concern that Iran might limit traffic through the waterway even after U.S. and Israeli attacks cease.

Oil prices rise again even as Trump suggests the war could end soon

The conflict is driving up prices for oil and natural gas, roiling stock markets, pushing up the cost of gasoline and threatening to make a range of goods, including food, more expensive.

Oil prices remained elevated, however, at $111.54 for a barrel of U.S. crude, having soared following Trump’s address. That's up about 50% from Feb. 28.

Though the oil and gas that typically transits the strait is primarily sold to Asian nations, Japan and South Korea were the only two countries from the region joining Thursday's call about the strait. The supply of jet fuel has also been interrupted, with consequences for travel worldwide.

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Rising from Bangkok and Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands. Associated Press writers Will Weissert in Washington and David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, and Toqa Ezzidin in Cairo contributed to this story.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said they are responding to Americans who have worried about plastics and pharmaceuticals in their drinking water. The gesture also aims to hand a win to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s MAHA movement, which for months has pressured Zeldin to further crack down on environmental contaminants.

The EPA’s Contaminant Candidate List identifies contaminants in drinking water not regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The agency is publishing the draft of the sixth version of the list, which opens a 60-day public comment period. It expects to finalize the list by mid-November.

“I can’t think of an issue that hits closer to home for American families than the safety of their drinking water,” Zeldin said at EPA Headquarters.

Studies have looked at the prevalence of microplastics in drinking water and in people’s hearts, brains and testicles. Doctors and scientists are still assessing what it means in terms of human health threats, but say there's cause for concern. There is also growing worry about pharmaceutical drugs that get into the water supply because humans excrete them and conventional wastewater treatment plants fail to remove them.

The EPA uses the list to prioritize research, funding and regulatory decision making, but rarely moves pollutants off the list to set limits for how much is allowed in public drinking water. The EPA said in March that it will not develop regulations for any of the nine pollutants from the list it most recently examined.

“It’s the beginning of a very long process that routinely ends in nothing,” said Erik Olson, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who works on drinking water protection.

Still, some who are urging the government to do more to stop plastic pollution say the announcement is a good start.

“Including it in the list would be the first step toward eventually regulating microplastics in public water supplies and hopefully this is not the last step,” said Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator who now heads up Beyond Plastics.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at Boston College, said that while the EPA is moving in the right direction, if the United States does not rein in the accelerating growth in plastic production, which leads to plastic pollution, it will make little difference. The U.S. is participating in talks on a treaty to address the global crisis of plastic pollution, but strongly opposes limits on plastic production.

Food & Water Watch says the listing is important but it ultimately falls short of their call for monitoring. EPA uses the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule to collect data for contaminants that are suspected to be present in drinking water.

The American Chemistry Council, an industry group, said it supports monitoring of microplastics in drinking water and research to better understand potential impacts, as long as the monitoring is standardized and consistent nationwide.

Plastic pollution is part of the MAHA agenda

The joint move from Kennedy and Zeldin comes as activists from Kennedy’s MAHA movement have forged fragile political ties with the EPA but expressed frustration with lack of action on their priorities, including pesticide regulation.

The movement erupted earlier this year over an executive order from President Donald Trump that is aimed in part at boosting the production of a controversial herbicide ingredient known as glyphosate. Kennedy has said he was disappointed by the executive order but sees it as necessary for agricultural stability and national security.

The EPA has teased a forthcoming MAHA agenda that it says will address issues such as forever chemicals, plastic pollution, food quality, Superfund cleanups and lead pipes. In February, EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch told The Associated Press that the agenda was in its “final stages.”

Kennedy, whose 2024 independent presidential campaign focused in part on tackling plastic pollution, also announced a $144 million effort to better measure, understand and remove microplastics that have made their way into human bodies.

Called STOMP, or Systematic Targeting of Microplastics, it will involve building tools to detect and quantify microplastics, mapping how they move through the body, and ultimately removing microplastics from the human body, he said.

“We can’t treat what we cannot measure, we cannot regulate what we don’t understand,” Kennedy said at the EPA on Thursday. “Together, we’re going to define the risk, build the tools and act on the evidence regarding microplastics.”

MAHA leaders, farmers and organizations told Zeldin in a letter Tuesday to tackle the health impacts of pesticides, plastics and PFAS chemicals. On plastics, they said the agenda must include monitoring for microplastics, establishing new limits on microplastics exposure and placing a moratorium on permitting for new or expanding plastic production facilities.

David Murphy, a former fundraiser for Kennedy’s presidential campaign, now works with the MAHA movement on its priorities as the founder of United We Eat. Murphy said it’s encouraging to see progress on microplastics, but criticized Zeldin for approving new pesticides during his tenure.

“It’s one step forward, two steps back at the EPA,” he said Thursday.

EPA publishes the list every five years

The Safe Drinking Water Act, as amended in 1996, directed the EPA to publish the Contaminant Candidate List every five years. Afterward, the agency must determine whether to regulate at least five contaminants from the list. In five cycles of the process, the EPA has determined that no regulatory action is appropriate or necessary for most of the contaminants it considered.

Trump has sought fewer environmental rules. In May, the EPA announced plans to rescind limits on some less common “forever chemicals” in drinking water, roughly a year after the Biden administration finalized the first-ever national standards. The NRDC and other environmental advocates are fighting to keep the entire Biden-era rule in place.

The new draft list includes four contaminant groups — microplastics, pharmaceuticals,  PFAS and disinfection byproducts — as well as 75 chemicals and nine microbes that may be found in drinking water, the EPA said.

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Associated Press writers Michael Phillis and Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

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

The grand jury returned a no-bill on Wednesday in Wyatt’s case.

• RELATED: Attorney says Harris County treasurer’s behavior was ‘unusual’ but had ‘no intention to commit a theft’

Wyatt was arrested in December 2025 after being accused of breaking into a vehicle.

Court documents allege Wyatt broke into the vehicle with the intent to commit theft.

• RELATED: Harris County treasurer arrested, accused of breaking into car

Documents alleged she was found sitting inside a vehicle outside a lounge and bar called Forget Me Not and refused to leave.

Following her arrest, her attorney Christopher Downey agreed Wyatt’s behavior was unusual but said she did not commit a crime.

The case against her has now been disposed.

Blanche, whom Trump elevated Thursday from deputy attorney general to acting U.S. attorney general, rose to prominence representing the president in criminal cases that consumed the four years between his first and second terms.

Blanche, a former federal prosecutor and law firm partner, led Trump's criminal defense team, representing the Republican in matters including his New York hush money case, which ended in his conviction on 34 felony counts, and a pair of federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith, both of which have been abandoned.

In a social media post, Trump called Blanche “a very talented and respected Legal Mind.”

As deputy attorney general, Blanche was the Justice Department’s second-in-command.

Working under Attorney General Pam Bondi, he managed the department’s day-to-day operations and became one of its most vocal defenders and visible public faces. He oversaw the release of government files on Jeffrey Epstein and appeared frequently on TV news programs.

Here's a look at Blanche's career and his rise to running the Justice Department:

Paralegal by day, law school student by night

Blanche, 51, attended Brooklyn Law School at night while working as a paralegal at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and graduated cum laude. Originally from the Denver suburbs, he completed his undergraduate studies at American University in Washington, D.C.

Blanche served as a law clerk for federal judges Denny Chin and Joseph Bianco, both now members of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a federal prosecutor for eight years in the same U.S. attorney’s office where he had started as a paralegal.

He spent two years as co-chief of the office’s violent crimes unit, overseeing about two dozen prosecutors and cases involving killings, kidnappings, and other violent crimes.

Entering private practice and Trump's inner circle

Blanche left the U.S. attorney's office in 2014, taking a job in the Manhattan office of the law firm WilmerHale. In September 2017, he moved to Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, where he was a partner in the White Collar Defense and Investigations practice.

In a prelude to his work defending Trump, Blanche represented the president's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and in 2019 succeeded in getting a mortgage fraud case against him dismissed in the same New York court where Trump was convicted.

Blanche argued that the case, brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office that later prosecuted Trump, was too similar to one that landed Manafort in federal prison and therefore amounted to double jeopardy.

‘An opportunity I should not pass up’

Blanche left Cadwalader in 2023, telling colleagues he was resigning to represent Trump. He joined the president's defense team just prior to his arraignment in the hush money case.

In an email announcing his departure, he wrote: “I have been asked to represent Trump in the recently charged DA case, and after much thought/consideration, I have decided it is the best thing for me to do and an opportunity I should not pass up.”

Despite his conviction, Trump came away from the hush money case impressed with Blanche’s tenacity, his willingness to spar with witnesses and judges, and the poise he showed in speaking in front of TV cameras.

Trump rewarded Blanche and another of his defense lawyers, Emil Bove, with prominent roles in his new administration's Justice Department, and last summer nominated Bove to be a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Defending Trump in a slew of criminal cases

In addition to the hush money matter, Blanche represented Trump in the two cases brought by the special counsel, his 2020 election interference case in Washington and the Florida case accusing the former president of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

In both cases, Trump's Blanche-led defense team successfully mounted a legal strategy focused heavily on delaying the cases until after the 2024 presidential election. When Trump won, Smith moved to abandon the cases, acknowledging a longstanding Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office.

Ten days before Trump returned to office, Blanche sat alongside him at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, appearing by video together as a Manhattan judge sentenced the president-elect to no punishment in the hush-money case.

“The majority of the American people also agree that this case should not have been brought,” Blanche told the judge, citing the election results as a verdict of its own.

“The American voters got a chance to see and decide for themselves whether this was the kind of case that should’ve been brought," Blanche said. "And they decided.”

Gen. Randy George “will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately,” said Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman. George has held the post of Army chief of staff, which typically runs for four years, since August 2023 under the Biden administration.

The ouster, reported earlier by CBS News, is just the latest of more than a dozen firings of top generals and admirals by Hegseth since he took office last year. Like many of those other firings, Pentagon officials are not offering a reason for George's departure, which comes nearly five weeks into U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran and with no clear timeline from President Donald Trump on when the war may end.

Hegseth also has ousted Army Gen. David Hodne and Army Maj. Gen. William Green, according to a Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive leadership changes. A reason for their departures also was not given.

General who rose rapidly under Hegseth will fill in

Gen. Christopher LaNeve will be stepping in as acting Army chief of staff, the Pentagon official said. LaNeve was serving as Hegseth’s top military aide when Trump suddenly nominated him to be the Army's vice chief of staff last October. It is a meteoric rise for an officer who was only a two-star general two years ago.

He would take over for George, who is a graduate of West Point Military Academy and an infantry officer who served in the first Gulf War as well as Iraq and Afghanistan. He also served as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s top military aide from 2021 to 2022 during the Biden administration before taking on top leadership roles in the Army.

George made it through the initial round of firings under the Trump administration in February 2025, when Hegseth removed top military leaders, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the Navy’s top uniformed officer, and Gen. Jim Slife, the No. 2 leader at the Air Force. Trump also fired Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Since then, more than a dozen other top military generals and admirals have either retired early or been removed from their posts.

Among those departures was George’s deputy, Gen. James Mingus, who was vice chief of staff of the Army for less than two years. LaNeve was nominated to that post after earlier being plucked from commanding the Eighth Army in South Korea after less than a year in the job to be Hegseth’s top military aide.

A spokesman for George could not be reached for comment.

Two other Army generals are fired

Of the other generals who were fired, Hodne had been head of the Army Transformation and Training Command, a unit that was only stood up in December as part of George’s effort to modernize the Army and amid Hegseth’s push to reduce the number of general officers in the military.

Green had been the Army’s chief of chaplains. Hegseth announced two major reforms to the military’s chaplain corps a little over a week ago.

In a video message last week, Hegseth said he wanted chaplains to focus more on God and less on therapeutic “self-help and self-care.” In recent years, the military has become increasingly dependent on chaplains to help address the growing numbers of troops in mental health distress. Hegseth also said chaplains would no longer wear their rank on their uniform but instead would be identified by religious insignia.

The changes come as Iran war grinds on

The leadership shakeup comes as Army paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne division are heading to the Middle East along with thousands of Marines and other assets. The Trump administration has avoided questions about whether or not the U.S. military will deploy ground troops against Iran.

In a prime-time address Wednesday about the war, Trump offered no end date for the conflict and few details on his strategy going forward but did forecast more military action.

“We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks,” Trump said of Iran, before adding that “we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong.”

Hegseth echoed that sentiment after the speech, with a post on social media that simply read, “Back to the Stone Age.”

Iran’s mission to the United Nations said on X that Trump’s comment “reflects ignorance, not strength,” noting that Iran’s civilization spans over 7,000 years.

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This story has been corrected to show that Gen. Jim Slife’s name was misspelled Silfe.

The Texas comptroller’s office, which manages the program, released final applicant data Thursday evening, saying it will continue verifying information before admitting students in the coming months. The program will allow families to use taxpayer funds for private school or home-schooling costs. 

Of the 274,183 Texans who applied for vouchers before Tuesday night’s deadline, 45% are white, 23% are Hispanic and 12% are Black. Low-income families make up 37% of applicants — defined by the program as a family of four earning $66,000 or less per year. Children with disabilities make up 16% of applicants. 

For comparison, 24% of Texas 5.5 million public school students are white, 53% are Hispanic and 13% are Black. About 60% of students are considered low-income — defined in public education as a family of four earning $61,050 or less annually. Children with disabilities make up 16% of enrollment.  

Meanwhile, about 75% of voucher applicants attended a private school or home-school during the 2024-25 academic year. The comptroller did not provide data on students’ current enrollment. 

The state found nearly 25,000 voucher applications ineligible. 

The applicant pool, while not fully reflective of the families who will ultimately receive voucher funds, indicates that taxpayer money will mostly flow to families who, before the program, had already committed to having their children educated in a private school or home-school. 

During the 2025 legislative session, state lawmakers and advocates touted vouchers as a benefit for low-income families and students with disabilities fed up with inadequate public schools. Of all applications, 63% came from middle- to high-income families — 27% of them making at or above $165,000 per year for a household of four. 

“It’s not surprising that a state as big as Texas has more voucher applicants than other smaller states, especially with such a large marketing budget,” Carrie Griffith, executive director of Our Schools Our Democracy, a public education advocacy group, said in a statement. 

“It’s also not surprising that so few public school families have applied for a private school voucher,” Griffith added. “Public schools deliver special education services, provide transportation, support extracurriculars, keep kids safe, and prepare them for life. They are one of Texas’s most effective, unifying public institutions. And the data remains undeniable: Most Texans want strong, fully funded public schools — not vouchers.”

Travis Pillow, a spokesperson for the comptroller, said Texas anticipates having only enough funding to offer vouchers to children with disabilities and students from low- and middle-income families. Program participants, Pillow believes, will look different than the pool of applicants. 

