According to an HPD source, two groups were in a fight at the school and a weapon was involved. It is unclear if anyone was injured or if any shots were fired, but we are told one of the groups ran off after the fight.

• ‘Extremely disturbed’: Houston Police Department officer relieved of duty after racist rant goes viral on social media

Police say at least one student has been detained at this time.

This is a developing story. KPRC 2 will update this story with any information we receive.

The announcement came as last-minute ceasefire talks between the U.S. and Iran looked uncertain and a two-week truce was set to expire Wednesday.

Earlier, the White House put on hold Vice President JD Vance’s expected trip to Islamabad for a second round of talks as Tehran — at least for the time-being — has balked at further talks.

In a Truth Social post announcing the ceasefire extension, Trump said the U.S. military would “remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.” He said the U.S. would continue it’s blockade of Iranian ports.

Both countries have warned that, without a deal, they were prepared to resume fighting.

Pakistan scrambles to get US and Iran to negotiate

Pakistani leaders, including Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, worked intensively late Tuesday to get both sides to agree to a second round of ceasefire talks, according to two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Iran’s state TV there has been “no final decision” on whether to agree to more talks because of “unacceptable actions" by the U.S., apparently referencing its recent blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.

As Vance put on hold a return trip to Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were expected in Washington on Tuesday afternoon for consultations about how to proceed, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.

The official cautioned that Trump could change his mind on negotiating with Iran at any time, and declined to predict what would happen if the ceasefire expires without another meeting. The official said Trump has options short of restarting airstrikes.

Both sides remain dug in rhetorically

Before announcing the ceasefire extension, Trump had warned that “lots of bombs” will “start going off” if there’s no agreement before the Wednesday deadline, while Iran’s chief negotiator said that Tehran has “new cards on the battlefield” that haven't yet been revealed.

A senior commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to destroy the region’s oil industry if war with the United States resumes. “If southern neighbors allow the enemy to use their facilities to attack Iran, they should say goodbye to oil production in the Middle East region,” Gen. Majid Mousavi told an Iranian news site.

Strait of Hormuz control key to negotiations

Iran’s envoy to the United Nations said Tuesday that Tehran has “received some sign” that the U.S. is ready to stop its blockade of Iranian ports. The U.S. had made no public statements about lifting the blockade.

Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said ending the blockade remains a condition for Iran to rejoin peace talks. When that happens, he said, “I think the next round of the negotiations will take place.”

The U.S. imposed the blockade to pressure Tehran into ending its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane through which 20% of the world’s natural gas and crude oil transits in peacetime.

Iran’s grip on the strait has sent oil prices soaring. Brent crude, the international standard, was trading at close to $95 per barrel on Tuesday, up more than 30% from Feb. 28, the day that Israel and the U.S. attacked Iran to start the war.

Before the war began, the Strait of Hormuz had been fully open to international shipping. Trump has demanded that vessels again be allowed to transit unimpeded.

Over the weekend, Iran said that it had received new proposals from Washington, but also suggested that a wide gap remains between the sides. Issues that derailed the last round of negotiations included Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, its regional proxies and the strait.

US says its forces board sanctioned oil tanker

On Tuesday, the U.S. said its forces boarded an oil tanker previously sanctioned for smuggling Iranian crude oil in Asia. The Pentagon said in a social media post that U.S. forces boarded the M/T Tifani “without incident.”

The U.S. military did not say where the vessel had been boarded, though ship-tracking data showed the Tifani in the Indian Ocean between Sri Lanka and Indonesia on Tuesday. The Pentagon statement added that “international waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”

The U.S. military on Sunday seized an Iranian container ship, the first interception under the blockade. Iran’s joint military command called the armed boarding an act of piracy and a violation of the ceasefire.

Pakistan hopeful talks will proceed

Pakistani officials have expressed confidence that Iran will also send a delegation to resume talks that mark the highest-level negotiations between the U.S. and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The first round April 11 and 12 ended without an agreement.

Pakistan said Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar met Tuesday with the acting U.S. ambassador in Islamabad to urge a ceasefire extension. Dar also met with the ambassador from China, a key trading partner with Iran.

Security has been tightened across Pakistan’s capital, where authorities have deployed thousands of personnel and increased patrols along routes leading to the airport.

Talks between Israel and Lebanon set to resume

In Lebanon, the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah said in a statement it had fired rockets and drones at Israeli forces for the first time since a 10-day truce took effect Friday “in response to the blatant and documented violations” by Israel, which it said included “attacks on civilians and the destruction of their homes and villages in southern Lebanon.”

The Israeli army said it responded by striking the group's rocket launcher. Israeli officials have said they intend to maintain a buffer zone in southern Lebanon — an area that includes dozens of villages whose residents have not been allowed to return.

Historic diplomatic talks between Israel and Lebanon are set to resume on Thursday in Washington, an Israeli, a Lebanese and a U.S. official said. All three spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the behind-the-scenes negotiations.

The Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors met last week for the first direct diplomatic talks in decades. Israel says the talks are aimed at disarming Hezbollah and reaching a peace agreement with Lebanon.

A 10-day ceasefire began on Friday in Lebanon, where fighting between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants broke out two days after the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran to start the war. Fighting in Lebanon has killed more than 2,290 people.

Since the war started, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, according to authorities. Additionally, 23 people have died in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Lee from Washington. Associated Press journalists Michelle Price, Aamer Madhani and Darlene Superville in Washington; Samy Magdy in Cairo; David Rising and Huizhong Wu in Bangkok; Sam McNeil in Brussels; Julia Frankel in New York; Bill Barrow in Atlanta, Edith Lederer at the United Nations and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this story.

Trump made the announcement as last-minute ceasefire talks between the U.S. and Iran looked increasingly uncertain Tuesday with a two-week truce set to expire. Both countries had said they were prepared to resume fighting if no deal is reached.

Trump said he would "extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.” The ceasefire had been set to expire Wednesday.

Iran has yet to decide whether to join the negotiations in Pakistan, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said earlier Tuesday, and will only take part if Tehran believes the discussions would yield results. Iran’s chief negotiator had said that Tehran has “new cards on the battlefield” that haven’t yet been revealed.

Since the war started, fighting has killed at least 3,375 people in Iran and more than 2,290 in Lebanon. Additionally, 23 people have died in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.

Here is the latest:

Iran calls for the United Nations to condemn US seizures of its ships

The Iranian mission to the U.N. sent a letter Tuesday asking for the world body and the Security Council to issue a “firm and unequivocal” condemnation of the U.S. decision Sunday to attack and seize an Iranian-flagged cargo ship.

“This constitutes a grave breach of international law, a clear violation of the ceasefire, and an act of aggression marked by the hallmarks of piracy,” the mission posted on X. “Such reckless conduct directly endangers international navigation and undermines maritime safety and security.”

Washington had said the ship tried to evade the U.S. naval blockade near the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump says US will extend ceasefire but continue its blockade of Iranian ports

The president said he’s extending the ceasefire with Iran at Pakistan’s request as he waits for a “unified proposal” from the Islamic Republic, but that the U.S. military will continue its blockade of Iranian ports.

Trump added that “he’s directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”

The president made the move even as the White House has put on hold Vice President JD Vance’s expected trip to Islamabad for a second round of talks as Tehran, at least for time being, is balking at further talks.

Cyprus says its offer to host direct Israel-Lebanon talks still stands

President Nikos Christodoulides told the AP that the island nation in the Eastern Mediterranean is ready to host talks, citing its “excellent relations” and trust across the region. He said Cyprus has hosted similar negotiations and will discuss the offer with Lebanon’s president at an EU summit later this week.

—By Menelaos Hadjicostas

Hezbollah accuses Israel of breaching the ceasefire more than 200 times

The Iran-backed Lebanese militant group said in a statement Tuesday it had fired rockets and drones at Israeli forces for the first time since a 10-day truce took effect Friday “in response to the blatant and documented violations” by Israel, which it said include “attacks on civilians and the destruction of their homes and villages in southern Lebanon.”

Israeli officials have said they intend to maintain a buffer zone in southern Lebanon and the Israeli military has issued maps of an area it calls a “forward defense line,” which extends several miles into Lebanon, containing dozens of villages whose residents have not been allowed to return.

A senior Iranian commander threatens to destroy the region’s oil industry if war resumes with the US

Gen. Majid Mousavi, the aerospace chief for the Revolutionary Guard, said in comments on Iranian media that it would be a mistake to carry out “aggression” against Iran. He also said the region’s oil facilities would be harmed if neighboring countries allow the U.S. to carry out attacks.

“If southern neighbors allow the enemy to use their facilities to attack Iran, they should say goodbye to oil production in the Middle East region,” he said.

The U.S. has bases and troops in several countries across the region.

Iranian foreign minister says US blockade of its ports is violation of ceasefire as talks stall

As news came that the U.S. delegation was pausing its travel to Islamabad, Iran’s top diplomat posted on X saying that American forces boarding an Iranian oil tanker earlier Tuesday was an act of war.

“Striking a commercial vessel and taking its crew hostage is an even greater violation,” Abbas Araghchi said in a post. “Iran knows how to neutralize restrictions, how to defend its interests, and how to resist bullying.”

Iran’s UN envoy says his government has ‘received some sign’ the US is ready to stop the blockade

Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said Tuesday that as soon as Washington ends the blockade, “I think the next round of the negotiations will take place in Islamabad.”

He called the U.S. naval blockade a violation of the ceasefire, and reiterated that lifting it is a condition for new negotiations to take place. The United States has not publicly indicated that it will lift the blockade.

The U.S. started the war against Iran, Iravani said, and if they want to return to the negotiating table “and find a political solution, they will find us ready.”

“If they want to go to the war, in this case also Iran is ready for that,” he told a small group of reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.

When asked how hopeful he is he about the possibility of new negotiations, the ambassador replied: “We should give the chance — we hope.”

VP Vance’s trip to Pakistan for peace talks is on hold, US official says; comes as Iran hasn’t committed to attending

A U.S. official said the Vance trip to Islamabad for potential talks had been called off and put on hold, but cautioned that Trump could change his mind at any minute.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, said Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner were expected in Washington on Tuesday afternoon for consultations about how to proceed.

The official declined to predict what would happen if the current ceasefire expires without another meeting Islamabad but noted that Trump retains options short of restarting airstrikes.

— By Matthew Lee in Washington.

Iran’s state TV denies 8 women are at risk of execution

State TV quoted the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency denying Trump’s claims that the women are facing execution. It said some have already been released, while others face charges that — if upheld by the courts — would ultimately result in prison sentences rather than execution.

It didn’t name which women were allegedly released.

Human rights centers have reported that at least two of the women were facing charges that carry a death sentence.

Pakistani officials race to salvage ceasefire talks

Two officials say Pakistani leaders were engaged in intensive mediation efforts late Tuesday to ensure the second round of ceasefire talks takes place.

The officials said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, and the prime minister’s national security adviser were involved in the push.

Despite a delay by Iran in sending its delegation to Islamabad, “overall optimism endures among decision makers in Pakistan,” the officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

— By Munir Ahmed in Islamabad.

6 Iranian women and 2 teenagers, mostly detained during January protests, are on Trump’s appeal for release

Bita Hemmati was sentenced to death in Tehran after taking part in the protests, according to the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Mahboubeh Shabani was arrested in the city of Mashhad during the protests. She’s charged with “enmity of God,” which carries the death sentence, according to human rights monitor Hengaw.

Diana Taher Abadi and Ghazal Ghalandari are both 16, and were arrested separately in Karaj, west of Tehran, and Yasuj in southwestern Iran during the protests, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

Venus Hossein Nejad, from the Bahai faith, was arrested in January from her workplace in southeast Iran. She was forced to confess on state TV and was accused with others of organizing protests and being members of a “satanic network and under the influence of Israel,” the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights said.

Golnar Naraqi, a 37-year-old emergency physician, was arrested in Tehran during the protests, according to a state-affiliated newspaper.

Two women were identified by Iranian social media as Ensieh Nejati and Panah Movahhedi Salamat. There was no immediate confirmed reports about their whereabouts.

Despite a ceasefire, the Israeli military says Hezbollah launched rockets at troops in Lebanon

The army said the rockets were fired at Israeli soldiers positioned in southern Lebanon and that it responded by striking the launcher.

This appears to be the first time Hezbollah fired on Israeli troops since a ceasefire took effect Friday, although the Iran-backed group said it detonated explosives Sunday targeting an Israeli convoy inside Lebanon.

“The launches constitute a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement,” the army said.

Israel has left thousands of troops inside Lebanon during the 10-day truce.

The army says it also intercepted a drone launched from Lebanon before it crossed into Israeli territory.

There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

Trump calls on Iran to release 8 women ahead of potential truce talks

The president reposted a photo of six women and two teen girls on social media Tuesday morning that a conservative activist noted are facing prosecution by the Iranian government.

“I am sure that they will respect the fact that you did so. Please do them no harm!” Trump posted. “Would be a great start to our negotiations!!!”

Five of those in the photo flagged by Trump were arrested during widespread anti-government protests earlier this year, according to human rights groups.

One of the women, from Iran’s minority Bahai faith, is accused of being part of a network described as “satanic and under the influence of Israel.”

Iranian media sites identified two others in Trump’s posting but did not offer details on why they were detained.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman says his government has not yet decided whether to join ceasefire negotiations

Esmail Baghaei told state TV late Tuesday that Iran was upset about what he called mixed messages from the Americans.

“It is not out of indecisiveness, it is because we are facing contradictory messages and behaviors, and unacceptable actions from the American counterpart,” he said.

US military seeks to boost spending on drones, air defenses and fighter jets

As part of Trump’s push to boost defense spending to $1.5 trillion in the 2027 budget, the Pentagon wants to triple spending on drones and related technology to more than $74 billion and invest over $30 billion into more critical munitions.

That includes missile interceptors, whose stockpiles have become critically low during the Iran war.

Military officials said the spending blueprint was developed ahead of the conflict in the Middle East. They also did not discuss how much they will request in additional funds for the war.

Drones and other unmanned vehicles have emerged as a key weapon in the wars in Ukraine and Iran, and top Pentagon officials say the U.S. must significantly increase its funding of both drones and counter-drone systems.

▶ Read more

Israel’s military says it has replaced a crucifix in southern Lebanon after a soldier smashed it down

The Israeli military posted a photo on social media of the replacement crucifix, which appeared smaller but more ornate than the original statue that a soldier was photographed destroying in southern Lebanon. Israel says two soldiers involved in the episode will be held for a month in military detention.

Tuesday’s post on X said troops worked with the community in the Lebanese village of Debel to coordinate the replacement, which includes a metallic-sheened Jesus figure and four paintings of saints, one on each arm of the cross.

Christians are estimated to make up around a third of Lebanon’s population of roughly 5.5 million people. Thousands of Christians were displaced from their homes in the country’s south during the war.

EU diplomats agree to new sanctions targeted Iranians obstructing freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz

“Today we also reach the political agreement to widen our sanctions regime, to also target those responsible for breaches to freedom of navigation,” said the 27-nation European Union’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas after the Tuesday gathering in Luxembourg.

“Freedom of navigation is non-negotiable. Daily U-turns where the Strait of Hormuz is open or closed, are reckless. Transit through the strait must remain free of charge,” she said, referring to Iran’s charging for safe passage on the Strait of Hormuz.

Kallas said the EU’s maritime security mission would be “the quickest way” to ensure safe transit in the Persian Gulf after peace is settled.

Vance is still in Washington

The vice president was participating in policy meetings at the White House on Tuesday morning, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The vice president’s office and the White House on Tuesday did not respond to messages inquiring about whether he still intends to travel to Pakistan for talks with Iran.

Iran-allied Yemeni rebels warn against escalation in the region

Even if the U.S.-Iran ceasefire holds and the current war ends, the leader of Yemen’s Houthi rebel group said “there is no doubt that further rounds of fighting are coming, as it is merely a truce within a continuous conflict with the enemy.”

In a televised speech Tuesday, Abdul Malik al-Houthi warned that escalation in the region is “possibly high” as the “fragile” ceasefire is nearing an end.

A Houthi missile attack on Israel last month raised concern that Iran’s ally in Yemen may again try to block Red Sea shipping routes, as it did during the war in Gaza.

Gulf shipping crews are stranded amid maritime attacks, UN agency warns

At least 10 seafarers have been killed and several more severely injured in a series of attacks on commercial vessels around the Persian Gulf since the start of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, according to the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency responsible for regulating global shipping.

IMO spokesperson Natasha Brown said the agency has confirmed 25 attacks on commercial shipping since Feb. 28. Hundreds of ships have been stranded in the Persian Gulf since.

“Around 20,000 civilian seafarers remain aboard vessels in the Persian Gulf, facing dwindling supplies, fatigue and severe psychological stress,” Brown added.

Following an extraordinary council session in March, the IMO said it is working with “relevant states on the development of a safe passage framework” to evacuate stranded crews, while coordinating access to supplies.

Pentagon wants to spend billions for more crucial missile interceptors

U.S. military officials said Tuesday that the Pentagon’s budget calls for spending more than $30 billion to buy more critical munitions, including missile interceptors, whose stockpiles have become critically low during the Iran war.

The supplies under the most strain are the Patriot air defense systems and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptors. The THAAD system is designed for defeating medium-range ballistic missiles, while the Patriot system is for taking down short-range ballistic missiles and crewed aircraft.

The $30 billion budget item will also purchase long-range Precision Strike Missiles and Mid-Range Capability missile systems that are used by the U.S. Army.

A new budget request from the Pentagon would triple spending on drone technology

The $1.5 trillion budget proposal detailed Tuesday by defense officials would allocate nearly $54 billion for military drones and related technology, as well as $21 billion for weapons systems designed to take down enemy drones.

Drones and other unmanned vehicles have emerged as a key weapon in wars in Ukraine and Iran, and top Pentagon officials say the U.S. must significantly increase its funding of both drones and counter-drone systems.

“Drone warfare is rapidly reshaping the modern battlefield,” Jules Hurst III, the acting undersecretary of defense, comptroller, told reporters during a budget briefing at the Pentagon.

“This budget is the largest investment in drone warfare and counter-drone technology in U.S. history.”

Israel disciplines 2 soldiers for destruction of Jesus statue

One of the soldiers photographed the other using what appears to be a sledgehammer to hack down the crucifix during military operations in the Lebanese village. The two will be held in military detention for 30 days.

“The soldiers’ conduct completely deviated from IDF orders and values,” said a military statement, using the acronym for the Israeli military.

The disciplinary measures come after the photo of the incident attracted worldwide attention and condemnations from Christian religious leaders. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar have also denounced the incident.

The military said that six other soldiers who stood by without intervening would be summoned for conversations with higher-ups and that military protocol for dealing with religious buildings and artifacts were re-emphasized to troops in the area.

Pakistan calls for Iran ceasefire extension in meeting with US diplomat

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister met U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Natalie Baker on Tuesday, urging that Washington and Iran extend the ceasefire and pursue diplomacy, the Foreign Ministry said.

In a statement, it said Ishaq Dar “underscored Pakistan’s consistent emphasis on dialogue and diplomacy as the only viable means to address challenges and achieve lasting regional peace and stability.”

Baker, in response, conveyed Washington’s appreciation for Pakistan’s constructive role in supporting regional peace and facilitating dialogue, the statement said.

More on the UAE as US weighs offering it a currency swap

The United Arab Emirates, an autocratically ruled federation of seven sheikdoms on the Arabian Peninsula that’s home to Dubai, became wealthy from its oil deposits. It pegs its currency, the dirham, to the U.S. dollar.

While it has been able to send some of its oil out via a pipeline to the Gulf of Oman, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has squeezed the country’s oil exports.

The UAE has an estimated $2.5 trillion in savings and sovereign wealth funds, but may be seeking the swap to “bolster investor confidence in the UAE’s financial position if the war were to drag on,” said Jason Tuvey, an analyst at Capital Economics.

Trump says administration is weighing currency swap for UAE

Trump confirmed in his CNBC interview that he’s considering a request from the United Arab Emirates Central bank for a currency swap to help secure dollar liquidity for the oil-rich economy that’s been rattled by the Iran conflict.

The president expressed surprise that the nation needs assistance, but made clear he was open to the prospect of making the move to help meet his ally’s concerns.

“I mean I’m surprised because they are really rich,” Trump said. He added, “You know, they’re very good for this country. So, yeah, if I could help them, I would.”

Trump says he doesn’t want to extend Iran ceasefire if talks with US progress

Trump was responding to a question during a live telephone interview Tuesday on CNBC, a business news network.

Asked if he would continue the ceasefire if there’s progress in the next round of Iran talks, Trump said, “Well, I don’t want to do that. We don’t have that much time.” He said Iran “had a choice” and “they have to negotiate.”

But it remained unclear when the ceasefire actually expires. Tuesday night was the deadline when the pause was announced two weeks ago, but Trump told Bloomberg News the ceasefire will expire Wednesday night.

Trump says he’s ready to resume Iran bombardment if talks don’t go well

In an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Trump was asked directly if he’d resume strikes if there isn’t progress in the coming talks in Islamabad.

“Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that’s a better attitude to go in with,” Trump said. “But, you know, we’re ready to go. I mean, the military is raring to go.”

Pakistan says it tests locally made anti-ship cruise missile

The navy says it successfully conducted a live firing of the Taimoor air-launched missile.

The announcement comes amid the Pakistani navy’s ongoing efforts to escort merchant vessels transiting key routes including the Strait of Hormuz.

US forces board oil tanker sanctioned for smuggling Iranian oil

The Pentagon on social media says U.S. forces “conducted a right-of-visit maritime interdiction” and boarded the M/T Tifani “without incident.” Ship-tracking data showed the Tifani in the Indian Ocean between Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

The announcement described the boarding as happening overnight. It added that “international waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”

Regional officials say US and Iran arriving Wednesday for Round Two

Neither the U.S. nor Iran have publicly confirmed the timing of talks. Iranian state television has denied any official is already in Pakistan’s capital.

Pakistan-led mediators received confirmation that the top negotiators, Vance and Qalibaf, will arrive in Islamabad early Wednesday, the officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

A two-week ceasefire is due to expire.

— By Munir Ahmed and Samy Magdy

U.S. forces “conducted a right-of-visit maritime interdiction” of the M/T Tifani “without incident,” the Pentagon said on social media.

The tanker was captured in the Bay of Bengal — between India and Southeast Asia — and it was carrying Iranian oil, according to a U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing military operation. The military will decide in the next four days what to do with the vessel, such as tow it back to the U.S. or turn it over to another country, the official said.

It's the latest move by the U.S. to stop any ship tied to Iran or those suspected of carrying supplies that could help its government, from weapons and oil to metals and electronics. The tanker was seized before President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. was extending a tenuous ceasefire in the Iran war at mediator Pakistan’s request but was keeping the blockade in place.

The tanker is the second vessel linked to Iran that has been interdicted by the U.S. military. The U.S. Navy attacked and seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship on Sunday that it said had tried to evade its blockade of Iranian ports, with Trump saying an American destroyer blew a hole in the ship’s engine room.

Targeting Iran-linked ships in international waters

The Pentagon on social media described the Tifani as “stateless” despite it being a Botswana-flagged vessel.

“As we have made clear, we will pursue global maritime enforcement efforts to disrupt illicit networks and interdict sanctioned vessels providing material support to Iran — anywhere they operate,” the Pentagon announcement said, echoing previous statements from Trump administration officials. “International waters are not a refuge for sanctioned vessels.”

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that the enforcement actions would extend beyond Iranian waters and the area under control of U.S. Central Command.

U.S. forces in other areas of responsibility, he told reporters at the Pentagon, “will actively pursue any Iranian-flagged vessel or any vessel attempting to provide material support to Iran.” He specifically pointed to operations in the Pacific and said the U.S. would target vessels that left before the blockade began outside the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for energy and other shipments.

The military also detailed an expansive list of goods that it considers contraband, declaring that it will board, search and seize them from merchant vessels “regardless of location.” A notice published Thursday says any “goods that are destined for an enemy and that may be susceptible to use in armed conflict” are “subject to capture at any place beyond neutral territory.”

Blockades can be lawful in wartime, expert says

The U.S. military’s actions against Iranian-linked vessels, namely the attack over the weekend on the cargo ship named the Touska, have raised questions about the two-week ceasefire.

The U.S. and Iran are operating in “an awkward space where the law doesn’t give you a clean yes-or-no answer” on whether the ceasefire was violated, said Jason Chuah, a law professor at the City University of London and the Maritime Institute of Malaysia.

“The United States seems to take the line that the conflict never fully switched off — that is there is still a state of armed conflict,” Chuah said. “By saying that, it can keep doing things like enforcing a blockade and even using limited force at sea.”

Iran is treating the ceasefire as a pause on all hostile acts, Chuah said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Tuesday called the U.S. blockade a breach of the ceasefire and said “striking a commercial vessel and taking its crew hostage is an even greater violation.” In a letter, Iran's U.N. Mission asked the U.N. Security Council and U.N. chief António Guterres to condemn the U.S. for seizing the Touska and its crew.

The U.S. earlier had instituted a blockade against sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela but had never fired on those vessels.

Blockades and even limited attacks on vessels can be lawful in wartime, with merchant vessels becoming legitimate targets if they contribute to military actions, carry contraband or are incorporated into enemy logistics, Chuah said.

It's harder to prove that a ship such as the Touska is realistically contributing to military action against the U.S., Chuah said.

“The whole dispute really turns on a deceptively simple question: Did the ceasefire actually suspend the right to use force?” Chuah said. “If it did, then firing on vessels or seizing them is very hard to square with the United Nations Charter.”

Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and a senior defense adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said a violation of the ceasefire is up for interpretation because there were no defined terms.

“Trump announced it. The Iranians agreed. But there’s no formal agreement,” Cancian said. “So whether it broke the ceasefire or not depends on your perspective. ... Nothing was written down.”

Michael O’Hanlon, a defense and foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, said the U.S. did not violate the ceasefire because it was limited to bombing Iran, not the blockade.

“We agreed to stop dropping bombs on them, and that’s the basic thing they wanted,” O’Hanlon said, adding that the U.S. still had to enforce the blockade “if you’re going to make it mean anything.”

___

AP writer Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Egan founded “Double Play,” an initiative focused on collecting and repurposing used baseball equipment for children in African countries where access to the sport is limited or nonexistent.

“I’ve played baseball my entire life, and this organization is an opportunity for me to give that opportunity to others,” Egan said. “It’s not just about catching and throwing, it’s about leadership, teamwork and perseverance.”

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The idea took shape after Egan connected with Max Bobholes, founder of Angels at Bat, which works to grow the sport in Africa. Through that connection, Egan learned that in places like Kenya, baseball equipment is nearly impossible to find.

“In Kenya, there wasn’t a single location where you could purchase baseball gear,” Egan said. “That contrast really motivated me.”

Double Play now aims to distribute equipment to youth teams in six African countries, helping fuel a growing interest in the sport.

One of those connections is with the Community Braves, a team in Uganda. Egan regularly exchanges training videos with players there, offering drills and encouragement from Texas while receiving updates on their progress.

• LSU All-American safety, Thurgood Marshall grad A.J. Haulcy: ‘I see myself as a playmaker, a plug and play guy’

In one moment that underscored the initiative’s impact, Egan said he received a video of players standing in line, introducing themselves while holding gloves donated from local families.

“It really put it into perspective,” he said. “These are gloves that came from our garages, and they’re changing lives.”

Egan hopes the initiative highlights how small actions can create meaningful change.

“Donating a single baseball can impact someone halfway across the world,” he said.

The effort has drawn strong support from the Atascocita community, including classmates, coaches, family members and administrators within Humble Independent School District.

Egan said that support has been essential to bringing Double Play to life and expanding its reach.

“I definitely could not have done this by myself,” he said. “The community here has been incredible.”

As the initiative grows, Egan hopes his work will inspire other students to pursue their own ideas for service.

“I hope it shows that effort can grow into a tangible impact,” he said. “And maybe it encourages another high school student to take that first step.”

The latest investment will establish the UT Dell Campus for Advanced Research and the UT Dell Medical Center. Funds will also provide support for undergraduate student scholarships, student housing, and the university’s supercomputing research center.

“What starts here changes the world, and today, with the Dell Advanced Research Campus, we are beginning something that will matter for generations,” said Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies, during an announcement ceremony on Tuesday.

The Dells said the goal of the new investment is to bring together medicine, science, and computing on a single campus designed for the artificial intelligence era.

“Texas already dominates in technology, energy, and business, and now we will further cement our leadership in health care innovation as well,” said Gov. Greg Abbott.

The UT Dell Campus for Advanced Research will occupy more than 300 acres in Northwest Austin and will house the 27-acre UT Dell Medical Center. Details about the size and scope of the new medical center aren’t final, but will include a hospital with around 300 to 500 beds. This will be different from Austin’s major trauma hospital, similarly named Dell Seton Medical Center located downtown.

Construction of UT Dell Medical Center is expected to begin later this year and will open in 2030 with a hospital tower, outpatient facilities, and full-service emergency departments. Phased expansion of advanced specialty programs, such as cardiovascular disease, multi-organ conditions, and other rare illnesses, will continue through 2032.

The UT MD Anderson cancer care services will also be fully integrated into UT Dell Medical Center, reducing the need for patients to travel to locations like Houston for clinical trials and other complex treatments.

“Last year, thousands of residents from Austin and the surrounding area traveled to Houston for our cancer care. That tells us two things: cancer patients and their families trust our care, and they deserve access to it closer to home,” said Peter Pisters, president of UT MD Anderson.

Since the new Dell Medical Center’s focus will be on specialized care, it will not replace Dell Seton Medical Center, which focuses on emergencies. Austin has been the largest U.S. city without a comprehensive academic medical center, according to university officials.

The academic medical center will also integrate AI directly into care delivery and operations from the start, in hopes of enabling earlier disease detection, more precise and personalized care, and better health outcomes.

“This is a very deliberate and intentional effort about how we look at the curriculum,” said Claudia Lucchinetti, dean of Dell Medical School. “We are looking at how to create those simulated environments of working side by side, as in a team that really consists of humans and robots working together to provide care.”

The Dells’ donations over the last 25 years include $10 million to build the Dell Computer Science Hall at the College of Natural Sciences, $50 million to establish the Dell Medical School, and $100 million to launch the UT for Me – Powered by Dell Scholars, a program for Pell grant-eligible students.

Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin 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.

As part of President Donald Trump’s push to boost defense spending to $1.5 trillion in the 2027 budget, the Pentagon wants to triple spending on drones and related technology to more than $74 billion and invest over $30 billion into more critical munitions, including missile interceptors, whose stockpiles have become critically low during the Iran war.

Military officials said the spending blueprint was developed before the conflict in the Middle East. They also did not discuss how much they will request in additional funds for the war, which would be on top of what the White House is seeking to boost defense spending in the next budget year.

“The overlap, you’ll see, is the request for munitions, which is something we always need," Jules Hurst III, acting undersecretary of defense and the Pentagon's comptroller, told reporters at a briefing. "We always need to increase our magazine depth. But outside of that, there aren’t any operational costs in here from Iran.”

Heavy investment in drone warfare

The missile interceptors whose numbers are under the most strain are the Patriot and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, air defense systems. The THAAD system is designed for defeating medium-range ballistic missiles, while the Patriot system is for taking down short-range ballistic missiles and crewed aircraft. However, they both also were used to shoot down cheap Iranian drones.

The $30 billion budget item also would aim to purchase long-range Precision Strike Missiles and Mid-Range Capability missile systems used by the U.S. Army.

The budget proposal would allocate nearly $54 billion for military drones and related technology, as well as $21 billion for weapons systems designed to take down enemy drones.

Drones and other unmanned vehicles have emerged as a key weapon in the wars in Ukraine and Iran, and top Pentagon officials say the U.S. must significantly increase its funding of both drones and counter-drone systems.

“Drone warfare is rapidly reshaping the modern battlefield,” Hurst said. “This budget is the largest investment in drone warfare and counter drone technology in U.S. history.”

As part of the 2027 budget, the Pentagon also intends to grow the military by 44,500 troops, or more than 2%, spend more than $2 billion on operations on the U.S.-Mexico border and make the largest shipbuilding request since 1962.

Dramatic increase in the Navy's Tomahawk missiles

While officials said the budget was developed before operations began in Iran, it featured major jumps in many of the missiles that have been used in the conflict. One of the most dramatic increases was in the choice for the Navy to increase of its purchase of the Tomahawk cruise missile from 55 missiles last year to 785 in this year’s budget.

The long-range cruise missile was heavily used in Iran and led to concerns from experts that the military was using it much faster than it could replenish its stocks.

Vice Adm. Ben Reynolds, the Navy’s budget boss, wouldn’t say if he expected all 785 Tomahawk missiles to be delivered within the year. He acknowledged that weapons production capacity “is absolutely the challenge” and, in the case of the Tomahawk, he said the Navy expects Raytheon — the company that makes it — “to invest very heavily now to be able to ramp up production.”

The services also are addressing the difficulty in producing the advanced munitions favored by the military by slowly shifting toward more basic weapons.

Major Gen. Frank Verdugo, the Air Force’s budget chief, said the Air Force wants to invest $600 million to develop “affordable” munitions as part of an effort to move away from “small numbers of exquisite weapons toward a future where we can overwhelm an adversary with sheer volume.”

Trump-endorsed battleship is missing

The Navy said it would be buying 18 more warships using more than $65 billion — a 46% increase from the previous year.

However, the Trump-endorsed battleship that was announced to great fanfare last year is not in this year’s budget, according to the briefing. Instead, the Navy is planning to pay for the first battleship in next year’s budget.

The military's spending proposal also lacked money for repairing U.S. bases in the Middle East, which Hurst said would be part of a future request.

“Part of it is we would assess what our posture should be in the Middle East,” Hurst told reporters. “We have to make sure we understand what we want to construct in the future. We might change how we build bases in the Middle East based on this conflict.”

Budget echoes Biden-era priorities, expert says

If approved by Congress, the budget would provide the largest level of defense funding in inflation-adjusted dollars in U.S. history, said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Harrison said the spending appears more aligned with former President Joe Biden’s national defense strategy than Trump’s.

“This is a budget that is trying to build a force capable of sustaining U.S. presence and security commitments around the world — a force that’s capable of fighting major wars against countries like Russia and China,” Harrison said.

The Trump administration’s strategy document put the priority on homeland defense and was largely silent on Russia and did not say much about China, Harrison said.

• ‘He has frozen it’: Houston mayor looking to revise immigration ordinance as funding freeze hurts HPD, FIFA preps

According to the mayor’s office, the proposed amendment will be is designed to address concerns raised by Ken Paxton while protecting constitutional rights.

A spokesperson said Whitmire believes the updated language “reinforces the Fourth Amendment” and safeguards roughly $110 million in state public safety funding currently at risk.

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sues Houston over immigration ordinance

The announcement comes days after Whitmire said in a one-on-one interview with Re’Chelle Turner that the state’s lawsuit against the city is politically motivated and that he does not plan to engage in a prolonged legal battle.

• RELATED: Houston mayor rejects filing Temporary Restraining Order as immigration ordinance fight threatens $110M in funding

Instead, Whitmire has pushed for a negotiated solution, warning that the funding freeze, which he previously said totals about $114 million, is already straining city resources.

He said the loss of funds could impact operations at the Houston Police Department, including overtime and staffing tied to critical investigations such as homicides, domestic violence, juvenile justice and human trafficking cases.

• RELATED: ‘A crisis situation’: State threatens to pull public safety funding over ordinance limiting when HPD can call ICE

The mayor also noted that tens of millions of dollars had been earmarked for security and logistics tied to the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2026, raising concerns about the city’s ability to prepare for the global event.

The dispute stems from a recently passed city ordinance related to how Houston police interact with federal immigration authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Whitmire has said previously that the ordinance would be revised to remove a specific 30-minute reporting requirement and replace it with a more flexible standard.

• RELATED: Houston postpones special City Council meeting as state deadline on funding dispute extended

He has also emphasized the need for clearer guidance and oversight within HPD to ensure consistency in enforcement.

Whitmire has maintained that the city cannot afford a costly court fight and would likely lose in court, calling litigation a “diversion” that delays urgently needed funding.

City leaders are expected to take up the revised ordinance in the coming days. Whitmire has said he is encouraged by ongoing discussions with council members and stakeholders and believes there is support for changes that could satisfy both legal concerns and public safety priorities.

The mayor is also expected to present a balanced budget proposal in May without raising property taxes, relying instead on efficiencies and potential department consolidations.

The cellular companies appealed to the justices after the Federal Communications Commission found they sold customers’ location data without proper safeguards. The FCC slapped the companies with hefty penalties totaling over $100 million.

The telecom companies challenged the process as unconstitutional because it gives them little opportunity to tell their side of the story in court. Key justices seemed skeptical, however. “I wonder if, at the end of the day, you're really just talking about a PR problem,” Chief Justice John Roberts said during arguments Tuesday.

The Trump administration defended the process as an essential regulatory tool and argued that it does leave a path to court. But the government also said companies don’t have to pay penalties right away, a concession that amounts to a win for the companies, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said. “It seems like you’ve won on the law going forward one way or the other,” Kavanaugh told an attorney for AT&T and Verizon.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority has limited the power of federal agencies before, including overturning a decades-old decision that had given regulators an advantage in court and stripping another agency of a major tool in fighting securities fraud. A victory for AT&T and Verizon in this case could have widespread effects for other agencies who use similar enforcement mechanisms, advocates said.

Companies who get notices that they’ve run afoul of FCC regulations now have two options: pay the penalty and then contest it before an appeals court or refuse to pay and wait for a federal lawsuit that could eventually go before a jury. Doug Orvis, a veteran telecom attorney, said neither option is viable, so most companies pay up.

A ruling is expected by late June.

Many advocates in the aftermath of the headline-grabbing shootings have said the tragedies pointedly highlight troubling trends in which Black women are more likely to experience domestic violence — and they see the killings as an opportunity to confront how disparities in access to care and resources make some women and children more vulnerable to violence in the home.

On Sunday morning, a man police identified as Shamar Elkins fatally shot seven of his children and another child in Shreveport, Louisiana. A relative has said Elkins was in the midst of separating from his wife, who was wounded in the attack.

And last Thursday, police found the bodies of former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and his estranged wife, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, in their suburban Washington, D.C., home. Justin Fairfax shot his estranged wife and then himself, and their two children in the home at the time were unhurt, police said. Like Elkins, Fairfax was in the process of separating from his wife and had faced a judge's upcoming deadline to move from the house.

While it's not clear what prompted the Shreveport killings or the apparent murder-suicide in Annandale, Virginia, experts say that the harrowing details of the killings echo familiar patterns that play out in homes across the country — and underscore the need for solutions that address the root causes of the disparate violence.

A ‘silent epidemic’

Sunday wasn’t the first time that Elkins’ family had suffered from gender-based gun violence: Shaneiqua Elkins was shot and her sister, Keosha Pugh, was injured while escaping, according to authorities and family. Elkins and Pugh lost their mother to gun violence when they were under age 10, according to their uncle Lionel Pugh. Another woman who authorities have not identified also was shot.

“It’s sad. It just breaks you down," Pugh said.

Shreveport Councilman Grayson Boucher said at a news conference Monday that the Louisiana killings were emblematic of “a true epidemic of domestic violence" across the small southern city of roughly 180,000 people.

Those trends go well beyond Shreveport as experts have pointed out how both race and gender make Black women in particular more vulnerable to domestic violence.

More than 4 in 10 Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetimes — a much higher rate than women who are white, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander — according to a 2014 study by the Centers for Disease Control.

Pamela Tate is the executive director of Black Women Revolt, which runs programs to prevent abuse and offers survivors' resources. She said a logical skepticism about police and government child services agencies based on a history of institutionalized racism makes Black women reluctant to seek help — and especially vulnerable to domestic violence.

Additionally, Black women are two times more likely to be murdered by men than their white counterparts, according to a 2025 study published by the Violence Policy Center, based on federal government data from 2023. Those men are more often than not familiar to their victims, according to the study, which found that more than 9 in 10 Black female victims knew their killers, with the majority of those killings being carried out with guns.

Ultimately, Tate said, “domestic violence doesn't see color," and is primarily driven by the prevalent belief among men — across racial demographics — that women are subjects or property.

“Domestic violence is about exerting power over someone that you profess to love and controlling their behavior,” Tate said.

Lack of resources for Black men

There has been intense speculation about the role that mental health crises might have played in both shootings.

A relative of Elkins' wife told The Associated Press that Elkins had voluntarily checked into a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in January for about a week and a half for mental health help.

In Virginia, Justin Fairfax was a rising star in the Democratic Party until two women accused him of sexual assault, casting doubt on his trustworthiness as a political leader. The former lieutenant governor's “mental and emotional health” suffered before he killed his wife and himself, according to court documents, which say he drank heavily and withdrew from his family after the allegations were made public in 2019.

Dr. Christine Crawford, an adult and child psychiatrist, hasn’t examined the killings in Shreveport or Annandale, but said financial troubles, marital issues and problems at work — in addition to underlying mental health vulnerabilities — can lead someone to “crack."

“It makes some think about the amount of pain, distress and hopelessness they found themselves in at that time,” said Crawford, who practices at the Webster Clinic in Boston and is interim chief medical officer at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

She noted many Black people find themselves priced out of programs and care for mental health for such reasons as private care costs and a lack of insurance.

That level of desperation can make some people feel “completely out of options on how to deal with the pain he was in at that moment," Crawford said.

Some have said that there are social dimensions to these economic trends, too.

“Mental health disparities in the Black community is not accidental,” said University of Michigan Social Work Professor Daphne C. Watkins. “They are the predictable result of structural racism” in schools, employment and other aspects of society.

Watkins, founder of the YBMen Project which provides young Black men with a safe place to discuss their mental health, manhood and social support, said studies show that 10% of Black adults experience moderate to severe depression, while 18% experience anxiety disorders.

But Black men tend to forego mental health treatment due to cultural expectations, in addition to costs, said Watkins. Without an outlet, stressors from family, work and relationships can pile up.

“For a long time, in the Black community, we didn’t talk about anxiety. Now, you have to talk about it hand in hand along with depression.”

Mental health not an excuse, some say

Others have emphatically said that mental health is not an excuse for domestic violence.

“To say they’re mentally ill, that doesn’t cut it,” Tate said. “There are people who are depressed or people who have schizophrenia and don’t harm the their partners, much less kill them.”

Shaneiqua Elkins and Cerina Fairfax could have been struggling with mental health challenges too, Tate added, and they both “had the same access or ability to go and purchase a gun” but chose not to.

“The mental illness is not what we’re talking about here,” she said.

____

This story has been updated to correct that Shaneiqua Elkins’ sister Keosha Pugh was not shot; Pugh was injured escaping, and a second woman who authorities have not identified was also shot.

____

Associated Press writer Sophie Bates contributed in Shreveport, Louisiana.

At a gas station in Austin Tuesday, Talarico unveiled a proposal to lower fuel costs by suspending the federal gas and diesel tax until average prices drop to where they were before the U.S.-Israel war in Iran. Last week, in front of a private jet hangar in Houston, he announced a plan to “close billionaire loopholes” by auditing the ultra wealthy, restricting offshore bank accounts and barring business owners from writing off luxury purchases like private jets and yachts — measures he argues would generate billions in additional annual revenue that could be used to cut taxes for middle class Americans.

“In the last election, Americans were promised lower prices,” Talarico, an Austin state representative, said Tuesday. “And in the year since that election, everything has gotten more expensive.”

As fuel prices soar amid the ongoing war in Iran, Talarico on Tuesday called for lifting the federal gas and diesel tax until prices return to where they were before the conflict began in February, citing estimates that higher gas prices driven by the war could cost average households $740 more this year. Suspending the tax, his campaign said, would save drivers $200 each a year and long haul truckers $4,000 each a year while also reducing costs for shipping and farms.

“Americans in the last election voted for two things: To end the forever wars and to make life more affordable,” Talarico said. “But the people in power have done the exact opposite. Texans need relief. Americans need relief.”

The federal motor fuel tax is set at 18.4 cents per gallon of gas and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel, and primarily funds federal highway and mass transit programs. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog, estimated that a monthlong gas tax holiday would cost the federal government $3.5 billion while a six month holiday would cost $21 billion.

Marsha Anderson Bomar, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a trade group, argued that a federal gas tax suspension would be unlikely to show up in savings for drivers since the taxes are collected at the distribution level — but would diminish needed infrastructure revenue.

“The intent is good, but it doesn’t work out the way people think it will, which is for the reductions to show up at the pump so that it helps the individual motorists be able to afford fuel prices,” Anderson Bomar said. “But the harm to the infrastructure program can be pretty significant. Those dollars are not collected, and it means that you have less to invest in critical infrastructure.”

To ensure savings reach consumers, Talarico’s campaign proposed “empowering the Department of Energy and Federal Trade Commission to prevent price gouging and ensure companies pass on the savings from the tax suspension.”

Talarico also pushed for an end to the war with a deal that “takes troops out of harm’s way and lowers prices at home,” and his campaign argued for an “all-of-the-above” approach to bolstering American energy independence by investing in oil and gas, nuclear, wind, solar and geothermal energy.

Talarico has centered his campaign since its launch in September around a populist, “top vs. bottom” pitch targeting the influence of billionaire political donors and taking power back for working Texans.

His announcements over the past two weeks drill down on how he would make good on that promise. The plans build on “anti-corruption” proposals he backed during the primary to ban super PACs, partisan gerrymandering, congressional stock trading and presidential pardons while imposing term limits on members of Congress and stricter ethics rules on Supreme Court justices.

Last week, Talarico vowed to help “fix our corrupt tax system” by ensuring billionaires “pay their fair share.” He proposed measures including closing the “carried interest loophole,” which allows investment managers to claim a lower tax rate by treating capital gains as profit rather than income; ending the “buy, borrow, die” loophole whereby the ultrawealthy skirt taxes by borrowing against their wealth to access tax-free cash flow; and restricting offshore bank accounts that Talarico’s campaign said lead to more than $100 billion in annual lost revenue.

“We can close these billionaire tax loopholes,” Talarico said. “We can make billionaires pay their fair share so that we can cut our taxes.”

While noting that the roughly 37% tax rate billionaires pay today is about half of what they paid in the 1980s, Talarico said he did not have a goal tax rate in mind but wanted “to ensure that the wealthiest people, the luckiest people in our economy are contributing to the success of the rest of us.”

Talarico is rolling out his policy plans while waiting to see which Republican he’d face in the general election. After neither cleared a majority of votes in the March 3 election, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton are facing off for the Republican nomination ahead of the May 26 runoff.

Republicans have attacked Talarico for his progressive social views and sought to tag him as too liberal for Texas.

“James Talarico is a radical liberal whose high-tax policies mirror those in failed states like California and New York, and that dog won’t hunt in Texas,” Cornyn campaign senior adviser Matt Mackowiak said in a statement. “Senator Cornyn supports pro-energy, pro-business, pro-taxpayer policies like the One Big Beautiful Bill, which included massive tax cuts to benefit all Texans.”

The S&P 500 erased an early rise to fall 0.6% after U.S. Vice President JD Vance called off a trip to Pakistan, where he was expected to lead U.S. negotiators in talks with Iran to extend the ceasefire.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 293 points, or 0.6%, after erasing an earlier gain of 400 points, while the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.6%. Less than 10 minutes after the U.S. stock market finished trading for the day President Donald Trump said he would extend the ceasefire to give Iran time to submit a proposal to end the war.

Oil prices also wavered before Trump announced the extension, and the price for a barrel of Brent crude went from less than $95 to roughly $100 during the day. It settled at $98.48, up 3.1%.

The moves were mostly more modest than the vicious swings that rocked Wall Street earlier in the war, when the price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly topped $119 and the S&P 500 dropped nearly 10% below its prior all-time high. The U.S. stock market remains near its most recent record, which was set Friday, indicating optimism still remains in financial markets that the United States and Iran will avoid a worst-case scenario for the economy.

“It’s become cliched to say that the economic hit will depend on the duration of the Middle East conflict, but that cliché does ring true,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.

Much of the tension in financial markets has focused on what will happen to the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway off Iran’s coast that oil tankers use to exit the Persian Gulf. A long-term closure would keep crude oil pent up in the gulf and away from customers worldwide.

Helping to limit Wall Street’s losses were UnitedHealth Group and other big companies that reported bigger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

UnitedHealth jumped 7% after also raising its forecast for profit over the full year of 2026. That’s big because stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term, and it’s a double-plus when companies not only top earnings estimates but also forecast better growth ahead.

Quest Diagnostics rose 4.4% after likewise reporting fatter profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected while also raising its profit forecast for the full year.

Amazon added 0.7% after Anthropic said it signed a new agreement and is committing more than $100 billion over the next 10 years to AWS technologies to train and run its Claude chatbot.

But they were all nevertheless overshadowed by a 2.5% drop for Apple, which was the day’s heaviest weight on the S&P 500. It fell in its first trading after Tim Cook said he’ll step down as CEO on Sept. 1 and become the iPhone maker’s executive chairman.

Cook is handing control over to John Ternus, a company veteran who rose through Apple’s hardware engineering ranks.

Tractor Supply, meanwhile, dropped 11.7% after reporting profit and revenue for the latest quarter that fell short of expectations.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 45.13 points to 7,064.01. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 293.18 to 49,149.38, and the Nasdaq composite sank 144.43 to 24,259.96.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia. South Korea’s Kospi rallied 2.7% for one of the world’s biggest moves.

In the bond market, Treasury yields rose after a report on Tuesday morning showed that U.S. retailers made more money in March, the first full month of the war, than analysts expected. Growth was even relatively stable for retail sales when not including those from gasoline stations.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.31% from 4.26% late Monday, and the gains accelerated late in the day with oil prices.

Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, said that he never promised Trump he would cut interest rates, even though Trump has angrily been calling for the central bank to do so. Warsh is facing a tightrope walk as U.S. senators consider his nomination because investors want him to maintain the Fed’s independence from political meddling.

___

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

His ex-wife, Asa Ellerup, said in a teaser for the episode airing Thursday that Rex Heuermann also told her that the eight women he has admitted to killing were his only victims.

Ellerup says later in the teaser that he told her that he killed seven of them in the basement of the family's house in Massapequa Park on Long Island while she was away.

“I said to him, ‘So Mr. Heuermann, I understand that you are confessing to me on these murders. Can you please tell me how many of these women did you kill’?,” she said in the 90-second clip. “He said, ‘Eight’.”

Ellerup said she intentionally didn’t use her former husband’s first name as a way to “put a wall up” between the two.

“When he started talking, it started feeling like that’s the Rex I know,” she said. “But I didn’t want to see that one. I wanted to see the one I needed to see.”

The latest and last installment of “The Gilgo Beach Killer: House of Secrets” will be available on NBC’s streaming service Peacock. Another documentary, “Killing Grounds: The Gilgo Beach Murders,” also comes out Wednesday on Amazon's streaming service, Prime Video.

Ellerup's attorney, Robert Macedonio, declined to discuss what other new details are revealed in the new episode of the Peacock documentary, the first three episodes of which aired last June.

“This has been an extremely emotional and painful process for the family to endure and come to terms with the allegations that Rex Heuermann was the Gilgo Beach serial killer,” he said in an email. “Ms. Ellerup would like the focus to remain where it belongs — on the victims and their families, who have suffered immeasurable and lasting losses.”

Vess Mitev, a lawyer for the couple's two grown children, Victoria and Chris, said the two “echo the sentiments of their mother, and wish only to move forward as best they can, given this remarkably dark chapter in their lives.”

Heuermann’s lawyers didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

Earlier episodes of the documentary showed the family struggling to reconcile their memories of the architect, who had an office in Manhattan, with the portrait of the killer described by authorities.

Ellerup, who divorced Heuermann after his arrest in 2023, steadfastly defended her ex-husband’s innocence during those earlier episodes. But her daughter eventually conceded her father “most likely” committed the brutal killings that bedeviled investigators and drew intense interest from true-crime watchers for years.

The saga came to a close earlier this month when Heuermann, 62, of Massapequa Park, admitted in Riverhead court to murdering seven women and also killing an eighth he had not yet been charged with over a 17-year span.

Heuermann said in court he strangled the women, many of them sex workers, and dismembered some of their bodies before dumping them on a desolate parkway not far from Long Island's Gilgo Beach, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Manhattan.

He’ll be sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

___

Follow Philip Marcelo on X: @philmarcelo.

After Texas regulators said Tesla’s lithium refinery near Corpus Christi wasn’t violating its permits by discharging what local officials reported as black wastewater into a drainage ditch, independent water testing there this month found two toxic metals and other contaminants.

Eurofins Environment Testing, an accredited lab with locations across the globe, reported traces of hexavalent chromium, a well-known carcinogen, and arsenic, an environmental poison. Nueces County Drainage District No. 2, which manages the ditch, commissioned the test.

Neither hexavalent chromium nor arsenic is included as an allowable discharge pollutant in Tesla’s wastewater permit.

“The results are quite disturbing,” wrote Frank Lazarte, an attorney representing Nueces County Drainage District No. 2, in a cease and desist letter to Tesla’s associate general counsel last week. The district is asking Tesla to stop discharging wastewater into the ditch until they can discuss the lab results.

Jason Bevan, senior manager of site operations for Tesla’s plant, in the small municipality of Robstown, said the company remains in complete compliance with all requirements of its state-issued wastewater discharge permit, including applicable water quality standards.

“Tesla routinely monitors and tests its permitted wastewater discharge,” Bevan said in an emailed statement to Inside Climate News. “Tesla is currently reviewing the letter from Nueces County Drainage District #2 and looks forward to working cooperatively with the district to address their concerns.”

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality sampled and tested Tesla’s wastewater discharge in February and confirmed that the company is in compliance with its permit, Bevan said.

But the state environmental regulator, known as TCEQ, didn’t look for heavy metals in February. Its water sample tested for dissolved solids, oil and grease, chlorides, sulfates, temperature and oxygen—all of which were within the bounds of Tesla’s permit.

Victoria Cann, a spokesperson for TCEQ, said Tesla’s facility was required to conduct initial sampling of the wastewater discharged from its outfall pipe for conventional and non-conventional pollutants, including metals used at the facility and toxic pollutants believed to be present in discharge.

The TCEQ industrial permits team reviewed those initial submitted results and had no concerns, Cann stated. Therefore it didn’t require an amendment to the permit to include additional wastewater limitations or monitoring requirements.

TCEQ initiated its February investigation after workers for the drainage district found an unfamiliar pipe stretched across its easement. The workers reported black liquid expelling into the ditch. The drainage district, which manages the ditch area, was unaware that the state gave Tesla permission to use it.

District officials were confused how the state could allow Tesla to discharge an average of 231,000 gallons of lithium refinery wastewater each day into the district’s ditch without notification. TCEQ said it doesn’t communicate directly with local drainage districts as part of the permitting process.

Volunteer drainage district engineer Aref Mazloum said TCEQ didn’t test for heavy metals in its compliance investigation because that hadn’t been part of the district’s complaint filed earlier this year. When the investigation concluded, he said he requested the results and commissioned the third-party wastewater testing to see what else might be in the water.

Eurofin conducted its testing earlier this month, according to its report. It placed a sampling machine in the wastewater for 24 hours to monitor and collect the discharge, then sent the results to its San Antonio lab on April 7.

As soon as district staff saw the lab results, they notified a raft of local elected officials, said Mazloum, who also recently started working as an engineer in the water supply division at TCEQ and is a mechanical engineering assistant professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Mazloum doesn’t want to be known as the guy who gave Tesla such a hard time he drove them out of Robstown, but he said the heavy metals must be remediated from the county’s wastewater. He said he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he were to keep quiet about this information.

“Public safety is my highest priority,” Mazloum said. “Secondly would come the economy.”

To safely manage its hyper-saline and toxic discharges, the electric vehicle company should design and fund an on-site multi-stage wastewater treatment plant, Mazloum said. The process Mazloum recommended Tesla take on would remove heavy metals and use industrial reverse osmosis technology. Then, Mazloum said, Tesla could use district infrastructure to dispel wastewater again.

“The resulting clean water will then be discharged and nothing will happen to the infrastructure, the ditches, the plants, the fish, the frogs, the animals, the people, from that water,” Mazloum said.

Mazloum added that the concentrated brine solution created by that on-site treatment would need to be hauled to a hazardous waste facility or processed through a zero-liquid discharge system.

While water in the ditch does not reach the drinking supply, people can be affected in other ways, such as by eating fish caught nearby or by facing increased flood risk if the ditch infrastructure erodes, Mazloum said. The wastewater pooling in the drainage ditch flows to Petronila Creek and ultimately to Baffin Bay, a longtime fishing spot suffering from decades of deteriorating ecosystem health.

Nueces County groundwater is known to contain some arsenic, said Chris Cuellar, a retired chemical plant worker who spent 10 years managing wastewater operations at one of the region’s largest industrial facilities. Eurofins tested the wastewater from the ditch, rather than from Tesla’s outfall pipe, so it’s possible there was residual arsenic from a nearby pond overflow that leached into the ditch, for example, rather than coming from the industrial process itself, Cuellar said.

The metallic particles of arsenic in the sample measured 0.0025 milligrams per liter, a fraction of the federal limit for drinking water, 0.01 milligrams per liter.

The Eurofins sample is good to have, Cuellar added, but offers a one-time baseline of that day. “It’s not what it always is or what it has been,” he said.

In the wastewater sample Eurofins tested, the concentrations of lithium, strontium and vanadium were abnormally high compared to levels in rainwater or groundwater, according to Lazarte, the attorney. “The three metals/chemicals act like a chemical signature pointing back to the battery processing facility,” he wrote.

Lithium is the active material inside rechargeable batteries. Tesla is seeking to increase the domestic supply of battery-grade lithium hydroxide at its nearly $1 billion lithium refinery plant in Robstown. It processes spodumene, an often yellowish mineral and a commercially important source of lithium.

A report written by Mazloum that’s been distributed to legislators and will soon be discussed with Robstown residents calls the traces of lithium a “fingerprint at a crime scene.”

The electric vehicle company’s wastewater permit does not monitor for lithium and wasn’t tested for in the TCEQ’s February investigation. In the first 60 days of the facility’s operation, Tesla had to test for a variety of metal and chemical pollutants not listed in its permit. Lithium was not among them.

When the permit was being considered and public comments expressed concern about how the facility would affect the environment, Kelly Keel, TCEQ’s executive director, said the wastewater wasn’t expected to contain any residual lithium, chemical runoff or other harmful pollutants.

No surface water intake for domestic drinking water supplies is located within five miles downstream of the wastewater discharge point, and so there would be no impact on water wells or drinking water, Keel said at the time.

Before the permit was issued, TCEQ determined that Tesla’s wastewater discharge plan would meet state requirements and protect the environment, water quality and human health.

Mazloum’s report noted that Eurofins detected 1.17 milligrams of strontium per liter of water in the sample and said long-term exposure could affect bone density and kidney function in humans and wildlife.

His report also flagged heightened levels of several chemicals consistent with industrial discharge, including manganese, iron, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and potassium. Manganese, a battery process tracer, can have neurological effects at chronic doses, the report stated. Too much iron can stain the ditch’s infrastructure and too much phosphorus can cause algae blooms that starve waterways of oxygen.

The risk of algal growth is amplified by ammonia, which the lab results found in the form of nitrogen at 1.68 milligrams per liter of water. “At this level,” Mazloum’s report said, it is “directly toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates. Imagine a slow-acting suffocant for anything that lives in the water.”

The high sodium concentrate, combined with elevated calcium, magnesium and potassium, creates a near-brackish water condition that’s 10 to 20 times saltier than normal surface water, according to Mazloum’s report.

“This directly threatens the drainage ditch’s ability to protect the neighborhoods,” Lazarte wrote. “Plants hate salt the same way you’d hate drinking ocean water when you’re thirsty.”

As salt draws out the moisture of plant roots, it kills the grass and ground cover lining the walls of the ditch. Then the bare soil washes away in rain, Mazloum said, and as the drainage ditch walls collapse, the channel loses the capacity to carry stormwater away from homes and raises the risk of floods during heavy rains.

When a state investigator went to test the wastewater in February, it appeared clear as it flowed downstream, according to state records. Along the banks and in the ditch, there was a heavy growth of algae and vegetation.

News of the contaminants Eurofin found in the wastewater sample comes as South Texas faces a serious water crisis. Corpus Christi is in the midst of developing groundwater projects to try to stave off imminent deletion of its dwindling reservoirs, and it expects to enact emergency water-use restrictions in September if weather patterns don’t change.

Robstown is 16 miles west of Corpus Christi. The Tesla situation is the first time the drainage district has had to deal with discharge water quality, said Steve Ray, a consultant for the district. The drainage district typically focuses on maintaining the integrity of its ditches and flood preparedness, he said.

“We want to make sure that this is environmentally safe for our citizens and for our employees who have to work in those ditches,” Ray said. “We also want to make sure it’s environmentally safe and sound for the future—for our kids, our grandkids.”

Mazloum recommended that Robstown residents stay away from the ditch. It’s off U.S. 77 and County Road 28.

Although officials did not mention Columbine by name, they referred to several books and handwritten notes that belonged to the gunman and referenced attacks in the United States in April 1999. Monday marked the 27th anniversary of the massacre in Colorado.

Among the gunman's belongings was a photo modified by artificial intelligence showing him alongside the Columbine attackers, according to a state official who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to address the media.

Seven people were wounded by gunshots at the archaeological site north of the Mexican capital, the local government said. The nature of the other injuries was not disclosed, but some people fell when the shooting started, including some who were climbing on the pyramids.

The assailant, who acted alone, shot and killed himself, authorities said, and security officials found a gun, a knife and ammunition at the scene.

Attack came before World Cup tournament

The attack happened less than two months before Mexico co-hosts the 2026 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament. Mexico's security secretary, Omar García Harfuch, said major tourist destinations would see a heightened presence of both ground forces and digital “cyber patrols” to prevent threats.

“Yesterday’s attack highlights the urgent need to strengthen our security protocols,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said. She also noted the importance of analyzing “external influences” that may provoke such violence within the country.

While such attacks are uncommon in Latin America, they are not unheard of. Earlier this month, Argentine authorities linked a teenager to the “true crime community” after the teen killed one student and injured eight others at a school in Santa Fe. The community is an online subculture that emerged from forums established after the Columbine massacre to discuss and, in some cases, glorify such violence.

Taken to hospitals were six people from the U.S., three from Colombia, one from Russia, one from Brazil, one from the Netherlands and one from Canada, the local government said. The youngest person who was hurt was 6; the oldest was 61, Mexican authorities said.

Shooter scouted tourist site before attack

Authorities identified the attacker as 27-year-old Julio César Jasso Ramírez, a native of Guerrero, Mexico, who, they said, had carefully scouted the pyramids before opening fire.

The assailant carried a tactical-style backpack containing an analog cellphone and bus tickets, said José Luis Cervantes Martinez, the attorney general of the state of Mexico, which includes Teotihuacan.

Cervantes Martinez also noted the presence of “literature, images and manuscripts" that related to "violent incidents known to have occurred in the United States in April 1999,” a likely reference to the Columbine attack in which 12 students and a teacher were killed.

Investigators built "a psychopathic profile" of the suspect that was "characterized by a tendency to copy situations that occurred in other places, at other times and involving other figures,’” the prosecutor added.

Greg Magadini, of Boise, Idaho, was with a tour group on top of the pyramid when he heard a loud crack followed by screaming. The gunman was about 40 feet (12 meters) away on the same platform with roughly 60 tourists, he said.

Magadini jumped down a ledge and scrambled for cover while two of his friends stayed on the platform above trying to hide.

Witnesses said everyone was a target

Shots seemed to ring out every five seconds, Magadini said, as he and the others jumped down more ledges to reach the ground. Then they ran through a field behind the pyramid, carrying one of his friends who badly injured her ankle on one of the jumps.

Magadini, who came away with scrapes and cuts, said he did not see the shooter, but his friends said the gunman seemed to fire randomly in all directions. “Everyone was a target,” he said.

Later at the hospital, they talked with other tourists, who said the shooter at one point played strange music and taunted them, saying he hated tourists, Magadini said.

The Teotihuacan pyramids, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are a series of ancient structures on the outskirts of Mexico City. As one of Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations, the site drew more than 1.8 million international visitors last year, according to government figures.

The shooting took place shortly after 11:30 a.m. Monday, when dozens of tourists were at the top of the Pyramid of the Moon. The gunman fired upward, according to a tour guide who was at the scene and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“Some people, because they were scared ... threw themselves face-down on the ground, and the rest of us started to go down,” the guide said, recounting how the shooter began firing as tourists descended the pyramid’s steps.

Another group of visitors lay motionless on the pyramid to avoid being targeted.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney offered condolences to the family and friends of the Canadian tourist who was killed. He said Canadian authorities were working with those in Mexico.

“It’s a terrible circumstance,” Carney said.

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Associated Press writers Megan Janetsky and and Fabiola Sánchez in Mexico City and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.

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

The findings from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research show a president who is struggling with unfulfilled promises to tame inflation and testing Americans’ patience with a conflict in the Middle East that has dragged on longer than expected.

Trump’s approval rating on the economy dropped to 30% in April from 38% in a March AP-NORC poll. A similarly low share of U.S. adults, 32%, approve of the president’s leadership on Iran, which is unchanged since last month.

The poll was conducted April 16-20, during which time the Strait of Hormuz was reopened by Iran, then closed again, an example of the whiplash that has characterized the conflict.

The president’s policies and pronouncements have often been at odds with each other. Gasoline prices — which he promised to slash — jumped after the U.S. attacked Iran in February. His tariffs have kept much of the economy in limbo and hiring has slowed despite his boasts of a “golden age.”

Only 33% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s overall job performance, down slightly from 38% last month.

Trump’s falling approval ratings could create problems for his party as it tries to defend House and Senate majorities in the midterm elections. The poll finds that Trump is especially weak on cost of living, and enthusiasm about Trump’s performance has waned over the past year among his own supporters.

Kathryn Bright, 60, a retired captain in the U.S. Air Force, regrets that she supported Trump in the last election.

“I feel disgusted with myself, I feel betrayed, like he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” she said.

Bright lives in a small town far out on Colorado’s prairie and has several disabling medical conditions. She was initially drawn to Trump because of his vows to support veterans, avoid foreign wars and lower costs.

“It’s like high school class president: ‘I’m gonna promise we are going to get pizza every single day,’” Bright said. “Then as soon as they get elected they are like, ‘Oh, I lied.’”

The vast majority of Americans disapprove of Trump on cost of living

In a sign of just how unpopular Trump’s approach on prices has become, the poll found that only about one-quarter of U.S. adults approve of his handling of the cost of living.

The consumer price index climbed 3.3% in March from a year ago, and inflation is slightly higher than the 3% that Trump inherited upon returning to the White House last year. Yet Trump has shown little interest in inflation and played down the rising energy costs caused by the war prompting Iran to effectively shutter the Strait of Hormuz to oil and natural gas tankers.

Trump on Tuesday dismissed the war as a “little journey” and portrayed the roughly 35% jump in oil prices as a positive compared to what he thought would happen.

He told CNBC in an interview that he was “surprised” that oil prices were only around $90 a barrel, compared to the $200 that he claimed to have expected.

Public disenchantment with that attitude is visible among his own supporters. Only about half of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the cost of living.

Younger Republicans are particularly unhappy. About 6 in 10 Republicans under 45 disapprove of how Trump is handling costs, compared to about 4 in 10 older Republicans.

Most Republicans who identify as supporters of the Make America Great Again movement are still largely behind the president. About 9 in 10 MAGA Republicans approve of Trump’s job performance, compared to 44% of non-MAGA Republicans, although only about 7 in 10 MAGA Republicans approve of him on cost of living.

Miguel Cortes, a 67-year-old retired aircraft mechanic in South Carolina, believes the increase in prices from tariffs and the Iran war is simply a temporary price to pay. As for gasoline costs rising, “it is what it is, I’m not going to complain,” he said. “People are just going to have to deal with it.”

“From deep in my soul, I believe God put him there for a reason,” said Cortes, who has a tin sign of “Make America Great” in his garage near a National Rifle Association plaque.

Americans are gloomier about the U.S. economy

About three-quarters of U.S. adults described the U.S. economy as “very” or “somewhat” poor in April, up from about two-thirds in February.

The drop in confidence comes as the economy remains unsettled, with gasoline prices higher than they were, as the financial markets for stocks, bonds and oil continues on a rollercoaster ride that veers wildly based on Trump’s claims of a coming peace with Iran one day and a threat to destroy the entire civilization the next.

Americans such as Heidi Bunting, 35, a student with two children, see an economy in which basic needs such as health care and transportation are unaffordable.

“It’s awful, and not just for me,” said Bunting, who lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. “I’m sure the only people doing well in this economy are those who started with a lot of money.”

Falling approval on the economy among independents and Republicans

Despite efforts to tout last year’s tax cuts and brush off economic concerns, Trump’s economic approval remains low among independents and has even eroded among Republicans.

About 2 in 10 independents approve of Trump’s performance on the economy in the new poll, down slightly from about 3 in 10 in March. Far more Republicans, 62%, have a positive view of the way Trump is handling the economy, but that’s also down from 74% last month.

In general, Republicans are less enthusiastic about Trump’s overall performance than they were shortly after he took office. In March 2025, 51% of Republicans “strongly” approved of the way he was handling the presidency, a figure that has dropped to 38% now.

Immigration, another signature issue of Trump’s, is a relative bright spot for the president. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of his performance on that issue, which is unchanged from last month and higher than his overall approval.

Trump’s approval ratings are in line with his predecessor Joe Biden’s lowest approval rating in AP-NORC polling — 36% — which came during July 2022 after inflation spiked to a four-decade high. Biden’s approval ratings recovered slightly as inflation eased, raising a question as to whether Trump can quickly regroup to show tangible progress.

Trump came into office last year with relatively low approval — 42% in March 2025 — which has until now remained fairly stable.

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Bedayn reported from Austin.

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The AP-NORC poll of 2,596 adults was conducted April 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the Senate will hold the first votes Tuesday to move forward with a new workaround to unlock the funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. Democrats have blocked money for those agencies since mid-February, demanding policy changes after the fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents.

Republicans are trying to fund the two agencies through a complicated, time-consuming process called budget reconciliation, a maneuver that they also used to pass President Donald Trump’s package of tax and spending cuts last year with no Democratic votes. With months of DHS negotiations stalled and temporary stopgap funding nearly exhausted, Thune said that Republicans “have run out of time to play the Democrats’ games.”

The budget process only requires a simple majority in the Senate, bypassing filibuster rules that require Republicans to find 60 votes on most bills when they only hold 53 seats. But it also comes with increased scrutiny from the Senate parliamentarian and an open-ended series of amendment votes that could potentially alter the bill.

“It’s not my preference, but it is reality,” Thune said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the budget workaround a “partisan sideshow” and said the resolution will pour money into immigration enforcement “without putting any restraints on these rogue agencies’ rampant violence in our streets.”

Senate leaders try to keep bill focused on ICE, border patrol

The Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday released the estimated $70 billion resolution to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years, through the rest of Trump’s term. Thune and other GOP leaders say they hope to keep the bill narrowly focused and pass it by the end of the month.

But that could prove difficult as many in the party see it as the last real chance this year to enact their priorities. Republicans in both the Senate and House have pushed to add other items, including money for farmers and Trump’s proof of citizenship voting bill, called the SAVE America Act.

Republican leaders say they would do a second partisan budget reconciliation bill to deal with some of those issues. But many of their colleagues are skeptical, especially with thin GOP margins in both chambers of Congress and an election approaching.

Senators who have been pushing for more to be included in the original resolution say they are preparing amendments to try and add them on the Senate floor. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said he’ll try to add parts of the SAVE America Act and proposals related to the economy.

“A lot of Americans are very worried about the cost of living and we need to address it,” Kennedy said Monday.

But at a lunch meeting on Tuesday, Republican senators were mostly united around Thune's plan.

“I think people recognize that we have to act quickly,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc. “The more you add the more that slows the process down.”

Democrats say reforms still needed at ICE

Democrats say any funding bill should place restraints on federal immigration authorities, including better identification for federal officers and more use of judicial warrants, among other asks.

“After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, people across the country demanded ICE be reined in," said Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “But instead of working with Democrats to enact real reform, Republicans rejected the most basic accountability measures, and now they’re rushing to give ICE billions of dollars more.”

After federal agents shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, Trump agreed to a Democratic request that the Homeland Security bill be separated from a larger spending measure that became law. But the DHS funding lapsed with no agreement on changes to his administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

In March, the Senate passed legislation by voice vote that would separate out ICE and Customs and Border Protection and fund the rest of the department, including the Transportation Security Administration as security lines grew long at some airports. But Republicans in the House refused to vote for it, saying they wouldn’t support any bill that didn’t include money for immigration enforcement.

Congress then left town for a two-week recess, leaving the issue unresolved. Trump has used executive orders to pay some department salaries in the meantime, but some of those will soon run out.

During the recess, Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson announced that they would pursue a two-track approach — pass the Senate bill that includes most of the department’s funding through regular order and use the party-line bill to pass ICE and CBP funding.

Johnson has said the House will move on the rest of the funding once the Senate has made progress on the budget resolution. But he has not announced next steps, and it is unclear if members of his GOP conference will unite behind the narrowed bill.