“We are working on a detailed report that captures all our outreach efforts for year 1, but we know there’s going to be more work to do to get the word out in year 2 and beyond,” Pillow said. “We’ll be looking for opportunities to reach more families we didn’t reach in year 1 and for ways to build trust in this new program.”

In other states with voucher programs structured like Texas’, white families with children previously in private school make up the majority of participants.

Most participating Texans with children in private schools will receive about $10,500 annually. Home-schoolers can receive up to $2,000 per year. Children with disabilities qualify for up to $30,000 — an amount based on what it would cost to educate that child in a public school.

Demand for the program exceeds $1 billion in available funding, which means the state will conduct a lottery to determine who can receive vouchers. The state will consider, in order of priority:

• Students with disabilities and their siblings in families with an annual income at or below 500% of the federal poverty level, which includes a four-person household earning less than roughly $165,000 a year (12% of applicants). 
• Families at or below 200% of the poverty level, which includes a four-person household earning less than roughly $66,000 (32% of applicants). 
• Families between 200% and 500% of the poverty level (29% of applicants). 
• Families at or above 500% of the poverty level (22% of applicants); these families can receive up to $200 million of the program’s total budget. Children who attended public school for at least 90% of the prior school year will receive priority within this group (5% of applicants). 

Families must still find private schools — which are generally not required to accommodate students with disabilities — to accept their children. Whether families identify a private school will ultimately determine who receives voucher funding. Parents must have their children enrolled in a school by July 15. 

Later this month, families will begin finding out if they can receive voucher funding. Most families applied to receive funding for pre-K, though the state deemed half of those applications ineligible.

“I didn’t wake up to my alarm. Slept through it," Jensen told The Kansas City Star and other outlets. "Don’t really have an excuse — nor should I. It sucks. It happens. I feel like I let teammates down, coaches down. Just learn from it and just know it won’t happen again.”

Jensen eventually arrived, but not early enough to prepare adequately to start the game. He did end up coming in as Kansas City’s catcher in the ninth inning of the Royals' 5-1 loss.

Salvador Perez, who was expecting to be Kansas City’s designated hitter Thursday, ended up catching the first eight innings.

“First and foremost, I’m glad Carter’s OK,” Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino told reporters. “I mean, that was kind of the initial thought when you’re trying to get a hold of his parents and everything like that — just make sure he’s OK.”

Pasquantino said Jensen, a 22-year-old rookie, needs to learn from this experience.

“There are some things that cannot happen, and that’s one of them,” Pasquantino said. “So he’s going to have to wear it on the chin — same way anybody would have to. It can’t happen, and hopefully it doesn’t happen again. But it’s one of those things that you just can’t afford mistakes like that in this game. Just got to move forward the best that he can. I know he feels really bad.

“I know it was not his favorite drive to the field this morning, but it wasn’t our favorite morning either, trying to figure out what was going on. He’ll learn from it, grow a little bit. We’re here for him, though. It’s not like anybody’s mad at him. Things happen. But you’ve got to learn from mistakes like that — and maybe get another alarm clock or something.”

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

Ralph led a team that returned just one starter to the most successful season in school history. The team went 29-5, with 13 of those wins coming in the regular season against a rugged Southeastern Conference schedule. The Commodores finished tied for second in the conference, which matched the best finish in program history. They earned a 2-seed in the NCAA Tournament and reached the Sweet 16.

“It's wild. It’s hard to wrap my mind around it. This whole year we haven’t slowed down,” Ralph told the AP. “I love basketball, I love the group that I coach.I love they stayed with me. It’s been hard and it’s been challenging, but in a good way.”

Ralph received the award with her entire Vanderbilt coaching staff, as well as her mom, husband and daughter in attendance. It was also special for Ralph with her UConn family there as well as they were also there to celebrate AP Player of the Year Sarah Strong.

Ralph received 23 votes from the 31-member national media panel that votes on the AP Top 25 each week. UCLA’s Cori Close, who was the AP Coach of the Year last season, was next with four. Ralph’s mentor at UConn, Geno Auriemma, received two votes while Mark Kellogg of West Virginia and Kara Lawson of Duke each received one.

”The thing I love the most of where I'm at is the vision never changed," Ralph said. “That's really important to me. Do it at a high level at Vanderbilt is really important to me. They've shown what that looks like to invest in women. Really invest in women. The resources and money, but also the development and academics.”

Ralph is the first Vanderbilt coach to win the award, which was launched in 1994-95. Her team, which won seven more games than the year before and was ranked as high as No. 5 in the AP poll, was led by All-America guard Mikayla Blakes.

“She’s someone you would want to run through a brick wall for,” Blakes said. “She has bought so much into us that it’s only right that we continue to fight in this game for her, and she’s someone who in tough moments you want to lean on. And that’s the reason why I came here.”

Vanderbilt started out 20-0 and had seven wins over ranked teams this season.

“I think truly we never talked about it,” Ralph said of the undefeated start. “I chuckled to some of my staff members this is what I’m used to. I feel comfortable here. Keep kicking their butts in practice and challenging them and keep preparing the same way no matter what our record is.”

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AP Sports Writer Teresa M. Walker contributed to this report.

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

Strong became just the fifth player to win the award in her sophomore year, joining Oklahoma’s Courtney Paris (2007), UConn stars Maya Moore (2009) and Breanna Stewart (2014), and USC's JuJu Watkins, who won it last year. The AP started giving out the award in 1995.

It's the 13th time that a Huskies player has won the award with Paige Bueckers being the last to do it before Strong in 2021.

Vanderbilt's Shea Ralph, who was a former UConn player and assistant coach, won the AP Coach of the Year award. They both accepted the awards in front of a full room that included the entire UConn team, which gave a standing ovation when both winners were announced.

“I’m so blessed because I totally got to this point in my life because of my teammates,” Strong said.

Strong received 25 votes from a national media panel that votes for the Top 25 each week. Vanderbilt's Mikayla Blakes garnered four votes and UCLA's Lauren Betts got the other two. Voting was completed before the NCAA Tournament began.

“Anybody that has watched us play would probably tell you that she's the heart and soul of our team,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “She elevates the play of everyone on our team."

He called Strong “the most low-key superstar you ever saw.”

“You don’t see that look in her eyes, you know, like, oh, my God, there’s always just, a calmness,” he said. “That’s the best way I can describe it. That allows her to just be free and fluid and play without worry. ”

Auriemma has coached some of the greatest in the game including Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird, Maya Moore and Diana Taurasi. Strong fits in with them.

“The great ones, the great ones all had it. I never saw (Taurasi) nervous,” he said. ‘You know that they came in as freshmen and you can tell by the look in their eyes, ’I can handle this. This is what I think. This is why I came here.' You know some may pretend, but you know deep down you’re not ready for that moment. She’s ready for that one."

Strong is averaging 18.6 points, 7.6 rebounds, 3.4 steals and 1.6 blocks a game while helping UConn go 38-0. She's shooting 59.4% from the field, 40.4% from 3 and 84.8% from the the foul line while playing just 27 minutes a game.

The sensational sophomore raised her game when the Huskies faced Top 25 opponents, averaging over 20 points and 10 rebounds per game. She reached 1,000 career points in her 59th career game, the third-fastest player in school history to reach the milestone.

Strong was the Big East Player of the Year as well as the Most Outstanding Player of the Fort Worth Regional.

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

Milliron is the judge who has been going viral recently after videos have been surfacing showing of his questionable courtroom conduct.

Chapter 13 bankruptcy allows individuals to reorganize their finances and repay debts over time through a court-approved plan.

However, court documents show Milliron’s case was dismissed on June 24, 2025, after he failed to comply with required filings outlined by the court.

The debts included:

• More than $30,000 owed to American Express
• Additional balances with Chase, Discover, and Bank of America
• Smaller debts tied to collections accounts

• ‘GET ME A CLERK’: Past emails from Harris County judge add to growing controversy

After the dismissal, the court later issued an order formally closing the case and releasing the trustee from further duties.

When a bankruptcy case is dismissed in federal court, the debtor is still legally responsible for their debts.

In this case, the court specifically cited Milliron’s failure to resolve deficiencies, meaning he did not comply with court orders, as the reason for dismissal.

The bankruptcy filing comes as Milliron faces public scrutiny over his behavior in the courtroom.

Several attorneys have spoken out against Milliron’s behavior calling it inappropriate and appalling.

“I’ve never seen a judge act this way,” said James Stafford, a longtime criminal defense attorney. “His conduct was way out of hand.”

Stafford said he emailed Milliron after watching the viral clip telling him he should apologize to the IT worker Milliron is seen having a tense exchange with.

• Harris County District Court confirms IT worker remains on job after viral exchange with judge

Milliron responded back with ordering Stafford to his court on April 9.

“The email is not a valid order, it has no legal enforcement and I do not expect to appear,” Stafford said.

KPRC 2 has also learned this week Milliron is listed as delinquent on two separate required filings from the Texas Ethics Commission, including both campaign finance and personal financial disclosure reports.

He is facing a combined $1,500 fine as civil penalties.

We’ve also obtained past emails from Milliron to District Clerk Marilyn Burgess which highlight his frustration with the district clerk’s office last year.

“My court will no longer be stagnant because of DCO’s ineptitude,” Milliron wrote.

DCO stands for the district clerk’s office.

“THIS IS NO LONGER AN ASK. GET ME A CLERK THAT RESPONDS TO ME and does the job!” Milliron further wrote in his email.

He told Burgess he is a “duly elected judge” and is not getting the same respect as any other judge in the courthouse.

Milliron ended the email demanding Burgess to “fix this by Monday.”

KPRC 2 reached out to Judge Milliron multiple times for comment but did not receive a response.

The Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct said complaints against judges are not public record.

The crash happened in the northbound feeder road near Cypresswood Drive.

@HCSOTexas deputies responded to a major crash at the 19700 block of North Freeway @ Cypresswood. The crash involves a jeep and motorcycle. A man has been transported to the hospital in critical condition. Northbound feeder is shut down. #HouNews pic.twitter.com/KpcxeFJeis

— Ed Gonzalez (@SheriffEd_HCSO) April 3, 2026

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office says the crash involved a motorcycle and a Jeep.

The northbound feeder road has been shut down.

Evalynn Tan was last seen in the general vicinity of Clements High School.

She has black hair and eyes, is roughly 5 feet tall, and weighs about 90lbs. Her build is very skinny and she is likely wearing a dark hoodie and sweatpants.

• Texas doctor accused of illegally selling millions of opioid pills out of Houston clinic

If you have seen her or have information on her whereabouts, you are asked to contact the Sugar Land Police Department at 281- 275-2020.

In a video posted to X, Hegseth said he is signing a memo that will direct base commanders to allow requests for troops to carry privately owned firearms “with the presumption that it is necessary for personal protection.”

He said any denial of a service member's request must be explained in detail and in writing.

“Effectively, our bases across the country were gun-free zones,” Hegseth said. “Unless you're training or unless you are a military policeman, you couldn't carry, you couldn't bring your own firearm for your own personal protection onto post.”

Questions about why service members lacked access to weapons have often emerged following shootings on the nation's military bases. Such shootings have ranged from isolated events between service members to mass casualty events, such as the shootings by an Army psychiatrist at Texas’ Ford Hood in 2009 that left 13 people dead.

Hegseth cited some of the events in his video, including a shooting that injured five soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia last year. Officials said the shooter, an Army sergeant who worked at the base, used his personal handgun before he was tackled by fellow soldiers and arrested.

“In these instances, minutes are a lifetime,” Hegseth said. “And our service members have the courage and training to make those precious, short minutes count.”

Defense Department policy has prohibited military personnel from carrying personal weapons on base without permission from a senior commander, with strict protocol for how the firearms must be stored.

Typically, military personnel must officially check their guns out of secure storage to go to on-base hunting areas or shooting ranges, then check all firearms back in promptly after their sanctioned use. Military police are often the only armed personnel on base, outside of shooting ranges, hunting areas or in training, where soldiers can wield their service weapons without ammunition.

Tanya Schardt, senior counsel at the Brady gun violence prevention organization, said in a statement that Defense Department leaders and the military’s top brass have opposed relaxing the current policy, which was originally enacted under President George H.W. Bush.

Schardt noted that most active duty service members who die by suicide do so with a weapon they own personally, not one military-issued, and argued that there will “undoubtedly be an increase in gun suicide and other gun violence.”

While fewer American service members died by suicide in 2024, the suicide rates among active duty troops overall still have gradually increased between 2011 and 2024, according to a Pentagon report released Tuesday.

“Our military installations are among the most guarded, protected properties in the world, and they’ve never been ‘gun-free zones,’” Schardt said. “If there is a problem with violent crime on these installations, then the Secretary of Defense has an obligation to alert the American people and describe how he’s working to prevent that crime.”

Friday will bring another round of spotty showers, this time they could reach Houston. Widespread rain isn’t expected until Saturday when the cold front arrives. That’s the period to watch, as the heaviest rain and strongest thunderstorms are likely in the evening hours.

Easter weekend forecast:

A cold front moves through SE Texas Saturday afternoon and night. The heaviest rain is expected in Houston around 5pm and 11pm.

There is a street flooding threat for all of southeast Texas Saturday and risk a low risk for strong to severe thunderstorms.

The good news is that it looks like almost all the rain is out by Easter sunrise service time. There may be some light rain along the coast, but the rest of us should be dry.

Sunday evening showers return mainly near the coast. By Sunday night, waves of rain move through all of SE Texas. It doesn’t look extremely heavy, just steady.

Whatever your plans are Sunday, make sure you dress for the cool. Temperatures range from the 50s in the morning to 60s in the afternoon with a strong north wind. And with the clouds it will feel colder than the actual temperature.

Extended forecast:

Look at the difference in temperatures from Saturday to Sunday. A big cool down with morning temps in the 50s and highs in the 70s early next week. I hope you have a wonderful Easter.

In an indictment unsealed Thursday in the Southern District of Texas, James Robles, 70, of Weslaco, Texas, is charged with operating a cash-only clinic in Houston that he used to sell the controlled substances.

• Man in custody charged with 2023 Fifth Ward murder

Court documents allege Robles, a medical doctor licensed to practice in Texas, conspired with others to illegally prescribe oxycodone, hydrocodone and carisoprodol – all controlled substances with substantial street value that were in high demand on Houston’s black market. Operating from his cash-only Houston clinic, Robles allegedly sold prescriptions to “crew leaders” who recruited others to pose as patients, filled Robles’ prescriptions at complicit pharmacies and resold the drugs on the black market. As alleged, Robles often did not see or examine his purported patients before prescribing them opioids and other controlled substances.

• Man armed with butcher knife ignored police commands, advanced towards officers before fatal shooting, HPD says

Court documents allege Robles allegedly prescribed approximately 2.9 million pills of hydrocodone, 1.3 million pills of oxycodone and 1.1 million pills of carisoprodol in just over four years. The documents allege in less than three years of the conspiracy, more than $2 million in cash was deposited into bank accounts controlled by Robles.

Robles is federally charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute and dispense controlled substances, one count of distributing and dispensing controlled substances and one count of maintaining a drug involved premises. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on each count.

According to court records, Kaden Berriman, of Clear Lake, posed as a Deer Park police officer during a phone call to Sycamore Grounds Coffee in December.

Court documents state that on December 18, 2025, a teenage barista received a call from someone asking to speak with the shop’s owner, Jackie Springer.

The caller claimed to be a Deer Park police officer and said there was an ongoing investigation involving the business, its owner, and employees. He told the worker the owner had reported customers using counterfeit money and said he needed to verify information, including whether employees were being paid.

When the employee questioned the caller’s identity and asked to meet in person, the suspect allegedly threatened him with arrest for interfering in an investigation.

“[The employee] stated that after he heard this, he was afraid of being arrested and did what the caller commanded him to do,” the documents say.

Court records show the teen went to his bank account, provided the last four digits of his account number, transferred money through Cash App, and sent $780 to the suspect.

Shop owner Jackie Spigener said the incident had a lasting impact on the now former employee.

“It really bothered him… he was very scared,” Springer said.

She added the employee was so shaken, he believed he was being watched through the shop’s security cameras during the call.

Deer Park police later tracked the payment through Cash App.

According to court documents, the transaction listed the name Kaden Berriman and included a memo reading “For FDIC.” Investigators also noted the profile picture on the account appeared to show a man wearing a police uniform, complete with patches and a badge.

“That’s even scarier,” Spigener said. “If he looked up at that and saw that, that it had a picture and all that, then he thinks it’s true.”

Records say investigators identified Berriman through multiple Cash App accounts linked to him, using records obtained through a grand jury subpoena. Investigators matched photos and identification documents tied to the accounts and confirmed the transaction.

Spigener said what surprised her most was how close the suspect was.

“Sometimes you think all the fraud comes from someone far away,” she said.

Records show the suspect lives about 20 minutes from the coffee shop.

Attempts by KPRC 2 to contact Berriman at his home were unsuccessful. Court records show he is out on a $20,000 bond.

Deer Park police confirm the investigation remains active. Officials say they are “chasing other leads” and conducting additional follow-ups but cannot release further details to avoid jeopardizing other cases.

“It makes you wonder how many other people have fallen to it,” Springer said.

Employees at the coffee shop say suspicious calls have become common, sometimes receiving multiple calls a day, many using realistic-sounding or AI-generated voices.

Consumer experts warn these types of calls often rely on urgency and fear to pressure recipients into acting quickly.

They recommend:

• Hanging up if a caller demands money
• Contacting the agency directly using an official number
• Never sending money to someone you don’t know

Since the incident, Spigener says she has changed how her team handles calls, making sure employees know how to identify and respond to suspicious requests.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Dallas declined to name the victims and an FBI affidavit attached to a criminal complaint only refers to them by their initials. One victim, R.D., is described as the owner of 1017 Records, the label belonging to Gucci Mane, whose legal name is Radric Delantic Davis.

“The victims in this case came to Dallas to conduct legitimate business and they were met with firearms and violence,” Ryan Raybould, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, where the complaint was filed, said at a news conference Thursday.

Publicists for Gucci Mane didn’t immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.

The alleged confrontation happened Jan. 10 after the three victims flew to Dallas for what they thought was a business meeting at a music studio, according to the affidavit. Prosecutors said Pooh Shiesty, whose legal is name Lontrell Williams Jr., arranged the meeting, allegedly to discuss the terms of his contract with 1017 Records.

“Once these three men were inside the recording studio, Williams Jr. and eight co-conspirators — several of whom traveled from Memphis, Tennessee — executed a coordinated, armed takeover,” said Raybould, who described Pooh Shiesty as the “ringleader."

Raybould said eight of the nine were arrested Wednesday. In Tennessee, the FBI in Memphis said Wednesday that it went to a home in the suburb of Cordova to serve court-approved warrants. Property records show it is owned by Pooh Shiesty.

Raybould described the three victims as music industry professionals. In the affidavit, the other two victims are referred to by the initials M.M. and B.P.

The affidavit said that Pooh Shiesty had asked to speak with the record label owner privately in a recording room. The label owner then entered the room with Pooh Shiesty, Pooh Shiesty's father and rapper Big30, whose legal name is Rodney Wright. Both Lontrell Williams Sr. and Wright are also defendants.

Pooh Shiesty produced contract termination paperwork and told the label owner to sign. They argued and Pooh Shiesty pulled what appeared to be an AK-style pistol and forced him to sign. Pooh Shiesty then took the man's wedding ring, watch, earrings and cash, the affidavit said.

When they left the room, the other defendants produced firearms and demanded property from the other two victims, the affidavit said, and the man referred to as M.M. was choked to near unconsciousness.

The affidavit said Wright blocked the studio door with his body to prevent the victims from leaving.

Messages to Wright and his label were not immediately returned Thursday. Contact information for Lontrell Williams Sr. could not immediately be found. A number listed for him was not in service. The number listed for the house in Cordova was also not in service.

Pooh Shiesty didn’t immediately return an emailed request for comment. At the time of the alleged confrontation in Texas, he was on home confinement for a prior firearms conspiracy conviction out of Florida and was required to wear an electronic monitoring device, prosecutors said.

Investigators used data from the device, plus surveillance videos, cell phone records and images posted on social media, as part of their probe, the affidavit said.

Bradford Cohen, an attorney for Pooh Shiesty in that firearms case, did not immediately reply to an email and phone call for comment.

Gucci Mane is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of trap music alongside fellow Atlanta rappers T.I. and Jeezy. He emerged in the mid-2000s with his breakout single “Icy” and went on to build a vast catalog. He has also helped launch or develop artists including Young Thug and earned a Grammy nomination for his appearing on Lizzo’s song “Exactly How I Feel.”

Gucci Maine's career has also been marked by legal troubles and personal struggles. In the 2000s and early 2010s, he faced multiple arrests on charges including drug possession, assault and probation violations. In 2014, he was sentenced in a federal firearms case and was released from prison in 2016.

His 2017 memoir, “The Autobiography of Gucci Mane,” reflects on his evolution as a music artist and personal struggles such as being diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. In recent years, he has publicly emphasized sobriety and stability.

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This story has been corrected to show that details came from an affidavit attached to a criminal complaint, not an indictment.

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Associated Press reporters Adrian Sainz in Memphis and Jonathan Landrum Jr. in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

As of April 1, Memorial Hermann is officially out-of-network for many Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas customers—leaving some patients scrambling to figure out how they’ll continue their care.

“Now I’m going to have to start from zero”

For Robert Turney, the impact is immediate—and deeply personal.

Turney is living with serious chronic conditions that require constant treatment.

“Three days a week, I spend in dialysis… I have a procedure called the paracentesis that helps manage some of the complications" Turney said.

Now, with his provider out-of-network, he’s racing against the clock. His next appointment is in less than a week—and he’s not sure if it will be covered.

“It was upsetting because I’ve gone through a lot, and I’ve worked very hard to get everything set up. Now I’m going to have to start from zero” Turney said.

Without insurance coverage, the cost of care could be overwhelming.

“It’s between $15,000 and $20,000 a pop” Turney said.

Why this is happening

The disruption comes after months of negotiations between the hospital system and the insurer failed to produce a new contract.

Memorial Hermann says Blue Cross Blue Shield made “unreasonable demands” that could jeopardize patient care and ignore the financial realities facing providers.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, meanwhile, says it remains open to reaching an agreement that ensures “affordable, quality health care” for its members.

In the meantime, patients are left navigating the fallout—often with little notice.

What this means for patients

For many, being out-of-network could lead to:

• Higher co-pays
• Larger deductibles
• Unexpected medical bills
• Disruptions to ongoing treatment

Patients in the middle of care—especially those with chronic or complex conditions—face the greatest risk.

What you can do right now

Health advocate Bonnie Sheeren says patients need to act quickly and be proactive.

For those with serious conditions:

“If it’s a complex case with a serious diagnosis, talking to that case manager on Blue Cross Blue Shield and working with that person is going to [be] very important” Sheeren said.

For patients who simply want to keep their current doctor, there may be another option before switching providers:

“You can talk to their office manager… they might be listed… with another group… and it’s possible they might be taking Blue Cross Blue Shield" Sheeren said.

A possible lifeline: continuity of care

Patients in the middle of treatment may qualify for Blue Cross Blue Shield’s “continuity of care” program.

This could allow them to temporarily continue seeing their current doctors at in-network rates—but it’s not automatic.

Patients must apply, and there is no guaranteed timeline for a decision.

Bottom line

Both Memorial Hermann Health System and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas say they’re still open to negotiations.

But until a deal is reached, patients like Robert Turney are left making difficult decisions—about their care, their finances, and their future.

Companies that have signed a “most favored nation” pricing deal and are actively building facilities in the U.S. to onshore production of patented pharmaceuticals and their ingredients will have a 0% tariff. For those that don’t have a pricing deal but are building such projects in the U.S., a 20% tariff will apply but will increase to 100% in four years.

A senior administration official told reporters on a press call that companies still have months to negotiate before the 100% tariffs kick in — 120 days for bigger companies, and 180 days for everyone else. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview the executive order before it was issued, did not identify any companies or drugs that were in jeopardy of getting hit with the increased tariffs but noted the administration had already reached 17 pricing deals with major drugmakers, 13 of which have signed.

In the order, Trump wrote that he deemed such actions necessary “to address the threatened impairment of the national security posed by imports of pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients.” It arrived on the first anniversary of Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, when the president unveiled sweeping new import taxes on nearly every country in the world that sent the stock market reeling. Those “Liberation Day” tariffs were among the duties the Supreme Court overturned in February.

Some warned of consequences of the coming tariffs announced Thursday. Stephen J. Ubl, CEO of pharmaceutical company trade group PhRMA, said taxes “on cutting-edge medicines will increase costs and could jeopardize billions in U.S. investments." He pointed to America's already large footprint in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and noted medicines sourced from other countries “overwhelmingly come from reliable U.S. allies.”

Trump has launched a barrage of new import taxes on America’s trading partners since the start of his second term and repeatedly pledged that sky-high levies on foreign-made drugs were on the way. But the administration has also used the threat of new levies to strike deals with major companies — like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb — over the last year, with promises of lower prices for new drugs.

Beyond company-specific rates, a handful of countries have reached trade frameworks with the U.S. to further cap tariffs on drugs sent to the U.S. The EU, Japan, Korea and Switzerland will see a 15% U.S. tariff on patented pharmaceuticals, matching previously agreed rates for most goods, and the U.K. will get 10% — which Thursday’s order noted would “then reduce to zero” under future trade agreements. The U.K. previously said it secured a 0% tariff rate for all British medicines exported to the U.S. for at least three years.

Trump also unveils update to metal tariffs

In addition Thursday, Trump rolled out an update on his 50% tariffs on imported steel, aluminum and copper. Starting Monday, tariff rates on those metals will be calculated based on the “full customs value” of what U.S. customers pay when buying foreign metal under the latest order, which the administration officials claimed will keep importers from other countries from escaping higher payments.

Products fully made of steel, aluminum and copper will continued to be tariffed at 50% for most countries. But the administration is also shifting how tariffs are calculated for derivative metals — or finished goods that contain some of these metals, but are not made entirely of them.

For a product with metal that amounts to less than 15% of its entire weight (like the cap on a perfume bottle) only country-specific tariffs will now apply, officials told reporters Thursday. But for products with more metal, such as a largely steel washing machine, they said a 25% tariff will apply to the whole value.

More sectoral taxes are piling up

Thursday’s orders reflect the latest example of Trump tapping into sectoral duties. The president used Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act to impose the levies, the same authority he cited to slap import taxes on cars, lumber and even kitchen cabinets. And many expect to see more product-specific import taxes down the road.

That’s because a ruling from the Supreme Court struck down tariffs Trump imposed using another law — the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act — to immediately slap tariffs on any country, at nearly any level.

While the Feb. 20 court decision marked a significant blow to Trump’s economic agenda, the president still has plenty of options to keep taxing imports aggressively. Beyond sectoral levies, Trump also imposed a 10% tariff on all imports under a separate legal power mere hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling, but that duty can only last for 150 days. Some two dozen states already challenged the new tariffs.

Trump has argued his steep new import taxes are necessary to bring back wealth that was “stolen” from the U.S. He says they will narrow America’s decades-old trade deficit and bring manufacturing back to the country. But Trump has also turned to tariffs amid personal grudges, or in response to political critics. And upending the global supply chain has proven costly for businesses and households that are already strained by rising prices.

Salah Sarsour, a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident of the United States, was taken into custody by nearly a dozen U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who surrounded his car on Monday in Milwaukee after he left his home, according to the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.

Supporters called Thursday for his immediate release. His attorneys said he was detained on the grounds that he is a foreign policy threat, a claim they say has no merit.

Instead, they believe Sarsour, 53, was targeted for speaking out against Israel and for a conviction as a minor by Israeli military courts, which have faced scrutiny over allegations of limited due process and high conviction rates of Palestinians. Israel rejects those claims. The offenses included allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli officers, according to attorney Munjed Ahmad.

“Our government should not be doing the bidding of a foreign government,” Ahmad said of Israel. “There’s no question in my mind is that this is to stifle the discourse on the Palestinian narrative.”

Attorneys said Sarsour, born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has no criminal record in the U.S., where he has lived for more than 30 years. They said the U.S. government has known about Sarsour's conviction in Israel since he came to the U.S. in 1993.

An email message left Thursday for ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.

Sarsour’s attorneys have likened the case to that of Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University graduate student activist who faces deportation because the federal government said he was a foreign policy threat.

Sarsour has been the board president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, the largest Islamic organization in the state, for five years. His attorneys say he holds a green card and lives just outside Milwaukee. His wife and four adult children are U.S. citizens.

At a crowded news conference, boisterous supporters chanted to free Sarsour, recounting his advocacy for those in need. Several recalled Sarsour's stories about his childhood, including allegations of inhumane treatment while being detained by Israelis.

“He was targeted because of one thing, because he dared stand up to the Israeli army,” Othman Atta, one of Sarsour’s attorneys, told the crowd. “And he was not a U.S. citizen.”

A diverse group of religious leaders in a attendance called Sarsour a valuable community member.

“This appears to be just the latest example of how this administration seeks to silence opposition and intimidate those who speak and act differently," said the Rev. Paul D. Erickson, bishop of the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Sarsour's arrest also prompted outcry from elected officials, including Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who called it “an outrage.”

“He is a legal permanent resident. There is no substantive evidence he has done anything wrong,” Johnson said Thursday in a post on X. “This is another example of overreach and harm from the U.S. immigration authorities.”

Sarsour is being held at a county jail in Indiana. His attorneys have filed a petition seeking his release.