“We’ll figure this out,” Johnson said. “We’ve got lots of discussion today and in the coming days to make sure we can get that through and I think we will.”

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Associated Press writer Steven Sloan contributed to this report.

A small handful of subpoenas were known to have been issued over the weekend for witnesses to appear before a grand jury in Washington. But investigators on Monday evening informed lawyers that the subpoenas were being withdrawn in favor of requests for voluntary interviews, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press to discuss developments in an ongoing investigation.

The reason for the reversal in course was not immediately known.

The months-old Brennan investigation is one of several criminal probes the Justice Department has opened over the last year against President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries. It centers on one of the Republican president’s chief grievances — a U.S. intelligence community finding that Russia interfered on his behalf during his successful 2016 presidential campaign.

The subpoenas were issued after a shakeup in the Justice Department team leading the investigation. A career national security prosecutor in Florida who’d been handling the inquiry left the case after expressing doubt about the legal viability of a potential criminal case, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Justice Department on Monday installed a Trump loyalist, Joe diGenova, who served as U.S. attorney in Washington during the Reagan administration, as a counselor to the attorney general who will now work on the Brennan investigation.

“Welcome to the fight, Joe!” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche posted on X on Monday, alongside a photograph of the two of them and other prosecutors in Florida.

Brennan served as CIA director under President Barack Obama and was in that role when the intelligence community in January 2017 published an assessment detailing Russian interference aimed at helping Trump defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. An investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia meddled on Trump’s behalf and that his campaign welcomed the assistance, but it did not find sufficient evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy.

The Justice Department last year received a criminal referral from Rep. Jim Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, alleging that Brennan made false statements in 2023 about the preparation of the intelligence community assessment. Brennan and his lawyers have vigorously denied any wrongdoing and have called the investigation politically motivated.

The investigation has been led by prosecutors in Florida, with investigators lining up interviews and issuing subpoenas for records. The latest subpoenas seek grand jury testimony in Washington, an indication that prosecutors expect they would have to bring any criminal case in Washington since that is where Brennan’s testimony took place.

Chief Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that a coalition of plaintiffs representing wind and solar developers were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that the administration's actions violate federal statute and will cause irreparable harm if the court did not intervene.

She issued a preliminary injunction to stop the administration from implementing the policies, which clean energy advocates said would hamstring projects that need to get underway quickly to qualify for expiring federal tax credits.

The Interior Department in July said that all solar and wind energy projects on federal lands and waters must be personally approved by Burgum, a layer of enhanced oversight that officials said was needed to end what they said was preferential treatment for these technologies under the Biden administration. Burgum's order authorized him to conduct “elevated review” of renewable projects, from proposed leases to rights of way, construction and operational plans, grants and biological opinions.

A coalition of regional wind and solar developers sued Burgum and other federal officials in December, saying his actions had the “goal and effect of destroying solar and wind energy” proposals in the United States. They accused Burgum of favoring fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas and said he had intentionally changed longstanding agency processes and legal determinations to delay and prevent the permitting and construction of wind and solar facilities. The lawsuit challenged six final agency actions that it says place wind and solar technologies into “second-class status.”

An Interior spokesperson said Tuesday the department does not comment on litigation, but added: “America sets the global standard for energy production. We do it cleaner, safer, and more reliably than anywhere in the world.”

In his second term, President Donald Trump has focused U.S. energy production on fossil fuels, which he says will lower costs for families, increase reliability and help the U.S. maintain global leadership in artificial intelligence. Critics say that change continues U.S. dependence on more polluting energy sources and sets the country apart from a world transitioning toward cleaner energy.

A law approved last year by the Republican-controlled Congress phases out tax credits for wind, solar and other renewable energy while enhancing federal support for coal, oil and natural gas. Three days after signing the law, Trump issued an executive order that further restricts subsidies for what he called “expensive and unreliable energy policies from the Green New Scam.”

The plaintiffs said in a joint statement Tuesday that the ruling is the first of many steps to bring more affordable energy options to people across the country.

“Clean energy is fast, affordable and here to stay,” the statement said. “We look forward to getting back to work and restarting the impacted wind and solar projects nationwide.”

The plaintiffs are: the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, MAREC Action, Southern Renewable Energy Association, Clean Grid Alliance, Interwest Energy Alliance, Renewable Northwest, Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association, RENEW Northeast and Green Energy Consumers Alliance.

Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Trump administration keeps trying new ways to block the clean energy projects needed to power the grid, and the courts keep striking them down.

“The administration should take the hint and stop these illegal attacks on projects that will help meet surging electricity demand and bring down costs for consumers,” Kennedy said in a statement.

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McDermott reported from Providence, R.I.

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Chadwick Scott Willacy, 58, was scheduled to receive a three-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke for the 1990 killing of Marlys Sather.

Court records indicate Sather had returned to her Palm Bay home for her lunch break on Sept. 5, 1990, and found Willacy burglarizing her home. He struck her in the head with a blunt object, fracturing her skull, and then bound her hands and ankles with wire and tape, according to investigators.

Willacy attempted to strangle Sather with a telephone cord, and when that didn’t work, he doused her in gasoline and set her on fire, records show. An autopsy determined that Sather had died from smoke inhalation, indicating she was still alive when she was set ablaze.

Willacy also stole Sather’s car and other items from her home, and used the woman’s ATM card to steal cash, officials said. When Sather failed to return from her break, her employer caller her family. Her son-in-law went to check on her and found her body.

Willacy was sentenced to death a year later upon a 9-3 jury recommendation after being convicted of first-degree murder, burglary, robbery and arson.

Then in 1994, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing because the trial judge failed to allow defense attorneys a chance to rehabilitate a potential juror who indicated she could not recommend the death penalty. Willacy again drew the death penalty at resentencing in 1995 on the 11-1 recommendation of a new jury.

This would be Florida’s fifth execution in 2026 if carried out, following a record 19 executions in the state last year. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was set in 2014 with eight executions.

On Tuesday, Willacy awoke at 5 a.m. and remained compliant as the execution hour approached, Department of Corrections spokesman Jordan Kirkland said at an afternoon news conference. Willacy had a last meal including chicken, tater tots, ice cream and pie. He received visits from his mother, two sisters and a cousin. He did not meet with a spiritual adviser.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon denied Willacy’s final appeal without comment. Last week the Florida Supreme Court also denied appeals filed by Willacy. He had made claims based on the state's refusal to grant public records requests about executions and lethal injection.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a long line of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with five executions each.

Another execution is planned in Florida later this month. James Ernest Hitchcock, 70, is scheduled to received a lethal injection on April 30. He was convicted of beating and choking his 13-year-old niece to death.

All Florida executions are injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

Two Mexican investigators also were killed in the crash, which Mexican authorities said occurred while the convoy was returning from an operation to destroy drug labs of criminal groups. There have been discrepancies in the public accounts of what happened from U.S. and Mexican officials, which experts say underscores heightened American involvement in security operations in Mexico and across the region.

The CIA's involvement was confirmed Tuesday by the three with knowledge of the crash, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. That the U.S. officials worked for the CIA was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

It comes after days of contradictions from Mexican and U.S. authorities about the role that American officials played in an operation to bust a narco-laboratory in northern Chihuahua state.

The lack of clarity from authorities reignited a debate over the extent of U.S. involvement in Mexico's security operations as Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum faces extreme pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to crack down on cartels. Trump has taken a more aggressive stance toward Latin America than any leader in recent U.S. history, capturing Venezuela's president, blockading oil shipments to Cuba and launching joint military operations in Ecuador, a country also marked by criminal violence.

Trump has repeatedly offered to take action on Mexican cartels, an intervention that Sheinbaum has said was “unnecessary.”

The CIA officers were initially identified as U.S. embassy personnel by U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ron Johnson, who is himself a former CIA employee.

The U.S. Embassy declined Monday to identify the individuals or which entity of the U.S. government they worked for, but said the officials were “supporting Chihuahua state authorities’ efforts to combat cartel operations.” The embassy, State Department and CIA declined to comment on the identities of reports of CIA involvement in the operation.

Local Mexican officials originally claimed they were working with the U.S. on an operation, but later walked those comments back after the effort came under scrutiny from Sheinbaum.

Sheinbaum said she knew nothing of a joint operation between Chihuahua’s government and the U.S. despite reports that the Mexican army was also involved in the raid on the lab.

She maintained in a Tuesday press briefing that she didn’t know if the officials were part of the CIA but acknowledged that state officials and the U.S. “were working together.”

It’s a sensitive issue for the Mexican leader as she walks a careful line with the Trump administration, working to maintain a strong relationship to offset threats of U.S. intervention on cartels and tariffs while also underscoring Mexico’s sovereignty.

The CIA has recently expanded its collaboration with Mexican authorities, part of the Trump administration’s effort to stop the flow of illicit drugs.

The presence of U.S. intelligence officials in Mexican territory has been the subject of ongoing debate, which has only intensified after Trump’s military actions in Venezuela and Iran.

Last year, Sheinbaum said the U.S. had conducted surveillance drone flights at Mexico’s request after a series of conflicting public statements.

The most recent controversy surfaced in January over the detention in Mexico of former Canadian athlete Ryan Wedding, one of the United States’ most wanted fugitives. While Mexican officials claim he surrendered at the U.S. Embassy, U.S. authorities have described his capture as the result of a binational operation.

“There is a rise of hidden operations by the United States in Mexico under Trump,” said David Saucedo, a Mexican security analyst. “They're hidden because … the Mexican government has a discourse that they can't permit the presence of armed U.S. agents — it's a kind of violation of sovereignty. The Mexican government has always tried to hide this collaboration.”

___

Janetsky reported from Mexico City. AP writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator said during a Politico health care summit that his agency plans to ask states to “own” the problem of health care fraud this week with requests for states to share their strategies within 30 days.

“It's an example of what we'd like them to do to prove that they're serious about this,” Oz said onstage Tuesday. “And if you don't take it seriously, it indicates to us that we might have to take the audits that we're doing to the different states more aggressively,” he said, without elaborating.

Tuesday's announcement is part of a federal campaign to tackle waste, fraud and abuse in federal Medicaid and Medicare programs that so far has mostly targeted Democratic states — and at least once has erred in its accusations.

Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported that CMS made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe in New York. The acknowledgment deepened doubts in the administration's methods and raised a common criticism that has been made about the second Trump administration — that it tends to attack first and confirm the facts later.

In addition to New York, CMS has approached at least four other states with investigations into potential health care fraud and halted some $243 million in Medicaid payments to one of them, Minnesota, over fraud concerns. It also is blocking for six months any new Medicare enrollments for suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics or certain other supplies around the country to address the potential for fraud. In addition, federal officials made several arrests earlier this month related to alleged hospice fraud schemes in the Los Angeles area.

Last month, Trump signed an executive order to create an anti-fraud task force across federal benefit programs led by Vice President JD Vance. It's unclear whether Tuesday's move is part of that effort, though Oz has been working closely with Vance on other investigations related to the task force. Asked for details on the new audit, a spokesperson for CMS said the agency was researching the AP's inquiry.

Oz justified Tuesday's move by saying federal health programs in some states have enrolled large numbers of providers who aren't providing real care to patients, but instead profiting from fraud. He said the requests for states to verify the legitimacy of Medicaid providers will be focused on “high risk areas,” but didn’t explain what those entail.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have blamed for allowing fraud to happen in federally funded programs including Medicaid, welcomed Oz’s announcement.

Walz told reporters Tuesday that Minnesota hadn’t received the request yet, but the Democratic governor said his state is already moving ahead with the revalidation process and has made significant improvements. Minnesota sued CMS in February in an attempt to stop it from withholding Medicaid funds. That case is still ongoing, and the money has not yet been released, but CMS wrote to state officials last month that the agency had approved the state’s corrective action plan.

Asked during the Politico interview whether there was a risk that Trump administration initiatives could eliminate, slow down or harm essential health care programs, Oz said he expects the opposite. He said Medicaid and Medicare are the “crown jewels” of our nation.

“I believe this audit and others like it will save the programs we care most about,” he said.

__

Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minnesota, contributed to this report.

“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Kevin Warsh, a former top Fed official, said under questioning by the Senate Banking Committee. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. ... I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”

Warsh’s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh didn’t immediately cut rates and responded, “I would.”

The comments underscore the challenge faced by Warsh, 56, a financier and former member of the Fed's board of governors whom Trump named in January to replace the current Fed chair, Jerome Powell. Democrats on the committee accused Warsh of flip-flopping on interest rates over the years, supporting higher interest rates under Democratic presidents and advocating rate cuts during Trump's time in office. Investors are watching the hearing closely to see how Warsh balances Trump’s demands with worsening inflation, as the war in Iran pushes up the price of gasoline.

Higher inflation typically leads the Fed to raise rates, or at least keep them unchanged, rather than cut them. When the Fed changes its key rate, it can affect mortgages, auto loans, and business borrowing.

Yet Warsh's account was challenged by Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, who said that Wall Street Journal reporting last year found that Trump had urged Warsh to reduce borrowing costs.

“Who's lying here? Is it you or the president?” Gallego asked.

“I think those reporters need better sources,” Warsh responded.

For all the back and forth, the hearing didn't appear to advance Warsh's nomination, which has been delayed by a Justice Department investigation into the Fed and Powell, over brief testimony Powell gave last June before the same panel about a building renovation.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican on the committee, reiterated Tuesday he wouldn't vote for Warsh until the investigation is dropped. With the committee closely divided and all Democrats opposed to his nomination, Tillis' opposition is enough to bottle it up in committee.

“We have got to get rid of this investigation,” Tillis said, “so I can support your nomination.”

Tillis has previously said that all seven Republicans on the committee have signed a letter stating that Powell did not commit a crime when he testified before the panel last June. Federal prosecutors, led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeannine Pirro, are investigating his testimony for potential perjury, though a judge said last month they offered no evidence to support the charge when he threw out subpoenas Pirro had issued.

Prosecutors from her office as recently as last week sought access to the Fed’s building project but were turned away, revealing that the Trump administration has not reversed course despite opposition from members of his own party that are essential to Warsh’s confirmation.

In his opening remarks, Warsh told the Senate Banking Committee that one of his top goals would be to fight inflation, which remains elevated at 3.3% annually.

“Congress tasked the Fed with the mission to ensure price stability, without excuse or equivocation, argument or anguish,” Warsh said. “Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it.”

Warsh would be in a tough spot if confirmed. Inflation is worsening, making it much harder for the Fed to implement the interest rate cuts Trump so desperately seeks. The conflict could also slow the economy, as well as hiring. And if Warsh ultimately becomes chair, he may very well find his predecessor, Powell, still sitting on the Fed’s governing board, an uncomfortable arrangement that hasn’t occurred since the late 1940s.

Warsh said the Fed's political independence is “essential,” and that the central bank wasn't threatened when “elected officials — presidents, senators, or members of the House — state their views on interest rates." Trump has repeatedly urged Powell to cut the Fed's key rate from its current level of about 3.6% to as low as 1%, a view almost no economist shares.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said that Trump has not just stated his opinions on rates, but has sought to fire a Fed governor and is investigating Powell.

“The Senate should not be aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s illegal takeover of the Fed by installing his chosen sock puppet as chair,” she said Tuesday.

Warren also noted that Warsh has not disclosed all of his financial holdings, which include investments in start-ups and private companies, or the size of those financial stakes. For example, Warsh has said he has holdings in SpaceX and Polymarket, but has not said how large those investments are.

Warren charged that Warsh is not in compliance with ethics requirements. Warsh argued that the Office of Government Ethics has signed off on his plan to sell all his assets within 90 days of his confirmation.

The turmoil could make a potential transition from Powell to Warsh an unusually turbulent one for the world’s most pivotal central bank, which has historically experienced smooth transfers of power. Should the change in leadership prove particularly bumpy, it could unnerve markets and lift longer-term interest rates.

Powell's term as chair ends May 15. He said last month that he would remain as chair until a successor is named. Powell also is serving a separate term as a member of the Fed's governing board that lasts until January 2028. Fed chairs typically leave the board when their terms as chair end, but Powell said last month he would remain on the board, even if a new chair is approved, until the investigation is dropped.

Trump said he would fire Powell if he attempted to remain at the Fed. Yet Trump's previous attempt to remove a Fed governor, Lisa Cook, has been tied up in court. During oral arguments in January, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court appeared to lean toward leaving Cook at the Fed.

On Monday, The Athletic’s Will Guillory reported that Kevin Durant returned to practice but is still considered a game-time decision for Game 2 on Tuesday night.

Rockets’ Kevin Durant practices, will be game-time decision for Game 2 vs. Lakers https://t.co/qXXAJRVxsu via

— Will Guillory (@WillGuillory) April 20, 2026

Durant missed what would have been his playoff debut as a Rocket on Saturday after reportedly suffering a knee contusion during a collision with a teammate in practice last Wednesday.

The announcement of his unavailability came just hours before Game 1 tipped off, and his absence was clearly felt in Houston’s 107–98 loss.

MORE FROM KD: Rockets star Kevin Durant confirms plans to play in 2028 Olympics: ‘Hell yeah, I want to play’

It wasn’t as if the Lakers were at full strength, either. In fact, Los Angeles was arguably more depleted in star power, playing without its two leading regular-season scorers—Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves.

The Rockets’ offense struggled mightily, shooting just 35-of-93 from the field. The Lakers, by contrast, were far more efficient, making 40 shots on just 66 attempts.

That disparity was also evident in the starting lineups. Four of Houston’s five starters shot between 30% and 40% from the field, with the lone exception being Josh Okogie, who made two of his four attempts.

Conversely, four of the Lakers’ five starters shot between 60% and 80%, with the lone outlier being Marcus Smart, who finished 5-for-12.

Durant’s impact is evident in numbers like these.

Not only is he an elite, efficient scorer, but his presence creates spacing opportunities for teammates, leading to higher-quality looks. That influence is reflected in his playmaking as well, as he ranked third on the Rockets in assists per game this season.

Game 2 will tip off at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles at 9:30 p.m. CT on NBC and Peacock.

ALSO READ: Kevin Durant passes Dirk Nowitzki to become the NBA’s sixth all-time leading scorer

City council members will vote next Tuesday on the water curtailment proposal for the city’s water customers — from households to oil refineries. The city’s current water curtailment plan starts with a 5% reduction in water use during a water emergency. 

But an ongoing drought that has caused the city’s main reservoirs — Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon Reservoir — to drop to just 8% of their capacity is forcing the city to consider more drastic measures.

City leaders are preparing for the possibility of a stage 1 emergency — the point when the city’s supply is projected to be 180 days away from falling short of demand — happening in September if there’s no significant rainfall and their allotment from Lake Texana, another key reservoir, is curtailed due to the drought. 

“The goal is to never get to this point,” Nick Winklemann, chief operating officer of the city’s water department, told the council. “We do not want to ever be in a situation where demand outpaces our supply.” 

The average residential customer uses around 7,000 gallons of water a month. A 25% reduction would give households 5,250 gallons per month, which about 30% of residential customers currently surpass, Winklemann said.  

Violations of the water limits would be a Class C misdemeanor, subject to a $500 fine. For a second violation, the city could cut off the customer’s water for at least one billing cycle under the proposal — which Mayor Paulette Guajardo called extreme. 

“I could never support that, to turn someone’s water off,” she said. Guajardo shared concerns that residents won’t know when they surpass a certain amount of water, especially during summer when kids are spending more time at home. 

“How are we going to create a better way to help our residents know, I mean they can’t be calling in every day saying ‘What’s my usage today?’” she said. 

The city, which is depending on a patchwork of temporary solutions to meet demand, is under pressure to finalize an emergency plan and find new sources of water. Its water system serves 300,000 residents and local businesses, along with 200,000 others across seven counties. 

The drought has coincided with a years-long effort by city leaders to attract refineries and other industry to the Corpus Christi Bay, driving up water demand. Those industrial facilities now consume as much as 60% of the city’s water supply, according to local officials. 

The water department’s recommendations include adding surcharges to customers’ water bills if they use more than a set amount. For example, the city’s 91,000 residential customers would have to pay an additional $4 for every 1,000 gallons they use after hitting a 7,000-gallon monthly threshold — which 13% of customers currently surpass. Commercial customers, such as hotels and restaurants, would have to pay the same surcharge after using 55,000 gallons per month. 

Some council members on Tuesday asked if the city could consider basing thresholds on customers’ baseline water use, instead of a set limit across the board. 

Under the proposal, commercial customers such as hospitals and schools would be able to apply for an exemption if they can show that the water limit risks public health, sanitation, or firefighting. Council members also discussed allowing households with bigger families to request a variance.

Setting water thresholds for apartments is more complex, Winkelmann said, which is why the city plans to look into their water usage patterns and set their standards on a case-by-case basis. 

Industrial customers of the city’s water have the option of buying into a drought surcharge exemption fee that City Manager Peter Zanoni has referred to as an “insurance program.” These large-volume users can sign up to add an additional fee to their water bill — 31 cents for every 1,000 gallons — to avoid additional fees during a water crisis. 

Eight companies have bought into the program, including Valero, Citgo and Flint Hills Resources. The funds collected from the exemption fee, he said, has generated about $6 million a year for the past eight years, which has been used for water-related development projects. 

Industrial customers that don’t pay the exemption fee, according to the water department’s presentation, would have to pay an additional $12 for every 1,000 gallons used after 12,842,000 gallons. 

Under a stage 1 emergency, residents would also be prohibited from using water to wash vehicles, boats and trailers. 

“I vehemently disagree with not being able to wash boats,” Guajardo said, noting that the city hosted dozens of fishing tournaments last year. “We’re a coastal community.”

They would also not be allowed to water landscaped areas, only potted plants. Pools, jacuzzis and hot tubs would not be allowed to be filled or refilled “except to maintain structural integrity,” according to the presentation. 

The city is also planning on reducing operating hours of city pools and splash pads, which council member Eric Cantu said is “the wrong direction to take.”

“We have an issue here in Corpus Christi with gun violence with children, and I think we need to keep our children at safe places,” Cantu said. “I think that’s just out of line. It’s not the family’s fault. It’s not the resident’s fault that we’re in this situation.”

Council member Carolyn Vaughn disagreed. 

“It’s not going to be pretty, what we’re going to have to do, we don’t want to do it but everybody’s going to have to make sacrifices,” she said. 

Splash pads require around 300 gallons a day and the city’s pools use up around 1.8 million gallons throughout the summer, according to city officials. 

The city will be hosting monthly information sessions for community members until September. The first session is scheduled for May 11. 

The city recently sold all of its stock of rain barrels, which residents can purchase for $47 to collect rainwater, and is expecting a delivery of 500 more barrels by next week.

Alejandra Martinez contributed to this article.

Morning drive through 9am:

The rain doesn’t waste any time Tuesday morning. By 9 a.m., widespread rain engulfs the Houston area.

Noon:

Things lighten up a little around noon, but there will still be some storms around. It’s a little more hit and miss but the gaps in the storms don’t last long.

Ride home from work 4pm to 6pm:

In the afternoon and by early evening, expect more rain to redevelop north of Houston to I-10. There may be some high water in low lying and flood prone areas, but I think most the heaviest rain will fall west of Houston.

This is good. Farmers and ranchers desperately need this kind of weather pattern and we’re getting it Tuesday.

Tuesday night:

Rain comes to an end Tuesday night. There will be more heavy rain Wednesday afternoon and night.

For a video forecast of the above information click my forecast below:

Make sure to check in with the KPRC 2 Weather Team as we update the storms throughout the day on KPRC 2 and the KPRC 2 Live Stream.

The congresswoman was facing the possible threat of expulsion, something that has only occurred six times in the history of the House. Support from her own party was increasingly in doubt.

It's the third resignation in a little more than a week from a House lawmaker. Reps. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, and Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican, announced within hours of each other that they were leaving Congress. Both men were facing sexual misconduct allegations and possible expulsion.

In a statement, Chefilus-McCormick said a House committee denied her new attorney's request for more time to prepare a defense. Cherfilus-McCormick said she would not pretend that the investigation had been anything other than a “witch hunt,” and rather than play political games, she would choose to step away and her resignation was effective immediately.

“But let me say this plainly: we should be very careful about the precedent we are setting in this country, we do not punish people before due process is complete," she said. "We do not allow allegations alone to override the will of the people. That is a dangerous patch, and one that should concern every American, regardless of party.”

The committee had previously determined she committed 25 violations of House rules and ethical standards, including breaking campaign finance laws.

She is also facing federal criminal charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds and using the money to buy items such as a 3-carat yellow diamond ring.

Cherfilus-McCormick has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and says she is not guilty of ethics violations, either.

The allegations against the congresswoman center on how she received millions of dollars from her family’s health care business after Florida mistakenly overpaid the business by roughly $5 million with COVID-19 disaster relief funds. She is accused of using that money to fund her 2022 congressional campaign through a network of businesses and family members.

Cherfilus-McCormick declined to testify during a previous Ethics Committee hearing, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Her attorney, William Barzee, sparred with some of the lawmakers and argued that they should have allowed a thorough ethics trial, at which he could present witnesses and evidence to counter the conclusions of House investigators.

A group of supporters in Cherfilus-McCormick's congressional district had weighed in on her behalf with the lawmakers who lead the Ethics Committee, urging committee leaders to proceed with caution in sanctioning her.

“Our communities deserve stability. Our voices deserve to be heard. And our right to representation must be protected,” said one of the letters sent to the committee and signed by about a dozen local faith leaders, union officials and others.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with other members of the caucus, issued a statement that said during Cherfilus-McCormick's time in Congress she “worked to uplift her constituents and elevate issues impacting underserved communities at home and abroad.”

“We extend our appreciation for her service and offer our prayers for her and her family," the caucus members said.

In all, the panel's two-year investigation led to the issuance of 59 subpoenas, 28 witness interviews and a review of more than 33,000 pages of documents.

House Democratic leaders had declined to condemn Cherfilus-McCormick, saying they wanted to see the ethics process play out. Potential punishments included a reprimand or a censure, which serve as forms of public rebuke. The committee could also have recommended a fine. The most severe form of punishment is expulsion.

But the House has historically been reluctant to serve as the final arbiter of a lawmaker’s career, preferring to give that final say to the voters. Of the six House members expelled, the first three fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and were expelled for disloyalty. The next two had been convicted of crimes. The final one was George Santos, the scandal-plagued freshman who was the subject of a blistering ethics report on his conduct as well as federal indictment. Santos, a New York Republican, served time in prison for ripping off his campaign donors before President Donald Trump granted him clemency, and he has apologized to his former constituents.

Under the Constitution, at least two-thirds of the House has to vote for expulsion for it to occur, a high threshold that requires enormous bipartisan support.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters last week he believed the House would move to expel Cherfilus-McCormick.

“The facts are indisputable at this point," Johnson said.

Ternus will take over as chief executive in September for Tim Cook, who turned Apple into a $4 trillion tech colossus during his 15-year run after the death of co-founder Steve Jobs.

Ternus faces challenges that will force him to step out of his comfort zone in hardware engineering. Beyond finding ways to keep Apple competitive in the artificial intelligence race, he will need to navigate supply chain questions and relationships with figures like President Donald Trump, who offered public praise for his predecessor on Tuesday.

Although Cook is handing over the CEO reins at Apple, he is widely expected to help the Cupertino, California, company maintain a good relationship with Trump after he shifts over to his new role as executive chairman.

Ternus, 50, has spent almost his entire career with Apple. He joined the company 25 years ago and has spent the past five years overseeing the engineering that underlies the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

It made him the prime contender to succeed Cook who on Monday, when Apple announced the change in leadership, hailed Ternus as “without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”

Ternus worked on some of Apple's signature products under Cook, including the Apple Watch, AirPods and Apple Vision Pro. He was also involved in the MacBook Neo, "arguably one of the most disruptive products” that Apple has released in a while, said Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight.

“This mentorship will undoubtedly ensure a smooth transition, and initially, I expect very few changes to the company’s strategy,” Wood said.

The appointment appeared to be carefully timed, following Apple's 50th anniversary celebrations and ahead of its annual WWDC developers conference in June.

The change also arrives at a pivotal time for the company. While Cook led Apple through an iPhone-fueled era of prosperity, Apple has fallen behind in the AI race. Apple has stumbled in its efforts to deliver new features built on AI, as was promised nearly two years ago.

“The challenge for the new CEO is really to make sure Apple is able to crack AI as the new user interface and reinvent human machine interaction," Forrester Research analyst Thomas Husson said.

Wood says attention at WWDC will be on the new CEO's AI strategy, and what the company will do next after turning earlier this year to Google — an early leader in the AI race — to help make the iPhone’s virtual assistant Siri more conversational and versatile.

“A big strategic question is how far Apple will invest in building its own AI platform versus relying on other companies’ models and platforms,” Wood said.

Apples shares fell more than 2% during Tuesday's trading, signaling some investors may have doubts about whether Ternus's focus on hardware products has prepared him for the AI challenges he will confront as the company's next CEO.

But building a device well-suited for the AI age is among the most critical missions as technology makes its most significant pivot since Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in 2007. That's why some analysts believe Apple's board saw Ternus' hardware background as a key advantage as it tries to develop an AI-powered device that could eventually supplant the iPhone as its top-selling product.

That is something that Jony Ive, the former Apple design guru, who shaped the look of the iPhone, is trying to do after his startup, io Products , was acquired last year for $6.5 billion by ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Apple also faces a turbulent market amid geopolitical uncertainty, Wood said.

"The consumer electronics industry faces a perfect storm, with memory chip shortages and the war in the Middle East having widespread implications for consumer confidence. Apple will also need to decide how much it wants to continue its deep reliance on China for manufacturing,” he said.

Being Apple CEO will also require soft skills including developing relationships with important figures. Cook cultivated ties with Trump as he navigated the company through business challenges including Trump's trade and tariff war targeting countries in Asia, where Apple has extensive manufacturing supply chains.

Trump noted his relationship with Cook in a social media post on Tuesday morning, writing that “it began with a phone call” at the beginning of his first term, when Cook asked for help with “a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix.”

“That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship,” Trump said.

Ternus is not well known outside of the Apple universe. He joined the company in July 2001, according to his LinkedIn profile, which does not have any posts.

Before joining Apple, he spent four years as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He graduated in 1997 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the swim team and for his senior project developed a mechanical feeding arm for quadriplegics controlled by head movements.

In a 2024 commencement speech to the university's engineering school, Ternus said he was intimidated when he first started working at Apple and wasn't sure he belonged. He learned to “always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room but never assume you know as much as they do.”

“There will always be new skills to master and new people to learn from,” he said.

Ternus said in Apple's announcement that he was "humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”

___

AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke contributed to this story from Berkeley, California.

Through his long months in captivity, family and friends hoped that, like Frankl, he would come back with a message of hope. Then, in August 2024, after nearly a year in captivity, he and five other hostages were shot dead by their captors deep underground, likely as Israeli forces were closing in.

The quest for his why has fallen to his family, who led a high-profile campaign for his release. His mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, has a new book released Tuesday.

“When We See You Again” has no narrative arc, no tidy uplifting message, no score settling with the Hamas militants who killed her son or the Israeli leaders who many blamed for his death — only a searing account of her grief.

She hasn’t yet decided whether the book is an exceptionally painful love story, or a love-filled pain story.

“I’m still trying to figure out with clarity what is my why, but it’s clear to me that my why is not done,” Goldberg-Polin said, a photo of a smiling Hersh behind her. “I just really wanted to tell the truth. It’s very ugly.”

A face of the hostage crisis

Hersh was among the 251 people abducted by Hamas in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack. His hand was blown off by a grenade before he was dragged into Gaza and eventually into the militant group’s labyrinth of tunnels.

The war sparked by the attack led to the killing of over 70,000 Palestinians and the destruction of much of Gaza before a ceasefire deal in October led to the release of all the remaining hostages. Hersh had been killed, along with five other hostages, more than a year earlier.

Rachel had campaigned tirelessly for her son’s release, appearing in countless media interviews, meeting with then-President Joe Biden and addressing the Democratic National Convention. She also joined mass protests in Israel accusing the government of failing to reach a deal sooner.

Her son was among the best-known hostages. Posters and graffiti with his name and face still appear across the country, often bearing the line popularized by Frankl.

A human portrait

In her memoir, Rachel takes care not to mythologize him. She notes that he picked his scabs as a kid and was bad at doing dishes.

“Hersh has become a symbol to many,” Goldberg-Polin writes in the book. “I don’t know what to do with that. But it’s OK. If people need Hersh to be something, he will be that. That is the essence of service, being what is needed.”

Rachel grew up in Chicago and moved to Israel with her husband and three children when Hersh, the oldest, was 6. She tells stories from the “before time”: of how Hersh as a child would wow people with his encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. presidents, and how he loved Jerusalem's local soccer team and their sister team in Bremen, Germany.

She only briefly touches on his capture and the details of his captivity, which have been widely reported. She writes about their desperate search for information in the chaotic and terrifying days after the attack, their long fight for his release and the news of Hersh's killing, along with five others, after 328 days.

The book is mostly a “very raw, peeled, oozing, throbbing pain,” Goldberg-Polin said. She describes “hundreds of sodden days dripping with anguish.”

“The book really started just as a way of taking this tremendous weight of suffering that was causing my soul to buckle,” she said in an interview in Jerusalem.

The writing came out in bursts, without a plan for a final project, just a question of “How do I survive the next 15 minutes?” she said.

A fellowship of grief

The book emerged in part from her frustration when people asked how she was. “I think, ‘Well, do you not see this dagger sticking out of my chest at my heart? How can you possibly be asking me that?’” she said. “But I realized they don’t see it. And it’s not because they’re mean or insensitive. They simply don’t see it.”

“Someone who’s born blind doesn’t know what blue is, and it’s very difficult to describe blue to someone who’s blind. But I’m desperate for people to see my blue, and I’m yearning for people to feel my pain,” she said.

Then there were those who wanted to share their own stories of death and loss, even during her son’s shiva, the traditional Jewish week of mourning after the funeral. It’s an experience that she describes as overwhelming and eye-opening, revealing the “surplus of suffering” in the world.

“They’re not trying to comfort me, they’re saying: ‘Let me stand next to you and we’ll be in this together,’” she said.

During the campaign to release the hostages, one of Rachel’s mantras was “Hope is mandatory,” even when it felt impossible. Now, wherever they go, people ask her and her husband for a bit of their creased and crumpled hope.

She has no easy answers, as she tells Hersh in a letter addressed to her dead son near the end of the book.

“I will carry your why,” she writes. “I'll do it, I’ll carry your why around the world.”

For A.J. Haulcy, this represents a pivotal life moment.

At every stage of his football career, Haulcy has bet on himself. The LSU All-American and All-Southeastern Conference selection had certainty, clarity and conviction about his skills.

Now, the Missouri City native and Thurgood Marshall graduate is poised for the next level: the NFL.

For Haulcy, this has been an extremely busy and productive time.

He completed a whirlwind of travel as he experienced the NFL draft process. He is regarded as a late first-round to second-round draft target, representing a potential enforcer and ballhawk in the secondary at the NFL level. He hits like a linebacker and covers like a true center fielder.

Haulcy visited the hometown Texans and the Green Bay Packers, Seattle Seahawks, Buffalo Bills, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints and Carolina Panthers.

At Reliant Stadium, Haulcy met extensively with coach DeMeco Ryans and his staff on his visit.

“We always watched the Texans every Sunday,” Haulcy told KPRC 2 after completing his visits. “Me and my mom, we were sitting there watching the game. Watching Arian Foster and Andre Johnson and J.J. Watt. The interactions with the coaches were great. I learned some things from the coaches I met.

“Just sitting around the stadium, they want to see where your brain is at. They just want to see how you are as a person, as a player, for their culture, how you are with the coaches, just football. It was amazing.”

A University of Houston transfer, Haucly recorded 89 tackles, a team-high three interceptions and one forced fumble last season for the Tigers.

Haulcy is a big, hard-hitting safety at 6-foot, 222 pounds with 4.52 speed in the 40-yard dash recorded at the NFL scouting combine. He intercepted 10 career passes.

“I feel like I could pick up and learn any defense fairly easily, plug in and play,” said Haulcy, who is represented by Ed Berry of Creative Artists Agency. “I’m a very versatile player. I just trust my instincts and my film study and that leads to me playing very fast. I’m not second-guessing myself. I can diagnose things. I see myself as a playmaker. If they can’t score points, they can’t win the game.

“I’ve been playing since I was like four years old. Tackling is not something that I even think about. I’m trying to hit you hard enough where you don’t want to come my way with my mentality to be as physical as possible. Once I feel like they tried me, I just go out there and give it all my got.”

Haulcy recorded five interceptions in his final season for the Coogs before entering the NCAA transfer portal and choosing LSU over Miami.

Now, Haulcy awaits word and the call for where he’ll ply his trade in the NFL.

“I’m a patient guy,” Haulcy said. “I just try not think about it, for real. When I’m back at home and I’m not on visits, I try to work out my whole day, so I’ll probably get done with all my workouts and the way I prepare probably about six o’clock.

“So ‚I really don’t got much time to think about it. I got a lot of Zooms, so I got to be focused on which team I’m talking to. For the most part, I’m patient. I’m taking this day by day, because, right after this, after the draft, it’s time to work. So, I’m enjoying my last few days off, but I’m working."

Haulcy has trained extensively with elite private defensive backs coach Jacory Nichols for several years.

He considers it invaluable work as he’s out there on the field regularly with Texans standout defensive backs Kamari Lassiter, Calen Bullock and several other NFL players.

“We had a great day,” Haulcy said. “It’s very cool.”

At Thurgood Marshall, Haulcy was a three-star recruit who chose New Mexico over Incarnate Word, Kansas, Houston Christian, Texas Southern Southeastern Louisiana and several other scholarship offers.

He was a freshman All-American.

Four years later, Haulcy is an NFL draft prospect who was named All-Southeastern Conference at LSU, All-Big 12 for the Coogs after intercepting five passes in his final season in Houston and All-Mountain West Conference at New Mexico.

It all started back in high school.

“My experience at Thurgood Marshall was great,” Haulcy said. “It was a time to remember. It was so much fun. I still talk to my friends and teammates and coaches. It was amazing.”

When Haulcy was making his decision to transfer to LSU, he heeded the advice of his mother. She has been instrumental in raising him to be respectful, disciplined and to believe in himself always.

“She gave me her input,” Haulcy said. “Throughout my life, my mom has always been very supportive. She was the one that put me in football when I was four years old. She’s been great. She told me not to be satisfied, to challenge myself.

“You never want to get comfortable. I prayed to God every day. I wanted to put my athletic ability and what I bring to the table on the highest level of college football and prove to myself that I could do it. I just want to be fully confident in my ability. You’re only going up, never down.”

Haulcy is having a draft party. There’s a chance someone famous will attend, a special guest.

There will be chicken wings, his favorite food, pizza, sandwiches and desserts on the menu.

“Man, I’m excited,” Haulcy said. “It’s going to be so much fun. You’re invited, come through.”

Aaron Wilson is a Texans and NFL reporter for KPRC 2 and click2houston.com

The UT Dell Medical Center, announced Tuesday, is projected to open in 2030 as the crown jewel of a new 300-plus-acre advanced research campus. The university expects to break ground this fall on what school leaders are calling the country's first “AI-native” hospital.

The donation makes the couple the first University of Texas donors to give more than $1 billion, according to system officials, building on two decades of support for computer science education, the medical school and scholarships for students with the most significant financial need.

For Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at about $170 billion, the next step was to further expand his and his wife's investments in Central Texas. The computer magnate founded the company in 1984 as a UT-Austin pre-med student selling customized personal computers from his freshman dorm room. Health infrastructure needs became clear, he said, as the area's population about doubled in size.

“I was born in Texas. My wife was born in Texas. This is our home,” Dell told the Associated Press, adding that “building a stronger health system here, more innovation and helping to support the growth and stability of the region” is important.

The donation is among the largest ever in higher education philanthropy, following recent contributions such as Phil Knight's $2 billion pledge to Oregon Health & Science University's cancer center and Michael Bloomberg's $1.8 billion gift to cover Johns Hopkins University medical students' tuition.

A ‘rare' opportunity to integrate technology into a new medical center

From monitoring vital signs to triggering step-by-step care plans, AI is making inroads into health care at hundreds of hospitals.

With the launch of UT Dell Medical Center, however, Dr. Claudia Lucchinetti sees a rare opportunity: instead of retroactively applying new technologies to old hospital infrastructure, she said they can integrate them from the start. They will also collaborate with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to offer top specialists for those with complex conditions.

Lucchinetti, the dean of Dell Medical School and senior vice president for medical affairs, said their model will use technology to support the patient-doctor relationship and make care “feel simpler and more human.” “Ambient" AI will make the hospital itself an “intelligent member of the care team,” she said, taking notes so that clinicians can treat patients more directly. She touted AI's ability to identify biometric patterns and early signs of cancer before they're obvious to the naked eye.

The goal, she said, is to move from a reactive and fragmented health system to one that is predictive and more seamless.

“We have the technology, the science and the understanding to do better. And what we’ve been missing is the ability to design a system around those capabilities from the start,” she said. "That’s the opportunity that Susan and Michael Dell have catalyzed.”

The gift will also support undergraduate scholarships, student housing and UT's Texas Advanced Computing Center, where officials are building the nation's largest academic supercomputer with Dell's AI infrastructure.

In a convocation address two years ago, Michael Dell encouraged medical school graduates to ensure AI models understand human ethics and make health care more equitable. He believes the technology will augment caregiving, create more precise treatments, accelerate scientific discoveries and apply those findings to real-world practices sooner.

“We have to figure out how to do this in a way that is responsible, reflects our values and beliefs, and ultimately enables humans to reach their full potential,” he told AP. “That's what we're all working on.”

Landscape for higher education giving

The major contribution comes at a time when private support for higher education is falling to a dwindling pool of supporters.

Colleges raised a record $78 billion last year, according to the 2025 Voluntary Support of Education, but nearly 90% of that money came from just 2% of donors.

Rutgers University Associate Dean for Research Marybeth Gasman said she's excited to see such strong support for a public institution at a time when public funding is declining amid politicized attacks on higher education. She hopes the megagift inspires other donations, as she said decades-long patterns suggest that more giving occurs after high-profile individual contributions.

“Higher education, quite frankly, could really use it right now," she said.

UT-Austin officials are certainly hoping so. The Dells' gift kicks off a broader 10-year campaign to raise $10 billion for the university.

The donation comes on the heels of the Dells' $6.25 billion pledge to provide an incentive to claim new investment accounts under President Donald Trump's tax law for 25 million American children ages 10 and under. The “Trump Accounts” give $1,000 to every newborn, so long as their parents open one, and invests those funds in the stock market. The couple believes it is the largest single private commitment made to U.S. children.

Michael Dell said even a small sum makes a child more likely to enter college — “perhaps at the University of Texas or some other great school” — and eventually start a family or business. He welcomed the creativity he's seeing from other “Trump Accounts" funders. He's seen cities offer additional investments for community service and good grades. He noted that hedge fund managers Brad Gerstner and Ray Dalio have seeded accounts in Indiana and Connecticut, respectively.

“I think you'll see many more gifts at the local community level and some other big ones at the national level,” he said.

But he dismissed the suggestion that, between the “Trump Accounts” and this University of Texas gift, there's been a shift in his and his wife's philanthropy toward more selective, bigger bets.

“Certainly, we’ve been very blessed and we have a lot of resources,” he said. "So, we're looking for things that have significant impact.”

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Repairs to the Druzhba pipeline became a contentious issue, delaying approval of a major 90 billion euro ($106 billion) EU loan intended to support Ukraine’s military and economic needs over the next two years. Zelenskyy said repairing the pipeline was linked to freeing the funds, which had been blocked by Hungary and Slovakia.

But top EU officials are now cautiously optimistic that the massive loan scheme might be approved as soon as Wednesday, ending months of political deadlock.

“Ukraine has completed repair work on the section of the Druzhba oil pipeline that was damaged by a Russian strike. The pipeline can resume operation,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X. “Although no one can currently guarantee that Russia will not repeat attacks on the pipeline infrastructure, our specialists have ensured the basic conditions for restoring the operation of the pipeline system and equipment.”

“We connect this with the unblocking of the European support package for Ukraine, which had already been approved by the European Council,” he added.

Russian oil supplies to Hungary and Slovakia have been halted for two months after what Ukrainian officials say were Russian drone attacks that damaged the pipeline, which crosses Ukrainian territory, and that continuous strikes risk the lives of technicians trying to repair it.

The war in Ukraine that began in February 2022 with Russia's invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands, forced millions to flee their homes and turned cities into rubble.

Before being unseated by centrist challenger Péter Magyar, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had threatened to cut gas supplies to Ukraine. Both Hungary and Slovakia accused Kyiv of deliberately obstructing Russian deliveries.

Zelenskyy said earlier this month he is reluctant to allow Russian oil to continue transiting through his country.

Speaking to reporters in Luxembourg after chairing a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the bloc's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the loan saga had taken many twists and turns. “We expect an agreement in 24 hours, so I don’t want to jinx it,” she said.

EU envoys are due to meet Wednesday in hopes of ending the standoff.

European Council President Antonio Costa, who will chair a summit of EU leaders starting Thursday, took to social media to thank Zelenskyy “for delivering, as agreed: repairing the Druzhba pipeline and restoring its operation.”

The 27-nation EU had originally intended to use Russian assets frozen in Europe as collateral for the loan. But that option was blocked by Belgium, where the bulk of the frozen assets are held.

In December, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia agreed not to stop their EU partners from borrowing the money on international markets as long as the three countries did not have to take part in the scheme.

But Orbán angered the other 24 countries by later reneging on that deal over the pipeline dispute and as campaigning heated up ahead of elections earlier this month, which the veteran Hungarian leader lost in a landslide.

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

“This case will come down to power, to control and to manipulation,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Candace White told jurors as opening statements began in the bellwether #MeToo case, with DA Alvin Bragg watching from the audience.

Weinstein lawyer Jacob Kaplan countered that the case actually “is about consent, about choice and about regret,” echoing Weinstein's longtime defense that his accuser has recast a willing encounter as a crime.

Since Weinstein became a major target of the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct nearly a decade ago, he has been convicted of some sexual assault charges and acquitted of others in trials on two U.S. coasts. A couple of charges ultimately were dismissed. But the rape charge involving a 2013 encounter in a Manhattan hotel has lingered, due to an overturned conviction followed by a jury deadlock.

The allegation is, by now, well known. But the contours of the case have changed.

The prior trials included other accusers and charges. This trial is pared down to the single question of what happened in a hotel room one morning between Weinstein and hairstylist and actor Jessica Mann, though jurors will again also hear a lot about their relationship before and after.

Weinstein also switched his legal team, and with it the rhetorical style and perhaps some strategic choices in his defense. His new attorneys have made clear that they intend to be more circumspect about broaching, for example, Mann's compensation from a claims fund for women who said Weinstein sexually mistreated them.

Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denies ever having nonconsensual sex. He said in court in January that he had been unfaithful to his then-wife and “acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone.”

The jury — seven men and five women — was selected last week. Weinstein's last New York jury was majority-female, but his first was mostly male.

Now a 73-year-old prison inmate, Weinstein was once one of the most influential people in Hollywood. An Academy Award-winning producer and a studio boss, he helped bring such acclaimed films as “Pulp Fiction,” “Shakespeare in Love” and “Gangs of New York” to movie houses and the popular reality series “Project Runway” to TV. He also was a prominent Democratic donor.

His career collapsed in 2017, when years of Hollywood whispers about his behavior toward women became public accusations in news and social media. Criminal charges followed in New York and Los Angeles.

Mann was a 27-year-old hairstylist hoping to break into big-time acting when she met Weinstein at a Los Angeles-area party in early 2013.

She has testified that she was looking for a professional connection but ended up, ambivalently, in a consensual relationship with the then-married Weinstein.

During a New York trip with a friend in March 2013, she arranged a breakfast for pals and Weinstein, she said at previous trials. According to Mann's prior testimony, Weinstein ultimately trapped her in a hotel room, ignored her protestation that “I don't want to do this,” demanded she undress and grabbed her arms, and she succumbed because she “just wanted to get out.”

White told jurors Tuesday that Weinstein “was used to getting his way. He did what he wanted, when he wanted and with whom he wanted.” She added, “Behind closed doors, power meant him taking what he wanted from the victim in this case.”

Weinstein shook his head slightly at one point as White claimed that he had “silenced” Mann by letting her know that crossing him could be professional quicksand.

Weinstein's defense emphasized that after the alleged rape, Mann kept seeing Weinstein, accepting invitations, asking him for career help and sending warm messages to him.

She has said she was trying to avoid angering a volatile and well-connected man. But his lawyer said the case “isn’t a ‘he said, she said' — it will be her word against her own word.”

“Ask yourself: What is Jessica Mann getting from Harvey Weinstein?” Kaplan told jurors. He contended that she reevaluated the relationship and came to regret it years later, but that “does not remove consent.”

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they agree to be named, as Mann has done.

The trial is expected to take up to four weeks.

Even more notable: Mendoza, of Indiana, joined Jim Plunkett and Bryce Young as just the third Latino to win the trophy while Pavia, from Vanderbilt, was the runner-up.

Now with the NFL draft almost here, Mendoza and Pavia continue to drive conversation about where they will go. Mendoza is projected to be the No. 1 selection Thursday night, likely going to the quarterback-needy Las Vegas Raiders, while Pavia hopes to prove any lingering doubters wrong.

And while the two quarterbacks are the headliners, they are certainly not the only Latino prospects hoping to hear their names called before the draft ends Saturday.

Here's a look at nine players who attended the NFL's annual scouting combine in Indianapolis in February.

QB Fernando Mendoza, Indiana

The Heisman Trophy winner and national championship-winning quarterback seems a virtual lock to be the No. 1 pick after throwing for 3,535 yards, leading the nation with 41 TD passes and running for seven more scores, including the memorable TD that helped seal Indiana's national title. Mendoza eagerly embraces his Cuban lineage. He has talked often about the role his parents and family played in his growth as a player, and his four grandparents who fled Cuba in 1959.

WR KC Concepcion, Texas A&M

The 5-foot-11 1/2, 196-pound, do-it-all receiver with Puerto Rican connections emerged as one of the nation's top playmakers in 2025. He was a first-team All-America selection as the all-purpose player and though his 40-yard dash time of 4.43 seconds may cause some scouts to question his top-end speed, Concepcion always seems to deliver in clutch moments or when plays appear to be over. He also has written about his speech impediment, indicating he wants to become a role model for those who “may be too scared to speak.” He could be picked on Day 1 or early on Day 2.

LB Jacob Rodriguez, Texas Tech

The 6-1, 231-pound Rodriguez did a little bit of everything with one of last season's top defenses. He made 128 tackles, broke up seven passes, intercepted four, forced seven fumbles, recovered two and posted one sack. And the unanimous All-American also won the Nagurski Trophy, Butkus Award, Lombardi Award and Bednarik Award on a defense stacked with future NFL players. He seemingly did it all in college, including playing quarterback at Virginia in 2021. The question is where he will land and how all that experience will translate to the pro level.

LB Taurean York, Texas A&M

At 5-11, 186 pounds, York is smaller than prototypical linebackers but could find a home by playing the trendy safety-linebacker hybrid NFL teams seem to increasingly want. He's been productive, too. The second team all-SEC selection started all three seasons with the Aggies, and he finished last season with 72 tackles and three passes defensed. He's one of five players in this draft with family ties to Mexico. Look for York to be chosen on Day 2 or early on Day 3.

QB Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt

He's one of the most polarizing players in this draft class, in part because he's not afraid to express his thoughts and in part because he stands only 5-foot-10, much shorter than most teams prefer in a quarterback. But there are two things on Pavia's resume that can't be ignored — he's routinely defied the odds and he wins. Pavia started his college career at New Mexico Military Institute, played well enough to jump to New Mexico State and then led Vanderbilt to its most successful back-to-back seasons in recent memory. Now the 2025 SEC Offensive Player of the Year and the first Heisman finalist from Vanderbilt will be waiting to find out which NFL team will give him a chance to prove himself all over again.

TE Josh Cuevas, Alabama

Cuevas has been a more proficient blocker than pass catcher at his three college stops — Cal Poly, Washington and Alabama. And though his size, 6-3 1/2, 245 pounds, may prompt some teams to project him more as a fullback than a tight end, there's plenty to like. Cuevas produced solid numbers last season with the Tide — 37 receptions, 411 yards, four TDs — and had career bests in 2022 at Cal Poly (58 catches, 678 yards, six TDs). The other thing coaches will appreciate is his accountablilty. He apologized to Alabama fans after the 2025 season-opening loss to Florida State, saying the players failed to meet the expected standard in that game. He also used his Senior Bowl platform to throw his support behind Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer.

OL Fernando Carmona, Arkansas

Carmona showed his versatility last season by moving to guard after playing left tackle the previous three seasons. That gave NFL teams a potential preview of what he could do next season with his shorter arms and massive size — 6-4 1/2, 316 pounds. He's also improved steadily in college, going from honorable mention all-Western Athletic Conference with San Jose State in 2023 to third-team all-SEC in 2024 and second-team all-SEC last year. While scouts also seem to like his energy and edge, they also realize he'll need better technique to excel at the next level.

QB Joey Aguilar, Tennessee

Aguilar is one of the rare prospects who didn't want to be on any draft list. Despite throwing for 3,565 yards and 24 touchdowns in his only season with the Volunteers, Aguilar wanted to return to school for one more year. But just days before the NFL's annual scouting combine was set to begin, a Tennessee court denied his preliminary injunction, pushing him into the draft. The decision put Aguilar in an awkward position because most of the other players had spent weeks or months preparing for the draft. That makes his landing spot — or even a selection — anybody's guess.

OL Enrique Cruz Jr., Kansas

Cruz has the size teams covet — 6-5 1/2, 313 pounds — and the versatility they like in late-round prospects because he played both left and right tackle in college. He also overcame the adversity of going from starter to backup at Syracuse by reclaiming the starting job last year at Kansas. Will it be enough to entice an NFL team? Perhaps.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL

Adoring crowds in the largely Catholic country lined the road from the airport into the administrative capital, Malabo, cheering the first pope to visit since St. John Paul II in 1982. Wearing his formal red mozzetta cape, Leo thrilled the flag-waving masses by arriving at the presidential palace in his open-sided popemobile.

“There is a lot of joy today because we waited 44 years for the pope to come,” said Diosdado Marques, a senior Catholic official in the country. “It’s a blessing for the country. We hope many things will change and we will deepen our faith.”

The former Spanish colony on Africa’s western coast is run by the continent's longest-serving president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been accused of widespread corruption and authoritarianism.

The pope notes a year since Francis' death

The discovery of offshore oil in the mid-1990s transformed Equatorial Guinea’s economy virtually overnight, with oil now accounting for almost half of its GDP and more than 90% of exports, according to the African Development Bank.

Yet more than half of the country’s nearly 2 million people live in poverty. And rights groups including Human Rights Watch — as well as court cases in France and Spain — have documented how revenues have enriched the ruling Obiang family rather than the broader population.

Leo, who arrived from Angola, met with Obiang at the presidential palace and then addressed government authorities, diplomats and civil service representatives. Noting that the encounter occurred on the first anniversary of Pope Francis’ death, Leo quoted the late pope in denouncing income inequalities that he said had been exacerbated by a global economy focused on the pursuit of profit at all cost.

“Such an economy kills,” Leo said. “In fact, it is even more evident today than in years past that the proliferation of armed conflicts is often driven by the colonization of oil and mineral deposits, occurring with no regard for international law or the self-determination of peoples.”

The Trump administration, which has announced plans to create a minerals trading bloc with its allies, has been racing to get access to Africa’s regions rich in critical minerals and to beat competition from China in a region where Beijing has long dominated.

Last year, as the administration emerged as a key broker for a peace deal to end the fighting in Congo’s mineral-rich but conflict-battered eastern region, it was also signing a partnership with Congo that would allow American companies access to those conflict minerals.

The U.S. is also investing funds in the Lobito Corridor, a major rail project that would facilitate export of minerals from regions in Zambia and Congo through Lobito in Angola. At the same time, the U.S. has backed a South Africa project aimed at extracting rare earth minerals from industrial waste.

Leo suggests Equatorial Guinea look to the ‘City of God’

The pope's meetings took place in the old presidential palace. The government has built a new capital on the mainland named Ciudad de la Paz, or City of Peace, but the transfer of government buildings is not complete.

Authorities have said the decision to build the new capital was strategic, given the potential for expansion of the city carved out of a tropical forest. But critics said the relocation would exacerbate inequalities and give further opportunities for the presidential circle to enrich themselves.

Leo referred to the new capital by citing the famous work of St. Augustine, “City of God,” in which the 5th-century philosopher interpreted humanity through two models: The “earthly city” where people live temporarily and the eternal “city of God,” characterized by God’s unconditional love and love of one another, especially the poor.

Leo didn't call out the corruption associated with the Obiang family or the criticism of the new capital. But he suggested Equatorial Guinea should look to the “City of God” as a model.

“The earthly city is centered upon the proud love of self, on the lust for power and worldly glory that leads to destruction,” he said. “It is essential to discern the difference between that which lasts and that which passes, remaining free from the pursuit of unjust wealth and the illusion of dominion.”

The pope plans to visit a prison

Equatorial Guinea is officially a secular country but about 75% of its population is Catholic, making it one of Africa's most Catholic countries.

Church leaders “are very much interconnected intrinsically with the government,” said Tutu Alicante, a U.S.-based activist who runs the EG Justice rights group. “Part of it is the fear the government has instilled in everyone, including the church, and part of it is the monetary gains that the church derives from this government.”

The Rev. Fortunatus Nwachukwu, No. 2 in the Vatican’s missionary evangelization office, said the Catholic Church is present in difficult civil spaces and knows how to operate in them to carry out its mission.

“Should the church go to war against the government? Surely no,” Nwachukwu said. “Should the church swallow everything as if it were normal? No. The church has to continue preaching justice, always in defense of life, human dignity and the common good.”

In addition to official corruption, the country’s government also faces accusations of harassment, arrest and intimidation of political opponents, critics and journalists.

Equatorial Guinea is also one of several African nations that have been paid millions of dollars in deals with the Trump administration to receive migrants deported from the U.S. to countries other than their own.

AP reporting shows that at least 29 such migrants with no ties to the country have been deported there. Some remain in detention in Malabo with restrictions on legal and medical support, while others have been forcibly returned to their countries where they face persecution.

Leo, who will visit a prison in the port city of Bata on Wednesday, has criticized the Trump administration’s overall migration deportation policy as “extremely disrespectful.”

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Associated Press writers Monika Pronczuk in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, and Ope Adetayo in Lagos, Nigeria, contributed.

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

The America Reads the Bible event — with each participant reading a passage aloud — is being livestreamed this week from the Museum of the Bible in Washington and other locations. It is slated to feature a video of Trump on Tuesday evening reading a passage that called for national repentance in ancient Israel — words that have been used prominently for decades by those promoting the belief that America has been and should be a Christian nation.

The Bible is “indelibly woven into our national identity and way of life,” Trump said in a statement commemorating the event. The statement cited historical figures such as the Puritan leader John Winthrop as “imploring his fellow Christian settlers to stand as a beacon of faith for all the world to see.”

Critics say the event has a highly partisan list of participants and is part of a larger project to connect America's upcoming 250th birthday with a Christian nationalist vision that portrays the nation's founding as essentially Christian, something many historians dispute. White Christians, particularly evangelicals, have been crucial to Trump's electoral base.

The list of participants — which overwhelmingly includes Republican politicians and Christian supporters of Trump — shows it to be “very much a right-wing MAGA, Christian nationalist effort," said Brian Kaylor, author of “The Bible According to Christian Nationalists: Exploiting Scripture for Political Power,” referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

“If they wanted this to be a unifying American project, there would have been a whole lot more attention to getting political diversity and ideological diversity,” added Kaylor, president and editor-in-chief of Word&Way, a progressive site covering faith and politics.

Historian Jemar Tisby, whose books have challenged what he says is enduring Christian complicity in racism, criticized the event on Facebook: "You cannot quote the Bible while justifying violence, war and exclusion.”

Bunni Pounds, founder of Christians Engaged, said that reading the Bible alone isn't enough. “Faith without works is dead,” she said, adding: “We need the word first to bring faith into our life.”

Trump's latest faith-related tensions

The Bible event comes just a week after Trump drew rare criticism from his evangelical supporters for circulating a social media meme in which a white-robed Trump appeared as a Jesus-like healer surrounded by patriotic symbols. Trump removed the image from his Truth Social site while insisting he was depicted as a doctor, not Jesus.

It also comes shortly after Trump's high-profile clash with the U.S.-born Pope Leo XIV over the Iran war.

Other high-ranking officials have been or will be reading biblical passages in person or by video. They include Cabinet officials such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as House Speaker Mike Johnson and several other Republican members of Congress. Prominent evangelical supporters of Trump who are participating include evangelist Franklin Graham, pastor Jack Graham and pastor Paula White-Cain, who heads Trump's White House Faith Office.

Pounds said that the organization invited Democratic members of Congress as well as leaders of some denominations that might be considered progressive but that they didn’t accept.

Each speaker is taking a turn in the ongoing reading of the 66 books of the Bible as recognized by Protestants. Jews recognize the Hebrew portion of the Bible that Christians call the Old Testament but not the New Testament books centered on Jesus, while Catholics and Orthodox recognize additional books of the Bible that are not included in this reading. The event does include some Catholic representation, including the president of CatholicVote, which endorsed Trump in 2024.

The event involves a comprehensive reading of the entire Bible, from the famous verses ("Let my people go," "The Lord is my shepherd") to the obscure. Passages range from the creation of the world to bloody battles and apocalyptic destruction, from exhortations to love of God, neighbor and the needy to passages telling of Jesus' life, death and resurrection.

Trump will read from 2 Chronicles

The event organizer is Christians Engaged, a nonprofit whose stated mission includes “discipling Americans on biblical worldview and their responsibilities to pray, vote and engage.”

Trump's appearance will be from the Oval Office, where he will read from the seventh chapter of 2 Chronicles, set during King Solomon's dedication of the temple in ancient Jerusalem. In it, God promises forgiveness if a future generation rebels then repents: "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

The verse has long been quoted at many conservative Christian rallies and political events such as the 2024 Republican National Convention.

Pounds noted that the Chronicles passage has for decades been a major theme at annual National Day of Prayer events and that organizers invited Trump to read from it. “It’s a powerful statement that he decided to read that passage,” she said.

The Bible-reading marathon comes just weeks before a May 17 event called a “National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise, and Thanksgiving,” to be held on the National Mall. It's the climactic event of “America Prays,” a project Trump announced last year in conjunction with America 250, calling for prayer for the country and to “rededicate ourselves to one nation under God."

Several of the groups and individuals involved in America Prays are also participating in this week’s Bible reading event.

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

According to TxDOT’s Houston District, the bridge over Interstate 69 will shut down beginning at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 30, 2026, and is not expected to reopen until Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2027. The extended closure will allow crews to demolish and fully reconstruct the bridge.

Alabama Street serves as a key connection between Midtown Houston and Third Ward, prompting TxDOT to roll out a comprehensive outreach effort to keep residents and commuters informed throughout construction.

The demolition process will take place in two phases and will require additional freeway closures:

• Phase 1: From 9 p.m. Friday, May 1, through 5 a.m. Monday, May 4, 2026Northbound I-69 will be closed between State Highway 288 and Alabama Street.
• Phase 2: From 9 p.m. Friday, May 8, through 5 a.m. Monday, May 11, 2026Southbound I-69 will be closed between Polk Street and SH 288. The southbound SH 288 connector to I-69 will also be shut down.

Detour routes for both drivers and pedestrians will be in place during the closure. TxDOT officials say maps and updates related to the project can be found on the NHHIP construction updates webpage.

The Alabama Street bridge work is part of a broader effort to improve safety and mobility along the I-45 corridor in Houston.

But it is the European Union's policy toward Israel — and how to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as security deteriorates in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, as well as in Lebanon — that is dividing EU members, stymieing strong action, and frustrating many in the 27-nation bloc.

Israel disagreement hobbles EU action

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said there was no clear political agreement in Luxembourg to ramp up pressure on Israel.

“We didn’t see that today, but these discussions will continue,” she said.

One of the loudest voices within the EU blocking sharper pressure on Israel is shortly leaving office — Hungary’s outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán routinely obstructed EU action on issues ranging from support for Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion to sanctions on Israelis accused of violent extremism.

Kallas said that Orbán’s defeat by pro-European opposition leader Péter Magyar in Hungary’s recent election could accelerate action.

“A lot of issues ... have been blocked” by Hungary, she said. “We are reopening the discussions and hope that we get a positive result.”

The EU has an Association Agreement, signed in 2000, that regulates trade and cooperation with Israel. Spain, Slovenia and Ireland have proposed completely suspending it, a move that doesn't have the required unanimous support among EU nations.

However, a partial suspension targeting just the trade aspects could have enough political support, said Spanish Foreign Minister José Albares.

“The European Union has to say today very clearly to Israel that a change is needed,” he said.

The EU has found indications Israel had violated the agreement with the bloc in its military campaign in Gaza.

“The attacks on the values that underpin that agreement are now too serious to ignore,” said Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot, adding that Belgium would support at least a partial suspension of the deal.

Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee said the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Israel's recent adoption of the death penalty for some Palestinians, and ongoing fighting in Lebanon should push EU nations to ramp up pressure on Israel.

“We need to act. We need to make sure that our fundamental values are protected,” McEntee said.

Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said France and Sweden have brought forward a plan to curtail trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Amnesty International condemned EU's lack of action to pressure Israel over its actions. Erika Guevara-Rosas, a director for the human rights organization, said “each delay only further entrenches impunity and paves the way for further grave human rights violations” by Israel.

EU diplomats call for extending ceasefires in Lebanon and Iran

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam spoke at the meeting in Luxembourg about the fragile ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, difficulties in disarming the Hezbollah militant group, and the need for EU assistance for the war-torn nation.

“Lebanon today needs its European partners more than ever,” Salam posted on X on Tuesday.

While now mainly headquartered in Brussels, EU institutions are also spread out in northern Europe like the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany and the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. Lawmakers, diplomats and officials regularly move between the cities for meetings.

The Luxembourg meeting comes a day after 60 nations sent representatives to a Palestinian peace conference in Brussels with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohamed Mustafa and Bulgarian diplomat Nikolay Mladenov, who heads the Board of Peace set up by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The EU diplomats gathered in Luxembourg called for diplomacy on Iran as a ceasefire struck between Tehran and Washington that began April 8 was to expire Wednesday.

Kallas, the foreign policy chief, warned that if the fighting resumes, "it will come at a very large cost for all.”

She also announced that EU foreign ministers agreed Tuesday on new sanctions on Iranian officials responsible for obstructing freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf.

“Freedom of navigation is non-negotiable. Daily U-turns where the Strait of Hormuz is open or closed, are reckless. Transit through the strait must remain free of charge,” Kallas said.

She did not elaborate on the sanctions or name the targeted officials.

Germany’s foreign minister called on Iran to send negotiators to Islamabad to meet with U.S. negotiators.

“Iran should now take this outstretched hand in the interest of its own people,” Johann Wadephul said.

The war in Iran has throttled global oil and gas markets and rattled the EU as a major importer of energy.

Also Tuesday, EU transportation ministers discussed in a video conference how to protect consumers at home and at the pump after the head of the International Energy Agency warned that Europe has “ maybe six weeks ” supply left of jet fuel.

Since the latest war in the Middle East started, fighting has killed at least 3,375 people in Iran and more than 2,290 in Lebanon. Additionally, 23 people have died in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.

___

McNeil reported from Brussels.

"Those (conversations) have been positive and productive. In order to be successful on and off the field, you have to make good decisions. That includes me. That starts with me,” Vrabel said, making an unscheduled statement from the podium at the team's facility on the second day of its offseason workout program.

The photos were of Vrabel and Russini at a Sedona resort and were taken before the annual NFL meetings that began in Phoenix on March 29, according to the New York Post, which published the photos earlier this month.

A Patriots spokesman said there are no plans for other team officials to address the issue further.

The NFL, meanwhile, said last weekend that it is not investigating Vrabel’s behavior. NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy confirmed to The Associated Press on Saturday that the league is not looking into the matter.

Vrabel and Russini, who are both married, released written statements to the Post after the publication of the story downplaying what the photos depict. But Russini resigned from The Athletic less than a week later, after the Post's report prompted an internal investigation at The New York Times-owned sports outlet.

Vrabel said he addressed players about the matter on Monday after they arrived for the start of the voluntary workout program. Two Patriots players were scheduled to be made available to reporters on Tuesday, but Vrabel said he wanted to speak before they did. He also said he didn't want the interest in the Post photos to take attention away from the NFL draft, which begins Thursday.

Vrabel said any conversations he's had with team officials would stay private.

“We never want our actions to negatively affect the team. We never want to be the cause of a distraction,” he said. “There are comments and questions that I’ve answered with the team and will keep those private to ourselves."

Russini joined The Athletic in 2023 after nearly a decade at ESPN, where she held various roles, including “SportsCenter” anchor, NFL analyst and insider. She hosted a podcast for The Athletic and made appearances on their video platform.

Until his appearance Tuesday, Vrabel hadn't spoken in a news conference setting with reporters since the owners' meetings.

Last year, before his first season as Patriots coach, he addressed reporters as part of the lead-up to the NFL draft. He opted not to do that last week, with only Patriots vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf speaking at that news conference on April 13.

“Very involved. Business as usual,” Wolf said when asked how much Vrabel had been involved with the team’s draft process. “I’d say he’s been in there with us this round probably a little more than he was in there last year. ... He’s been in there. He’s been contributing. He’s watched a ton of the players.”

Vrabel, 50, won three Super Bowls as a player with New England. He is preparing for his second season as coach of the Patriots. He led the team to a 14-3 finish last season, which ended with a Super Bowl loss to Seattle.

Vrabel said his focus going forward is football.

“I care deeply about this football team and excited to coach them. I also know that I’m going to attack each day with humility and focus,” he said. "What I can promise you is that my family, this organization, the team, the staff, coaches and our fans, most importantly, will get the best version of me going forward. That’s what I know and I’m excited to do that.”

___

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL

Officer Ashley Gonzalez was sworn in in January 2024 and assigned to the South Gessner Patrol Division. She has been relieved of duty pending an investigation, an HPD source confirmed Tuesday morning.

Gonzalez was identified as the speaker in a video of a racist rant that has gone viral on Facebook.

In the video, a woman sitting in her car can be heard using racial slurs and making offensive remarks targeting Black people. She also expresses hostility toward people of color and makes comments referencing slavery, racial discrimination, and stereotypes.

A clip of the video with the slurs censored was shared by Grizzy’s Hood News.

MORE FROM GRIZZY’S HOOD NEWS: Carnival Legend crew rescues man, cat after spotting sailboat in distress while cruising to Mexico

In one portion of the video, she describes confronting someone she claims attempted to steal her wallet.

“Y’all don’t know how good it felt to say [racial slur] out loud. Oh my God, I felt like I was back in the Marine Corps,” the speaker says in the video.

KPRC 2 has contacted the USMC for more information regarding Gonzalez’s reported military service.

The Houston Police Department has not released further details about the video or the circumstances under which it was recorded.

Gonzalez had logged more than 1,600 hours of course work for the Houston Police Academy and other law enforcement organizations, according to documents pulled by KPRC 2’s Bryce Newberry.

In a statement, the Houston Police Officers’ Union (HPOU) said it is “extremely disturbed” by the video and emphasized that it does not condone or tolerate racist behavior among its members.

The statement was issued by HPOU President Douglas Griffith, who noted the importance of accountability and maintaining community trust.

“The Houston Police Department prides itself as being one of the most diverse police departments in the nation,” Griffith said.

He added that the union believes HPD will take appropriate action regarding the video in an effort to maintain public confidence.

FULL STATEMENT BY HPOU:

The Houston Police Officers’ Union is extremely disturbed by a video circulating on social media regarding an officer making offensive, racist comments.  In no way does the HPOU or its leadership condone or tolerate racist behavior from any of our officers. The Houston Police Department prides itself as being the most diverse police department in the nation, largely a product of that collaborative changes to civil service law that the HPOU and the Department have made through our meet and confer process. It is our belief that the Department is diligently working to confirm the authenticity of this video and will take appropriate measures to ensure public confidence and trust between our Department and our community.

According to charging documents filed April 17, Jason Justiniano Olea, 38, is accused of felony theft from a nonprofit organization. The alleged loss totals $87,784.12, placing the charge within the $30,000 to $150,000 felony range under Texas law.

Investigators with the Houston Police Department Property and Financial Crimes Division say the alleged theft occurred between January 15 and October 18, 2024, while Olea was employed as vice president of IT for Manned Space Flight, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that operates Space Center Houston. He was terminated on October 18, 2024.

According to a probable cause affidavit, Olea allegedly used a company-issued American Express card for personal purchases, then submitted altered receipts to seek reimbursement. The card was restricted to business use under a signed agreement.

The theft was uncovered in September 2024 when a senior accountant flagged an irregular Amazon receipt. Investigators noted multiple red flags, including altered formatting, incorrect tax charges for a tax-exempt organization, and mismatched order numbers. The discovery prompted a broader internal audit of expense reports dating back to January 2024.