“He is ready to fight tooth and nail to make sure that he’s not drug through the mud,” Ahmad said. “He wants to stay in this country.”

The sales drive by Florida-based Powerus – which announced a deal last month to bring aboard Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. – positions the company to potentially benefit from a war that their father began.

“These countries are under enormous pressure to buy from the sons of the president so he will do what they want,” said Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush. “This is going to be the first family of a president to make a lot of money off war — a war he didn’t get the consent of Congress for.”

Powerus co-founder Brett Velicovich told The Associated Press that the company is making sales pitches that include drone demonstrations in several Gulf countries to show how its defensive drone interceptors could help them ward off Iranian attacks.

“Our team is doing many demos across the Middle East right now for our interceptors," Velicovich said in an text exchange. “We have very incredible tech that can save lives.”

He declined to name the countries or give more details.

The Trump brothers' deal with Powerus could give them sizable equity stakes. Their father, as commander in chief, launched the strikes with Israel against Iran over a month ago that began the war, the impetus for why these Gulf countries now need protection.

Powerus denied there were any conflicts when the Trump brothers' stake was first announced. Velicovich emphasized its determination to help the U.S. catch up with Chinese and Russian drone makers and beat them.

“We are at war, my friend, we are in an arms race and America will lose if we don’t build fast,” said Velicovich, an Army veteran who had come under fire from the same Russian drones now being used by Iran. He added, “We should be thankful anyone is trying to invest in American manufacturing now. That idea transcends politics.”

The president's oldest sons have expanded their business interests beyond hotels and golf courses since their father took office again. The companies they've invested in or been named advisers for — with equity stakes — run the gamut from cryptocurrency ventures to prediction markets to federal contractors making rocket parts and rare earth magnets.

This latest Trump venture has its sights on $1.1 billion set aside by the Pentagon to build up a U.S. manufacturing base for armed drones to fill a hole left when the Trump administration banned such imports from China.

The Trump Organization, where the two sons are executives, didn't respond to a request for comment, but has dismissed claims of conflicts of interest in the past. The sons have said they didn't get credit for their restraint in expanding their businesses in their father's first term so have decided not to hold back much this time.

Asked about potential Powerus conflicts of interest specifically, Eric Trump sent AP a statement last month saying, “I am incredibly proud to invest in companies I believe in. Drones are clearly the wave of the future.”

Founded by U.S. Army Special Operations veterans about a year ago, Powerus makes drones for commercial uses, from spreading fertilizer to putting out forest fires. But it is bulking up fast to supply drones for military uses.

The company recently raised $60 million from investors and hopes to tap additional financing by doing a “reverse merger” with a Trump company listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange that owns a few golf courses in Florida. Such a merger allows a private business to quickly go public by taking over a company that already has publicly traded shares, shortening the process of filing paperwork and meeting various requirements of regular initial public offering.

The company reported Thursday that sales rose 6% to 358,023 in the three months through March, the first time in three years it posted a first-quarter increase from the year-earlier period. The increase follows a year of plunging sales due to an aging lineup and boycotts over Musk's right-wing political stands.

Still, the results disappointed investors, who sold heavily on Thursday.

One reason was that sales were 6% lower than the 381,000 that financial analysts had expected, according to a survey by researcher FactSet. And they were sharply off from the sales for the three months ended in December.

Tesla has had to contend with lower demand due to the September expiration of a $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers, a blow to sales across the industry.

The company is hoping cheaper versions of Tesla models X and 3 introduced late last year will eventually lift sales. Tesla is also now producing a self-driving Cybercab with no steering wheel to attract customers.

Details on the new offerings could come out on April 22 when Tesla reports quarterly earnings.

Financial analysts expect the company will report net income roughly doubled to 25 cents a share on $23 billion in revenue, according to FactSet.

The heavy selling Thursday pushed Tesla stock down 5.4% to $360.59 per share.

Still, the stock is trading 30% higher than a year ago and its valuation is sky-high, too — 181 times expected earnings versus 22 times for the broad stock market.

That reflects a marketing victory of sorts for Musk who has been telling investors to focus less on car sales and more on the company's chances of dominating a future in which fewer people own cars, self-driving Tesla robotaxis are nearly everywhere and Telsa's Optimus robots are taking over for humans in factories and homes.

Before that future comes, if it does, European and Chinese EV makers are stealing market share. Chinese maker BYD recently reported it had made 2.26 million electric vehicles last year versus Tesla's 1.64 million to become the new record holder.

They have size. They are athletic. They have pedigree.

But they haven't faced a ton of on-court adversity — particularly in March.

That could change on Friday night when UConn faces South Carolina and Texas meets UCLA in the national semifinals at Mortgage Matchup Center. After beating up on inferior adversaries for the majority of March, it's time for the game's elite to pick on someone their own size.

Here's how they're preparing for potential clutch moments this weekend.

South Carolina (35-3)

The Gamecocks have had a few tough losses this season, including two to Texas. They also dropped a road game against Oklahoma, blowing a seven-point halftime lead before losing in overtime.

South Carolina got its revenge last week, beating the Sooners in the Sweet 16.

The Gamecocks haven’t faced much friction in the NCAA Tournament, winning their four games by an average of 40.3 points.

Coach Dawn Staley said the way to stay fresh for late-game situations is to simulate them in practice so that players are comfortable when tense moments come. For instance, during last week’s regional in Sacramento, the coach said they made sure to go over sidelines inbounds plays since the benches were in a spot that was different than most of the games they had played.

Guard Raven Johnson said Staley did a good job of ramping up the intensity after the early-season setbacks, holding them to the program’s standard that has been built over the past two decades.

“When we took losses throughout the season, I think practices, they shifted,” Johnson said. “They were hard. She was on our butts. She was a different person.

“I think that made us come closer. That made us realize that people here, this is their first time ever experiencing things like this. We had to remind them that our standard here is very high. We had to remind them in practice, good habits are contagious. When you have good habits, they carry on into the game.”

UConn (38-0)

The Huskies' dominance has been historic. They've won their 38 games by an average of 37.8 points, which is on track to rank third all-time behind its record 40.6 in 2015 and 39.7 in 2016.

On-court adversity hasn't been common. The Huskies played a tight game against Michigan early in the year, pulling out a 72-69 win on Nov. 21. They also trailed by one point against North Carolina after one quarter in the Sweet 16 before pulling away for a 63-42 victory.

Other than that, it's been pretty smooth sailing.

Azzi Fudd said she's confident the Huskies will be ready to execute in a tight fourth quarter if needed.

“You simulate as much as you can in practice, which the coaches have done for us all year long," Fudd said. “At the end of the day, the habits that we've built in practices and games will definitely help keep us settled, keep us calm, keep us together this weekend.”

Texas (35-3)

Texas played a difficult schedule, going 14-3 against nationally ranked teams before March Madness even started. The Longhorns are the one team in the Final Four that has had a two-game losing streak, dropping back-to-back games to LSU and South Carolina in mid-January.

In that regard, they might be the most battle-tested team remaining.

Texas also might be the hottest team in the nation at the moment. The Longhorns are on a 12-game winning streak, which includes a 78-61 win over South Carolina in the SEC Tournament and a 77-41 win over Michigan in the Elite Eight.

Coach Vic Schaefer said he's not concerned about the lack of close games. He believes his team has proven its mettle thanks to the tough schedule.

“I've got a fifth-year point guard and I've got Madison Booker, who has been in those games and those wars,” Schaefer said. “I stopped worrying about this group about three or four weeks ago. What they've done and how they've done it — at some point you've got to step back and go ‘OK, they’re good.'”

Texas has won its games by an average of 29.1 points this season and by 35.5 in the tournament.

UCLA (35-1)

The Bruins are the only team remaining that has experienced a recent brush with a loss, trailing by eight points at halftime against Duke in the Elite Eight before rallying for a relatively comfortable 70-58 win.

Their lone loss came at the hands of their upcoming opponent — Texas.

Senior guard Gabriela Jaquez said the Duke game was a great learning moment heading into what she hopes are two more games.

“We never want to be down, but it's really important to respond quickly,” Jaquez said. “In the Duke game, we should have responded quicker, but it's OK, we responded at halftime. In the Final Four, all these teams are really good. They've worked hard all season, they're going to be ready, they're going to be prepared.”

UCLA has won its games by an average of 28 points this season, including 27 in the tournament.

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AP Sports Writer Eric Olson contributed to this report.

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

China denies the allegations. Panama has been caught in a broader rivalry between the United States and China after U.S. President Donald Trump accused Beijing last year of running the Panama Canal. The Trump administration sees the critical maritime trade route as strategically important, both commercially and militarily, and Trump has talked about retaking the Panama Canal since his campaign.

“China’s decision to detain or otherwise impede Panama-flagged vessels engaged in lawful trade destabilizes supply chains, raises costs, and erodes confidence in the global trading system,” Rubio said on social media. “The United States stands with Panama against any retaliatory actions against its sovereignty and will always support our partners in the face of bullying.”

Of the 124 ships detained in Chinese ports for inspection in March, 92 — or nearly 75% — were Panama-flagged, according to public data from Tokyo MOU, a regional port state control organization comprising 22 member authorities in the Asia-Pacific region. The Panama-flagged ships were typically detained for a few days — as short as one day or as long as 10 days — before being released.

That is up drastically from the previous two months, when 19 out of 45 ships — or more than 40% — held in February were Panama-flagged, and 23 out of 71 — or over 30% — in January hung the Panama flag.

America’s “repeated wrongful allegations only reveal its attempt to take control of the canal,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington. In a statement, he did not address the uptick in the number of Panama-flagged ships held up in Chinese ports.

It comes amid the backdrop of Panama's supreme court ruling in January that the concession held by a subsidiary of Hong Kong's CK Hutchison Holdings over the Balboa and Cristóbal terminals was unconstitutional.

The U.S. has pressured Panama and other Latin American countries to curb China's sway in the Western Hemisphere, where Trump has said he would increasingly focus. The Trump administration has gotten involved in Latin American affairs more aggressively than the U.S. government has in decades, most dramatically by capturing Venezuela's leader Nicolás Maduro in a military raid in January.

The Federal Maritime Commission in Washington has been tracking Panama-flagged vessels that are being detained or held up in Chinese ports.

“Secretary Rubio’s statement highlights the disruptive effects of the government of China’s actions against Panama-flagged vessels,” said Laura DiBella, chair of the commission. She said the commission “is not aware of any other country in recent history conducting vessel safety inspections and detentions in a punitive manner.”

Panama’s government has said APM Terminals, a subsidiary of the Danish group A.P. Moller-Maersk, would temporarily assume the administration of the terminals while a new contract is awarded. DiBella said that the Chinese Ministry of Transport had summoned Maersk to Beijing for high‑level discussions.

Panama’s government has sought to minimize the wider geopolitical tensions surrounding the ships. Officials did not respond to requests for comment about Rubio’s comments, but previously denied that the detentions had to do with disputes between China and Panama over the canal.

In March, Panama’s foreign minister, Javier Martínez, recognized that there had been an increase in detentions but said he believed they were “part of routine maritime industry practices, because detentions also occur in other ports and to other flags.”

“We want to maintain a respectful relationship with China,” he added.

After the ruling from the Panama supreme court in January, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said China would “take all measures necessary to firmly protect the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies.”

José Digeronimo, former president of the Panama Maritime Chamber, said actions with the ships could have a “huge impact” on Panama, which is a world leader in ship registries. The registries generate around $100 million for the government every year.

Digeronimo compared such registries to shipowners choosing passports, with owners registering their boats in places that “allow you to travel to the greatest number of countries without restrictions.” Harassment by Chinese authorities could put that in jeopardy, he said.

“If the world’s main exporter starts imposing restrictions for using the Panamanian flag, the last thing you’ll want is to have the Panamanian one,” Digeronimo said.

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Solís reported from Panama City. Associated Press writers Megan Janetsky and Alexis Triboulard in Mexico City contributed to this report.

At issue — for union nurses at OSU's Wexner Medical Center, for former athletes at the Les Wexner Football Complex, and for some student leaders who may walk past the Wexner Center for the Arts near the campus oval — is Wexner's well-documented association with the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

Similar cries are arising over a Wexner-named building at Harvard University and others around the country whose names appeared in the Epstein files, including Steve Tisch, Casey Wasserman, Glenn Dubin and Howard Lutnick.

It's all part of the backlash across higher education against figures with ties to Epstein, who cultivated an extensive network including powerful people in the arts, business and academia. Scrutiny has landed on university donors as well as several academics whose emails with Epstein surfaced in the latest files, including some who have resigned.

Wexner complaints cite Epstein association

Wexner hasn't been charged with any crime in connection with Epstein, the one-time financial adviser by whom he says he was “duped.”

But a group of former Ohio State athletes who survived a sweeping sexual abuse scandal at the school argues that the retired L Brands founder 's generosity to his alma mater is now tainted by the knowledge that Epstein was entangled in many of his family's spending decisions, including around the football complex's naming.

“Ohio State University cannot credibly separate itself from these facts, nor can it justify continuing to honor Les Wexner with an athletic facility,” their naming removal request read. It went on, “To do so is to ignore the voices of survivors, former athletes, and the broader community who expect accountability, transparency, and moral leadership.”

At Harvard, a group of students and faculty at the prestigious Kennedy School has targeted the Leslie H. Wexner Building and the Wexner-Sunshine Lobby. The renaming request submitted in March cites Wexner’s “strong ties to Epstein” and argues Epstein profited off Wexner, “which enabled Epstein to use his wealth and power to traffic and abuse children and women.”

Some Harvard students and alumni also want the Farkas name removed from Farkas Hall, which hosts the Hasty Pudding Theatricals Man and Woman of the Year. The building was renamed in 2011 following a significant donation from Andrew Farkas, graduate chairman of the Hasty Pudding Institute, in honor of his father.

Farkas had a longtime personal and business relationship with Epstein, including co-owning a marina with him in the Caribbean. He also repeatedly asked Epstein to donate to Hasty Pudding. Between roughly 2013 and 2019, Epstein regularly donating $50,000 annually to secure top-tier donor status, for a total of more than $300,000.

“As I’ve said repeatedly, I deeply regret ever having met this individual, but at no time have I conducted myself inappropriately,” Farkas said in a statement.

Pressure building on campuses

Pushback against buildings named for Epstein associates and others named in the Epstein files is growing on some U.S. campuses.

Just last weekend, the student body at Haverford College in Pennsylvania voted to urge President Wendy Raymond to forge ahead with the renaming process for the Allison & Howard Lutnick Library. The building is named for the U.S. commerce secretary who has faced resignation calls over his relationship with Epstein.

Raymond had said in a February open letter that she wasn't ready to do that. In a statement to The Associated Press following Sunday’s vote, Raymond said she respected the process and would respond to the resolution within the customary 30-day period.

At Ohio State, pleas against the Wexner name are making their way through a five-step review procedure, most of which takes place outside public view and with no set timeline. The university's new president, Ravi Bellamkonda said, “I think the process is thorough, fair, and open, and I will promise you that we will give each request a full consideration.”

A spokesman for Harvard confirmed the school has received the Wexner-related name removal request but would not comment further. It would be the university's second name change, after the John Winthrop House, which bore the name of a Harvard professor and a like-named ancestor, was changed to Winthrop House in July over their connections to slavery.

Tufts University, home to the Tisch Library and the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center, said it continues to look at the matter. The library has moved to clarify that it was not named for Steve, but, in 1992, for his father Preston Tisch, an honored alum. The sports center removed a set of Steve Tisch's handprints during spring break. The university said that was part of a planned renovation.

UCLA's Wasserman Football Center and Stony Brook University's Dubin Family Athletic Performance Center also are named for individuals who appear in the files.

Namings often tied to philanthropic giving

The current clamor bears some resemblance to the controversy that surrounded the wealthy Sackler family's culpability in the deadly opioid crisis, because in both cases the institutions involved had received vast sums from the family.

Some major institutions — including museums in New York and Paris, Tufts and the University of Oxford in England — did remove the Sackler name, but Harvard chose not to. In a 15-page report explaining its 2024 decision, the university said the legacy of Arthur M. Sackler, whose company Purdue Pharma made the potent opioid OxyContin, was “complex, ambiguous and debatable.”

The Epstein-tainted names are on campus buildings also are typically generous donors, as well as alumni.

Wexner, his wife Abigail and their charities have given Ohio State well over $200 million over the years, for example. That included $100 million to benefit the Wexner Medical Center; at least $15 million for the Wexner Center, a contemporary art museum named for Wexner's father, Harry; and $5 million split with an Epstein-run foundation toward construction of the football complex. The Wexners have given another $42 million to the Harvard Kennedy School.

A moral and financial bind for universities

Anne Bergeron, a museum consultant and author who specializes in the ethics of building naming rights in the cultural sector, said universities are serious about their gift acceptance standards while also recognizing that the conduct of individual donors may be judged differently over time.

“It’s no surprise that a lot of these situations arise within the university sphere, because with students — especially the younger generation — there is virtually no tolerance for being associated with anyone who doesn’t represent the best of humanity,” she said

She called this “a moment of reckoning” for universities and said they have to guard against the appearance of a quid pro quo in their building namings.

Michael Oser, a Columbus-area resident, articulated the frustration of some defenders of retaining the Wexner name in a recent letter-to-the-editor of The Columbus Dispatch.

“OSU took the money. Built the buildings. Cut the ribbons. Smiled for the photos There were no formal ‘morality clauses’ attached back then, just gratitude and applause,” he wrote. “Now, years later, some want to play moral referee while the university keeps the cash and the concrete. That’s not accountability. That’s convenience.”

Supporters of name removal see opportunity for healing

Lauren Barnes, a student in the Kennedy School's master's program leading the effort to remove Wexner's name, said she struggles most days as a survivor of sexual abuse and the mother of a 14-year-old to walk into a building with a name linked to Epstein.

“Thinking about all the children in this world that deserve safety and also all the survivors on campus that have to walk under the Wexner name, I know what that’s like to have my heart race and my hands get sweaty,” she said. “I hate that anyone else has to have that feeling walking under that name and just dealing with it kind of everywhere on campus.”

One protester at Ohio State, Audrey Brill, told a local ABC affiliate that it now “feels gross” thinking of women delivering babies at OSU's Wexner Medical Center “given everything that we’re learning about where this money went” — and she feels removing Wexner's name could help.

Some protesters also want the name of Dr. Mark Landon, a prominent Ohio State gynecologist who received five-figure quarterly payments from Epstein between 2001 and 2005, removed from a visitor’s lounge in the hospital’s new $2 billion, 26-story tower. Landon have said the money was for biotech investment consulting for Wexner, not health care for Epstein or any of his victims.

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This story corrects headlines, summary and story to replace “Epstein associates” with individuals “whose names appeared in the Epstein files.”

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Casey contributed from Boston.

Jay Rothman, president of the multicampus 165,000-student university system since 2022, said in a letter addressed to the head of the Board of Regents dated March 26 that he has been given no reason why regents want him to leave.

Rothman said he has been told that his options are to resign or retire, and that if he doesn't then the board “was prepared to terminate my employment despite all that has been accomplished.”

The Board of Regents held a closed emergency meeting on Wednesday night to discuss personnel matters.

“The Board is responsible for the leadership of the Universities of Wisconsin and is having discussions about its future," Amy Bogost, board president, said in a statement to AP. "We don’t comment on personnel matters.”

Rothman declined to comment when reached via email on Thursday.

“I believe my letter speaks for itself,” he said.

In the letter addressed to Bogost, Rothman said he had not been “provided any substantive reason or reasons for the Board’s finding of no confidence in my leadership.”

Because of that, Rothman said, “I am not prepared, as a matter of principle, to submit my resignation.”

Rothman also refused to resign in a second letter sent to two other regents on Wednesday after he said they urged him to step down during a Tuesday meeting. Rothman said the regents told him if he didn’t resign, the board was prepared to meet this weekend to fire him.

Rothman said those regents also could not give a reason for them wanting him to resign or be fired.

“I find this process to be nearly (if not completely) indefensible,” Rothman wrote.

Rothman said he asked for an opportunity to discuss the situation with the board and was told that would not happen.

Rothman's tenure has been marked by his efforts to increase state funding amid federal cuts, debates over free speech on campus amid pro-Palestinian protests, and declining enrollment leading to eight branch campus closures.

Rothman raised the possibility of resigning in 2023 when the Board of Regents rejected a deal reached with the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature over diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The board later reversed its vote and approved the deal.

Rothman noted in the March letter that “among so many other things,” the university will need to replace the chancellor of the flagship Madison campus this year. Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin is leaving to take the job as president of Columbia University.

“I do not believe my resignation at this time is in the best interests of either the Universities of Wisconsin or the state of Wisconsin,” Rothman said.

Rothman said in the letter that he has devoted his “heart and soul to the mission of the Universities of Wisconsin” and that he was surprised when told “an unidentified majority of the Board of Regents had lost confidence" in his leadership.

“When I asked you to articulate reasons for the Board’s conclusion and apparent lack of confidence in me, you merely noted that each Regent has his or her own perspective on the matter,” Rothman wrote. “You did not provide any tangible reasons for the Board’s determination.”

Rothman, the former chair and CEO of the Milwaukee-based Foley & Lardner law firm, was chosen as UW president in 2022. He had no prior experience administering higher education.

His salary as UW president is $600,943.

The Universities of Wisconsin consists of 13 universities and several other branch campuses.

“Unfortunately I will not play in the Masters Tournament next week and will be out for an extended period of time as my family continues to navigate a personal health matter,” Mickelson posted on social media.

Tiger Woods said Tuesday he was taking an indefinite leave to seek treatment after his arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence in a Feb. 27 crash in Florida.

It will be the first time neither Woods nor Mickelson will be at the Masters since 1994, when Woods was a senior in high school and Mickelson had broken his leg while skiing earlier that year.

Mickelson called the Masters “definitely the most special week of the year,” and his record reflects that. He won his first major at Augusta National in 2004, the last player to win the Masters by one shot with a birdie putt on the 72nd hole.

He also won in 2006 and in 2010, one of only eight players to win the Masters at least three times.

Mickelson has not shared details of the personal family matter. He sat out LIV's four events to start the year and returned in South Africa two weeks ago, tying for 48th in the 57-man field.

“It's just fun to be back playing,” he said in South Africa.

The only other time Mickelson missed the Masters was in 2022, when he took a leave of absence after inflammatory remarks as the Saudi-funded LIV Golf was preparing to launch.

Mickelson accused the PGA Tour of “obnoxious greed” in a Golf Digest interview. In an interview with author Alan Shipnuck for his book on Mickelson, he dismissed Saudi Arabia's human rights record and the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reshape the PGA Tour.

The remarks cost him corporate sponsorships. Mickelson joined LIV later that year.

The Masters starts April 9 with a 91-man field, with one spot still available if the winner of this week's Texas Open is not already eligible.

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

Two senior officials involved in the incident resigned soon after it was brought to agency leadership’s attention.

Paxton, who is in a contentious runoff for the GOP Senate nomination against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, was impeached in 2023 over allegations that involved improper relationships with a donor.

The more recent investigation centers on hotel rooms the agency booked for employees attending last year’s inauguration of President Donald Trump and Supreme Court arguments over a new state law, defended by Paxton’s office, that requires adult websites to verify users’ ages.

The agency paid more than $20,000 for a nonrefundable block of 10 hotel rooms at the Courtyard Marriott. Then, a winter storm prevented several of the travelers from getting to Washington.

The agency would have been on the hook for approximately $16,000 of unused hotel rooms, documents obtained through an open records request show. Instead, agency employees identified private citizens who wanted the rooms and agreed to pay out of pocket for them.

“The intent was to relieve the OAG of its financial obligation for the unused rooms,” deputy first assistant attorney general Ralph Molina said in an investigative report conducted by the agency.

The people who agreed to take the rooms included major Paxton donors Terry and Jennifer Lacore, controversial Albanian businessman Bashkim Ulaj and chair of the Albanian Republican Party Fatmir Mediu. Keith Craft, lead pastor at Elevate Life Church in Frisco, later took one of the rooms as well. The list was first reported by Texas Bullpen.

State Sen. Angela Paxton, a Republican from McKinney who filed for divorce from Ken Paxton six months later, also took one of the rooms at her own expense. Sen. Paxton authored the bill that was argued, and ultimately upheld, at the Supreme Court.

The state employees did not go through the proper process to transfer these rooms, according to the agency’s internal report. And when two of the private citizens who were supposed to take over the rooms did not end up using them, they were ultimately billed to the OAG — with the names of the two private citizens, one of whom previously donated to Paxton, attached to the charge.

“The employees responsible for effectuating this apparently did not inform their superiors about this billing problem,” Molina wrote. “Instead, they requested the private individuals pay the hotel for their rooms after the fact, despite their ultimate absence from the hotel, which would in turn allow the hotel to issue an offsetting refund to the OAG.”

These private citizen bookings saved the agency $7,296, although it still paid $8,339 for the unused, nonrefundable rooms.

In June, officials from the state comptroller’s office notified the attorney general’s office they were opening a “routine post-payment audit” to review payroll, purchasing and travel expenditures. A few weeks later, Craft and another guest paid the hotel for the cost of the room; the hotel then reimbursed Paxton’s office.

That audit was paused after Comptroller Glenn Hegar left office and was replaced by acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock.

In October, two of Paxton’s senior aides, chief financial officer Michele Price and chief of staff Lesley French, began emailing about the travel discrepancies. The conversation, and the emails, subsided, until days after the March 3 primary election — when Hancock reopened the audit.

Soon after, French alerted fellow senior officials of what Molina described as “errors and mistakes” in hotel bookings that “could potentially be misconstrued in an audit.”

The next day, she resigned. A few days later, Price resigned as well.

Neither said anything in their resignation letters about the investigation or the audit. French said she had accepted another position. Price did not provide a reason for her resignation.

The Office of the Attorney General did not respond to a request for comment about the investigation and the departures of French and Price.

Enrique Delgado-Garcia, 25, died at a hospital on Sept. 13, 2024, a day after undergoing a “medical crisis” and becoming unresponsive during a defensive tactics exercise in the boxing ring, authorities said at the time. Charges in these types of cases are exceedingly rare.

David Meier, an investigator appointed by Massachusetts' attorney general, announced in February that the supervisor and the instructors in the police academy’s defensive tactics unit were being charged with involuntary manslaughter and causing serious bodily injury to a person participating in training. The supervisor also was charged with perjury in connection with her grand jury testimony.

Meier had said unsafe sparring sessions led to the trainee's concussion, adding he sustained “multiple blunt force injuries to the head and massive brain bleeding” a day later after academy staff failed to stop a training boxing match.

Lt. Jennifer Penton, the supervisor and a sergeant at the time she was charged, along with Troopers Edwin Rodriguez and David Montanez, entered not guilty pleas to all charges before Worcester Superior Court Judge J. Gavin Reardon Jr.. A fourth trooper, Casey LaMonte, faces arraignment April 14.

All plead not guilty

In a packed courtroom, Penton, Rodriguez and Montanez stood together and responded “not guilty” as the charges were read. Across the courtroom, relatives of Delgado-Garcia watched quietly. A handful of people outside court help up signs showing the trainee's face and the words, "Justice For Enrique."

The three defendants were released on personal recognizance under several conditions including having no contact with potential witnesses in the case.

Outside court, the family's attorney, Mike Wilcox, said Thursday was “a difficult and long day” for Delgado-Garcia's relatives, some seen holding back tears.

“They've been patient. They have been gracious through all this. They have shown nothing but class,” Wilcox said.

“They are grieving still, as you can tell, and they are going to stick with this process for as long as it takes,” he said. “They want justice for Enrique, and they want to make sure that the process is fair and that Enrique is heard here.”

The defendants didn't speak exiting the court but their attorneys called the death a “tragic accident” and said the three were just doing their jobs and would be found innocent.

“The tragedy of Trooper Delgado is not a crime. Filing these criminal charges will not bring Trooper Delgado Garcia back,” Penton's lawyer Brad Bailey said. “The Commonwealth’s effort to apply ... convoluted legal theory to the underlying facts will not change them. Nor will it transform this tragedy into criminal conduct.”

Attorney defends training and troopers

Kevin Reddington, representing Montanez, described all three troopers as “good people" and defended the training as necessary to prepare recruits for their crime-fighting duties.

“It’s so easy for people to say oh my goodness that was just too rough,” Reddington said. “This is reckless conduct that they’re alleging, manslaughter charges that they are alleging against people that were doing their job, consistent with rules, regulations, and what has been recognized as valid training.”

Brian Williams, the president of the State Police Association of Massachusetts, also defended the troopers.

“These members and our entire defensive tactics staff are among the best in the nation and all established protocols were strictly followed,” he said.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell appointed Meier in February and said it was important to have an independent, impartial investigatio. It follows calls from advocacy groups and Delgado-Garcia’s family and friends for those responsible to be held accountable.

More than 30 recruits have died in academies since 2015

An Associated Press investigation, “ Dying to Serve, ” has found that more than 30 recruits have died during law enforcement academies since 2015, caused by a mix of violent or grueling training exercises, heat, exertion and other medical conditions.

The number of deaths have risen in recent years as departments turn to less-traditional candidates to fill openings but maintain longstanding academy drills. Investigators have generally treated them as unfortunate but unavoidable medical incidents, and criminal charges have rarely been considered.

The charges in Massachusetts are believed to be the first related to a police academy recruit’s death in years. In examining the deaths of 37 recruits since 2005, AP could not find any other case that led to criminal charges.