Authorities say Olea used personal Amazon and PayPal accounts to make purchases, then manipulated receipts to conceal the true nature of the transactions. Investigators allege he downloaded legitimate receipts, edited them using Microsoft Word, and re-saved them as PDFs before submitting them for reimbursement.

Examples cited in the charging documents include a reimbursement request for a Microsoft Copilot Enterprise license listed at $2,520 when the actual charge was $137.80, and a PayPal purchase labeled as a “titanium mounting frame” that investigators say was actually a personal item.

Evidence cited includes subpoenaed financial records from American Express, Amazon, PayPal and KeyBank, as well as metadata from altered PDF files showing edits consistent with document manipulation. Investigators also linked shipping information on receipts to Olea’s home address.

A certified fraud examiner conducted an independent review, confirming the total loss amount, according to the documents.

Olea declined to provide a statement when contacted by investigators. As of the filing, no arrest date had been listed.

The testimony by Olly Robbins increases the heat on Starmer, who is facing calls to resign over the decision to appoint Mandelson, a scandal-tainted politician and friend of Jeffrey Epstein, to one of the U.K.’s most important diplomatic posts.

Robbins, the former top civil servant in the Foreign Office, said there was an “atmosphere of pressure” from Starmer’s 10 Downing St. office to approve the appointment so Mandelson could be in the post at the start of U.S. President Donald Trump ’s second term.

He told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee there had been “a very, very strong expectation” that Mandelson “needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible.” He said Downing Street had “a generally dismissive attitude” toward the requirement for tough security checks.

The prime minister fired Robbins last week after the revelation that Mandelson was approved for the job in January 2025 against the recommendation of the government's security vetting agency.

Robbins said the vetting agency considered Mandelson a “borderline case” and was “leaning toward recommending against” giving him security clearance. Robbins cleared him anyway, based on advice that the risks could be managed, he said.

Robbins said the concerns about Mandelson didn't relate to his relationship with Epstein, but he declined to explain to lawmakers what led the government's vetting agency to flag him as a potential security risk.

Mandelson had to resign twice from senior posts in previous Labour Party governments because of scandals over money and ethics. A separate background report prepared before he was appointed ambassador flagged potential business links to Russia and China as a concern.

Politicians wanted the appointment approved

Starmer has called it “staggering” that Foreign Office officials failed to tell him about the security concerns, which he says he only found out about last week. Robbins said the rules bar details of the sensitive vetting process from being shared except in “exceptional circumstances.”

Starmer announced the choice of Mandelson in December 2024, before intensive security checks were carried out. Robbins said he was “very conscious” that refusing Mandelson security clearance would have caused “a real problem for the government and a problem for the country” in its relations with the Trump administration.

Robbins declined to identify any individuals as being behind the pressure. Starmer's chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, a protégé of Mandelson, resigned in February, saying he took responsibility for the decision to appoint Mandelson.

The leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, said Starmer "personally decided to appoint a serious known national security risk to our most sensitive diplomatic post.

“The prime minister is not fit for office," she said. “It is time for him to go.”

Starmer acknowledged on Monday that he made the wrong judgment when he picked Mandelson for the job, but said he would have withdrawn the appointment if he’d known about the failed security vetting.

Starmer fired Mandelson in September, nine months into the job, when new details emerged about his friendship with Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019.

The U.K. leader has ordered a review of security concerns arising from Mandelson’s access to sensitive information while ambassador.

Questions over Starmer's judgment

Critics say the Mandelson appointment is more evidence of bad judgment by a prime minister who has made repeated missteps since he led the center-left Labour Party to a landslide election victory in July 2024.

He picked Mandelson as ambassador despite being warned by his staff that Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein exposed the government to “reputational risk.” Mandelson's expertise as a former European Union trade chief and contacts among global elites were considered assets in dealing with the Trump administration.

Starmer says he won't resign, but the scandal has caused gloom among lawmakers in his center-left Labour Party, already anxious about its dire poll ratings. Starmer already defused one potential crisis in February, when some Labour lawmakers urged him to quit over the Mandelson appointment.

He could face a new challenge if, as expected, Labour takes a hammering in local and regional elections on May 7, which give voters a chance to pass a midterm verdict on the government.

Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, said that regardless of the complexities and blame-trading, the view of many voters boils down to: “Keir Starmer appointed Peter Mandelson. Peter Mandelson was a wrong-un and he hung out with Jeffrey Epstein.

“And none of this that we’ve seen today or any other day does anything except reinforce that,” he said. “And that's just disastrous" for Starmer.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said he had raised concerns about the choice of ambassador, but didn’t think Starmer should resign over the debacle.

“If every time a prime minister made a mistake they resigned, we would shuttle through prime ministers like nobody’s business,” Miliband told the BBC.

Mandelson is under police investigation for suspected misconduct in public office after a trove of Epstein-related documents released by the U.S. Justice Department in January included emails suggesting that Mandelson had passed on sensitive — and potentially market-moving — government information to Epstein in 2009, after the global financial crisis.

British police launched a criminal investigation and arrested Mandelson in February. Mandelson has previously denied wrongdoing and hasn’t been charged. He doesn't face allegations of sexual misconduct.

Location: In-Person – Detroit, MI

Description

We are seeking a junior-level developer who is passionate about building best-in-class web and app experiences. You will join the team responsible for our websites and apps, focused on delivering deeply personalized experiences and elevating video engagement across every market we serve. This role is for someone who obsesses over the details that separate a good digital experience from a great one — performance, design, responsiveness, and engagement.

You will rapidly prototype new features, ship them into production, and iterate based on real user behavior and feedback. We are looking for someone who strives for best-in-class experiences in web design and community engagement, and who takes pride in leveraging modern tools and frameworks to deliver polished, high-performance products. You will be part of the award-winning Graham Digital team, known for its strong culture of collaboration and innovation.

Your work will directly shape how audiences across our markets in Detroit, Houston, San Antonio, Orlando, Jacksonville, and Roanoke experience our local journalism. The features and experiences you build will influence how tens of thousands of people discover stories, watch our video, and connect with their communities every day.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship features for our websites and apps that deliver best-in-class user experiences.
• Develop deeply personalized experiences that surface the right content to the right audience at the right time.
• Elevate video engagement across our platforms — from playback experience to discovery, recommendations, and monetization.
• Rapidly prototype new ideas, release them to production, and refine based on real user behavior, performance metrics, and direct feedback.
• Collaborate closely with product, design, newsroom, and digital teams to turn ideas into polished, high-performance features.
• Apply modern development frameworks, tooling, and best practices to keep our platforms fast, reliable, and scalable.
• Contribute to the ongoing evolution of our web and app architecture, adopting new tools and techniques that raise the bar on what we can deliver.

Requirements

• Frontend and backend experience with React or a similar modern JavaScript framework (Next.js, Vue, Svelte, Node.js, etc.).
• A portfolio of shipped work — personal projects, open-source contributions, or professional experience — that demonstrates your eye for design, performance, and user experience.
• Comfort working with version control, testing, deployment pipelines, and collaborative development practices.
• A clear bias toward shipping: you would rather release a good v1 and iterate than polish something indefinitely before users ever see it.
• Strong design sensibility and attention to detail across both visual polish and technical execution.
• A growth mindset and desire to learn in a fast-moving environment.

What We Offer

You will join a team that values collaboration, innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement. We are committed to investing in modern tooling and development practices that allow you to accelerate your impact from day one. You will learn from experienced professionals who operate and maintain leading digital platforms across multiple markets.

We are invested in your growth and believe this position has the potential to evolve into a significantly larger role within Graham Media Group. As you help elevate our web and app experiences and refine them through real-world feedback, you will build both meaningful impact and a strong foundation for long-term career advancement within our organization.

Additional Information

Working on-site in our Detroit office provides direct exposure to newsroom and product operations and close collaboration with the Graham Digital team. Being embedded in this environment will accelerate both your technical development and your understanding of how great digital experiences support local journalism and community engagement.

Contact

Michael Newman, Director of Transformation

mnewman@grahammedia.com

Graham Media Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. In addition to complying with the requirements of federal law, GMG will comply with applicable state and local laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Any offer of employment is conditional upon the successful completion of a pre-employment drug screening, investigative background check, employment/education verifications and reference checks.

Tuberculosis, often referred to as TB, is an airborne illness that primarily affects the lungs but can spread to other parts of the body. It is transmitted through the air when an infected person coughs, speaks or sneezes.

Historically, TB was one of the deadliest diseases in the United States. In 1900, it claimed 194 lives per 100,000 people. While advances in medicine and public health efforts have dramatically reduced those numbers, officials say the disease has not been eradicated.

According to the report, Harris County recorded 5.5 active tuberculosis cases per 100,000 residents in 2024, the most recent year of available data.

Health officials emphasize that TB is both preventable and treatable, but it requires early detection and consistent medical care. Symptoms can include a persistent cough, chest pain, fever and weight loss.

The report highlights the need for continued public health vigilance, particularly in densely populated urban areas like Houston, where the risk of transmission can be higher.

Officials encourage residents to seek medical attention if they experience symptoms or believe they may have been exposed.

Inside Rudder Auditorium, the same man interrupted Pence twice, shouting profanity first after Pence voiced support for recent U.S. military action against Iran and again when Pence invoked conservative activist Charlie Kirk while condemning political violence. After the second interruption, officers removed and arrested the man, who the university said was not a student.

Pence said he was able to forge warm relationships in Congress with people he thought “were wrong about everything” because they still shared common ground in caring deeply about their faith, families and their country.

“I think the key for us going forward is to stop talking at each other and start listening to each other,” he said, arguing that government should reflect “the decency and the generosity and the respectfulness of the American people.”

The event — meant to teach students how to disagree agreeably — was the latest in a five-campus Texas A&M System series that leaders framed as helpful preparation for engaging despite differences in polarized times. But critics saw a contradiction in teaching students about effective dialogue after restricting information that can be taught and canceling classes based on their content.

Pence, once among Trump’s closest political allies, became a target of Trump and his supporters when he refused to block the certification of the 2020 election. Monday marked at least his third visit to Texas A&M since 2019, and one of several college appearances he has made ahead of the June 2 release of his new book, “What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience.”

At Texas A&M, he blamed some of the country’s growing political division on social media, saying it reinforces people’s existing views and gives foreign actors another way to deepen distrust. He also praised U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, and Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, for working across the aisle on efforts to force the sale or ban of TikTok’s Chinese parent company.

Pence’s afternoon session and the morning discussion with McCaul and Cuellar were both moderated by leaders in student government. But across both sessions, speakers spoke in general terms about civility, political courage and listening across differences without directly addressing the campus controversies hanging over the event.

Those controversies grew out of Texas A&M’s response to lecturer Melissa McCoul’s classroom discussion on gender identity last fall, which led first to heightened scrutiny of course content and later new limits on what professors could teach. System leaders ordered a review of all courses, and regents barred most courses from teaching race or gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity unless a campus president approved an exception in writing.

The death of Kirk, who had visited Texas A&M months earlier, widened the debate beyond the classroom. After reports that some students at other universities had mocked or celebrated his death, lawmakers created a committee to review civil discourse and freedom of speech on college campuses.

McCaul, whose district includes College Station, and Cuellar spoke about moments when they took heat from their own parties. McCaul pointed to his vote to certify the 2020 election, while Cuellar cited his 2005 support for the Central America Free Trade Agreement.

Only afterward, in response to a question from The Texas Tribune, did the lawmakers address the fight over what can be taught in classrooms.

“I’m one of those big believers that you’ve got to have public expression, that freedom, and we’ve got to be very, very careful not to cross those lines,” Cuellar said.

McCaul also said he would not want to see free speech chilled at universities and that students should have a voice, but he also said universities must follow the law. He did not name a specific law.

No state or federal law currently bans college faculty from teaching about race, gender or sexuality, and the executive order McCaul appeared to reference governs federal funding, not classroom instruction.

The university said about 2,000 people registered to hear Pence speak.

Outside, roughly 30 to 40 students and faculty stood in light rain with “Aggies for Academic Freedom” signs, protesting what they saw as a gap between the symposium’s message and the university’s recent actions. One sign, decorated with googly eyes, read, “Our eyes see through TAMUS lies.” Another asked, “Are we a force for good … yet?” a pointed riff on the university’s “A Force for Good” branding. Protesters also chanted, “Aggies gig ‘em, we don’t gag them.”

The protest was organized by the Texas A&M chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which said it and other campus groups delivered a petition with more than 1,000 signatures Monday urging university leaders to protect academic freedom, end political control over classroom content and restore faculty authority over the curriculum.

Mitchel Cepale, a sophomore political science major who said he attended the morning session before joining the protest, said civil discourse was a worthy goal, but argued the event itself felt like a “facade of civil discourse” built around preplanned questions and broad concepts.

Student protester Leah Tolan said she wanted to represent students and faculty who were too scared to speak publicly.

“We’re showing the Board of Regents that we’re not backing off,” said Tolan, a sophomore sociology major who said she did not attend the symposium because she had class.

Another student protester, Yousef Mahdy, pointed to the university’s ongoing investigation into his own speech as part of what he and other protesters see as a broader crackdown on views those in power do not like.

Earlier this month, Mahdy, who is a junior studying petroleum engineering, filmed himself approaching two students on campus at a Students Supporting Israel table. He called them “genocide supporters” and “stinky Zionists,” and told them to “get the hell out of our country.”

The video was posted to X by the StopAntisemitism account, which tagged Chancellor Glenn Hegar and asked why the conduct was allowed. Hegar replied that same day, “Harassing others with hateful and demeaning language is unacceptable. … We are reviewing the facts, and we will act if our policies have been violated.”

In an interview with the Tribune, Yousef said he was not antisemitic and that criticizing Zionism is not the same as attacking Jewish people. On Monday, he told protesters, “How do they expect me to have civil discourse when my discourse is being silenced?”

Martin Peterson, the philosophy professor who told the Tribune in January that he had been ordered to remove material from Plato and other sources related to race and gender, said the system’s rules now keep professors from teaching what they believe students need to learn, weakening the value of a Texas A&M education.

Peterson, who is leaving Texas A&M for Southern Methodist University, framed his departure as a handoff to others still on campus, urging them to keep pushing back.

“I really hope someone else will take up the fight,” he said. “I love you. I will miss you.”

In a statement to the Tribune before Monday’s event, Hegar said the symposiums were meant to expose students to “substantive discussion in an appropriate setting” and to reinforce that “disagreement does not have to devolve into hostility.” He said it was “entirely fair for critics to voice objections” but called it hypocritical to dismiss civil discourse while “rejecting engagement out of hand.”

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

Disclosure: Southern Methodist University and Texas A&M University System 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 notion that a flu vaccine must be mandatory for every service member, everywhere, in every circumstance at all times is just overly broad and not rational,” Hegseth said in a video posted on social media.

He said American service members are free to get the flu vaccine but will not be forced to “because your body, your faith and your convictions are not negotiable.”

Hegseth’s directive does allow for the military services to request to keep the vaccine requirement in place, according to a memo enacting the policy posted online. It says the services have 15 days to make those requests.

Vaccination programs in the U.S. military date back to the American Revolution. But they became a contentious political issue during the coronavirus pandemic, when more than 8,400 troops were forced out of the military for refusing to obey the 2021 mandate for the COVID-19 vaccine. Thousands of others sought religious and medical exemptions.

Congress agreed to rescind the mandate, which the Pentagon dropped in January 2023, after roughly 99% of active duty troops in the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps had gotten the vaccine, and 98% of those in the Army. The Guard and Reserve rates are lower but generally are more than 90%.

The Trump administration then spent months crafting a policy to allow service members who refused to take the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine to reenter service with back pay. While only a tiny fraction have taken the Pentagon up on the new policy, Hegseth’s team has spent the past several months personally highlighting them.

The Pentagon stated in March that 153 service members who were separated under the COVID-19 mandate had been reinstated or "re-accessed."

The dropping of the flu vaccine mandate follows what health officials said was a particularly severe flu season when U.S. infections surged. Public health experts recommend that everyone 6 months and older get an annual influenza vaccine.

The Trump administration has been working to dial back vaccine recommendations. It stated earlier this year that it will no longer recommend flu shots and some other types of vaccines for all children, saying it’s a decision parents and patients should make in consultation with their doctors. A federal judge has temporarily blocked that effort as a lawsuit plays out.

The Congressional Research Service listed eight mandatory vaccines for service members in a 2021 report. They included vaccines for the flu, polio and tetanus as well as the measles and hepatitis A and B.

Service members could request to opt out of a vaccine requirement for religious reasons, the report stated. But the unit commander was required to seek input from medical and religious representatives, while also counseling the service member on the potential impact on their ability to deploy. A military physician also had to counsel the service member on the benefits and risks of forgoing a required vaccination.

The Congressional Research Service noted that the military instituted its first vaccination program in 1777 when Gen. George Washington directed the inoculation of the Continental Army to protect personnel from smallpox.

A proposed constitutional amendment backed by Democratic officials would bypass the state's bipartisan redistricting commission to allow use of new congressional districts approved by state lawmakers in this year's midterm elections.

The referendum, which needs a simple majority to pass, tests Democrats' ability to push back against President Donald Trump, who started the gerrymandering competition between states after successfully urging Texas Republicans to redraw congressional districts in their favor last year. Virginia is the second state, after California last fall, to put the question to voters.

It also tests voters' willingness to accept districts gerrymandered for political advantage — coming just six years after Virginia voters approved an amendment meant to diminish such partisan gamesmanship by shifting redistricting away from the legislature.

Even if Democrats are successful Tuesday, the public vote may not be the final word. The state Supreme Court is considering whether the redistricting plan is illegal in a case that could make the referendum results meaningless.

Virginia Democrats are following California's lead

Congressional redistricting typically is done once a decade after each U.S. census. But Trump urged Texas Republicans to redistrict ahead of the November elections in hopes of winning several additional seats and maintaining the GOP's narrow House majority in the face of political headwinds that typically favor the party that is out of power during midterms.

The Texas gambit led to a burst of redistricting nationwide. So far, Republicans believe they can win up to nine more House seats in newly redrawn districts in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio.

Democrats think they can win up to five more seats in California, where voters approved a mid-decade redistricting effort last November, and one more seat under new court-imposed districts in Utah. Democrats hope to offset the rest of that gap in Virginia, where they decisively flipped 13 seats in the state House and won back the governor’s office last year.

Voters focus on fairness, with different perspectives

The stream of voters was steady Tuesday at a recreation center in the Old Town area of Alexandria, Virginia.

Matt Wallace, 31, said he votes regularly but this election has additional emphasis.

“I think the redistricting issue across the country is unfortunate, that we’ve had to resort to temporary redistricting in order to sort of alter our elections across the country," he said. Wallace said he voted for the Democratic redistricting amendment "to help balance the scales a bit until things get back to normal.”

Katie Reusch, 35, said she thought the amendment was necessary to respond to the Republicans' redrawing of congressional districts in Texas last year: “You can’t just say we’re in power so we’re changing things so we stay in power,” she said.

But Joanna Miller, 29, said she voted against the redistricting measure, “because I want my vote to count in a fair way.” Miller said she was more concerned about representation in Virginia than trying to offset actions in other states.

“I want my vote and my representation to matter this fall,” she said.

That concern is particularly acute among conservative voters in the state's rural areas, many of which would be drawn into congressional districts that will be dominated by Democratic-leaning cities and suburbs.

Ruth Ann McCartney, voting in the town of South Hill, a few miles north of the North Carolina border, said she cast her ballot against the amendment.

“I look at it more, not really in terms of Republican versus Democrat,” she said. “I look at it more as we don’t have the population as northern Virginia. And as a rural area, we just need to be heard.”

Political parties made a big push in Virginia

Leaders of both major parties see Tuesday’s vote as crucial to their chances to win a House majority in the fall. Trump weighed in via social media Tuesday morning, telling Virginians to “vote ‘no’ to save your country!”

Former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, rallied with opponents of the measure Monday night, calling the redistricting plan “dishonest” and “brazenly deceptive.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol earlier in the day that a vote to approve the redraw “will serve as a check and balance on this out-of-control Trump administration.”

A committee supporting the Democratic redistricting effort had raised more than $64 million — three times as much as the roughly $20 million raised by opponents, according to finance reports filed less than two weeks before the election.

The back-and-forth battle over congressional districts is expected to continue in Florida, where the Republican-led legislature is scheduled to convene April 28 for a special session that could result in a more favorable map for Republicans.

A lobster-like district could aid Democratic efforts

In Virginia, Democrats currently hold six of the 11 U.S. House seats under districts that were imposed by the state Supreme Court in 2021 after a bipartisan commission failed to agree on a map based on the latest census data.

The new plan could help Democrats win as many as 10 seats. Five are anchored in Democratic-heavy northern Virginia, including one shaped like a lobster that stretches into Republican-leaning rural areas.

Revisions to four other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads dilute the voting power of conservative blocs in those areas. And a reshaped district in parts of western Virginia lumps together three Democratic-leaning college towns to offset other Republican voters.

The Virginia redistricting plan is "pushing back against what other states have done in trying to stack the deck for Donald Trump in those congressional elections,” Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger said during an online rally last week.

Ads for the “yes to redistricting” campaign featuring former President Barack Obama have flooded the airwaves.

Opponents have distributed campaign materials citing past statements from Obama and Spanberger criticizing gerrymandering, but those were before Trump pushed Republican states to redraw their congressional maps in advance of this year's midterms.

Democrats “were all against gerrymandering before they were for it,” Virginia Republican Party Chairman Jeff Ryer said.

Virginia court weighs whether lawmakers acted illegally

Virginia lawmakers endorsed a constitutional amendment allowing their mid-decade redistricting last fall, then passed it again in January as part of a two-step process that requires an intervening election for an amendment to be placed on the ballot. The measure allows lawmakers to redistrict until returning the task to a bipartisan commission after the 2030 census.

In February, they passed a new U.S. House map to take effect pending the outcome of the redistricting referendum. Republicans have filed multiple legal challenges against the effort.

A Tazewell County judge ruled that the redistricting push was illegal for several reasons. Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley Jr. said lawmakers failed to follow their own rules for adding the redistricting amendment to a special session.

He ruled that their initial vote failed to occur before the public began casting ballots in last year’s general election and thus didn’t count toward the two-step process. He also ruled that the state failed to publish the amendment three months before that election, as required by law.

If the state Supreme Court agrees with the lower court, the results from Tuesday's vote could be rendered moot.

___

Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed in South Hill, Virginia, Gary Fields in Alexandria, Virginia, and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

Soccer's governing body announced Tuesday it will make more tickets available at 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday for all 104 games in Categories 1, 2 and 3 plus the new “front category” pricing it added this month.

The new category sparked online complaints from fans who said they thought the better seats in the categories they had bought tickets for were withheld and they were assigned less favorable locations.

FIFA in December put tickets on sale at prices ranging from $140 for Category 3 in the first round to $8,680 for the final, then raised prices to as much as $10,990 when sales reopened on April 1.

FIFA did not respond to an April 9 request for comment about the new ticket categories it added.

Also Tuesday, The Athletic reported that tickets sales are lagging for the U.S. opener against Paraguay on June 12 at Inglewood, California. It said a document distributed to local organizers dated April 10 said 40,934 tickets had been purchased for the U.S.-Paraguay game and 50,661 for the Iran-New Zealand contest on April 15. FIFA projects SoFi's World Cup capacity at about 69,650, noting it may change.

FIFA's December sale priced U.S.-Paraguay tickets at $1,120, $1,940 and $2,735, and Iran-New Zealand seats at $140, $380 and $450.

___

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

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan and 32-year-old Jihad Abu Naim were killed in an attack by Israeli settlers and soldiers on the village of al-Mughayyir that left three others wounded.

Kazem Al-Hajj Mohammad, who witnessed the shooting, said that there was a volley of gunfire after settlers and the army arrived. School administrators told parents to come get their children and were met with more gunfire and tear gas. That’s when the two were killed, he said.

He and other mourners carried the two bodies sheathed in Palestinian flags out of the Ramallah Medical Complex, where the dead and wounded were taken after the shooting.

“This is our daily reality,” he said, noting that the role of settlers and the army had become interchangeable amid daily violence, displacement, land grabs and livestock seizures.

Israel’s military said that the gunman was a civilian, an army reservist who wasn't mobilized. The military said that he hadn't been arrested, but that the incident was under investigation. It said that troops had responded to reports of rock-throwing toward an Israeli civilian vehicle.

Al-Mughayyir, a village 9 miles (15 kilometers) northeast of Ramallah, has been an epicenter of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers and soldiers, with Palestinians reporting dozens of attacks in 2025, including lethal shootings, arson and vandalism. The main road leading to al-Mughayyir has been frequently closed by a military gate, and residents say they have gradually lost access to their agricultural lands and olive groves.

Many of the groves were razed during an Israeli army raid last summer, after a Palestinian gunman allegedly opened fire on settlers grazing sheep near the village. Eight settler outposts now encircle al-Mughayyir, including Adei Ad, which was legalized by Israel’s government in December.

Another 14-year-old, Mohammed Naasan, was killed there in January. Hamdi al-Naasan, Aws' father, was killed by settlers in a 2019 clash that drew international condemnation, including by the United Nations.

Al-Naasan and Abu Naim are the latest Palestinians to be killed this year in the occupied West Bank, where 10 people have been killed by Israeli settlers — surpassing the total killed by settlers in 2025. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 240 Palestinians were killed in the territory last year, the vast majority by Israel’s military, while nine deaths were attributed to settlers.

But rights groups caution that the distinction can be blurred. The Israeli advocacy group Yesh Din, which tracks violence in the West Bank, has reported that lethal violence is increasingly being carried out by “settler-soldiers” from reserve battalions, both when they're working and when they're off duty.

“The availability of uniforms and firearms has given a vast number of settlers, some of them with a history of ideologically motivated offenses, the opportunity to engage in illegal acts against Palestinians, using military equipment, whether by abusing their powers while on duty or off duty altogether,” it said in a February report titled “Settlers in Uniform.”

Yesh Din noted an active duty reservist wearing civilian clothes opened fire in the village of Deir Jarir — also northeast of Ramallah — in December. Israel's military also opened an investigation into a reservist who shot and killed a Palestinian in the same village on April 11.

Israeli strikes kill 5 in Gaza

Also on Tuesday, Israeli strikes killed at least five Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, hospital authorities said, including four suspected militants who were killed when a drone strike hit a Hamas-controlled security point just after midnight in Khan Younis.

Nasser Hospital, which received the casualties, said another man was wounded in the strike in Amal, a Khan Younis neighborhood around 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) west of the so-called Yellow Line, separating the Israeli-controlled areas from the rest of Gaza, according to relatives of those killed.

Israel's military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Relatives said the militant-manned checkpoint was being used to police the area and protect people and their properties.

“They were protecting people and their properties,” said Ahmed Musa Abu Helal, a relative of the two casualties. “This is a cold-blooded killing that didn’t respect the truce."

In the northern town of Beit Lahiya, a 30-year-old woman was killed when Israel's navy opened fire toward tents sheltering displaced people early Tuesday, Shifa Hospital said.

Israel's military said it wasn’t aware of attacks in Beit Lahiya.

The deaths were the latest among Palestinians in the coastal enclave since a fragile ceasefire deal in October attempted to halt the more than two-year-long war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

While the heaviest fighting has subsided, the shaky ceasefire has seen almost daily Israeli fire. Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequently fire on Palestinians near military-held zones, killing more than 780 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.

The health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. But it does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.

Militants have carried out shooting attacks on troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to that and other violations. Four Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.

——— Metz reported from Ramallah, West Bank and Magdy from Cairo.

Tuesday, April 21

• Texas Mattress Makers
• Galveston County Fair & Rodeo
• Ace Berry
• Flora & More
• Texas Dental Implant Center

Monday, April 20

• Robins Landing Neighborhood Floor Plans - Houston Habitat for Humanity
• Homeownership Process - Houston Habitat for Humanity
• Volunteering - Houston Habitat for Humanity
• ReStore - Houston Habitat for Humanity
• Third Ward - Houston Habitat for Humanity

Friday, April 17

• ‘Houston Life’ is live today at the Houston Ballet Nutcracker Market Spring
• • Houston Ballet Nutcracker Market® SPRING
  • Dog Collar World
  • Linked by Stevi
  • The Hive
  • Big Creek Farms
  • EK The Boutique
  • House of Cottonwood
  • ParkerJoe

Thursday, April 16

• TUTS presents ‘Monty Python’s Spamalot’ rides into the Hobby Center
• • Monty Python’s Spamalot at TUTS Tickets
• One ticket, endless fun at the Galveston County Fair and Rodeo
• • Galveston County Fair and Rodeo
• Carpet Giant celebrates 50 years of proudly serving generations of Houstonians
• • Carpet Giant Website (mention Houston Life to get $150 off your purchase of $1,000)
• Faith ‘One Arm Wonder’ Malton and Zack ‘Pitbull’ Ruhl rappel 30 stories for non-profit Camp For All
• • Camp For All
  • Faith Malton

Wednesday, April 15

• Brush up on your makeup routine at Blushington River Oaks
• • Houston Life Deals (Get 20% off beauty services at Blushington River Oaks)
  • Blushington River Oaks
• The King himself shares how to save 20% on tickets to the Texas Renaissance Festival
• • Texas Renaissance Festival
• Ethan’s Ohana
• Cube Against Cancer 2026 Houston
• Cube Against Cancer
• Fortis College

Tuesday, April 14

• Former Texans WR Steven Sims Jr. to host FREE youth football camp
• • Must See Foundation
• Why it’s not just the generator - it’s the company behind it
• • Gen Pro
• How the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce helps local companies grow
• • Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
• Step Onward Foundation uses music to fight homelessness in Texas
• • Step Onward Foundation
  • Sunday Funday Community Celebration

Monday, April 13

• Robins Landing Neighborhood Floor Plans - Houston Habitat for Humanity
• Homeownership Process - Houston Habitat for Humanity
• Volunteering - Houston Habitat for Humanity
• ReStore - Houston Habitat for Humanity
• Third Ward - Houston Habitat for Humanity

Friday, April 10

• Your guide to the Houston Barbecue Festival this weekend: Top pitmasters, unlimited BBQ samples, and more
• • Houston BBQ Festival
• Texas CASA’s partner agencies train volunteers to be a voice and a lifeline for children in the foster care system
• • Become a CASA
• ‘Grow the Game’ Initiative expands soccer access in Houston ahead of the World Cup with Guinness World Records attempt
• • Airbnb GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™
• Houston’s Garden Theatre celebrates 5 years with Stephen Sondheim’s “Company”
• • The Garden Theatre
• Father daughter duo Steve Zahn and Audrey Zahn chat new film ‘She Dances’

Thursday, April 9

• The Salvation Army Women’s Auxiliary kicks off 22nd annual ‘Chic Boutique’
• • Chic Boutique
• Aramie Payton brings Broadway pedigree to Alley Theatre’s revival of “Fences”
• • Alley Theatre
• Layoff leads Houston creator to viral small business mission
• • Follow David on Instagram
• At just 19, Jalyn Hall is stepping into his moment
• • NBC’s “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins”
• KPRC 2’s “Eat Like a Local”

Wednesday, April 8

• Houston Underwater Film Festival returns this weekend with stunning ocean films 🌊🌊
• • School, college and scuba students: claim a free ticket by emailing huff@hups.org
  • Houston Underwater Film Festival Tickets
• Celebrate Earth Month by sipping sustainably!
• • Wine and Travel Contributor Daniela Garrido
• Shred Day Houston: Safely destroy documents and fight hunger on April 18
• • Comerica Shred Day Houston
• Trade-show-tested home picks: Coffee, Water, Bidets and Moving Gear
• • Kathryn Emery Home Improvement & Lifestyle Expert
• A kid’s guide to top play picks to cut screen time and spark creativity
• • Kid-trepreneur Dylan Emery

Tuesday, April 7

• Grand Marshals Kam Franklin & Brian Ching preview the 39th annual Art Car Parade
• • Houston Art Car Parade
• This Texas artist is turning Titanic artifacts into art
• • Souls of the Titanic
• In Houston, Your Windows May Not Last as Long—Here’s What to Know (and What to Do About It)
• • Pella Windows and Doors
• Houston’s Trillest Chef bringing bold flavors of H-Town the national stage
• • Follow Chef Machete on Instagram
• Texas Dental Implant Center

Monday, April 6

• Houston’s Garden Theatre celebrates 5 years with Stephen Sondheim’s “Company”
• • The Garden Theatre
• Sysco’s World Cup-themed food show is a preview of how Houston plans to feed the world
• • Sysco World Cup-themed food show
• The Houston Art Car Parade

Friday, April 3

• HL Rhythm Energy Question of the Week
• WWE Wrestler Je’Von Evans
• WWE Monday Night Raw at Toyota Center Tickets
• IBEW Local 66
• KPRC 2’s “Eat Like a Local”

Thursday, April 2

• Disney on Ice
• The Chevron Championship
• Maxine Sharf brings ‘Maxi’s Kitchen’ to Houston Life with her mom
• • Follow Maxine Sharf on Instagram
  • "Maxi’s Kitchen: Easy Go-To Recipes to Make Again and Again"
• Father daughter duo Steve Zahn and Audrey Zahn chat new film ‘She Dances’

Wednesday, April 1

• Spring gets sweeter with two easy recipes: Carrot cupcake and blueberry crumble bun
• • Follow Cookbook Author Florence Jackson on Instagram
• This Houston Restaurant Hasn’t Raised Prices Since Its Food Truck Days
• • Black Restaurant Week
  • Chitalian Pizzeria
• Tarot, the Fool card and finding meaning on Derrick’s birthday (April Fool’s Day)
• • Tarot Card Reader Amber Ambrose
• Theatre Under the Stars presents ‘Back to the Future: The Musical’ through April 5th
• • TUTS “Back to the Future: The Musical”

Tuesday, March 31

• Send Well Wishes to Tessa on her last day
• • Tessa Barrera announces she’s leaving ‘Houston Life’
• Calling all book lovers: Houston indie bookstore crawl returns for its third year of literary adventure
• • 2026 Houston Bookstore Crawl
• Preview the 13th annual Insperity Invitational presented by United Healthcare
• • Insperity Invitational
• Texas roots and coastal growth, how the Oyster Bros in Palacios are redefining the gulf oyster
• • Oyster Bros
• Goodtaste with Tanji Patton

Monday, March 30

• How Autism Moms of Houston became a lifeline for families raising children who are neurodivergent
• • Autism Moms of Houston
  • Autism Awareness Festival
• An offer fit for a new you! Grab the Alloy Personal Training Houston Life Deal
• • Alloy Personal Training Houston
  • Houston Life Deals
• Who’s responsible when a child is hurt at daycare?
• • Bivona Law
• At just 19, Jalyn Hall is stepping into his moment
• • NBC’s “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins”

Friday, March 27

• Family fun, charity, & of course golf shine at Texas Children’s Houston Open ⛳
• • Texas Children’s Houston Open
  • TCHO Cleats for Kids

Wednesday, March 25

• Tessa Barrera announces she’s leaving ‘Houston Life’
• Plan aims to turn Garden Oaks Theater into an arts hub before it’s too late
• • Save the Garden Oaks Theater
• Fore! Preview the 2026 Texas Children’s Houston Open
• • Texas Children’s Houston Open
• Women, Wealth, and breaking ‘The Success Lie’
• • Chantell Preston
  • “The Success Lie” by Chantell Preston
• McGovern Allergy & Asthma Clinic
• Gexa Energy

Tuesday, March 24

• From puppy playtime to pesky nipping, helpful springtime tips for dog owners
• • Stephanie Bennett’s Believe in Dog Training
• How one Houston program is helping kids discover confidence—and their future
• • Sam Houston Area Council Boy Scouts of America
• Houston Ballet’s Busy Spring: Nutcracker Market, Sons de L’âme & YAGP Finals
• • Houston Ballet
• Breaking barriers and popping corks with CEO and Master Sommelier June Rodil
• • Master Sommelier June Rodil
  • Goodnight Hospitality

Monday, March 23

• Blooming Wonders at ARTECHOUSE
• • Spring arrives at ARTECHOUSE Houston with ‘Blooming Wonders’
• Texas Dental Implant Center
• • Trusted Dental Implant Care in Houston — Board-Certified Periodontist Helps Complex Cases
• Disability Attorney Marc Whitehead
• • Expert tax advice: Are your Social Security and Disability benefits taxable?
• Allied Outdoor Solutions
• • From basic to beautiful: See this stunning backyard transformation in Weston Lakes

Thursday, March 19

• Springtime fun at the Houston Zoo
• • Zoo Bloom
  • All you can Zoo
  • Saving the Galápagos Islands

Wednesday, March 18

• Houston Latino Film Festival celebrates 10 Years with Cheech Marin
• • Houston Latino Film Festival
• Find the good vibes every weekend for Jazzy Sundays in the Parks
• • Jazzy Sundays in the Parks
• Get to know Dash rising star, Avery Patterson
• • Houston Dash
• Kevin Williamson makes fans SCREAM all over again in latest franchise installation
• • Kevin Williamson
• Self Employed? Tax Filing Moves That Help You Qualify for a Mortgage
• • Habayit Home Loans
  • Mortgage Expert Rich Bonn’s Upcoming Webinar

Tuesday, March 17

• Houston’s Mezclada Dance Company blends hip hop, Latin and contemporary dance forms into high-energy performances
• • Performing Arts Houston New/Now featuring Mezclada Dance Company
• METRO rolls out systemwide changes: A first look at the new technology to help streamline your ride
• • Metro Houston
• Houston Life Deals: Fun & savings for the entire family
• • HoustonLifeDeals.com
• Frontier Utilities teams with Kids’ Meals Houston to pack thousands of meals
• • Frontier Utilities

Monday, March 16

• Affordable rodeo-ready outfits you can find at Target this season
• • Target.com
• Houston’s growing need for linemen: Why the trade pays and how to start
• • IBEW Local 66
• ET hosts Nischelle Turner and Kevin Frazier share highlights from the 98th Academy Awards
• • Entertainment Tonight Oscars Coverage
• Houston Ballet principal dancer Karina González brings Frida Kahlo to life in Broken Wings
• • “Broken Wings” at Houston Ballet Tickets
• The Largest Indoor Waterpark in the U.S.? It’s Just a Road Trip from Houston
• • Kalahari Resorts and Conventions

Friday, March 13

• HL Rhythm Energy Question of the Week
• Houston Life Deals: Fun & savings for the entire family
• Outriding the Devil: Angela Ganter’s incredible rodeo comeback
• • Outriding the Devil premieres at River Oaks Theatre
• ‘Aliens’ 40th anniversary cast reunion and more at Pop Culture Con 2026
• • Pop Culture Con
• Alley Theatre brings Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” to Houston with a fresh twist
• • “The Importance of Being Earnest” at Alley Theatre Tickets
• Bounce your way to better fitness: trampoline workouts in West U
• • Motiv Fitness at West University
• Moon 2 Mars Festival returns to Space Center Houston with out-of-this-world fun and concerts this spring break
• • Space Center Houston

Thursday, March 12

• KPRC 2 INSIDERS: Enter for your chance to see Tim McGraw at RODEOHOUSTON
• The Birthday Joy Program helps kids in foster care, shelters and group homes celebrate their special day
• • the Birthday Joy Program Website
• Inside “The Feminine Universe” Houston’s new all-women immersive art experience
• • The Feminine Universe Art Show Tickets
• Bring the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo home with these sips and bites
• • Entertaining Expert Paul Zahn
• Spring is in full swing at CITYCENTRE Houston
• • CITYCENTRE
• Kalahari Resorts and Conventions

Tuesday, March 10

• Enjoy Spring Break at the Houston Museum of Natural Science
• • Houston Museum of Natural Science
• Honoring the fallen & recognizing community heroes
• • Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
  • BP America
• Houston author Margie Seaman proves it is never too late to chase a dream
• • Margie Seaman
  • “Someday Is Our Horizon” by Margie Seaman on Amazon

Monday, March 9

• NestFest beach cleanup invites volunteers to protect nesting sea turtles on the Galveston Coast
• From bumper boats to STEAM activities, enjoy a FUNonmenal spring break at Discovery Green
• • FUNomenal Spring Break at Discovery Green
• This veteran-owned business is helping Houstonians keep the heat the out and the savings in with new windows
• • The Window Source
• You’ve been diagnosed with cancer, now what? Non-profit CanCare pairs you with survivors who can help
• • CanCare
• Spring Break Staycation: Why The Travel Mom says Houston families love Great Wolf Lodge
• • The Travel Mom
  • Great Wolf Lodge

Friday, March 6

• Houston Life Deals
• Pickle vs. anime: Largest pickle festival in Texas comes to Rosenberg with anime-inspired food
• • In A Pickle Festival
• Expedia’s 2026 Air Hacks: Best days to book, when to fly and top savings
• • Expedia Air Hacks Report
• The Parking Spot making airport parking a breeze
• • The Parking Spot
• A rustic dream venue just outside Houston
• • Country Oaks Venue
• Rare Texas artifacts step out ‘From the Vault’ at The Bryan Museum
• • The Bryan Museum
• Rhythm Energy Question of the Week

Thursday, March 5

• Gold Buckle Foodie Awards at Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
• Houston Life Deals
• Avoiding vacation headaches: New Vrbo survey on group travel reveals common pet peeves
• • Vrbo
• Houston wellness trend: A local body sculpting technique focused on lymphatic health
• • The Tox
• Catching up with Russell Dickerson ahead of debut RODEOHOUSTON performance
• • RODEOHOUSTON

Wednesday, March 4

• Houston Life Deals
• Moon 2 Mars Festival returns to Space Center Houston with out-of-this-world fun and concerts this spring break
• • Space Center Houston
• What to Wear to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo: Your Ultimate Style Guide 
• • Boot Barn
• Destin-Fort Walton Beach, more than beaches: reefs, fishing, little adventures
• • Visit Destin-Fort Walton Beach
• Baz Luhrmann’s ‘EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert’ gives fans a front-row seat to The King
• • “EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert” Film

Tuesday, March 3

• Diana Ross coming to Smart Financial Centre at Sugar Land
• Learn about the untold history of Black baseball
• • Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy
• Houston Life Deals
• Modern dental implants give Houston patients natural, comfortable smiles
• • Texas Dental Implant Center
• Houston native Kyrie McAlpin Talks ‘The Burbs’, Keke Palmer & a very Seth MacFarlane Christmas party

Monday, March 2

• Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
• • Houston Life kicks off opening day at 2026 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
• Suits & Boot Injury Lawyers

Friday, February 27

• Gabriel Basso takes us behind the scenes of Netflix’s ‘The Night Agent’
• • Netflix’s “The Night Agent”
• Mudbug Mania: Tanji Patton celebrates crawfish season in Houston
• • Goodtaste with Tanji Patton
  • Crawfish Shack
  • Crawfish Hideaway
• Theatre Under The Stars reveals 2026-27 season with Broadway tours & local shows
• • Theatre Under the Stars
• Boot Barn
• What to see and do in Malta — beaches, history and booking tips from The Travel Mom
• • The Travel Mom

Thursday, February 26

• Diana Ross at The Sugar Land Smart Financial Center
• KPRC 2 INSIDERS: Enter for a chance to see Creed perform at RodeoHouston
• Get a peek inside RodeoHouston’s World Championship BBQ Cookoff
• • Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
• Soulful river cruises that connect Black travelers to heritage and culture
• • AmaWaterways Soulful Experience River Cruise
• Houston Life Deals
• Allied Outdoor Solutions
• HCC Southeast College

Wednesday, February 25

• Behind the scenes of TUTS’ ‘Million Dollar Quartet’
• • Tickets to ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ at Theatre Under the Stars
• Houston influencers share their best thrifting tips for Rodeo
• • Find your nearest Goodwill store
• Plan the ultimate spring break getaway for everyone at Moody Gardens
• • Moody Gardens
• Ride along: METRO Police Chief explains new safety measures for Houston transit
• • Metro Houston

Tuesday, February 24

• Spring Break, but make it San Antonio
• • Visit San Antonio
• Alley Theatre’s ‘English’ explores identity, belonging, and the weight of learning a new language
• • Tickets to ‘English’ at Alley Theatre
• Looking for a Career Change? Here’s How You Could Be Job-Ready in 10 Months
• • Learn more about programs at United Education Institute Houston

Monday, February 23 (WE ARE BACK!!!)

• Indian Film Festival of Houston celebrates France with film, food and culture
• • Indian Film Festival of Houston Website
• KPRC 2 INSIDERS: Enter for a chance to see Riley Green perform at RodeoHouston
• • Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo
• Chris Hemsworth will keep you on the edge of your seat in ‘Crime 101’
• • “Crime 101” Movie Times
• Modern dental implants give Houston patients natural, comfortable smiles
• • Texas Dental Implant Center

February 6 - 20

• Houston is off air due to the Winter Olympics, but that doesn’t mean we’ll stop entertaining you. Be sure to follow us on social media to see all the HL fun. We’ll be back Feb. 23.
• • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Pinterest

Thursday, February 5

• Papa Johns Pizza
• The Cody Stephens Foundation saves lives with free heart screenings for young athletes
• • Cody Stephens Foundation
• Get ready for the return of the one and only Monster Jam in Houston
• • Tickets to Monster Jam at NRG Stadium
• Getting your best night’s sleep: How the latest materials and technology can help you sleep better
• • Texas Mattress Makers
• What is an “Orphan Generator”? And why it could put Houston homes at risk during an outage
• • GenPro.com
• Follow Mersha the Mini Panther on Instagram (Use MERSHA20 to get a discount at PrettyLitter)

Wednesday, February 4

• Simon & Garfunkel Story at The Sugar Land Smart Financial Center
• Behind the scenes of ‘Real Women Have Curves’ on stage at Alley Theatre
• • Tickets to ‘Real Women Have Curves’ at Alley Theatre
• Decoding body language: How to spot liars, read subtle signals, and communicate with confidence
• • Jan Hargrave
• In the Kitchen with Kroger: Why they are your one stop shop for the Big Game and Valentine’s Day
• • Kroger

Tuesday, February 3

• MFAH’s new exhibit explores Frida Kahlo’s lasting legacy
• • ‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’ at MFAH
• United Way of Greater Houston’s 211: Help is one call away
• • United Way of Greater Houston’s 211 Helpline
• After the freeze - now what? How to care for perennials and shrubs in Houston
• • Gardening with Skip
  • Houston Home and Garden Show
• Go back in time at Popfancy Dessert Bar’s new retro 80’s sci-fi arcade cafe
• • Popfancy Fan Cafe

Monday, February 2

• Kenny G at The Sugar Land Smart Financial Center
• The relationship advice that helps couples feel closer — even during hard conversations
• • Connection Expert Jenn Pinkerton
  • Connectin Cards Couples Edition on Amazon
• Paris Hilton’s “Infinite Icon”
• Arandas Bakery
• Texas Dental Implant Center

Friday, January 30

• Monster Energy Supercross heads into Houston featuring the world’s fastest racers
• • Monster Energy Supercross at NRG Stadium This Weekend
• From Trinidad and Tobago to Top Chef: Tristen Epps’ journey is rooted in culture
• • Chef Tristen Epps
  • A Classically Black Dinner - Vibrant + Modern + African
• Few physicians leave a legacy like this: Houston honors cancer pioneer Dr. Philip Salem
• • Salem Oncology Center
• The Travel Mom: Family-Friendly Wave-Season Deals from Princess
• • The Travel Mom
  • Princess Cruises

Thursday, January 29

• The Simon & Garfunkel Story at The Sugar Land Smart Financial Center
• Former KPRC 2 reporter shares ‘With Love From Harlem’: The story behind America’s First Black power couple
• • ReShonda Tate’s new book ‘With Love from Harlem’
• American Home Buyer
• How personalized aesthetics - Botox, fillers & lasers - can help you age better
• • Anti Age Institute
• The cast of ‘Bridgerton’ takes us behind-the-scenes of the ton for season 4
• • Netflix’s Bridgerton Season 4

Wednesday, January 28

• KPRC 2’s new evening anchor Stephania Jimenez makes her Houston debut with passion and purpose
• • Follow Stephania on her KPRC 2 Instagram Account
• Cars, boats and more: What to know about this year’s Houston AutoBoative Show 2026
• • Houston Autoboative Show (Save $20 with Family Four Pack Option)
• Get a taste of Old Town Katy with Tanji Patton of Goodtaste TV
• • Goodtaste with Tanji Patton
  • Peanut Butter Pie from Southern Dough
  • Southern Dough Baking Co.
  • Humble Grounds Coffeehouse
  • Harvest Kitchen & Bakery
• A Family Business Built on Trust: Luke’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning Serves Houston for Over 30 Years
• • Luke’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning

Tuesday, January 27

• Remembering the iconic artist David Adickes on his 99th birthday and his lasting legacy in Houston
• • David Adickes Art Website
  • Follow ‘Adickes Art’ on Instagram
• Plan a Vacation Day: Experts share 2026 travel trends and how to protect your trip
• • The Travel Mom
  • Follow The Travel Mom Emily Kaufman on Instagram
  • Travel Guard Insurance
• Texans Serving Texans: Gexa Energy gives back
• • Gexa Energy
• Bill Skarsgård steps beyond horror roots in new film, ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

Monday, January 26

• Houston relationship and intimacy expert dishes on the small relationship habits that make love last
• • Houston Relationship Therapy
  • VIVID Relationships app
• Crawfish & Noodles gearing up for a busy crawfish season
• • Crawfish & Noodles
• Traveling smarter in 2026: What travel experts say to book now
• • Travel Expert Jeanenne Tornatore
  • Follow the Outside Insider on Instagram

Friday, January 23

• Discover why Sam Houston Race Park is a top spot for family outings with “Houston Life”
• • Sam Houston Race Park
  • Corgi Races
  • Shannon Jewelers Presents Diamond Dig
  • Wiener Dog Races

Thursday, January 22

• WEIGH IN: What are your must have products during a freeze?
• Cars, boats and more: What to know about this year’s Houston AutoBoative Show 2026
• • Houston Autoboative Show (Save $20 with Family Four Pack Option)
• Honoring Dr. Philip A. Salem for innovations in cancer care and research
• • Salem Oncology Center
• Bert Kreischer talks fatherhood, fame, and his new scripted comedy series, “Free Bert”
• • Netflix’s “Free Bert”
• Last chance to enjoy the Green Mountain Energy Ice at Discovery Green
• • Ice at Discovery Green

Wednesday, January 21

• Seth Rogen, Ike Barinholtz & Chase Sui Wonders chat comedy series ‘The Studio’
• • Apple Tv+’s ‘The Studio’
• Allied Outdoor Solutions
• Living Designs Furniture
• The Women’s Resource empowers women and girls through free financial and career coaching services
• • The Women’s Resource
• Houston woman helps bring Black cowboy history to PBS
• • Alma’s Way on PBS Kids
  • Black Cowboy Coalition

Friday, January 16

• School Makes You Super: KPRC-TV reporter and mom Haley Hernandez debuts first children’s book to ease school anxiety
• • Buy ‘School Makes You Super" here
• Children’s Museum Houston celebrates the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
• • MLK Day Celebration at Children’s Museum Houston
• Two experts explain why Key Largo, Florida should be on your 2026 travel list
• • The Travel Mom
• The man known as “the human lie detector” works to keep serial killers behind bars
• • Killer Confessions

Thursday, January 15

• Young voices, lasting legacy: Houston students honor Dr. King in 30th Annual Oratory Competition
• • Foley MLK Jr. Oratory Competition
• Breaking through the plateau with Dr. Ian Smith’s ‘The Last 15′
• • Follow Dr. Ian Smith on Instagram
  • Purchase “The Last 15″ on Amazon
• Mindful eating tips and a pesto vinaigrette recipe to kickstart a healthier new year
• • Leaf & Grain
• Stay powered and protected with GenPro.com, Houston’s premier generator specialists
• • Call or log on to book an estimate and receive a functional mini generator worth $50 for FREE

Wednesday, January 14

• Check out the fun, food and giveaways for Houston Rockets fans this week
• • Houston Rockets Game Day Tickets
• A Kroger pharmacist’s guide to everyday wellness in 2026
• • Enter for a chance to win a Kroger gift card
  • Kroger
• Mix-MATCH Festival returns with over 20 performances celebrating Houston’s creative spirit
• • Tickets to 3rd Annual Mix-MATCH Festival
  • Daisies & Pancakes

Tuesday, January 13

• Kick off the new year with magic: Magician Curt Miller returns with his show “The Conjurer”
• • Curt Miller
  • Tickets to The Conjurer: An Intimate Magical Experience with Curt Miller
• Brad Meltzer Book Signing
• • Follow Brad Meltzer on Instagram
• Innovative Lasers of Houston

Monday, January 12

• Turn to tea this year to slow down, reset, and satisfy without regrets
• • Tea Please
• The Travel Mom: Family fun at Knott’s Berry Farm - a California getaway everyone will love
• • The Travel Mom
  • Visit Buena Park
  • Knott’s Berry Farm
• Pet adoption events for the new year at Fort Bend County Animal Services
• • Fort Bend County Animal Services
• New Year, New Smile: AI-driven smile design at Texas Dental Implant Center
• • Texas Dental Implant Center

Friday, January 9

• Shop The Sale Houston with proceeds benefitting childhood cancer research
• • The Sale Houston
• A new chapter begins: Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones chat about their new pairing
• • TODAY with Jenna & Sheinelle
• Former radio personality, Sarah Pepper returns to Texas to emcee 2026 Chevron Houston Marathon
• • Follow Sarah Pepper on Instagram

Thursday, January 8

• Belle comes to Houston - Kyra Belle Johnson stars in Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ now at the Hobby Center
• • Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” Tickets at Hobby Center
• Mathew Knowles launches new Destiny’s Child nationwide tribute tour; Houston is first stop
• • Destiny’s Child: Iconic Reimagined Tribute Tickets
• Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

Wednesday, January 7

• The story behind Luke’s Plumbing and Air Conditioning serving Houstonians since 1991
• • Luke’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning
• Where karaoke meets claw machines: Welcome to Klaw‑Oke Kingdom in Pearland
• • Klaw-Oke Kingdom
• Brace yourself, the 1993 Oilers vs. Bills game is featured in new docuseries ‘Don’t Call it a Comeback’
• • VICE TV’s “Don’t Call It A Comeback”
• New Year, Strong Start: EōS Fitness Experts Share Tips to Crush 2026 Goals
• • EōS Fitness

Tuesday, January 6

• Houston bagel pros talk schmear, slices and specials ahead of National Bagel Day
• • Bagel Shop Bakery
• Comedian Chinedu Ogu takes H-Town-rooted comedy on a national tour
• • Chinedu at Punch Line Houston
• Start your new year weight loss journey at Health Solutions and Weightloss
• • Health Solutions and Weightloss
• Enroll Now: Key deadlines and tips for 2026 Marketplace coverage
• • Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas

Monday, January 5

• Rosca de Reyes Season is here - and this Houston bakery is busy
• • Arandas Bakery
• Damp or Dry January? These non-alcoholic wines actually taste like wine
• • Daniela Garrido | Wine and Travel Expert
• New Year, New Smile: AI-driven smile design at Texas Dental Implant Center
• • Texas Dental Implant Center
• Freeze Miser

Friday, January 2

• Tough but fair: NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas visits Houston Life
• • NBC Nightly News
  • Tom Llamas
• Tarot Card Reader Amber Ambrose
• Opening weekend kicks off at Sam Houston Race Park TODAY!
• • Sam Houston Race Park

Thursday, January 1

• New Year’s fitness made simple: Tips and a low-impact workout for beginners
• • Hoodfit
• Chantell Preston
• HiFi at The Finn

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Frosty nights aren't unusual this time of year. Across the region, the average date of the last frost ranges from mid-April to early June, according to the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University. But the first half of April was unusually warm for much of the region, and that, coupled with the quick drop in temperature, could cause some problems.

Boston saw temperatures climb into the high 70s (around 26 Celsius) last week, with cities including New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. reaching temperatures in the 90s (around 32 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service. By the weekend, temperatures across the region dropped into the 50s (around 10 Celsius), with some areas in New England seeing snow showers.

And the cold continued into this week: The National Weather Service issued a freeze warning for Monday night and Tuesday morning for parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.

In Ohio, the warm weather pushed peach and apple trees to start budding early at Apple Hill Orchards, which includes about 80 acres (32 hectares) in Mansfield and 110 acres (45 hectares) in Fredericktown. But the temperature then dropped into the low 20s (around minus 5 Celsius), ruining one variety of peach, said owner Anne Joudrey.

“Farming is farming, and you never know what you’re gonna get, but we had a pretty good bloom, so we were expecting a pretty good crop,” she said Monday.

The apples were doing OK, she said, and it helps that the trees are planted on high ground so cold air drains away.

“We should fare pretty well, hopefully,” she said. “But you never know.”

In Vermont, the temperature swing affected operations at Understory Farm in Bridport, which grows cut flowers. Tulips that were supposed to be ready for Mother's Day in mid-May have already bloomed in the farm's greenhouses, said owner Gregory Witscher.

“That just means that we have to harvest them all at the same time,” he said. “We have to harvest them and store them with the bulbs on in crates in a walk-in cooler for longer.”

Witscher grows about 50 varieties of flowers for wholesale markets. Weather fluctuations require flexibility, he said, and it's become more common for small vegetable and flower farms to have row covers or heaters to protect plants from cold or shade cloth for extreme heat.

“With the hot weather and then the cold weather, I think it's intense, and it makes things challenging,” he said. “The longer I do this, the more I want to have as many options as possible and have a lot of tools and resources available to be extremely nimble.”

President and CEO Michael Reinsdorf made it clear after firing executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas and general manager Marc Eversley near the end of the season that he wanted Donovan to remain on the job. He said anyone who wanted to bring in a new coach was “probably not the right candidate for us.”

Now, it looks like whoever the Bulls hire to run their organization will get that opportunity.

“While we clearly wanted Billy to return as our head coach, we had open dialogue about the importance of respecting the process of bringing in new basketball operations leadership," Reinsdorf said in a news release. “Together, we mutually agreed that giving that person the freedom to shape the organization was the best approach for everyone involved.”

The 60-year-old Donovan consistently has said he still has a passion for coaching. The decision to leave the Bulls was made “after a series of thoughtful and extensive discussions with ownership regarding the future of the organization,” Donovan said in the team release announcing the move.

“I believe it is in the best interest of the Bulls, to allow the new leader to build out the staff as they see fit,” he said.

Donovan was arguably the top candidate on the market when the Bulls hired him in September 2020, a few months after Karnisovas and Eversley got their jobs.

Chicago’s lone playoff appearance since all three were hired came during the 2021-22 season, when it finished sixth in the Eastern Conference at 46-36 and got knocked out by Milwaukee in the first round. The Bulls lost in the play-in tournament the next three years.

Donovan got a contract extension last offseason. Reinsdorf said after firing Karnisovas and Eversley that the problem was the roster construction — not the coach.

Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, Michael's father, praised Donovan for the “class and genuine care” that he brought to the organization.

“We wanted Billy to continue as our head coach — that was never in question,” Jerry Reinsdorf said. “But through honest conversations, we all agreed that giving our new head of basketball operations the right to build out his staff was the most important thing for the future of this franchise. That is the kind of person Billy is — he put the Bulls first.”

Karnisovas’ inability to land a franchise cornerstone player and refusal to give the Bulls a better shot at the No. 1 pick by rebuilding were glaring. He finally changed course before this year’s trade deadline, dealing Nikola Vucevic to Boston, Kevin Huerter to Detroit, Coby White to Charlotte and Chicago product Ayo Dosunmu to Minnesota. The Bulls loaded up on second-round draft picks and did not get any first-rounders in return.

One of the players Chicago got in return was Jaden Ivey from Detroit. Chicago waived him following anti-LGBTQ+ comments about religion he made in videos posted on his Instagram account.

___

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

Voters in the Commonwealth are considering a ballot measure that would amend Virginia’s constitution to give the Democratic-majority General Assembly temporary power to redraw the state’s congressional districts. It’s the latest move in an escalating redistricting arms race that began in July 2025, when Texas Republican lawmakers redrew their state’s congressional map to favor Republicans at President Donald Trump’s urging.

Democrats hold six of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats, but if a plan passed by the legislature in February and signed by Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger is enacted, the party could gain the upper hand in 10 districts, a net pickup of four seats.

The new boundaries would be in place in time for November’s midterm congressional elections, where just a handful of seats could determine which party controls the House for the last two years of Trump’s final term.

Under the proposal, state lawmakers would retain the power to redraw district boundaries until October 2030, when the authority would revert to the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission. The commission would create new maps for the 2032 election after the census.

Spanberger and former President Barack Obama are among the high-profile Democrats who have endorsed the referendum, saying it's a necessary response to Republican-initiated mid-decade redistricting in other states. But groups opposed to the measure have also prominently featured the two in campaign materials alongside their past quotes critical of gerrymandering. Former GOP Govs. Glenn Youngkin and George Allen oppose the measure.

Groups supporting the proposed amendment have far outraised those opposing it, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project.

Democrats won Virginia in the past five presidential elections, but voters tend to be less party-loyal in state elections, as the governorship has changed party hands six times over the last 33 years.

If support for the measure falls mostly along party lines, the “Yes” side can expect overwhelming support in the state’s traditional Democratic strongholds of Northern Virginia and the cities of Richmond and Norfolk, while the “No” side should see wide margins in the smaller, more rural counties that make up the bulk of the state geographically.

Fairfax County, the state’s most populous, votes heavily Democratic, but Republican candidates who can chip away at the Democratic advantage there can win statewide. In 2021, Republicans Youngkin and then-attorney general candidate Jason Miyares received about 35% of the vote in Fairfax and won their races. By comparison, Trump lost Virginia in all three of his presidential campaigns, and his best showing in Fairfax was about 31% in 2024. Republican Winsome Earle-Sears received about 26% of the vote in her unsuccessful 2025 gubernatorial bid.

Other key jurisdictions to watch are Chesterfield and Stafford counties and the cities of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. Spanberger and Democratic presidential nominees Joe Biden and Kamala Harris carried all four areas in their statewide victories, but Youngkin swept the four in 2021. Majority “No” votes in any of these areas on election night could be an indicator of a very close race.

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

Virginia does not conduct automatic recounts. On ballot questions, a group of 50 or more voters may request and pay for a recount if the vote margin is 1 percentage point or less. The government will pay for the recount if the margin is less than 0.5 percentage points or the recount changes the outcome. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is eligible for a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

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

When do polls close?

Polls close at 7 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The proposed constitutional amendment is the only statewide contest on the ballot.

It reads: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

A “yes” vote would support allowing the General Assembly to redraw congressional districts ahead of the midterms. A “no” vote would leave current boundaries unchanged until the next round of regularly scheduled redistricting after the 2030 census.

Who gets to vote?

Any voter registered in Virginia can cast a ballot. Eligible voters may register on Election Day.

How many voters are there?

There were 6,386,877 registered voters as of March 1. Virginia voters do not register by party.

How many people actually vote?

About 3.4 million votes were cast in the 2025 general election for Virginia governor, which was the last statewide election. This was about 54% of registered voters at the time.

How much of the vote is cast early or absentee?

About 43% of total votes cast in the 2025 general election for governor were cast early or by absentee ballot.

As of Monday, about 1.4 million ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election. That’s about 93% of the total advance votes cast in the 2025 gubernatorial election. In-person early voting concluded on Saturday.

When are early and absentee votes released?

Virginia counties and independent cities vary in terms of when they release results from early and absentee voting.

Less than a third of jurisdictions release all or almost all of their early and absentee voting results in their first vote update of the night.

Nearly half the jurisdictions release no early or absentee voting results in the first vote update.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the 2025 general election for Virginia governor, the AP first reported results at 7:10 p.m. ET, or 10 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 1:52 a.m. ET with more than 99% of total votes counted.

Are we there yet?

As of Tuesday, there will be 196 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

___

Follow election results for the Virginia redistricting special election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/virginia-special-general-results-question-1/.

The civil rights group made the announcement on Tuesday, saying President Donald Trump's administration appears to be preparing legal action against it or some of its employees.

“Although we don’t know all the details, the focus appears to be on the SPLC’s prior use of paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups,” CEO Bryan Fair said in a statement.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

The Southern Poverty Law Center previously paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities, often sharing it with local and federal law enforcement, Fair said. It was used to monitor threats of violence, he said, adding that the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.

“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”

He said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded in 1971 and used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups. The nonprofit has become a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.

The investigation could add to concerns that Trump's Republican administration is using the Justice Department to go after conservative opponents and his critics. It follows a number of other investigations into Trump foes that have raised questions about whether the law enforcement agency has been turned into a political weapon.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has faced intense criticism from conservatives, who have accused it of unfairly maligning right-wing organizations as extremist groups because of their viewpoints. The center regularly condemns Trump’s rhetoric and policies around voting rights, immigration and other issues.

The center came under fresh scrutiny after the assassination last year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed attention to its characterization of the group that Kirk founded and led. The center included a section on that group, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the agency was severing its relationship with the center, which had long provided law enforcement with research on hate crime and domestic extremism. Patel said the center had been turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the United States.

House Republicans hosted a hearing centered on the Southern Poverty Law Center in December, saying it coordinated efforts with President Joe Biden's Democratic administration "to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”

A spike in gas prices due to the Iran war, now in its eighth week, resulted in a hefty 1.7% gain in retail sales in March after a revised 0.7% increase in February, according to the Commerce Department’s report on Tuesday. The figure marked the fastest one-month increase in retail sales in more than three years.

The report marks the first read on spending to capture the effects of the Iran war.

Excluding gas prices, retail sales were up 0.6%, helped in part by government tax refunds and warm weather.

Business at gas stations rose 15.5% percent.

Elsewhere, shoppers were still willing to spend. Sales at department stores rose 4.2%, while sales at furniture and home furnishings stores were up 2.2%. Online retailers saw a 1% gain. Consumer electronics and appliance stores posted a 0.9% increase. The only area that saw a decline for March was miscellaneous retailers, according to the Commerce report.

The snapshot offers only a partial look at consumer spending and doesn’t include things like travel and hotel stays. The lone services category – restaurants – registered a more modest gain of 0.1%.

The so-called control group—which excludes food services, autos, building materials and gas station sales and is used to calculate economic growth—rose 0.7%. That offered a good sign of broad spending by consumers, economists said.

“It’s a blowout retail sales figure for March,“ Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a report.

She noted that the impact of tariffs is visible in the high spending on electronics and appliances due to higher prices. A small increase at restaurants may indicate some early signs of pullback as consumers have to spend more at the pump, she said.

“Overall, the American consumer is still healthy,” she added. "Extra income from tax refunds is helping many households weather this oil shock, but that extra money won’t last forever.”

The Iran war began Feb. 28 and has shut down the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

Late last month, U.S. gas prices jumped past an average of $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022.

Economists had believed that an unusually large jump in tax refunds would kick start spending at the start of the year. But spiking gas prices are taking a bite out of that money. And the Iran war is also further dampening shoppers' mood. Consumer sentiment plunged to a record low in April, according to a survey released earlier this month by the University of Michigan, largely because of the Iran war and concerns over higher gas prices.

Shoppers aren’t just feeling it at the gas pump, but are also starting to see unforeseen costs everywhere, including when they travel such as higher baggage fees. They will also likely see higher prices on different products ripple through the supply chain as companies start to pass on higher transportation costs to shoppers, analysts said.

The jump in gas prices caused a sharp spike in inflation last month, creating major challenges for the inflation-fighters at the Federal Reserve and increasing already significant political hurdles for the White House.

Consumer prices rose 3.3% in March from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.9% in March from February, the largest such gain in nearly four years.

Heading into the war, shoppers were already cautious. But Bryan Eshelman, Americas leader of retail and a partner and managing director at consultancy AlixPartners, noted his retail clients see their customers pulling back even more now.

“Particularly in the low-end economy, people are shifting from wants to needs,” he said.

R.J. Hottovy, head of analytical research at Placer.ai, noted that for seven straight weeks, traffic at nondiscretionary retailers like grocers outpaced that of discretionary merchants. That trend was reversed the week of April 6, helped by the distribution of tax refunds and spending tied to spring break and Easter.

But after the data goes past Easter trends, future visits will largely depend on consumer sentiment regarding broader macroeconomic conditions and gas prices, Hottovy said. The firm tracks people’s movements based on cellphone usage.

That home went up in flames slower because it was fortified with better materials. Add moving vegetation, mulch, wood fences and hot tubs with their highly flammable insultation several feet away and experts said you can protect houses from the increasing danger of wildfires on a warming planet.

The research is being done by workers at a remote site in South Carolina. They have set fire to 13 houses because scientists need to burn to learn.

Inside the carefully crafted home were sensors and a few cameras the site's manager said will “give their life for science.” Outside are nearly $1 million of other cameras and instruments in a fireproof building nearby and scattered around.

The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety is a nonprofit created by insurers to make houses and other buildings more resilient. The institute's 100-acre (40-hectare) site in Richburg, South Carolina, started to study hurricanes and heavy wind and rain.

As wildfire danger increased in recent years, they sometimes turn the six-story tall wall of 105 fans stacked on top of each other to blow out of the wind tunnel's massive doors and spread fire.

“We crash test houses,” said Roy Wright, the president of the institute.

Wildfires are worsening, costing more damage

From 2016 to 2025, wildfires in the United States on average burned an area the size of Massachusetts each year, slightly more than 11,000 square miles (28,500 square kilometers). That’s 2.6 times the average burn area of the 1980s, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Canada’s land burned on average for the last 10 years is 2.8 times more than during the 1980s, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

In the United States, wildfires have caused an average of $17.7 billion a year in damage since 2020, according to statistics kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the nonprofit Climate Central.

Climate change is intensifying and extending fire seasons across the U.S. and a growing population puts densely packed neighborhoods into fire-threatened areas. In the past three years, massive and devastating wildfires hit California, Maui in Hawaii and the North and South Carolina mountains.

Drought across much of the United States — especially in the West and Southeast — is at record severe levels for this time of year. Add to that record heat and unheard of levels of low moisture in the West for the first three months of 2026 and it looks like this upcoming fire season will be extraordinarily bad, unless late spring or early summer rain somehow bails out the country, said UCLA climate and fire scientist Park Williams.

Test fires lead to building changes

The institute's research has already led to some conclusions that strengthened California's fire code. New homes must have ignition-resistant walls, tempered or double paned windows and mesh over vents to prevent fire embers from getting inside.

As important is taking care of the outside. Creating a 5-foot (1.5-meter) buffer where any material that burns easy like pine straw, a hot tub, a wooden fence or overhanging branches is an important line of defense.

The fire testing makes that clear. Researchers at the test site set fire to wooden blocks that look like Jenga towers within the buffer zone. The simulated winds, which in a recent test purposefully fluctuated between 30 and 55 mph (50 to 90 kph), continually pushed the flames toward the home.

Once the windows and walls are breached, all the combustible things inside like couches, furniture, clothes and plastics quickly erupt and begin sending large showers of dangerous burning embers lofted by heavy wind, setting new fires a block or two away.

But fire standards can only help so much. “Under really severe fire conditions, especially those involving very high winds, they probably are of more limited value,” Syracuse University fire researcher Jacob Bendix said.

Home fire prevention becomes a business

Fire prevention tools and techniques are becoming a big business.

After the 2018 Woolsey fire near his home in Ventura County, California, Nicholai Allen watched firefighters use fire retardants and wondered if homeowners could do the same. He became a wildland firefighter and learned that preventing embers from getting into homes’ attics and garages are the key.

Allen now makes and sells Safe Soss (pronounced like sauce), which include carbon filters or guards for attics and vents, fiberglass heat-resistant ember-stopping tape and a spray fire retardant that can work from a garden hose, all of which recently became available at a major hardware chain.

Allen compares it to how people up north get ready for winter.

“It’s kind of like if you live in the snow, you have a snow shovel, you have scrapers, and you know that you have to take certain preventative steps in order to live in an environment that, hey, sometimes snows,” Allen said.

Trial by fire

The test fires by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety are carefully controlled. The homes are made to be as similar to regular houses as possible without electricity or plumbing.

The attention to detail and safety is exacting. The institute likes spring fire testing at its site about halfway between Charlotte, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina, because while summer temperatures in the South can nearly match those in the fire-prone West, the swampy humidity in July is a bad approximation to a mountain canyon.

High winds delayed last week's fire for more than six hours with anxious workers worried they couldn't wait for the next day because an outdoor burning ban was starting after an unusually dry and hot spring.

Tarps and machines heat the houses to summer levels just before the fires are set on a huge concrete pad just outside the giant hanger where the fans line one wall and the hurricane testing takes place.

Elsewhere at the site, researches have started looking into hail and how it can damage homes. Another part of the campus has dozens of roofs just sticking above the ground as the shingles freeze and bake and are soaked by Mother Nature sometimes for more than a decade for more testing.

___

Borenstein reported from Washington. Associated Press journalist Erik Verduzco contributed from Richburg, South Carolina.

___

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Under a proposal submitted Monday to a state judge in Texas, The Onion would be granted an exclusive, temporary license to the intellectual property of Infowars' parent company, Free Speech Systems, allowing the outlet to put its own content on the Infowars website and social media accounts.

Ben Collins, chief executive of The Onion, said the deal could be in place around April 30, if approved by Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin. He said The Onion has already hired people to run Infowars as a parody site including Tim Heidecker, one half of the comedy duo Tim and Eric known for their work on the Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” shows.