Other forms of legal accountability, including civil lawsuits and workplace safety investigations, have also rarely been pursued. Families have struggled to collect federal death benefits, even after Congress passed a law clarifying that recruits were eligible.

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Associated Press writer Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed to this report.

The culinary creator behind Maxi’s Kitchen has built a massive following by sharing easy, feel-good recipes alongside her mom, Ann. Now, those viral moments are turning into something even bigger. Her debut cookbook, Maxi’s Kitchen: Easy Go-To Recipes to Make Again and Again, is officially out, and the mother-daughter duo stopped by Houston Life to share their story.

Back in 2022, Maxine was laid off from her job in tech after a decade in the industry. She says the news came suddenly, in the form of an email, and left her understandably shaken.

“I cried most of the day,” she shared but then things changed. She felt the need to pursue her dreams.

The very next day, she picked up her camera and filmed three recipe videos. She hasn’t stopped since.

That leap of faith paid off. Today, Maxine has millions of followers across social media, with fans drawn to her approachable recipes and the natural chemistry she shares with her mom on screen.

Ann, who joins her daughter in many of the videos, admits she didn’t quite see this coming.

“When she first said she was going to do this full time, I thought maybe she should just get another job,” Ann said with a laugh. “I was wrong.”

Their bond in the kitchen goes back years. Maxine recalls a difficult time in middle school when friendships fell apart. Instead of letting her daughter sit with that hurt, Ann invited her into the kitchen.

“She said, if you’re going to be home, let’s cook together,” Maxine said. “That’s when I really started to fall in love with cooking.”

Now, that shared experience is at the heart of everything they create.

The cookbook reflects that same sense of comfort and connection. It features 95 recipes inspired by Maxine’s multicultural background, including Korean, Chinese, and Eastern European influences, along with Italian and Mediterranean flavors picked up through family and travel.

The book is also designed with real life in mind.

Organized by day of the week, it helps take the stress out of deciding what to cook. Early in the week, it focuses on quick, simple meals, while later chapters lean into more indulgent, time-intensive dishes.

“My whole thing is that a lot of people see cooking as stressful,” Maxine explained. “But once you have your go-to recipes, it becomes something you can actually enjoy.”

That philosophy is clearly resonating. Fans have been showing up in cities across the country during her book tour, sharing which recipes have already made it into their regular rotation.

“It’s been so energizing,” Maxine said. “Every person tells us a different dish they love, and it’s amazing to see that impact.”

The Houston stop included a book signing at Williams Sonoma in Highland Village, where fans got the chance to meet Maxine and Ann in person and get a signed copy of the cookbook.

The Houston Life crew loved meeting the duo and getting to chat with them about everything from family relationships, to pasta, and connections to California. We wish them the best!

Caroline Graham Hansen scored twice and Alexia Putellas, Irene Paredes, Ewa Pajor and Esmee Brugts all scored a goal apiece for the three-time champion in the second leg of their quarterfinal to advance on a 12-2 aggregate score.

Barcelona will face Bayern Munich for a spot in the May 23 final in Oslo.

It was Barcelona’s sixth win over Madrid in the women’s clásico in all competitions this season and it was watched by 60,067 spectators in the women’s first game at the newly revamped Camp Nou.

Later Thursday, OL Lyonnes needed extra time to beat Wolfsburg 4-0 and will take on defending champion Arsenal in the last four.

Barcelona didn’t waste time in proving its superiority, giving Madrid no chance for an unprecedented quarterfinal turnaround after last week's 6-2 result in the Spanish capital.

In the eighth minute, Pajor's attempt from the left side of the box was saved by goalkeeper Misa Rodríguez. But Putellas scored off the rebound to mark the two-time Ballon d'Or winner's 500th Barcelona appearance.

With the goal, Putellas became the first Spanish player to have 30 goals in women’s club competitions, according to UEFA.

Seven minutes later, Graham Hansen headed in the second from close range. Paredes made it 3-0 with another header off a corner from Graham Hansen in the 27th.

The home team went into halftime with a 4-0 lead after Pajor's seventh goal in the Champions League this season and career 40th in European club competitions.

Graham Hansen chipped the ball over Rodríguez 10 minutes into the second half for a 5-0 lead. Clara Serrajordi set up Brugts to tap in the sixth.

Barcelona seeks to reclaim the title it lost to Arsenal last season. The Catalan club topped the league phase with an unbeaten campaign that included 20 goals scored and three against.

Substitutes save Lyon

Substitutes Melchie Dumornay and Damaris Egurrola scored off corner kicks five minutes apart at the end of the first half of extra time, and another substitute — Tabitha Chawinga — sealed the win, 4-1 on aggregate, to send the record eight-time champions to the next round.

Leading 1-0 from the first leg, Wolfsburg relied on defense and some great saves by goalkeeper Stina Johannes.

Lily Yohannes, an 18-year-old United States international, erased the one-goal deficit with a deflected low shot in the first half.

It was the 13th meeting between Lyon and Wolfsburg in the Women’s Champions League, a new record for the most played fixture.

Wolfsburg won the first meeting — the 2013 final — but Lyon has had the best of the rivalry since then. It won three finals against the German club: in 2016, 2018 and 2020.

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

Tina Peters is serving a nine-year prison term after being convicted of state crimes for sneaking in an outside computer expert to make a copy of her county's election computer system during a software update in 2021. A photo and video of confidential voting system passwords were later posted on social media and a conservative website.

Calls for Peters’ release have become a cause celebre in the election conspiracy movement. President Donald Trump has sought unsuccessfully to pardon Peters and pressured Colorado to set her free.

Judges on the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her conviction in a 74-page ruling that rejected a range of issues raised by Peters, including the notion that Trump has authority to pardon her state crimes. But they said a lower court judge should not have considered Peters’ continued promotion of election fraud conspiracies when he sentenced her in 2024.

Judge called Peters a ‘charlatan’

One of Tina Peters’ lawyers, John Case, said the court’s ruling affirmed the importance of free speech.

“Tina Peters was punished for words that she used to criticize our insecure and illegal voting system," he said. “The decision affirms that people are free to speak what they believe in Colorado as well as the rest of the United States of America.”

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who has been considering granting clemency to Peters, praised the court's decision for rejecting Trump’s pardon but upholding her free speech rights.

“This case has been very challenging and a true test of our resolve as a state to have a fair judicial system, not just for people we agree with but a fair system for Coloradans that we vehemently disagree with,” Polis said in statement.

Peters was the former clerk in Mesa County, in the far western part of Colorado, and convicted by jurors in the Republican stronghold that has supported Trump.

She was unapologetic when she was sentenced by Judge Matthew Barrett and insisted that she tried to unearth what she believed was fraud for the greater good. He ripped into her, calling her a “charlatan” who had used her position to “peddle snake oil.”

The appeals court found that Barrett violated her rights to free speech by punishing Peters for persistently alleging fraud in the 2020 election. They noted that because Peters is no longer serving as an election clerk, she can no longer engage in the conduct that led to her conviction.

"The trial court obviously erred by imposing sentence at least partially based on Peters’ protected speech,” Judge Ted Tow wrote in Thursday's ruling.

What's next

The court sent Peters’ case back to a lower court for a judge to issue a new sentence. That can't happen for at least 42 days to give time for the parties to appeal.

Case said he would likely ask for Peters to be sentenced to time served and released.

But 21st Judicial District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, who prosecuted Peters, said the judge potentially could issue a sentence similar to the original one while complying with the appeals court ruling.

Trump has threatened to take “harsh measures” against Colorado unless the state releases Peters. In February, Trump said Colorado was “suffering a big price” for refusing to release her.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who is running for governor, has accused the Trump administration of waging a revenge campaign by choking off funds and ending federal programs over the state’s refusal to free Peters.

Weiser said in response to the ruling that the original sentence had been “fair and appropriate.”

“Whatever happens with her sentence, Tina Peters will always be a convicted felon who violated her duty as Mesa County clerk, put other lives at risk, and threatened our democracy. Nothing will remove that stain,” Weiser said in a statement.

Appeals court rejects Trump's pardon

The U.S. Justice Department inserted itself into Peters’ bid to be released while her state appeal was considered. The federal Bureau of Prisons also tried to get Peters moved to a federal prison. After both efforts failed, Trump in December announced a pardon for Peters.

However, the appeals court judges said they could find no prior example of a president pardoning someone for a state crime. And they rejected her attorneys' claims that Peters actions had been carried out while “defending a federal interest.”

“We have found no instance where the presidential pardon power has been stretched in such a way as to invade an individual state’s sovereignty,” they said, adding that the President’s pardon has “no impact” on the state’s case against Peters.

The Associated Press left messages with the White House for comment.

Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state.

Peters’ lawyers didn’t deny that she used the security badge of a local man she pretended to hire to allow the an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make a copy of the Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during an annual software update in 2021.

But they said she only wanted to preserve election data and find out whether any outside actor had accessed the system while ballots were being counted. They said she didn’t want the information made public.

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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

With a Ph.D in neuropsychology and decades of experience running his own business, Goldberg, 74, didn't picture chauffeuring strangers around when he retired. But financially, things didn’t go as planned. So he makes the best of his situation shuttling passengers through New York City at night.

“I like the freedom. I like the flexibility. I like meeting people,” Goldberg said. “I like that most of the time I can get, once or twice a day, a good conversation with somebody.”

Goldberg is one of a growing number of Americans who have “unretired” in recent years. After concluding decades-long careers at hospitals, universities and corporations, they returned to the workforce due to insufficient retirement savings, rising living costs and a desire to stay active.

Some are finding gig work, or contract jobs, through apps or digital platforms. Delivering people and parcels, taking care of pets or folding other people’s laundry suits them because they can set their own hours and work, or not, when they choose.

“We’re living longer, so people are working longer because they have to fund those extra years,” said Carly Roszkowski, vice president of financial resilience at the nonprofit organization AARP. “And this concept of retirement for most people as like a cliff or a day they’re working towards really isn’t a reality for most.”

Goldberg wanted to teach after winding down his software and telemarketing company. But he needed to earn more money than what the occasional adjunct professor job teaching statistics would pay.

“Uber came up, and it was not a bad choice for me because I was comfortable driving people,” he said. “I felt it could be a good way to make money and keep most of it.”

About 1 in 5 Americans over age 50 who aren't retired say they have no retirement savings, according to a survey the AARP conducted in January 2025.

Retirees and employment experts say gig work has advantages and downsides, including limited job protections and wages that may be insufficient to cover on-the-job expenses. Here are some factors to consider.

Stay active, but know your limits

Barbara Baratta, 72, retired as a pediatric nurse in 2018. But she got restless after a few years and signed up with the pet care app Rover, which connected her to jobs walking dogs and using her nursing skills to administer medications to cats.

The work keeps her active. “I get my steps in and do hill climbing,” she said.

In a leafy New Jersey suburb, Baratta set out to coax Barley, a mix of pit bull, beagle and shepherd, into the afternoon air with a wind chill pushing the temperature down into the 20s.

“Barley, if you turn this way, the wind will be blowing behind you,” she said gently, leading the dog down a wide street.

Baratta likes the physical nature of dog walking. She ran two half-marathons in the past year but notices that "being older and not having knees that are totally great” makes steep or uneven terrain a challenge even for her. She advises people in her age group to be careful about which pets they agree to walk.

“Some dogs are big and strong, which can be an issue, a lesson I learned very early on,” Baratta said. “An 80-pound dog, ... they’re going to pull, they’re going to run away.”

Driving can be hard on the back and legs, and the challenge of finding restrooms to use on the go becomes difficult to deal with as you age, Goldberg cautioned.

A social buzz

Days can feel long and lonely after one retires. Working part-time can provide social interaction.

Baruch Schwartz, 78, was a wedding photographer for decades until the work became too physically demanding to do full-time. He started driving for Uber and Lyft and derives satisfaction from feeling needed. “I feel like I’m on a mission,” he said after taking a passenger home from a kidney dialysis appointment.

Driving for Uber gives Goldberg a chance to meet a variety of people. One night he spoke with a Scottish historian about the movie “Braveheart.” Another night a passenger asked him how to know whether it was the right time to propose to his girlfriend.

“I'm amazed at what people will tell me about their relationships,” Goldberg said.

Flexibility — for a price

One of the draws of working for gig platforms is the ability to set your own hours. Baratta's schedule allowed her to babysit her grandchildren.

Goldberg appreciated the flexibility of setting his own hours when there was a recent death in his family. But between that unplanned trip and a root canal, and no vacation or sick days offered by his job, he went several days without income.

“When that happens, even though you have the flexibility, which you like, and you don’t have to call anybody and say ‘I’m not driving today,’ you still don’t make the money that day. And you’re still paying insurance,” Goldberg said.

Make sure the work is worth it

Before investing time into gig work, research what percentage the company takes from workers' earnings.

“The house always wins, so the amount of money you are going to get as a driver or delivery worker is very much controlled by the platform,” said Alexandrea Ravenelle, a sociologist and gig economy researcher at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “There are no workplace protections, so if you get injured on the job, if you have any types of problems, if you have a car accident, for instance, you are entirely out of luck.”

Uber maintains commercial auto insurance coverage on behalf of its drivers, although New York City requires drivers to hold that insurance themselves, said Uber spokesman Ryan Thornton.

Goldberg hit three nasty potholes in three weeks, paying $144 each time to replace the tires. He lost money those weeks, despite working, he said.

“I’d say most drivers are not happy with the money that they’re making, unless they’re working more hours than I’m willing to do,” Goldberg said.

LisaKay “LK” Foyle, 64, of Orange, Texas, found a way to maximize her earnings on Poplin, an app which connects her with clients who need help with laundry. She has seniority among workers on the app so chooses to accept express orders, which pay the highest rate, and declines lower-paying jobs.

Foyle marvels at the state of some families’ dirty laundry: “all the socks are inside-out, all the underwear is in the pants, and you’ve got to check every single pocket, or you’re washing marbles or frogs or the snacks they had that day.”

Baratta's dog-walking income supplements several small pensions and Social Security benefits. She charges $20 for a half-hour walk, not including her driving time to and from the location. Rover keeps about 20%, she said. The $1,000 to $2,000 she makes per month helps pay the bills, she said.

“The dogs and cats are delights,” Baratta said. “I’m not becoming rich doing this, ... but I’ve met a lot of great families doing it."

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

Elmore, 61, faces three felony charges related to the 1986 deaths of Laura Miller and Audrey Cook. His bond was set for $1.5 million in the manslaughter case and an additional $1.5 million for two tampering with evidence charges.

Prosecutors allege Elmore helped longtime suspect Clyde Edwin Hedrick conceal the women’s remains and prepared a vial of cocaine that Hedrick allegedly administered to Miller, killing her.

OUR FIRST REPORT: Man accused of helping dispose of 2 bodies in ‘Texas Killing Fields’ murders arrested

Hedrick died by suicide in March, officials confirmed to KPRC 2.