“We’ll build this into a bigger comedy network,” Collins said in phone interview Monday, adding the Sandy Hook families would receive profits from the new operations.

“A big part of it for us is that the way people consume news now is they see somebody who has no idea what the (expletive) they’re talking about staring into their camera and just like coming up with conspiracy theories or telling you health hacks that will actually get you poisoned, things like that,” he said. “We’re going to create a bunch of characters and worlds around those kinds of things.”

After the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, Jones called it a hoax staged by “crisis actors” in an effort to increase gun control. Many relatives of the victims, along with an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones and his company for defamation and infliction of emotional distress.

On his show Monday, Jones vowed to fight the licensing proposal in court but acknowledged he and his crew could be kicked out of the building at the end of the month. He said he would continue his shows in another studio he is preparing, and they would air on his personal X account and other new social media accounts and websites, as well as dozens of radio stations. He also has set up new websites for the merchandise he sells, including dietary supplements and clothing that bring in millions of dollars a year.

“I’m going to continue the exact same show,” he said. “It’ll just be called the ‘Alex Jones Show.’ So, it’s the same satellite, same system. It's a different news site and news studio. So I’m not going anywhere.”

The licensing deal with The Onion would be for six months, with the right to renew it for another six months as a court-appointed receiver works to eventually sell the assets of Infowars’ parent company, Austin-based Free Speech Systems, and give proceeds to the Sandy Hook families. The receiver is supporting the plan, which calls for The Onion to pay $81,000 a month to cover the rent for the building housing Infowars' studios, along with utilities and other costs.

During a trial of the defamation suit in Connecticut in 2022, victims' relatives testified that people whom they called followers of Jones subjected them to death and rape threats, in-person harassment and abusive comments on social media over the hoax claims. Jones argued there was never any proof that linked him to the actions of others.

A jury and judge awarded the families and the FBI agent more than $1.4 billion in damages. In a similar lawsuit in Texas, the parents of a child killed at Sandy Hook were awarded nearly $50 million. Jones appealed both awards. He lost his challenges to the Connecticut judgment, while his appeal of the Texas award is still pending.

Jones filed for bankruptcy in late 2022. In those proceedings, an auction was held in November 2024 to liquidate Infowars’ assets to help pay the defamation judgments, and The Onion was named the winning bidder. But the bankruptcy judge threw out the auction results, citing problems with the process and The Onion’s bid.

The attempt to sell off Infowars’ assets later moved to the state court in Texas, where Guerra Gamble appointed a receiver to liquidate the assets of Jones' company. Jones is also appealing that ruling, which has put a hold on the liquidation.

A lawyer for the Sandy Hook families who sued Jones in Connecticut said they support The Onion's plan.

Operation Blue Santa announced it will end its holiday efforts after being informed by the Houston Police Department that officers can no longer legally provide resources to support the program.

That includes providing space, vehicles, compensatory time, allowing officers to conduct Blue Santa business while on duty, or using any department resources for the program.

Without that institutional support, program leaders say continuing operations was not possible.

Laura Reyes, a Blue Santa board member, reflected on what the program meant to those who ran it.

“We are proud and honored by how we evolved the Blue Santa Program through the years to serve children and their families throughout the year,” she said.

Blue Santa began in 1984 after Houston police officers responded to a shoplifting call and discovered a man was attempting to provide Christmas gifts for his children.

Over time, the program grew into a large-scale community effort supported by officers and volunteers.

Victor Wembanyama — as expected — was announced Monday as the league's top defensive player. The San Antonio center was second in the voting for DPOY as a rookie, was the favorite last season until a medical condition ended his season prematurely, then left no doubt this year.

At 22, he's the youngest winner of the award.

“The real struggle might have been getting to 65 games,” Wembanyama said — referring to the number he needed for award eligibility — on NBC Sports Network. “But I’m super, super happy to win this award and actually super proud to be the first-ever unanimous.”

Oklahoma City's Chet Holmgren was second and Detroit's Ausar Thompson was third after both helped their teams secure No. 1 seeds for the playoffs. But this was never in doubt, not after the 7-foot-4 — or maybe taller — Wembanyama led the NBA in blocked shots for a third consecutive season and generally terrorized opponents any time they wanted to score.

“Best player in the world,” Spurs forward Keldon Johnson said.

The NBA will continue its award announcements Tuesday when the Clutch Player of the Year — either Minnesota's Anthony Edwards, Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Denver's Jamal Murray — is revealed. Wembanyama is also a finalist for MVP, with the winner of that trophy not set to be revealed until next week at the earliest.

First, the league got this announcement out of the way. And Wembanyama's win was accompanied by a slew of milestones.

— Every other winner of the award had been at least 23. Wembanyama doesn't turn 23 until next January.

— The Spurs became the first franchise with four players to win DPOY, which was first handed out in the 1982-83 season. The others? Alvin Robertson in 1986, David Robinson in 1992 and Kawhi Leonard in 2015 and 2016.

— Wembanyama joins Robinson and Michael Jordan as the only players to win both Rookie of the Year and DPOY.

“I’ve had the chance to have great coaches over my career who have taught me great habits on defense,” Wembanyama said.

The biggest accomplishment may be this: Wemby got every voter to agree.

Golden State's Stephen Curry was the unanimous MVP in 2016 and in the 10 seasons that have followed, there have been only two instances of a player collecting 100% of the first-place votes for an award.

Those were Wembanyama for Rookie of the Year in 2024, and now this.

No player in at least the last 50 seasons — and maybe ever, since it's hard to say with certainty because some full voting results for awards handed out generations ago are not known publicly — has won two major individual awards unanimously.

It's the 10th known unanimous pick in any vote for MVP, Rookie of the Year, Sixth Man of the Year, Most Improved Player, DPOY or Coach of the Year. And some of biggest names, including LeBron James and Michael Jordan, never won a major award unanimously.

“I feel like he is one of the hardest workers that I’ve ever been around,” Johnson said. “He takes his craft very seriously. I feel like this is just a small token of what’s to come for Victor. He’s a special player now. He’s a special player on the court and even more special person off the court as well. This is just a small token, small flowers that’s given to him for Defensive Player of the Year.”

Holmgren and Thompson both got votes for the first time; a panel of reporters and broadcasters who cover the league were asked to pick their top three in the category, with ballots due last week before the playoffs started.

Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert — a four-time DPOY winner — was fourth, followed, in order, by Toronto’s Scottie Barnes, Boston’s Derrick White, Oklahoma City’s Cason Wallace, Houston’s Amen Thompson, Atlanta’s Dyson Daniels and New York’s OG Anunoby.

There was a three-way tie for 11th between Detroit’s Jalen Duren, Golden State’s Draymond Green — the 2017 winner — and Miami’s Bam Adebayo.

Wembanyama is an MVP finalist (along with Oklahoma City's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the reigning MVP, and three-time winner Nikola Jokic of Denver), which almost certainly means he'll be an All-NBA first-team selection. And the DPOY win means he'll also be on the All-Defensive team, so the Frenchman is assured of no fewer than four trophies from this year's award season.

“We often overlook the team aspect,” Wembanyama said. “I’m sitting here. I happen to be the guy who’s put in the spotlight, but I am part of a system and I couldn’t get this award and I couldn’t do what I do if it wasn’t for my teammates ... and my coaching staff.”

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AP freelance writer Raul Dominguez contributed to this report.

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

The Sentry was canceled last January on drought-stricken Maui when the grass on the Plantation course at Kapalua was dying due to restrictions brought on by a dispute with the company in charge of a century-old water delivery system.

Two staff members at Kapalua, which is operated by Troon Golf, were notified Monday of the decision not to return. The PGA Tour confirmed it when contacted by The Associated Press.

The Sony Open on Oahu was in the final year of its sponsorship. It had leaned on being the week after Kapalua since 1999 to help attract players for a two-week stay in Hawaii.

The Sony Open is working toward becoming a PGA Tour Champions event to be packaged with the Mitsubishi Electric Championship on the Big Island.

“We are grateful to The Plantation Course at Kapalua, Kapalua Resort, Maui County and the state of Hawaii for their longtime support of our season-opening PGA Tour event, as well as the fans, partners and volunteers across Maui who have supported the event throughout the years,” the tour said in a statement.

It said it would share more details on the 2027 schedule at a later date. The tour also confirmed it was in conversations with the Sony Open about a spot on the PGA Tour Champions schedule, without further comment.

Kapalua began as a winners-only start to the PGA Tour season in 1999, a favorite among players for its wide fairways and endless views of the ocean on the west end of Maui.

Wisconsin-based Sentry took over as title sponsor in 2018, and its most recent extension takes it through 2035.

The most likely landing spot for Sentry is Torrey Pines in San Diego, where several executives attended this year. The previous sponsorship for Torrey Pines with Farmers Insurance ended this year without any intention of renewing.

Stephanie Smith, the company’s chief marketing and brand officer in charge of the golf partnership, did not mention future plans, only to say Sentry was proud of its eight-year run at Kapalua.

“We have said from the beginning, we love Maui and Maui is a Sentry community not unlike our hometown of Stevens Point, Wisconsin,” she said. “We cherish the friends and partnerships we have formed over the past several years. Our commitment to the island runs deep, and we remain committed to being active in the community.”

Hideki Matsuyama was the last winner at Kapalua. The final stroke was an 8-foot birdie putt that set the PGA Tour record for score to par at 35 under.

The tour had been subsidizing the purse increase to $20 million when it became a signature event, and The Sentry was among the most expensive operations because of shipping so much equipment to Maui. Attendance was moderate at best.

The water dispute involved accusations from the Kapalua owner, Japanese billionaire Tadashi Yanai, homeowners and Hua Momona Farms that Maui Land & Pineapple had not maintained the water delivery system.

MLP then filed a countersuit and alleged Kapalua was violating water restrictions.

The Sony Open dates to 1965 and had been played continuously since 1971, played at Waialae Country Club in Honolulu, along the ocean down from Diamond Head. It took over as the season opener this year when The Sentry was canceled, won by Chris Gotterup.

The most famous moment in tournament history was Isao Aoki holing out from the fairway for eagle to win in 1983. Ernie Els became the first player to sweep the tour’s Hawaii events in 2003 when he won at Kapalua and Waialae.

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

Schlittler has overcome similar threats to experience success against the Red Sox in the postseason spotlight, so he has reason to carry confidence into his first game at Fenway.

Schlittler grew up a Red Sox fan in Walpole, Massachusetts. Despite his background with the Red Sox, Schlittler told the New York Post that he and his family have received death threats leading up to Thursday night's game. He compared the threats to normal trolling from fans and said he hasn't felt the need to get police involved.

“Most normal fans could care less, right?” Schlittler told the newspaper. "It’s just those diehards that just have nothing else in their lives other than baseball or sports that really care about this, and the fact that I play for the Yankees makes it worse for them.”

After his family was targeted with hurtful comments on social media during last season's AL Wild Card Series against the Red Sox, Schlittler responded with a dominant performance. He became the first postseason pitcher with at least eight scoreless innings and 12 strikeouts without allowing a walk, pitching New York to a 4-0 clinching win over Boston in New York.

This season, the 6-foot-6 Schlittler has enjoyed more success. The 25-year-old is 2-1 with a 1.95 ERA in five games. He has 36 strikeouts in 27 2/3 innings.

He says his strong start will only encourage more venom from Red Sox fans.

“It’s gonna be bad, it’s gonna be bad," Schlittler told the Post. "I’m not nervous about it, but it’s gonna be loud. ... They’re gonna probably have dudes that are my age or a little bit younger, sitting right outside the bullpen, yelling whatever, probably throwing stuff at me, trying to grab me.

“That’s kind of what I expect. So I know the guys are excited for it and I’m excited for it.”

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

The campaign is focused on preventing crashes and saving lives in active construction areas, where road crews say dangerous driving behavior remains a serious concern.

Officials point to speeding, texting while driving, and erratic lane changes as some of the most common risks.

Drivers caught breaking traffic laws in work zones can face fines that double when workers are present.

According to the Texas Department of Transportation, there were more than 28,000 crashes in Texas work zones in 2025, resulting in 203 deaths, including 7 roadway workers. Officials say most of those killed were drivers and passengers rather than construction crews.

There are more than 1,800 active work zones across Texas, meaning officials say nearly every driver is impacted at some point.

Workers describe frequent close calls on the job. One construction worker, Kyle Baldwin, recalled a near-miss when a driver came close to striking him and his crew while operating heavy equipment.

“It was probably one of the scariest moments of my life with a vehicle bearing at you at 50 to 60 miles an hour head-on with the front end loader,” Baldwin said.

TxDOT spokesperson Danny Perez says crews are often working just feet from moving traffic with limited protection.

“They don’t have an office that protects them; they’re out there. They don’t have four walls when they’re out there, so when the workers are out there, it’s really important to take their safety into consideration. They want to get home, as well,” Perez said.

Officials are reminding drivers to slow down, avoid distractions, watch for crews, never tailgate, and allow extra travel time through construction areas.

Drivers are also reminded of Texas’ Move Over or Slow Down law, which requires motorists to move over a lane or reduce speed by 20 miles per hour below the posted limit when approaching vehicles with flashing lights on the roadside.

“I think that this is the election that’s going to be the sea change, not only for getting to a pro-equality majority but for changing the momentum on this fight for equality,” said Kelley Robinson, the Washington-based organization's president, in an interview with The Associated Press. “This movement is ready for its next wind, its second wind.”

Besides eight congressional districts that could help determine control of the U.S. House, the Human Rights Campaign is also supporting Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas. The money will be spent on advertising, events and canvassers.

The LGBTQ+ movement has been reckoning with a wave of defeats on the campaign trail and in the courtroom that have left Democrats struggling to regain their footing.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has rolled back protections for transgender people, such as banning them from serving in the military and cutting off gender-affirming care for children. The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority has upheld Republican states’ restrictions while striking down bans on “conversion therapy” practices in Democratic states.

“I believe that our movement made ourselves believe that we were closer to equality than we actually are,” Robinson said. “The last few years, we’ve been doing an incredible amount of listening, of learning, also of repositioning this work.”

After the 2024 presidential election, Democrats were divided over the role that LGBTQ+ rights played in their party’s losses. The Trump campaign ran a series of advertisements mocking Vice President Kamala Harris for supporting medical gender transitions for incarcerated people and highlighting the issue of transgender people playing on women's sports teams.

“Kamala Harris is for they/them,” said a voice-over in one national ad. “President Trump is for you.”

Robinson argued that the ad was effective because of an implicit economic message, not for its critiques of the policy toward transgender people. But conservative activists and some moderate Democrats have argued such stances are too unpopular with swing voters.

“There’s a real disconnect between most voters and the party elite," said Leor Sapir, a fellow with the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

He added, “If I’m a Democrat consultant, my advice would be: Do everything in your power to keep this issue off the public agenda."

Robinson said her organization has been soul-searching on how to best craft winning messages on LGBTQ+ rights.

“Our job is to move away from the fireballs that our opposition wants to talk about and instead find a way to get back to the things that are impacting folks every day,” she said.

In January, the Human Rights Campaign published a guide to blunting conservative attacks on LGBTQ+ issues, citing the successful campaigns of Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.

Although the guide encourages candidates to “lead with your values” and “address concerns directly," it also encourages them to “go big” and quickly pivot to issues like cost-of-living concerns.

“I think the number one way to shut out a voter is to try to make them believe that their fears are not real. So what we coach candidates on doing is listening,” Robinson said. “For folks who have questions about the issues, that’s OK. We’re in a moment where the stakes in front of us are too high to look away.”

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Follow the AP's coverage of LGBTQ+ issues at https://apnews.com/hub/lgbtq.

Authorities confirmed to KPRC 2’s Bryce Newberry that Kevin Faux, 24, was arrested without incident at an apartment in Gretna, Louisiana—an area just southeast of uptown New Orleans.

The arrest was conducted by the US Marshals Service New Orleans Task Force. There was another person inside the unit when Faux was taken into custody.

Faux had been wanted on a capital murder charge in the death of 23-year-old Ashanti Allen, who was eight months pregnant when she was reported missing on April 10.

MORE ON THE SEARCH: Search expands for missing pregnant Houston woman Ashanti Allen

Her body was found on April 16.

Faux’s arrest marks a significant development in a case that has drawn scrutiny over Faux’s criminal history and prior release from jail.

The suspect is expected to be extradited back to Texas, where he will face capital murder charges.

Authorities have not yet released details on the timeline for his transfer, but online records say he remains in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. He has a hold preventing him from bonding out.

Court records confirmed that prosecutors have filed a motion to deny Faux bail under a 2025 voter-approved Proposition 3 measure to deny bail under certain violent offenses.

MORE ON PROP 3: No bail for you: Texas law allows judges to deny bail

The investigation remains ongoing.

Disappearance and discovery

According to the Houston Police Department, Allen was last seen on April 8 and was reported missing by her mother on April 10.

Her mother told investigators she received a text message from Allen’s phone at 3:50 a.m. that morning stating, “I’m leaving I’m not coming back,” but said the message was out of character and raised immediate concern.

When she went to check on her daughter, Allen’s vehicle was missing, and her purse had been emptied, with her wallet, ID, and credit cards gone.

Six days later, on April 16, Allen’s body was found in southwest Houston near Chimney Rock.

Investigators later determined she had been strangled with a cord that was found wrapped around her neck and tied into two knots.

Surveillance video and timeline

Court documents outline a detailed timeline of events based on surveillance footage, phone data, and witness statements.

Video from Allen’s apartment complex reportedly captured Allen and Faux walking to her car at around 2:20 a.m. on April 10. License plate readers captured the vehicle minutes later on the South Loop West service road.

A witness told investigators she met Faux on the night of April 9, and he left at around midnight, saying she was returning to his mother’s house.

She said he later called her on FaceTime at around 3:17 a.m.

She described him as sweating and frantic in a wooded area, where he allegedly told her he had “killed a motherf-----r” and showed her what appeared to be a lifeless body on the ground.

Text messages recovered by investigators show Faux later saying he “had to fight for [his] life” and “Imma felon then I killed a [expletive].”

The messages stopped at 3:46 a.m., just minutes before Allen’s mother received the “I’m leaving” text from her daughter’s phone.

Evidence tied to suspect

Allen’s brother later tracked her phone to a home connected to Faux’s mother.

While Allen’s brother was present, Faux’s mother called Faux and put the phone on speaker, and he allegedly denied seeing Allen and claimed he had not been in contact with her.

Detectives later recovered Allen’s vehicle parked near that home and tracked her phone to a nearby park. On April 15, a city employee found her phone at Edgewood Park.

Doorbell camera footage from the residence showed Faux arriving and leaving his mother’s residence multiple times on April 10. Allen’s vehicle was seen parked at the home, and later footage showed Faux returning with a backpack and large container.

Investigators said Allen’s phone location data aligns with Faux’s movements captured on surveillance video.

Additional video from a nearby business reportedly showed a man wearing clothing consistent with Faux dragging what appeared to be a body to the location where Allen was later found.

Out-of-state movements

According to court records, Faux reached out to a woman in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, on April 10, saying he had purchased a bus ticket to come visit her. He had previously connected with the woman online, but they had never met in person.

The woman told investigators he arrived at around 5 a.m. on April 12 and mentioned being involved in a missing persons investigation in Houston.

Authorities say Faux denied involvement when questioned and told her not to look up the case online.

She still decided to look up the case online and was concerned by the news reports. She became more suspicious after she noticed Faux using Allen’s debit card, records showed.

A short time later, an anonymous tipster alerted investigators that Faux had been seen recently leaving a residence in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. He was ultimately arrested shortly afterward.

Faux’s history of violence and early release

Court records show Faux had multiple prior assault-related cases, including:

• A 2019 aggravated assault with a deadly weapon
• A 2021 misdemeanor assault involving another woman
• Two assault charges involving Allen in 2025

In Sept. 2025, Faux was jailed in connection with assaults against Allen and later sentenced in February to 280 days behind bars.

However, records indicate he received a “two-for-one” credit—commonly used to manage jail populations—which cut his sentence in half.

READ MORE: Ashanti Allen case highlights safety planning after pregnant woman’s death

He was released months earlier than expected.

Family demands accountability

Speaking with KPRC 2 last week, Allen’s family said they were unaware of the full extent of the danger she may have been facing before her death.

“We need to know what’s happening behind closed doors with our kids,” her father previously said. “If we only knew what was going on, we would not be standing here talking to you.”

READ MORE: Ashanti Allen murder suspect Kevin Faux still at large; Family questions how man with violent history is free

History’s first American pope is visiting the continent against the backdrop of his calls for peace that have sparked a feud with U.S. President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.

Leo is now in Equatorial Guinea, the final stop of his tour, after visiting Algeria, Cameroon and Angola. His trip is so dizzying in its complexity it recalls some of the globe-trotting odysseys of St. John Paul II in his early years.

In meetings with leaders and with Africa's young population, the pope has also focused on themes including Christian-Muslim coexistence, the overexploitation of the region’s natural and human resources, corruption, migration and the legacy of colonialism.

Here’s a country-by-country look at each destination and highlights of the itinerary:

ALGERIA: April 13-15

In Algeria, Leo walked in the footsteps of his spiritual father, St. Augustine, making a pilgrimage to the archaeological ruins where the fifth-century titan of early Christianity lived, died and wrote some of the most important works in Western thought.

The Algeria stop clearly carried the most personal importance for Leo, given his ties to St. Augustine, the inspiration of his Augustinian religious order.

Migration and Christian-Muslim coexistence were other top themes in Algeria, a former French colony which is a majority Sunni Muslim nation on North Africa’s Mediterranean coast. Leo also paid homage to migrants killed in shipwrecks trying to reach Europe and visited the Great Mosque in Algiers.

In Annaba, the modern-day Hippo, Leo met with a small community of Augustinians and celebrated Mass at the Basilica of St. Augustine, the 19th century basilica overlooking the ruins of Hippo where thousands of pilgrims including Muslims visit every year.

CAMEROON: April 15-18

A major highlight of Leo's visit to Cameroon were his remarks at a “peace meeting” in the western city of Bamenda, the epicenter of Cameroon's separatist conflict. There, he blasted the “handful of tyrants” who are ravaging the planet with war and exploitation.

Although the remarks were directed at the separatist conflict, considered one of the world’s most neglected crises, Vatican officials have said the pope's Gospel-mandated message of peace on this trip is meant for all those responsible for wars and exploitation.

Leo met with both religious and political leaders including Cameroon's 93-year-old president, Paul Biya, the world's oldest leader. He called for an end to the “chains of corruption” and for upright leadership.

Biya has been accused of using corrupt means and the targeting of opponents to remain in power.

Cameroon sits atop significant reserves of oil, natural gas, cobalt, bauxite, iron ore, gold and diamonds. But revenues rarely reach rural and Indigenous communities and mostly benefit only foreign companies and a small national elite, activists say.

The pope also visited an orphanage for children taken off the streets after suffering abandonment or maltreatment from their parents.

He celebrated a Mass before thousands of people in the economic hub of Douala, where he urged young people to resist the temptation of corruption.

ANGOLA: April 18-21

As Leo headed for Angola, he again addressed the back-and-forth with Trump, saying it was "not in my interest at all” to debate the American president over the Iran war, but he would continue preaching a message of peace.

In Angola, where around 58% of the population is Catholic, Leo prayed at the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, a Marian shrine that has become one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage sites in Angola.

That church also has deep links to Angola's history of slavery. It was first built around the end of the 16th century by Portuguese colonizers after they established a fortress at Muxima, and became a key point in the Portuguese trans-Atlantic human trade as a place where enslaved people were baptized before they were sent on ships to the Americas.

While Leo didn't directly address slavery, his visit to the small town of Muxima drew reflections on his own complex heritage after research last year showed the first American pope has both Black and white ancestors who include enslaved people and slave owners.

Angola today is an oil- and mineral-rich country, yet many of its 38 million people live in poverty. Previous leaders have been accused of large-scale corruption, while the country still bears the scars of a 27-year civil war that began straight after independence from Portugal in 1975.

At a meeting with Angolan President Joao Lourenco, Leo challenged current Angolan leaders to break the “cycle of interests” that have exploited Africa and its people for centuries.

EQUATORIAL GUINEA: April 21-23

Equatorial Guinea, the last stop, presents the pope with perhaps the most delicate diplomatic challenge of his tour.

The overwhelmingly Catholic former Spanish colony has been led for nearly 50 years by a president who is accused of widespread corruption and holding on to power through the harassment, arrest and intimidation of political opponents, critics and journalists.

Equatorial Guinea's leader, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, is Africa’s longest-serving president and has been in power since 1979.

The discovery of offshore oil in the mid-1990s transformed Equatorial Guinea’s economy virtually overnight, with oil now accounting for almost half its GDP and more than 90% of exports, according to the African Development Bank.

Several rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have documented how revenues have enriched the ruling Obiang family rather than the broader population, where at least 70% of the country’s nearly 2 million people live in poverty.

In addition to the negative impacts of the extraction industries, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Leo would raise issues of corruption and the proper role of governing authorities during the trip to Africa.

___

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

The six were all in custody. A seventh suspect, former Bayelsa state Gov. Timpre Sylva, is accused of helping to conceal the plot and is still at large.

In the 13-count charge sheet, authorities said suspects “conspired with one another to levy war against the state to overawe the president of the Federal Republic."

The Nigerian government first said it had foiled a coup attempt in January, when it announced that several military officers would stand trial. They were part of a group of 16 military officers arrested in 2025 over what military authorities described as “acts of indiscipline and breaches of service regulations," which fueled rumors of a coup plot that the government initially denied.

Africa's most populous nation experienced five coups in the 20th century but has not seen one since it transitioned to democracy in 1999.

The alleged coup plot comes on the heels of a surge in coups and attempted coups in West and Central Africa, the latest in Benin and Guinea-Bissau late last year. The military takeovers, experts say, follow a pattern of disputed elections, constitutional upheaval, security crises and youth discontent.

Constable Mark Herman is reminding residents and businesses to take advantage of the holiday to prepare for emergencies.

During the three-day period, qualifying emergency supplies can be purchased without paying state sales tax. The tax-free items include equipment and basics commonly used during storms, power outages and other emergencies.

Emergency supplies can help support employee safety and speed up business recovery, but officials note they work best when they’re part of a larger emergency plan. The message: prepare now and stay ready.

What’s tax-free?

• Portable generators
• Fire extinguishers
• First aid kits
• Radios, batteries and phone chargers
• Tarps and emergency lighting

The steady sound of rain tapping against your window this morning may have made it tempting to stay under the covers, and honestly, in weather like this across Houston, it’s hard to blame you. But for most of us, Tuesday is still moving forward, and so is the soggy forecast.

A slow-moving system is bringing rounds of showers and heavier downpours across the Houston area, creating a damp start and a messy commute for many. Rain is expected to continue on and off through the morning and into the afternoon, with pockets of heavier rainfall that could lead to ponding on roads and slower travel times. If you’re heading out, it’s worth planning for extra time and staying alert for changing conditions.

Unfortunately, there’s little relief in sight for today; this looks to be a persistently wet Tuesday from start to finish. For a full breakdown of timing, impacts, and when we might finally start to dry out, check out our detailed forecast below.

To read more, click here.

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YOUR MORNING FORECAST ☀️

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KPRC 2 Meteorologist says:

“Rain gear will become your best friend, as another wave of rain pushes into SE Texas on Tuesday morning. The main concern is excessive rainfall. Give yourself some extra time to get to work as thunderstorms start moving in around 7 am. Street flooding is a concern for Houston. An area of low pressure is responsible for the storms with rain possible off and on all day long! The heaviest rain should fall west of Houston, with totals ranging between 2 and 4 inches. While Houston itself is forecast to get around half an inch to an inch, localized downpours could deliver higher totals in some areas.”

Get your forecast details here.

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TIMELINE: A Tuesday washout with heavy rain in the morning and afternoon in Houston

The rain doesn’t waste any time on Tuesday morning. Heavier showers are expected to move in by 7 a.m., especially in western communities. By 9 a.m., widespread rain engulfs the Houston area. And by noon, Things lighten up a little around noon, but there will still be some storms around. It’s a little more hit and miss, but the gaps in the storms don’t last long.

LIVE RADAR: Heavy rain hits Houston area today

See where rain is falling hardest across the Houston area so you can better plan your commute. It’s also helpful to check when storms are expected to reach your neighborhood, giving you time to prepare before heading out.

🚧 Houston Road Closures & Traffic Watch

If you’re heading out today, it’s worth checking live conditions from Houston TranStar, which tracks real-time incidents, closures, and construction across the region.

Right now, the system shows a mix of ongoing construction and lane closures on major corridors, including parts of I-10, I-45, and the 610 Loop. Some closures are long-term—lasting months or even years—while others shift daily depending on construction schedules.

You’ll also find updates on:

• Crashes and stalled vehicles affecting lanes in real time
• Planned construction closures and detours
• High-water alerts during heavy rain events (none reported at last check)

💡 Why it matters: Even minor incidents or single-lane closures can quickly snarl traffic—especially during bad weather or peak commute hours.

👉 Check the latest conditions before you go: View Houston road closures

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Chris Shepherd shares two of his favorite Houston-area spots for a great meal with friends

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According to the Houston Police Department, the incident occurred around 3:36 a.m. on the eastbound U.S. 290 exit ramp near Windfern Road.

Investigators say a sedan, possibly a Mazda CX-5, crashed into a divider under unclear circumstances.

Details about how many people were inside the vehicle have not been released, and it remains unknown whether the driver was the sole occupant.

Police confirmed the crash was fatal but have not yet shared the identity of the victim.

Units from the department’s Vehicular Crimes Division responded to the scene and have launched an investigation into what caused the crash.

As a result of the incident, the eastbound lanes of U.S. 290 were shut down for several hours.

The feeder road, however, remained open to traffic.

No additional information has been released as the investigation continues.

Rain gear will become your best friend, as another wave of rain pushes into SE Texas on Tuesday morning. The main concern is excessive rainfall. Give yourself some extra time to get to work as thunderstorms start moving in around 7 am. Street flooding is a concern for Houston. An area of low pressure is responsible for the storms with rain possible off and on all day long!

The heaviest rain should fall west of Houston, with totals ranging between 2 and 4 inches. While Houston itself is forecast to get around half an inch to an inch, localized downpours could deliver higher totals in some areas.

Wednesday:

The weather action doesn’t stop there; another round of storms is forecast for Wednesday afternoon into the evening. Wednesday morning looks calmer before things ramp up again later in the day.

Since this pattern is driven by a low-pressure area (not a cold front), the rain will be more hit and miss, but still capable of creating trouble spots with heavier downpours.

Your extended forecast:

Looking ahead past Wednesday, the organized rain systems leave our area. Small rain chances, around 20%, could linger thanks to the warmth and humidity, but no organized storm systems are expected after mid-week.

Temperatures are also on the rise. Highs go from the 70s on Tuesday and Wednesday to the lower-80s by Thursday, setting up a warmer stretch as the weekend approaches.

Have storm or flood photos from your neighborhood? Share what you’re seeing with the KPRC 2 Weather Team through Click2Pins at click2houston.com/pins/.

Let’s make a deal.

There have been 60 trades involving first-round picks over the past five years. Eighteen were traded in 2022. Last year, six first-round picks were dealt. That was tied for the fewest since 1985.

The Bengals, Packers, Jaguars, Falcons, Colts and Broncos don’t have a first-round pick while the Giants, Jets, Dolphins, Cowboys, Browns and Chiefs each have two.

Cincinnati traded the 10th overall pick to the Giants on Saturday for defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence. New York owns the fifth and 10th picks. Green Bay doesn’t have one because of its blockbuster trade for Micah Parsons last August. Jacksonville traded its 2026 first-rounder to Cleveland on draft night last year to move up to get Travis Hunter with the second overall pick.

Atlanta sent this year’s first-round pick to the Rams on draft night a year ago to select edge rusher James Pearce Jr. at No. 26. Indianapolis traded its first-rounder to the Jets for Sauce Gardner. Denver sent the 30th overall pick to Miami in the deal for Jaylen Waddle.

Here are five teams that could be active on Thursday night:

Philadelphia Eagles

General manager Howie Roseman is one of the most active and aggressive executives in the NFL. The Eagles own the 23rd pick. They moved up from No. 10 to No. 9 in 2023 to get defensive tackle Jalen Carter. A year earlier, they went from 15 to 13 to get defensive tackle Jordan Davis. In 2021, Philadelphia moved up from 12 to 10 to select wideout DeVonta Smith. Roseman also moved up in 2019 and 2016. He traded out of the first round in 2018.

“I think we go into this draft being very comfortable with having 23 guys we’re ready to take. We’re there ready and prepared for that,” Roseman said. “If something happens where somebody who’s higher on our board than 23rd is available, we’ll be ready for that. If there’s an opportunity that we think makes sense to move up based on the value of that player, we’ll move up. If we have multiple guys at our spot and there’s a trade that makes sense to move back, we’ll move back.”

The trade involving the Eagles that’s been a hot topic throughout the offseason isn’t expected to happen this week. A.J. Brown is likely on the move, with the Patriots expected to be the leading contender to land the star wide receiver, reuniting him with coach Mike Vrabel. The Rams already pursued Brown earlier in the offseason. The Eagles would be able to spread a $40 million salary cap hit over two seasons by waiting until June 1 to deal Brown.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

With the 15th pick in the first round, the Buccaneers might miss out on one of the top players on their board. They need an elite rusher and could use more draft capital because they have only one pick in each round. There are several potential pass rushers who could be a fit in the 16-25 range that would allow Tampa Bay to move back and add more premium draft picks.

“In a lot of scenarios that we’re working through, yeah,” GM Jason Licht said about moving back. “You have a group of players that you say, ‘No matter what, if this player’s there, we’re taking (them).’ If there’s a group of three, then maybe you go back one or two to make sure that you ensure you get one of your three, but the part of that that makes it difficult is you’ve got to find a trade partner. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Sometimes teams just don’t want to move up. They don’t want to give up picks, and I understand why.”

Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys have the 12th and 20th picks, and Jerry Jones has hinted at being aggressive. But it would make more sense for Dallas to trade down in one of those spots to add extra picks because the defense has several needs.

The Cowboys don’t have a second-round pick after sending it to the Jets in a deal for defensive tackle Quinnen Williams before the trade deadline. Moving down from 20 and adding a second-rounder plus other picks is one scenario.

New York Jets

The Jets have four of the top 44 picks in the draft, including Nos. 2 and 16 in the first round. They have three 2027 first-round picks.

If there’s a player they covet — perhaps an elite wideout — they have the draft assets to jump up from 16. They have their choice of edge rushers at No. 2 after quarterback Fernando Mendoza goes first to the Raiders.

Miami Dolphins

The Dolphins have the 11th and 30th picks in the first round and plenty of needs. They’re in full rebuild mode. Trading one of those to add more picks could help Miami replenish its roster.

___

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

Universities are incorporating artificial intelligence into education more every year, while admissions to computer science programs are down roughly 20% in Texas and nationally as hiring slows for software engineers.

Students are experiencing those changes in real time as they prepare to enter an uncertain job market in a rapidly changing industry.

“At the very beginning, it was a joke,” said Derek Do, a third year computer science major at the University of Texas at Austin. “The industry took it seriously, but a lot of the students didn’t.”

A computer science degree, previously seen as a reliable path to a well-paying tech job, doesn’t seem like such a sure thing to many students who worry that they will be the first victims of a future built around AI.

“I’ve applied to a billion jobs, as everyone has too,” added Do, who was recently able to secure an internship with a top tech company.

Some of the highest unemployment rates for recent college graduates are degree holders in computer science and computer engineering, at 7% and 7.8% respectively, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York study.

Postings for software development jobs in the U.S. have plunged since a 2022 hiring boom, according to data from Indeed compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

This uncertainty comes on the heels of a golden age for tech in the U.S. following the Great Recession of 2008, when six-figure starting salaries were almost a guarantee for students graduating from top computer science programs. The demand was such that major U.S. tech companies launched a campaign in the early 2010s encouraging high schoolers to learn to computer code, promising lucrative, stable careers once they finished college.

Now, Texas universities are reworking their computer science curricula in response to the fast-changing job market.

Computer science students are taught to write the instructions computers use to operate. As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, it’s now able to do much of that coding work with a speed and accuracy human software developers can’t match.

Chairs of computer science departments at UT Austin, the University of Texas at San Antonio and Baylor University said the changing job market is a frequent topic of discussion among their students and faculty.

“The students are anxious, the faculty are anxious, it’s a natural human tendency when things are uncertain,” said Peter Stone, chair of UT Austin’s computer science department.

Company lays off workers after adopting AI

Parth Patki, a spring 2025 graduate from UT Austin’s computer science program, has personally experienced the tumult of being a software engineer in the age of AI.