“He was taken to the hospital for some breathing issues on Friday, and due to some of his other health issues, he was placed on a ventilator Friday. On Saturday, he removed that ventilator,” said prosecutor Kate Willis.

The district attorney’s office was preparing to seek capital murder charges against Hedrick.

On Thursday, Elmore arrived in court handcuffed, wearing a pink Galveston County Jail jumpsuit.

Prosecutors asked the judge to keep him jailed.

“He’s habitual, Your Honor,” the prosecutor said. “There is also some violent history, violent arrests in his past.”

His defense attorney told the court Elmore has roughly $5,000, making it unlikely he will post bail.

RELATED: Galveston officials say ‘significant headway’ has been made in unsolved ‘Texas Killing Fields’ case after new arrest

The judge set a trial date for August 24, 2026.

District Attorney Ken Cusick said the investigation is not over and that other leads are still being pursued.

KPRC 2 Investigates has covered the Texas Killing Fields for years, documenting the decades-long hunt for answers in its four-part docuseries, “The Evidence Room.”

Wreckshop was instrumental in elevating influential artists like Fat Pat, Big Moe, and E.S.G., cementing its legacy as a driving force behind Houston’s rise in Southern hip-hop. Now the company is expanding it’s reach.

• Artemis II astronauts bound for moon after rocketing away on NASA’s first lunar voyage in decades

The label’s owner Derrick “D-Reck” Dixon and business partner Noke-D have signed rising Houston rapper Quiet Money “Dot,” a collaboration the label says has been in the works since 2025.

Dixon and Noke-D hosted Dot at a private dinner Monday, March 16, 2026, where the label outlined plans to build the artist into a wider name beyond Houston. Wreckshop executives say Dot has been selected to participate in a Fat Pat tribute album, Dreamz To Reality, a project intended to honor the late Houston rapper and Screwed Up Click member.

“Noke-D has been telling me about Dot for several years,” Dixon said in a statement. “I finally figured the time was right to bring him on board.”

The label says Dot’s next album is planned for early May 2026 and will include unannounced collaborations. Wreckshop leaders said Dot stood out for what they described as an authentic Houston sound and delivery, comparing his style to Fat Pat and other artists associated with the Screwed Up Click.

• FIRST ON 2: Viral judge filed for bankruptcy last year, listed nearly $70K in debt

Dot, a Worthing High School graduate and Grambling State University alumnus, said he has studied the music business as he builds his career. Wreckshop officials also pointed to his recent visibility around South by Southwest as a sign of momentum.

Dot’s biography traces his roots to Houston’s South Side neighborhoods of Sunnyside and South Park. He cites a mix of influences, including East Coast lyricism, West Coast bounce and the slowed-down style popularized locally by DJ Screw.

Before pursuing music, Dot played collegiate football at Grambling State, an experience he says shaped his work ethic. He began recording more seriously during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the biography, and released early tracks that drew quick attention online.

Since making his solo debut in 2020, Dot has released more than 20 projects through his independent imprint, Quiet Money Records, according to materials provided. The biography says his videos have drawn nearly 1 million YouTube views over the past 18 months.

The sheriff’s office said Michael Davis, 64, of Livingston—the first assistant district attorney in Polk County—surrendered around 8 a.m. on Thursday. He was booked on a Class A misdemeanor charge of unlawful installation of a tracking device.

• ‘Texas Killing Fields’ suspect gets $1.5M bond, trial date

Officials said the warrant was issued out of Montgomery County and that Davis posted a pre-set $2,500 bond.

The sheriff’s office said the Texas Rangers are investigating. KPRC 2 has reached out to the Texas Rangers and the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office for more information.

“Sheriff Chuck Havard and his staff are committed to combating crime in Jasper County,” the sheriff’s office said in an online post.

According to a grand jury indictment filed in Montgomery County, Davis’s arrest stems from an incident in September 2025, alleging he installed a tracking device to a vehicle.

The Polk County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that Davis has been put on administrative leave following his arrest:

The Polk County District Attorney’s Office has been made aware of the recent arrest of Assistant District Attorney Michael Davis.

The matter is not related to his official duties or employment with this Office. Effective immidiately, Mr. Davis has been placed on administrative leave pending further review. The Office remains committed to upholding the highest standars of integrity, accountability, and public trust.

We will monitor the situation and will provide additional information as appropriate.

Polk County District Attorney's Office

The early decline for stocks was driven by a surge in oil prices following a national address late Wednesday from President Donald Trump. He vowed the U.S. will continue to attack Iran and failed to offer a clear timetable for ending the conflict in the Middle East. Oil prices eased slightly during the day, but still remain elevated well above $100 per barrel.

The S&P 500 rose 7.37 points, or 0.1%, to 6,582.69. Several days of solid gains this week helped the benchmark index notch a 3.4% gain for the week. That’s the first weekly gain since the conflict started for index at the heart of many 401(k) accounts. Stock markets will be closed for Good Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 61.07 points, or 0.1%, to 46,504.67. The Nasdaq composite rose 38.23 points, or 0.2%, to 21,879.18. Both indexes also notched weekly gains.

A barrel of U.S. crude oil rose 11.3% to $111.54, though prices rose close to $114 at one point during the day. The price of Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 7.8% to $109.03 per barrel. Crude oil prices have been the main force behind the sharp swings for stocks globally. Shipping traffic has been severely curtailed in the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes through during peacetime.

Crude oil prices had been sliding back toward $100 per barrel prior to Trump’s address on Wednesday. The U.S. only relies on the Persian Gulf for a fraction of the oil it imports, but oil is a commodity and prices are set in a global market. A disruption anywhere affects prices everywhere.

Stocks have been broadly sliding since the war began, with indexes often rising and falling sharply along with statements from Trump about the direction of the war. Just on Monday, the S&P 500 briefly neared a 10% drop from its record, a steep-enough fall that professional investors have a name for it: a “correction. The index gained ground Tuesday and Wednesday on hope that the war could end soon.

“For markets, a prolonged conflict increases the risk of sustained pressures on inflation, global growth, interest rates, and equity valuations,” wrote Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist for LPL Financial, in a note to investors.

Airlines and other travel-related companies were among the biggest losers on Thursday. United Airlines fell 3% and Carnival shed 3.5%.

Tesla fell 5.4% after a report showing that sales over the past three months fell short of analysts' expectations.

Several big technology stocks gained ground to help counter losses elsewhere in the market. Intel jumped 4.9% and Advanced Micro Devices rose 3.5%.

Treasury yields remained relatively steady in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to to 4.30% from 4.32%.

Wall Street is worried that higher energy prices are adding to already stubbornly high inflation. Rising fuel prices take a bigger chunk out of consumers' wallets in several ways. Directly, gasoline prices in the U.S. have surged 36 percent from a month ago to average $4.08 per gallon, according to the auto club AAA.

Indirectly, rising fuel prices tend to make a wide range of services and goods more expensive. Flights become more expensive as airlines raise ticket prices to offset rising fuel costs. Consumer goods become more expensive as shipping and transportation costs rise.

Inflation has been stubbornly above the Federal Reserve's 2% target. The war and its corresponding surge in energy prices effectively pushes inflation higher and that has dashed hopes for the Fed to cut interest rates. Wall Street had hoped for the central bank to cut rates in order to help offset a weakening job market. Lower interest rates could help stimulate the economy by lowering borrowing costs, but they also risk worsening inflation.

Traders came into 2026 forecasting several cuts to the Fed's benchmark interest rate, which influences rates for mortgages and other loans. They are now expecting the benchmark rate to remain steady this year.

The war has also caused an anomaly of sorts in the oil market. Brent crude oil futures are typically priced higher than those for U.S. crude oil, but the war flipped that on its head. Because of the supply constraints, the sooner a buyer needs a barrel of oil, the more they’ll have to pay. Right now, the most actively traded futures contract for U.S. crude oil is for delivery in May, while the Brent futures contract is for delivery in June. That shorter timeframe is why U.S. crude is trading for more than Brent.

Tom Kloza, chief energy adviser at Gulf Oil, points out that a buyer who needs oil immediately will pay about $3 to $5 a barrel above the futures price for U.S. crude and an even steeper premium for Brent.

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An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the weekly percentage change for the S&P 500.

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Associated Press journalists Chan Ho-Him and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

Pulido is challenging Rep. Monica De La Cruz in Texas’ 15th Congressional District, a majority-Hispanic district which runs from McAllen to rural counties east of San Antonio and voted for President Donald Trump by 18 percentage points. He is a well-known Tejano singer who first rose to fame in the 1990s and whose candidacy has excited Democrats in South Texas and Washington alike.

Pulido’s association with accordion player Frankie Caballero was first reported by the New York Post.

Caballero has played accordion onstage with Pulido numerous times, according to the New York Post report — including after his 2014 conviction.

In a statement, Pulido’s campaign manager said the singer was not aware of Caballero’s criminal history.

“Bobby extends his deepest sympathies and support to all of the victims involved,” Pulido campaign manager Abel Prado said in a statement. “Frankie Caballero has long struggled with addiction issues and Bobby Pulido has acknowledged and attempted to help him with that battle.”

Prado said when Pulido’s management learned of Caballero’s criminal history in 2021, he was immediately fired and that relationship was severed.

“Bobby was never made aware of Caballero’s sex offender registration and would never knowingly associate with anyone with that kind of history,” he said.

Prado also said that the hiring of Caballero was done by Pulido’s management company, which did not conduct a background check, in accordance with industry standards.

Republicans, including De La Cruz, have jumped on the report saying this is just the latest piece of evidence that Pulido is morally corrupt.

“My heart goes out to the children who were sexually abused by a close friend and professional associate of Bobby Pulido,” De La Cruz said in a statement. “Despite being caught on tape admitting he knew of this man’s criminality and praising him as recently as November, Mr. Pulido now falsely claims to have been unaware of his crimes. These are not South Texas values.”

Pulido said in a November interview with the Houston Chronicle about his music that Caballero, who played on the recording of his 1995 hit “Desvelado,” was a “prolific accordion player” who ended up on the song after the keyboard player who was supposed to be on the track missed the session.

Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called Pulido “misogynistic.”

“Bobby Pulido’s pattern is clear: bad judgment, worse excuses, and zero accountability,” Martinez said. “Texans deserve someone who can be trusted to protect their families, not someone who spent years sharing the stage with a band of pedophiles and now wants Texans to believe he had no idea.”

Pulido has leaned into his music fame and status as a political outsider on the campaign trail, including to withstand attacks related to his musical career. Republicans have jumped on his past social media posts — which include sexist comments and links to pornographic websites — as well as a music video in which he portrays a pervert, as evidence that the Democratic candidate is depraved.

The singer, for his part, has said that the music video is a parody satirizing Latin artist Elvis Crespo. And in a video posted to X on March 22, he called Republican attacks “cheap” and said that much of his Spanish language humor does not translate to English, which “shows just how out of touch they are with our culture.”

“I’ve been in the music business for 30 years and never had a scandal — and I’m proud of that,” Pulido said. “Needless to say, they’re very worried about losing this seat.”

Redistricting changed the boundaries of the 15th Congressional District, but it retained similar partisanship. De La Cruz won the seat by 14% in 2024, but Democrats are bullish about Pulido’s ability to bring Hispanic voters back into the Democratic column. A poll conducted by a Democratic group of the race last fall found Pulido trailing De La Cruz by 3%.

On Thursday, Miller's legacy was recognized along with UConn star Breanna Stewart. The two women's hoops game-changers were honored by The Associated Press as the greatest players of the women's college basketball poll era, selected by a 13-member panel.

“I played the game because I loved it," Miller said, "without there ever being a hint of what my legacy may look like or what I ever envisioned down the road. I think the overwhelming feeling that I feel right now is grateful.”

Miller accepted the honor at “The AP Top 25 Fan Poll Experience," which is being held at Arizona State’s First Amendment Forum in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Delta State was also recognized as the first No. 1 team when the women’s basketball poll debuted 50 years ago. Under coach Margaret Wade, the Lady Statesmen won three straight national championships from 1975-1977 in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). They won three more under coach Lloyd Clark in 1989, 1990 and 1992 after their move to the NCAA’s Division II.

Miller, a 6-foot-2 forward, won two national titles and earned All-America honors in all four of her seasons with the Trojans, averaging 23.6 points, 12 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 3.6 steals and 2.5 blocks. She was also the head coach and general manager for the Phoenix Mercury in the late 1990s, leading the team to the WNBA Finals in 1998.

Stewart has won it all in her career: She was a two-time state champion in high school. She won four NCAA titles at UConn. She’s won three WNBA titles, three World Cup gold medals, three Olympic gold medals, even two EuroLeague titles. Earlier this year, Stewart led her team Mist BC to a championship in Unrivaled — the 3-on-3 women’s basketball league she co-founded.

“I want to say thank you to the AP for voting me best college basketball player of the last 25 years,” Stewart said in a video message. “Especially to be named to this honor alongside Cheryl Miller. There’s been so many women’s hoops players who have gone through college and made their mark. Shoutout to my Huskies. ... Nobody’s taking our four national championships away from us.”

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AP Top 25 Fan Poll Experience: https://apnews.com/https:/apnews.com/projects/arizona-state-fan-poll-experience/

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

The departure followed months of scrutiny over the Justice Department's handling of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation and failed efforts to meet Trump's unwavering demands for criminal cases against his adversaries. As Trump's own frustrations mounted, he began privately discussing firing Bondi, people familiar with the matter say.

“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said in a statement. He added, “We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future.”

Trump named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, one of his former personal lawyers, as the acting attorney general. Three people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Thursday that he has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick.

In her own statement, Bondi called the job “the honor of a lifetime” and said she would be working over the next month to transition the position to Blanche.

Bondi came into office 14 months ago, pledging that she would not play politics with the Justice Department. But she quickly set out to do Trump's bidding, heaping lavish praise at congressional hearings and White House events, firing prosecutors deemed insufficiently loyal to the president and opening investigations into his political foes. The intense turmoil contributed to the resignations of hundreds of employees, with the norm-breaking actions stirring concern that the department was being wielded as a tool to advance Trump's personal and political interests.

“Pam Bondi oversaw an unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department that brought our nation’s rule of law to its knees,” said Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat.

Bondi rejected accusations that she politicized the Justice Department and said her mission was to restore the institution’s credibility after overreach by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, which included two federal criminal cases against Trump. Bondi’s defenders have said she worked to refocus the department to better tackle illegal immigration and violent crime and brought much-needed change to an agency they believe unfairly targeted conservatives.

Embracing, supporting and protecting the president

Bondi’s public embrace of the president, however, marked a sharp departure from her predecessors, who generally took pains to maintain an arm’s-length distance from the White House to protect the impartiality of investigations and prosecutions. Bondi postured herself as Trump’s chief supporter and protector, praising and defending him in congressional hearings and placing a banner with his face on the exterior of Justice Department headquarters.

She called for an end to the “weaponization” of law enforcement that she said occurred under the Biden administration, even though Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, the special counsel who produced two cases against Trump, have said they followed the facts, the evidence and the law in their decision-making. Bondi’s critics, meanwhile, said she was the one who had politicized the agency.

“You’ve turned the People’s Department of Justice into Trump’s instrument of revenge,” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary committee, said at a February hearing.

Bondi delivered a combative performance but few substantive answers at that hearing, as she angrily insulted her Democratic questioners with name-calling and praised Trump for the performance of the stock market — “The Dow is up over 50,000 right now!” —- and openly aligned herself as in sync with a president whom she painted as a victim of past impeachments and investigations.

Even Republicans began to challenge her, with the GOP-led House Oversight Committee last month issuing a subpoena to her to appear for a closed-door interview about the Epstein files.

Under Bondi’s leadership, the department opened investigations into a string of Trump foes, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan. The high-profile prosecutions of Comey and James were short-lived as they were quickly thrown out by a judge who ruled that the prosecutor who brought the cases was illegally appointed.

Trump repeatedly praised and defended Bondi publicly but also showed flashes of impatience with his attorney general’s efforts to meet his demands to prosecute his rivals. In one extraordinary social media post last year, Trump called on Bondi to move quickly to prosecute his foes, including James and Comey, telling her, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”

Bondi oversaw the exodus of thousands of career employees — both through firings and voluntary departures — including lawyers who prosecuted violent attacks on police at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; environmental, civil rights and ethics enforcers; counterterrorism prosecutors; and others.

Fumbling the Epstein files

She struggled to overcome early stumbles over the Epstein files that angered conservatives eager for government bombshells about the case, which has long fascinated conspiracy theorists. She herself had fed the conspiracy theory machine with a suggestion in a 2025 Fox News Channel interview that Epstein’s “client list” was sitting on her desk for review. The department later acknowledged that no such document exists.

Bondi was ridiculed over a move to hand out binders of Epstein files to conservative influencers at the White House, only for it to be later revealed that the documents included no new revelations. And despite promises that more files were going to become public, the Justice Department in July said no more would be released, prompting Congress to pass a bill to force the agency to do so. Ultimately, the department said it had complied with its obligations by releasing millions more records.

Jess Michaels, an Epstein survivor who traveled to the U.S. Capitol last year to press for the files’ release, said she was optimistic when Bondi took office but lost faith after Bondi distributed the binders at the White House.

“I think she had this opportunity to be a hero and to really do right by survivors of sexual violence and trafficking, and she chose not to,” Michaels said by phone. “It is outrageous, the volume of miscalculation she has made.”

The Epstein files fumbles led to a stunning public criticism from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, a close friend of Bondi’s, who told Vanity Fair that the attorney general “completely whiffed.” The Justice Department’s release of millions of pages of Epstein files did little to tamp down criticism, prompting a House committee, with the support of five Republicans, to subpoena Bondi to answer questions under oath.

Bondi, who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, was his second choice to lead the Justice Department, picked for the role after former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida withdrew his name from consideration amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Daly in Washington and Jennifer Peltz in New York contributed to this report.

Trump in a social media post named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as the acting attorney general, though three people familiar with the matter have said he has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick.

It marks the end of a contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the Justice Department’s culture of independence from the White House, oversaw large-scale firings of career employees and moved aggressively to investigate the Republican president’s perceived enemies.

Here is the latest:

It’s quiet outside Bondi’s home in South Tampa

The house sat silently in the upscale neighborhood on the cloudy but warm afternoon.

A breeze shifted an American flag that extended above the hedge surrounding the yard. There wasn’t other movement seen at the home or swarms of television crews vying for a view inside.

Black suburban’s lined the street, and the local police department drove past a few times.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna joins Massie in call for the next attorney general to release all Epstein files

The red and blue duo, Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, have mounted a pressure campaign on the Justice Department to release all the Epstein files.

Both are carrying that forward to whomever replaces Bondi, and are calling on the department to launch investigations based on the files.

“Now, we need to fight to make sure that another lawless sycophant doesn’t replace Bondi,” said Khanna in a video posted to X Thursday. “Whoever replaces Bondi should release all of the Epstein files and prosecute the rich and powerful men who abuse young girls.”

Bondi struggled to overcome fumbling the Epstein files

Bondi struggled to overcome early stumbles over the Epstein files that angered conservatives eager for government bombshells about the case.

She also had fed the conspiracy theory machine with a suggestion in a 2025 Fox News Channel interview that Epstein’s “client list” was sitting on her desk for review. The department later acknowledged that no such document exists.

Bondi was ridiculed over a move to hand out binders of Epstein files to conservative influencers at the White House only for it to be later revealed that the documents included no new revelations. Despite promises that more files were going to become public, the Justice Department in July said no more would be released, prompting Congress to pass a bill to force the agency to do so.

The Justice Department’s release of millions of pages of Epstein files did little to tamp down criticism, prompting a House committee to subpoena Bondi to answer questions under oath.

To some Epstein victims, the problem is bigger than Bondi

“This is not about a single person; it is about a government and judicial system that has repeatedly failed Epstein survivors,” one of Epstein’s earliest accusers, Annie Farmer, said in a statement.

“Regardless of who holds power, survivors deserve accountability, transparency, protection from retaliation, and assurance that those who enabled Epstein, Maxwell, and others will be investigated and, if appropriate, prosecuted,” Farmer said.

Robert Glassman, an attorney for a woman who testified as “Jane” in the 2021 criminal trial of Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, noted that leaders of government agencies change.

“But for victims of sexual abuse, what matters is whether the institutions meant to protect them actually do their job,” Glassman said by email.

Epstein victims’ attorney says Bondi’s departure might be the only justice they get

Gloria Allred, an attorney for numerous Epstein victims, called Bondi’s departure “long overdue,” saying the now-departing attorney general betrayed them by failing to protect personal information in the files.

“She has destroyed the trust in the DOJ that victims had a right to expect, and her termination may be the only type of justice that survivors will receive from the DOJ,” Allred said by email.

One Epstein victim’s view: Bondi had an ‘opportunity to be a hero .., and she chose not to’

Jess Michaels, an Epstein survivor who traveled to the Capitol last year to press for the files’ release, wanted Bondi gone, but she wasn’t optimistic about what comes next at DOJ.

“I’m happy that she is not in charge of this investigation anymore because she obviously failed. Do I think that the next person put in charge, Todd Blanche, is going to do any better? We can only hope. But given that they worked together, I don’t have great expectations,” Michaels said.

When Bondi became attorney general and pledged transparency, Michaels thought, “Well, maybe a woman stepping into this role will finally finally get the truth,” she recalled.

But once Bondi distributed now-infamous binders that proved to be largely rehashes of already public material, Michaels lost faith. Her mistrust was amplified by the DOJ’s problematic handling of the eventual release of a trove of documents.

“I think she had this opportunity to be a hero and to really do right by survivors of sexual violence and trafficking, and she chose not to,” Michaels said by phone. “It is outrageous, the volume of miscalculation she has made.”

Who is Lee Zeldin, the head of the EPA and Trump’s rumored pick to replace Bondi as attorney general?

Trump picked Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to be acting attorney general, but three people familiar with the matter have said he has privately discussed Zeldin as Bondi’s permanent replacement.

Zeldin, before Trump tapped him to lead the environmental agency, was a Republican congressman from New York. A staunch ally of the president, he worked on Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment and voted against certifying Trump’s 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

Under his leadership, the EPA has rolled back climate change regulations and proposed including microplastics and pharmaceuticals on the list of drinking water contaminates.

Louisiana Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields troubled by Bondi’s firing

Fields said Pam Bondi’s firing was “deeply troubling — not because of who is leaving, but because of why.”

Fields said in a statement that he has been critical of Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files but “here is what should alarm every American: reports indicate that Trump’s frustration stemmed not from Bondi’s failure to uphold the law — but from his belief that she didn’t weaponize the Justice Department aggressively enough against his political enemies.”

He said politically motivated cases against former FBI-Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James had been thrown out.

“The Justice Department is not the President’s personal law firm and shouldn’t be used as a tool for retribution.” Fields said the issues of the files and the independence of the department should be addressed before anyone else is confirmed.

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, who hounded the DOJ over the Epstein files, says he supports Bondi’s ousting

The Kentucky Republican previously broke with his party to push legislation forcing the release of the Epstein files, and accused Bondi on X in January of making “illegal redactions and withholding key documents.”

On Thursday, Massie said on X that he supported Trump’s decision, adding that “I hope the next AG will release all the Epstein files according to the law and follow up with investigations, prosecutions, and arrests.”

Bondi says she is ‘thrilled’ about new private sector role, expresses support for Trump

Bondi released a statement Thursday, which read:

“Over the next month I will be working tirelessly to transition the office of Attorney General to the amazing Todd Blanche before moving to an important private sector role I am thrilled about, and where I will continue fighting for President Trump and this Administration.

Leading President Trump’s historic and highly successful efforts to make America safer and more secure has been the honor of a lifetime, and easily the most consequential first year of the Department of Justice in American history.

Since February 2025, we have secured the lowest murder rate in 125 years, secured first-ever terrorism convictions against members of Antifa, shattered domestic and transnational gangs across the country, taken custody of more than 90 key cartel figures, and won 24 favorable rulings at the Supreme Court.

I remain eternally grateful for the trust that President Trump placed in me to Make America Safe Again.”

Democrats applaud Bondi firing, but say it won’t reform DOJ

Democrats in Congress were celebrating the firing of the attorney general, whose appearance on Capitol Hill often featured bitter exchanges with Democratic lawmakers. But they also said that new leadership alone would not be enough to halt the Trump administration’s efforts to remake the Department of Justice to do his bidding.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement that under Bondi’s leadership, the Justice Department “has lost centuries of professional experience, willfully violated federal law and judicial orders alike” and added that her firing is “not enough to restore the credibility of the Justice Department.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Bondi’s “legacy will be the weaponization of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency for Donald Trump’s personal benefit, but apparently even she didn’t go far enough to appease him.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley said Judiciary Committee is ready to advance new Trump nominee

The Republican had only nice things to say about Bondi in an emailed statement, noting a drop in violent crime during her tenure and her Justice Department’s responsiveness to congressional oversight requests.

“The Judiciary Committee stands ready to advance President Trump’s next Attorney General nominee,” Grassley said.

Will Pam Bondi still face a congressional subpoena?

The attorney general was facing a subpoena to appear before the House Oversight Committee on April 14 as lawmakers look into how the Department of Justice handled the release of the case files on Jeffrey Epstein.

The chair of the committee, Rep. James Comer, said in a statement that he would survey Republicans on the committee on whether they still wanted to enforce the subpoena.

Democrats quickly called on the committee to follow through on the subpoena. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement that Bondi “will not escape accountability and remains legally obligated to appear before our Committee under oath.”

Mace still expects Bondi to appear for April 14 deposition over the release of the Epstein files

Bondi was subpoenaed last month to appear before the Republican-led Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and face questions over the Justice Department’s sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and release of the related files.

Mace, who sits on the committee, said in a statement Thursday that Bondi “will be appearing” in two weeks because the “DOJ still hasn’t complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.”

Bondi’s public embrace of the president marked a sharp departure from her predecessors

Past attorney generals generally took pains to maintain an arm’s-length distance from the White House to protect the impartiality of investigations and prosecutions.

But Bondi postured herself as Trump’s chief supporter and protector, praising and defending him in congressional hearings and placing a banner with his face on the exterior of Justice Department headquarters.

She called for an end to the “weaponization” of law enforcement that she said occurred under the Biden administration, though her critics said she was the one who had politicized the agency to do the president’s bidding.

Bondi’s ousting follows a turbulent release of the Epstein files

The Justice Department’s review and release of Epstein files frustrated members of Congress, who accused the department of hiding certain documents, over-redacting files and, in other cases, failing to redact sensitive information about the victims.

The department denied that it redacted documents in order to protect people and that it improperly withheld certain material. Still, it caused a series of headaches for the Trump administration.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche thanks Trump and compliments Bondi

“Thank you to President Trump for the trust and the opportunity to serve as Acting Attorney General,” Blanche wrote in a post on X, after saying that Bondi led the department with “strength and conviction.”

“We will continue backing the blue, enforcing the law, and doing everything in our power to keep America safe,” Blanche said.

Trump said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will become the acting head of the Justice Department, who is he?

Blanche is a former federal prosecutor who worked as Trump’s criminal defense attorney in two cases brought by the department under President Joe Biden’s administration.

He was also a key figure on the president’s defense team in the hush money case against Trump in New York.

Blanche became second in command behind Bondi at the Justice Department last year.

Trump says Attorney General Pam Bondi will leave the Department of Justice

“We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, after saying she’s been a “loyal friend.”

Trump said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will serve as acting attorney general.

Rep. Mace welcomes Bondi’s ousting

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, in response to earlier reports that President Donald Trump was considering ousting Attorney General Pam Bondi, said in a statement Thursday: “I welcome it.”

“Bondi handled the Epstein Files in a terrible manner and seriously undermined President Trump,” said Mace in the statement, whose long been critical of the justice department over the release and review of the Jefferey Epstein files.

Trump says Pam Bondi, a loyalist who oversaw Justice Department upheaval, is out as attorney general

President Donald Trump said Thursday that Pam Bondi is out as his attorney general, ending the contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the Justice Department’s culture of independence from the White House, oversaw large-scale firings of career employees and moved aggressively to investigate the Republican president’s perceived enemies.

The announcement follows months of scrutiny over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation that made Bondi the target of angry conservatives even with her close relationship with Trump. She also struggled to satisfy Trump’s demands to prosecute his political rivals, with multiple investigations rejected by judges or grand juries.

The former Florida attorney general came into office last year pledging that she would not play politics with the Justice Department, but she quickly started investigations of Trump foes, sparking an outcry that the law enforcement agency was being wielded as a tool of revenge to advance the president’s political and personal agenda.

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JUST IN: Trump says Pam Bondi, a loyalist who oversaw Justice Department upheaval, is out as his attorney general

Eric Goosby, 48, was arrested by the U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Task Force around 2 p.m. Thursday in the 1900 block of Hussion Street.

• Man armed with butcher knife ignored police commands, advanced towards officers before fatal shooting, HPD says

Goosby is charged with murder in connection to the shooting death of his girlfriend.

Authorities have not yet released the victim’s name. Goosby is also charged with unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon.

Authorities responded around 1:50 p.m. Monday to an apartment located at 2831 Laura Koppe Road.

Houston Fire Department personnel arrived at the apartment and found the woman after getting a person down call. The woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

• Man in custody charged with 2023 Fifth Ward murder

Police learned neighbors heard gunshots around 9 p.m. the night before and saw a man leaving the apartment alone. Neighbors believed the man was the victim’s boyfriend.

After further investigation, police identified Goosby as a suspect in the case.