During his time at UT, Patki followed the same path as so many computer science majors before him, including an internship at an international cybersecurity firm. That was followed by a job offer to be a software engineer at the same company upon his graduation.

The use of artificial intelligence was essential to his work, and Patki said the six months he spent working there opened his eyes to the power of the new tools. New software engineers are commonly given space to make mistakes and learn from more senior engineers, Patki said.

“I learned so many things at that company I would never have learned in college, but the amount of time and mistakes that I made were plentiful,” Patki said. “The amount of time for AI to do the same thing that I was doing, making no mistakes, or very few, doing it in seconds instead of a week. It was wild.”

Patki was laid off in December along with about half of the software engineers working in his office. He said his bosses told them the company decided to restructure and slim down the company because of the efficiencies AI had introduced to the workplace.

Thrust back into the job market, Patki said he applied to an average of 25 jobs a day over the course of two months before receiving an offer from one of only two companies that called him back for an interview.

Professors see reasons for optimism

Professor Fred Martin, chair of the computer science department at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said the job market is changing for software developers as the use of AI becomes more common. He also noted that the Federal Reserve of New York study on employment for recent college graduates shows some positives for those entering the industry.

The median wage for early career graduates in computer science and engineering is still higher than any other degree, while the Fed’s “underemployment rate,” or the percentage of students working jobs unrelated to their degree, is also lower for computer science grads than most other degree fields.

“Definitely, it’s harder to get jobs,” Martin said. “There’s no question about that. But our kids, the ones who have internships, who know how to talk to people and have the chops, they totally have jobs. They get great jobs.”

Martin pointed to the burst of hiring that many top tech companies did in the wake of COVID lockdowns ending. Many companies are now realizing they simply have a glut of employees and are hesitant to continue hiring amid an uncertain economy still grappling with elevated inflation and hiring slowdowns across the board, Martin said.

Martin said he hopes enrollment in computer science programs is simply stabilizing after being elevated for an extended period.

Professor Jean Gao, chair of the Baylor University computer science department, argued that AI may create more jobs in software development as it makes it cheaper and easier for companies outside of the tech industry to incorporate the tools into their business. Students pursuing the field in hopes of simply landing a high paying job may not find the same level of success as a student that is truly passionate about software development in a tighter job market, but that is a reality faced by most other job fields, Gao added.

“Computer science is just like glue, in every field you need it, like health care, insurance, finance, cyber security, everywhere needs computer science,” Gao said. “So that’s why students need to make themselves different. They don’t want to be like so many other similar candidates with no differentiations.”

All three department chairs said they have introduced new curricula in response to AI’s increasing use in the workplace. Gao and Stone said they both have introduced classes for all undergraduate students that teach the foundation of AI use.

Students adapting to changing job market

Vivian Tran, a senior at UTSA and president of the campus’ Association for Computing Machinery chapter, said she and her peers are constantly talking about the job market and how they should respond to the changes caused by AI.

She said most of her friends opted to stay in school and pursue master’s degrees rather than entering the job market now “just because they wanted to avoid the job market for now,” Tran said.

During her time at UTSA, Tran has seen AI go from a gimmick that had limited use for class assignments to a powerful tool that can save her hours of coding work.

Tran has experienced that difficult job market personally, submitting 250 internship applications before securing a summer internship as a software engineer at Uber, something she hopes will turn into a full time job with the ride share company.

Tran agreed that the job market is not impossible, but it is certainly more difficult.

“On one end, there’s people that, you know, just focus on the degree. And that’s completely fine. I understand everyone has different … circumstances, but obviously that isn’t cutting it anymore,” Tran said. “The other end of the spectrum, there’s people that are solely …dedicated to the grind: doing elite code problems and building projects to put on your resume, networking events, and just [becoming] like the general, ‘LinkedIn warrior.’”

Danielle Nyame, a freshman computer science major at UT, said she’s still optimistic and hopes to land a job at the intersection of business or social justice, using AI to power technology that will help society.

“AI will not be able to take over every single aspect of this field, but it will be able to help aid with the work that is done in this field,” she said.

Patki, the recent UT graduate who was laid off last year, now works as a machine learning engineer at Paypal and uses AI every day to create new software faster than he ever thought possible.

That has opened his eyes to the ways AI could change work in other industries.

“I think there’s a lot to learn and still a lot for AI to grow,” Patki said. “It’s both as bad and not as bad as people think.”

The work is exciting and interesting, he said, but he now prioritizes building up his savings account in case of another layoff.

“I know that I’m replaceable,” Patki said. “Every day, I’m reminded that I’m replaceable.”

Disclosure: Baylor University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at San Antonio 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 Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency confirmed that it has asked prosecutors to request a court warrant for arresting Bang, the billionaire founder and chairman of Hybe.

Bang’s legal team in a statement to The Associated Press did not directly address the accusations but expressed regret that police were seeking his arrest “despite our full and consistent cooperation with the investigation over an extended period.”

“We will continue to cooperate with all legal procedures and make every effort to clearly explain our position,” the statement said.

Bang, who has been barred from leaving the country since August, is being investigated over allegations that he misled investors in 2019 by telling them Hybe had no plans to go public, prompting them to sell their shares to a private equity fund, before the company proceeded with an initial public offering. Police believe that the fund may have paid Bang around 200 billion won ($136 million) in a side deal that promised him 30% of post-IPO stock sale profits.

Hybe officials say Bang denies any wrongdoing.

Bang’s legal troubles are a major public relations setback for Hybe, coming as BTS embarks on a global tour after a nearly four-year hiatus as its seven members served their mandatory military service, which is required for most able-bodied South Korean males.

BTS performed in front of tens of thousands of international fans at a free comeback concert in Seoul last month and have also held several concerts in South Korea’s Goyang city and Tokyo. The group is to kick off a series of U.S. events with a concert in Tampa, Florida, later this month.

Bang, a music executive and producer who founded Hybe as Big Hit Entertainment in 2005, is widely seen as one of the most powerful figures in K-pop and has sought to capitalize on the global success of BTS to build his company into an international pop powerhouse.

In 2021, Hybe spent about $1 billion to purchase Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, securing the management rights to artists like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.

While Hybe’s roster includes some of K-pop’s biggest acts, such as Seventeen, Le Sserafim and Katseye in addition to BTS, the company has seen turmoil in recent years, including a highly public fallout between Bang and star producer Min Hee-Jin over the popular girl group NewJeans.

The rift erupted in 2024 when Hybe attempted to remove Min as CEO of Ador, the subsidiary managing NewJeans, while accusing her of illegally attempting to take control of that company. Min, in turn, accused Bang of hostile treatment and of undermining NewJeans in favor of other groups, as the dispute moved into courts. Members of NewJeans, who have described Min as a mentor, tried to leave the label following her ouster, but a court last year ruled they must honor their contract through 2029.

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Amid the frustrated jeers of an infuriated home crowd, the Hurricanes now had to regroup and continue the grinding fight of a postseason game that appeared over only moments earlier. And that led to forward Jordan Martinook immediately standing at center ice with another chance to end it as he waited to take a penalty shot — a rarity in OT during the playoffs.

“Try having a penalty shot after all that,” Martinook quipped.

Nothing came easily Monday night for the Eastern Conference's top seed against the Ottawa Senators in a 3-2 double-overtime win that secured a 2-0 lead in their first-round series. That was particularly true of those gut-churning few minutes when the Hurricanes thought they had secured a victory, then learned they hadn't, then got an immediate second chance at a walk-off win, only for Martinook to be denied.

Martinook ultimately got his winner, beating Linus Ullmark from the slot at 13:53 of the second OT to finally end this one more than four hours after the puck dropped on Game 2.

“Hockey’s crazy, sports are crazy,” Martinook said. “Being able to score after that, I’ll tell my grandkids about that one, that’s for sure.”

Not that anyone around here will soon forget this one, not with the emotions — and fortunes — changing at whiplash speed.

“There's a lot there to unwind, that's for sure,” Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour said.

The Hurricanes won the series opener 2-0 on Saturday, then found themselves up 2-0 in the second period Monday before giving up goals to Drake Batherson and Dylan Cozens that eventually pushed the game into overtime. Ullmark had been brilliant all night on the way to 43 saves, one coming when he gloved down a hammered one-timer from Taylor Hall as the puck shifted cross-ice to his left side.

Another came in the final seconds of regulation when Ullmark got his left shoulder on Jordan Staal’s shot from the top of the crease.

That all became prologue to those few minutes when things got weird in Raleigh.

The Hurricanes appeared to break through late in the first OT, with Mark Jankowski skating in to pounce on a loose rebound and beat Ullmark on the left side with 2:42 left to send the home crowd into a frenzy. But officials reviewed the sequence and determined Staal didn’t have possession and control of the puck as he entered the zone, coming as Martinook skated through the middle across the blue line for a 1-on-1 chance on Ullmark.

“I don’t know that rule,” Staal said. “I pick up the puck, I look up where Marty is and apparently I lost control of it. And then I make a nice pass to Marty for a breakaway. I don’t really get it. … We battled through it. It is what it is.”

“It's a weird play, you don't see it a lot in overtime,” Senators coach Travis Green said, adding: “I felt like it was offside. I thought the refs made the right call.”

But that sequence ultimately led to a hooking penalty on Warren Foegele, meaning Martinook quickly had to pivot to taking the first OT penalty shot in a postseason game since August 2020 and only the fifth ever.

Martinook skated in on Ullmark and tried to beat him to the glove side, only for Ullmark to knock down the puck and ensure the game would continue.

Afterward, a reporter mentioned to Martinook that he had a chance to become the first player ever to end a playoff game on an OT penalty shot.

“Thanks for that,” Martinook said with a grin.

“I was trying to tell them we needed the power play, not the penalty shot,” Martinook said. “Yeah, I've never seen that. That's a first.”

The Hurricanes ultimately came out on top — after the Senators nearly got their own sudden-death winner in the second overtime when Michael Amadio got an in-close shot. Frederik Andersen made the stop with his glove to deflect the puck, which kept rising and hit the crossbar before bouncing away.

Roughly 2 1/2 minutes later, Martinook buried a shot past Ullmark to finally end this one.

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

The study comes 10 years after the Tax Day Flood, a storm researchers say is often overshadowed by Hurricane Harvey, but remains one of the most dangerous scenarios for the region.

Researchers at Rice’s Center for Coastal Futures and Adaptive Resilience say the Tax Day flood is especially concerning because of how quickly it developed.

“Houston really should take possible storms as seriously as probable storms,” said co-director Dominic Boyer.

Unlike hurricanes, which come with days of warning, the Tax Day storm dumped nearly two feet of rain overnight in parts of the region, catching many off guard.

Researchers say that kind of fast-moving storm could be even more dangerous today.

What the new maps show

Using advanced modeling, researchers simulated what would happen if a Tax Day-level storm hit different parts of Houston today.

They found that shifting the storm just miles could dramatically increase the number of homes impacted.

In one example, about 3,600 homes would have flooded in a Clear Creek scenario—but if the storm’s center shifted, that number jumps to more than 13,000.

In denser areas like Hunting Bayou, nearly half of homes in the watershed could see flooding.

“This could happen overnight without a whole lot of warning,” said co-director Jim Elliott.

A “dangerous illusion” about flood risk

Researchers say one of the biggest concerns is a widespread misunderstanding about who is at risk.

“Our data shows a massive blind spot. 92% of at-risk homes do not have flood insurance coverage,” said researcher Yilei Yu. “It’s a very dangerous illusion.”

Many homeowners rely on FEMA flood maps, but experts warn those maps don’t tell the full story.

“Floodwaters are not going to respect the boundaries,” Elliott said. “They’re going to extend beyond.”

In fact, during Hurricane Harvey, about 75% of flooded homes were outside designated flood zones.

A Meyerland family’s reality

For one Meyerland family, that risk became reality.

Michael and Freda Wadler say their home had never flooded when they bought it 30 years ago.

Then, in less than a decade, it flooded three times, during the Memorial Day flood, the Tax Day flood, and Hurricane Harvey.

“I don’t know if anybody’s really safe in Houston, you never know,” Michael Wadler said.

Living with the anxiety of flood season

The couple says flood season used to bring constant stress—not just for them, but for their family.

“You don’t realize the post-traumatic stress that you’ve got,” Wadler said. “It was always nerve-racking.”

Even their children would call and warn them when storms were approaching.

Now, their home is being elevated six feet above ground with the help of a FEMA grant.

“It feels like a miracle. It’s long overdue,” Wadler said.

The change is already making a difference.

With more intense storms, rapid development, and aging infrastructure, researchers warn that risk is growing.

“We’ve had multiple ‘500-year’ events in just a few years,” Boyer said. “We’re moving outside the boundaries of prediction.”

What homeowners should do

Researchers urge residents not to rely solely on flood maps, and to take steps to understand their individual risk.

“Do not rely solely on FEMA flood maps,” Elliott said. “Even if you think you’re outside the floodplain… think seriously about protection.”

That includes considering flood insurance and using new tools, like Rice’s interactive maps, to assess potential risk.

You can explore the interactive flood simulation maps from Rice University here.

Four years after the queen’s death, the shop is doing a brisk business in mugs, tea towels and key rings bearing the likeness of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch as the nation marks the centenary of her birth on Tuesday. Items featuring her son King Charles III? Well, not so much.

“We still sell more than the king any day,’’ said Ismail Ibrahim, the store’s manager.

The late queen’s memory looms over the monarchy after a 70-year reign that saw her evolve from the glamorous young sovereign who cheered Britain during the gloomy post-war years to the beloved national grandmother who rallied the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still ‘the queen’

When she died in September 2022, Elizabeth was the only monarch most Britons had ever known. Even now, mention of “the queen” is more likely to evoke thoughts of Elizabeth than of Queen Camilla, Charles' wife.

But the passage of time has also tarnished the late queen’s legacy. While she is celebrated as a symbol of tradition and continuity who helped unite Britain as the end of empire, economic struggles and mass migration changed the nation’s perception of itself, revelations about the former Prince Andrew’s links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have raised questions about why she let the problem fester for years.

“Despite her absence, Elizabeth II remains this key presence whenever we think about the monarchy,’’ Ed Owens, author of “After Elizabeth: Can the Monarchy Save Itself?’’ told The Associated Press.

“She’s certainly the most significant figure in the history of the institution in the last 100 years and, I think, therefore deserves probably the attention that’s going to be focused on her in connection with what would have been her 100th birthday.”

The festivities include a Buckingham Palace reception where Charles will congratulate centenarians who share the late monarch's birthday, and the dedication of a memorial garden at Regent's Park in central London. An exhibit of the queen's fashions is already underway.

An unexpected reign

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor wasn’t meant to wear the crown. Born on April 21, 1926, she started her long life not in a castle but at 17 Bruton St., a townhouse in London’s Mayfair district.

As the elder daughter of King George V’s second son, Elizabeth was expected to live the life of a minor royal. Dogs and horses, a country house, a suitable match — a comfortable but somewhat anonymous life — seemed her future.

But destiny intervened. A decade after Elizabeth’s birth, her uncle King Edward VIII abdicated to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Elizabeth’s father became King George VI, thrusting the young princess into the spotlight as heir to throne.

Elizabeth became queen the day her father died on Feb. 6, 1952. Just 25, she heard the news in Kenya and hurried home to take up her duties.

Global ambassador

For decades, she presided over the annual opening of Parliament in crown and ermine robe, hosted banquets for visiting leaders at Buckingham Palace and made thousands of appearances across the U.K., often wearing brightly colored suits to make sure the people could catch a glimpse of their queen.

She also became a global ambassador for brand Britain, making more than 200 overseas trips that helped bolster ties with one-time colonies from India to Tanzania, former enemies Germany and Japan and long-time friends such as the United States.

Late in life, the queen became an internet star when she and James Bond star Daniel Craig used moviemaking sleight of hand to parachute into the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics and teamed up with Paddington Bear to celebrate her 70 years on the throne.

The king recalled his mother's impact on people around the world in a video tribute released Tuesday.

“Millions will remember her for moments of national significance; many others for a fleeting personal encounter, a smile, a kind word that lifted spirits, or for that marvelous twinkle of the eye when sharing a marmalade sandwich with Paddington Bear in the final months of her life,'' he said.

In a world of relentless change, she moved with the times — applauding the nation’s successes and consoling Britons during difficult times, while remaining above the fray of politics, Robert Hardman, author of “Elizabeth II: In private. In public. The Inside Story,’’ told the AP.

Scandal's shadow

But those accomplishments make her failure to end the scandal surrounding her second son even more glaring.

Despite concerns about his boorish behavior, questionable business dealings and unsavory friends, Andrew spent 10 years as Britain’s special envoy for international trade and remained a prince of the realm until the details of his relationship with Epstein were revealed last year. In an effort to shield the monarchy from the continuing fallout, Charles fi nally stripped his younger brother of his princely title. He is now known simply as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

“He was problematic and that gave her cause for worry,’’ Hardman said. “But I do think people let him have an easy ride because they thought if they came down hard on him, they might somehow upset the queen. Now that’s partly attributable to her, but partly attributable to others.”

Besides, her “great achievements’’ far outweighed any errors, Hardman said.

Elizabeth took the throne as a young woman with two small children at a time before jet travel existed and no one had even thought of going to the moon, then remained a constant presence in British public life across generations.

“She just reigned through this vast span of the ages and was as authoritative and loved and respected at the end as she was at the beginning,” Hardman said. “And she was working till the very end, ‘til her last day.”

As historians debate the queen’s legacy, members of the public are making their own judgements.

Take Sylvie Deneux, and her daughter Clara, who stopped by Cool Britannia during a visit to London from their home in Lille, France.

They praised the late monarch for her elegance and described her as an icon. But when asked about Mountbatten-Windsor, Sylvie Deneux, 49, paused and looked at her daughter. Failing to quickly quash the scandal was a mistake, she said. But Deneux could still muster sympathy for Elizabeth, because she made those decisions as a mother, not as a queen.

“Can we blame her?’’ she asked. “I’m not sure.”

The vote was held behind closed doors during a routine meeting of Luxon’s center-right National Party lawmakers and was sought by the Prime Minister himself. Luxon emerged afterward to read a brief statement announcing the vote and departed without taking questions from reporters.

“The last week, there has been intense media speculation about my leadership,” Luxon said, adding that he had called for a confidence vote “to put that media speculation to rest.”

His party caucus had “answered clearly and decisively,” the Prime Minister said. “It has backed my leadership.”

He did not say that the vote had been unanimous. Nicola Willis, the party's deputy leader, said later Tuesday that vote had been a secret ballot with only scrutineers knowing the final tally, but that Luxon must have received a majority.

The confidence vote happened months ahead of New Zealand’s next national election, scheduled for Nov. 7. Recent drops in the polls for National had prompted speculation from analysts that he would face a leadership challenge.

That was seen by party lawmakers as an unwelcome distraction in an election year for National, which has governed New Zealand in a right-wing coalition government since the 2023 vote. Luxon, a former airline executive who entered Parliament in 2000, has led the party since 2021.

While two recent New Zealand prime ministers — National's John Key and Labour's Jacinda Ardern — have voluntarily quit the post, it would have been extremely unusual for lawmakers to oust a sitting prime minister.

Luxon blamed reports of unrest within his party's ranks on news outlets, but one political poll released days ago appeared to have made a discussion of leadership unavoidable. The 1News-Verian poll suggested slumping support for Luxon and for National in a hypothetical election.

The levels of support in the most recent poll implied the right-wing bloc led by his party could come in behind the left-wing bloc led by Labour if an election were held immediately, though the vote won’t occur for more than another six months.

“If the media want to keep focusing on speculation and rumor, I am not going to engage,” Luxon said Tuesday.

This time, they overcame a 19-point deficit, rallying past the Nuggets 119-114 on Monday night behind 30 points from Anthony Edwards and 24 from Julius Randle to tie their first-round playoff series at one game each.

“Just coming together, staying poised within those moments," Edwards said.

Jamal Murray scored 30 points for Denver, which had won 13 straight games since losing on March 18. The Nuggets jumped out to a 44-25 lead early in the second quarter only to see a potential laugher quickly turn into a head-scratcher.

After outscoring the Wolves 39-25 in the first, the Nuggets watched Minnesota flip that exact score in the second period.

“So, basically same quarters, first and second, just opposite teams,” said Nikola Jokic, who had 24 points, 15 boards and eight assists for the Nuggets.

After a slow start, Edwards looked much better than he did during his 22-point effort in Game 1, when his rust from a bum knee was apparent. This time, he drove to the basket more instead of settling for jumpers, fueling the comeback.

“He was awesome. It was unbelievable,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “Also in that (first) period when we were down, he was great on the bench. Great leadership, positive. He recognized he needed to get into attack mode and get downhill a little bit more. He did that."

Denver blew a chance to take control against its Northwest Division rival. The Nuggets are 8-0 in their history when winning the first two games of a playoff series, and the Wolves are 0-8 when dropping Games 1 and 2.

Edwards turned the ball over with 31 seconds left and Christian Braun got fouled at the other end after Jokic passed up a floater to tie it. Braun missed one of two free throws, leaving Denver trailing 115-114 with 19 seconds remaining.

Randle then sank two free throws and Donte DiVincenzo added a breakaway dunk to cap the comeback.

“I trust C.B. to make free throws,” Denver coach David Adelman said. “It rimmed out. That happens in the NBA. You're going to have moments that you don't want to remember. That's a tough moment for C.B. after playing such a good game."

Murray sank a 51-foot 3-pointer at the halftime buzzer to tie it at 64. Jokic came on strong after a quiet start, scoring 16 points in the third quarter when Denver took a 93-90 lead. But the Nuggets' All-Star duo shot a combined 2 for 12 in the fourth quarter as the Wolves evened a best-of-seven series that shifts to Minneapolis for Game 3 on Thursday night.

“I feel like we had the game in hand,” Murray said, “and then we just didn't make our shots.”

Jaden McDaniels, who added 14 points for the Wolves, said the key to Minnesota's bounce-back was going "after Jokic, Jamal, all the bad defenders. Tim Hardaway, Cam Johnson, Aaron Gordon, the whole team, just go at them. Yeah, they’re all bad defenders.”

Before tipoff, Finch complained for a third straight day about the free-throw disparity in Game 1, when the Nuggets outscored Minnesota 30-14 from the stripe. He cracked that maybe his players need to “start flopping, too.”

Each team went to the line 30 times Monday night.

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

Many Iran-backed militias are funded through the Iraqi state budget and embedded within the security apparatus, drawing criticism from the United States and other countries that have borne the brunt of their attacks and say Baghdad has failed to take a tougher stance.

Despite mounting pressure from the U.S., Baghdad has struggled to contain or deter the groups. The most hard-line factions now operate under Iranian advisers using a decentralized command structure, the five officials told AP, each on condition of anonymity to speak freely about sensitive matters.

“The various forces have been granted the authority to operate according to their own field assessments without referring back to a central command,” said one militia official, who didn't have permission to speak publicly.

The war in the Middle East has exposed the fragility of Iraq’s state institutions and their limited ability to restrain these groups. A parallel confrontation between Washington and the militias has deepened the crisis, with factions acting as an extension of Iran’s regional campaign and escalating attacks on U.S. assets in Iraq before a tenuous ceasefire deal was reached in April.

Even if the ceasefire agreement holds, Washington is expected to intensify efforts against the groups militarily and politically, particularly as they gain latitude to operate more independently, officials and experts said. On Friday, the U.S. imposed sanctions on seven commanders and senior members of four hard-line Iran-backed Iraqi militia groups.

“The U.S. is still going to feel it has the freedom of action to hit Iraqi militias,” said Michael Knights, head of research for Horizon Engage, a geopolitical risk consulting firm, and an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “That may well play out into an effort to try and guide a less militia-dominated government formation.”

For Iran-backed militias in Iraq, a move to decentralized control

Days into the war sparked by U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, an Iranian delegation arrived in Iraq’s Kurdish region and delivered a blunt message: If militia attacks escalated near U.S. military bases, commercial interests and diplomatic missions, Iraqi Kurdish authorities should not come to Tehran with complaints, as there was little they could do about it.

“They said they’ve devolved authority to regional Iranian commanders,” a senior Iraqi Kurdish government official said on condition of anonymity, citing the subject's sensitivity.

In the past, Kurdish leaders in Iraq would call Iranian officials after attacks to ask why they had been targeted. “This time, they wanted to preempt that by saying, ‘We can’t help you with the groups in the south right now,’” the official said.

This shift reflects lessons drawn from the 12-day war in June, the official said. Militia officials corroborated the claim. During that war, operations were tightly centralized. In its aftermath, greater autonomy was granted in the field.

A spokesperson for Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, among the Iran-backed militia groups that have attacked the U.S. in Iraq, said there was “coordination” with Iran in launching attacks but didn't give details.

"Since we are allies of the Islamic Republic, we have coordination with our brothers in the Islamic Republic,” Mahdi al-Kaabi said.

In the recent war, key Iraqi militia leaders appeared to step back from the latest phase and didn't appear to be directly involved in operations, Knights said. U.S. strikes largely killed mid-level commanders, according to militia officials.

“None of the first-line leaders have been killed,” said a second militia official, who wasn't authorized to brief reporters.

Rather than targeting top figures, the U.S. also focused on Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisory cells, said Knights, who tracked the attacks. In one strike in Baghdad’s upscale Jadriya neighborhood, three Guard advisers were killed at a house used as their headquarters during a meeting, according to the second militia official.

Pressure on Iraq is intensifying

At the heart of government efforts to rein in militia groups lies a paradox: The factions the government says it cannot control are tied to political parties that brought it to power.

The Coordination Framework, an alliance of influential pro-Iran Shiite factions, helped install Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as prime minister in 2022. He now serves as caretaker premier amid a prolonged political deadlock.

Militia forces carrying out attacks on U.S. targets aren't rogue actors; they're part of the state’s Popular Mobilization Forces, created after the fall of Mosul in 2014 to formalize volunteer units that were critical in defeating the Islamic State.

The PMF has evolved into a powerful force that surpasses the Iraqi army, with fighters receiving state salaries and access to government resources, including weapons and intelligence. The result, critics say, is a deep contradiction: Certain state-funded groups operate in line with Iranian priorities, even when doing so undermines Iraq’s national interests.

Al-Sudani’s office didn't respond to the AP’s requests for comment on the decentralized control of militia groups.

The U.S. is focused on curbing the power of these groups in Iraq, the senior Iraqi Kurdish official and a Western diplomat said, which will put increasing pressure on the government, still functioning in caretaker status. The diplomat also spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't permitted to brief reporters.

Last week, Iraq’s ambassador to the U.S. was summoned to Washington to hear U.S. condemnation of attacks by Iran-backed factions on American personnel and diplomatic missions, according to State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Bigot.

“The Deputy Secretary affirmed that the United States will not tolerate any attacks targeting its interests and expects the Iraqi Government to take all necessary measures immediately to dismantle Iran-aligned militia groups,” Bigot said in a statement.

Militias resist steps from Iraq's government

Al-Sudani has taken limited steps to curb militia influence, including further institutionalizing the PMF and occasionally removing commanders who act outside state authority. The efforts have met significant resistance from militia groups.

Further institutionalizing them has deepened their entrenchment within the state. The U.S. may seek to isolate the most hard-line factions — including Kataib Hezbollah, Harakat al-Nujaba, and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada — from others more embedded in Iraq’s political system. “The bad militias from the worse militias,” the senior Iraqi Kurdish official said.

Harakat al-Nujaba spokesperson al-Kaabi offered a dual framing of the group’s position, stressing both its alignment with Iran and its claim to Iraqi state legitimacy.

“To put it bluntly, we are allies of the Islamic Republic,” he said. He described the group as part of Iran’s regional “axis” alongside Hezbollah in Lebanon and Ansar Allah in Yemen.

At the same time, he insisted the group operates within Iraq’s political order, supporting the state and government when they serve national interests.

“It’s true we’re not affiliated with the government or the prime minister, but we respect the law and the constitution,” he said.

Chavez-DeRemer is the third Trump Cabinet member to leave her post after Trump fired his embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in March and ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this month.

In a statement posted on social media, Chavez-DeRemer praised Trump and wrote, “I am proud that we made significant progress in advancing President Trump’s mission to bridge the gap between business and labor and always put the American worker first.”

Unlike other recent Cabinet departures, Chavez-DeRemer’s exit was announced by a White House aide, not by the president on his social media account.

“Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said on the social media site X. “She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives.”

He said Keith Sonderling, the current deputy labor secretary, would become acting labor secretary in her place. The news outlet NOTUS was the first to report Chavez-DeRemer's resignation.

Labor chief, family members faced multiple allegations

Chavez-DeRemer’s departure follows reports that began surfacing in January that she was under a series of investigations.

A New York Times report last Wednesday revealed that the Labor Department’s inspector general was reviewing material showing Chavez-DeRemer and her top aides and family members routinely sent personal messages and requests to young staff members.

Chavez-DeRemer’s husband and father exchanged text messages with young female staff members, according to the newspaper. Some of the staffers were instructed by the secretary and her former deputy chief of staff to “pay attention” to her family, people familiar with the investigation told the Times.

Those messages were uncovered as part of a broader investigation of Chavez-DeRemer’s leadership that began after the New York Post reported in January that a complaint filed with the Labor Department’s inspector general accused Chavez-DeRemer of a relationship with the subordinate.

She also faced allegations that she drank alcohol on the job and that she tasked aides to plan official trips for primarily personal reasons.

Late Monday, on her personal X account, Chavez-DeRemer posted, “The allegations against me, my family, and my team have been peddled by high-ranked deep state actors who have been coordinating with the one-sided news media and continue to undermine President Trump's mission.”

Both the White House and the Labor Department initially said the reports of wrongdoing were baseless. But the official denials got less full-throated as more allegations emerged — and when Chavez-DeRemer might be out of a job became something of an open question in Washington.

At least four Labor Department officials have already been forced from their jobs as the investigation progressed, including Chavez-DeRemer’s former chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, as well as a member of her security detail, with whom she was accused of having the affair, The New York Times reported.

“I think the secretary demonstrated a lot of wisdom in resigning,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Monday after her departure was made public.

She enjoyed union support — rare for a Republican

Confirmed to Trump’s Cabinet on a 67-32 vote in March 2025, Chavez-DeRemer is a former House GOP lawmaker who had represented a swing district in Oregon. She enjoyed unusual support from unions as a Republican but lost reelection in November 2024.

In her single term in Congress, Chavez-DeRemer backed legislation that would make it easier to unionize on a federal level, as well as a separate bill aimed at protecting Social Security benefits for public-sector employees.

Some prominent labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, backed Chavez-DeRemer, who is a daughter of a Teamster, for Labor Secretary. Trump’s decision to pick her was viewed by some political observers as a way to appeal to voters who are members of or affiliated with labor organizations.

But other powerful labor leaders were skeptical when she was tapped for the job, unconvinced that Chavez-DeRemer would pursue a union-friendly agenda as a part of the incoming GOP administration. In her Senate confirmation hearing, some senators questioned whether she would be able to uphold that reputation in an administration that fired thousands of federal employees.

She was a key figure in Trump's deregulatory push

Aside from reports of wrongdoing in recent months, Chavez-DeRemer had been one of Trump’s more lower-profile Cabinet picks, but took key steps to advance the administration’s deregulatory agenda during her tenure.

For instance, the Labor Department last year moved to rewrite or repeal more than 60 workplace regulations it saw as obsolete. The rollbacks included minimum wage requirements for home health care workers and people with disabilities, and rules governing exposure to harmful substances and safety procedures at mines. The effort drew condemnation from union leaders and workplace safety experts.

The proposed changes also included eliminating a requirement that employers provide adequate lighting for construction sites and seat belts for agriculture workers in most employer-provided transportation.

During Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure, the Trump administration canceled millions of dollars in international grants that a Labor Department division administered to combat child labor and slave labor around the world, ending their work that had helped reduce the number of child laborers worldwide by 78 million over the last two decades.

In her statement Monday, Chavez-DeRemer said, “While my time serving in the Administration comes to a conclusion, it doesn’t mean I will stop fighting for American workers.”

The Labor Department has a broad mandate as it relates to the U.S. workforce, including reporting the U.S. unemployment rate, regulating workplace health and safety standards, investigating minimum wage, child labor and overtime pay disputes, and applying laws on union organizing and unlawful terminations.

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Associated Press writers Steven Sloan and Will Weissert in Washington and Cathy Bussewitz in New York contributed to this report.

The shooter was identified as 27-year-old Julio Cesar Jasso of Mexico, a state official told the AP on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about the case. Jasso later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said, and security officials found a gun, a knife and ammunition. Jasso was the sole assailant in the attack, the State of Mexico government confirmed on Monday night.

The local government said seven people were wounded by gunshots. How the other people were injured was not disclosed, but a number of people fell when shooting started, some while climbing on the pyramids.

Those taken to hospitals for treatment were six Americans, three Colombians, one Russian, two Brazilians and one Canadian, the local government said. The youngest person who was injured was 6; the oldest was 61, Mexican authorities said.

Video and photos published by local media showed a man, later identified as Jasso, standing with a gun on top of a pyramid while people ducked for cover. A number of gunshots rang out in the videos.

The Teotihuacan pyramids, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are a series of massive structures on the outskirts of Mexico City built by three different ancient civilizations. As one of Mexico’s most important touristic destinations, the site drew more than 1.8 million international visitors last year, according to government figures.

The shooting took place shortly after 11:30 a.m. when dozens of tourists were at the top of the Pyramid of the Moon. The standing on the structure’s platform began firing upward, according to a tour guide who was at the scene and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“Some people, because they were scared ... threw themselves face down on the ground, and the rest of us started to go down,” the guide said, recounting how the shooter, upon seeing the tourists descending the pyramid’s steps, began firing.

Another group of visitors lay motionless on the pyramid’s platform to avoid being targeted by the shooter, who authorities have not yet identified.

Brenda Lee, of Vancouver, British Columbia, said she was waiting to buy a souvenir when she and others in her group thought they heard firecrackers.

"Before we knew it, someone said, ‘No, that’s gunfire, run,’ and we saw people coming off the top,” she told CTV News, one of Canada’s national television broadcasters.

“There were thousands of people there and there were a lot of gunshots that just kept coming,” Lee said.

The scene quickly turned chaotic as people tried to escape, Lee said.

“And then a fellow jumped,” she said. “It was someone trying to get away, and he dropped to the next level, but he fell on his back, and it was ... it just was awful.”

In past years, staff at the archaeological site carried out security scans before people entered the area but have since stopped, one local guide noted.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum wrote on social media that the shooting would be investigated and that she was in touch with the Canadian Embassy.

“What happened today in Teotihuacán deeply pains us. I express my most sincere solidarity with the affected individuals and their families,” she wrote.

Anita Anand, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, said on X that as a “result of a horrific act of gun violence, a Canadian was killed and another wounded in Teotihuacán” and that her “thoughts are with their family and loved ones."

Later in the evening U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson also expressed “deep concern” and sadness over the deaths and numerous injuries, and said on a post on X that the U.S. is “ready to provide support as needed while Mexican authorities continue their investigation.”

The National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement that the Teotihuacán archaeological site will remain closed until further notice.

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

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AP journalist Jim Morris contributed to this story from Vancouver, British Columbia.

Martinook — who was stopped on a penalty shot in the first OT — kept the winning play alive by chasing down a loose rebound toward the boards to keep the possession in the offensive zone. Moments later, Nikolaj Ehlers found Martinook between the circles to beat Ullmark, who was partially shielded by Carolina captain Jordan Staal at the top of the crease.

That set off a mob celebration by the Hurricanes around Martinook in a corner of the ice, ending a game that saw them hang on despite blowing a 2-0 lead and having an apparent winner by Mark Jankowski waved off in the first overtime due to an offside call on review.

The Hurricanes still had a chance to win it after the overturned goal, only for Ullmark to stop Martinook on the NHL's first OT postseason penalty-shot attempt since 2020.

“I didn't feel very good about myself after that penalty shot, and that intermission felt really long," Martinook said. “That was cool. I'm happy it worked out that way. It didn't matter who scored, but it was going to be a long night if that penalty shot came back to bite me.”

The Eastern Conference's top seed managed to protect home-ice advantage — barely — as the series moves to Canada’s capital for Game 3 on Thursday.

“That’s the toughest thing: You have it won, a hard-fought game, and then to have it turned over," Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "You’ve got to give the guys tons of credit, because our game didn’t change. We actually got better, I think, in the second overtime.”

Logan Stankoven and Sebastian Aho also scored for Carolina, while Frederik Andersen shook off giving up two second-period goals to finish with 37 saves and multiple key stops late.

Drake Batherson and Dylan Cozens scored for Ottawa, while Ullmark finished with 43 saves and was terrific all night. He had multiple big stops in the second period, one when he extended his glove to knock down a hammered one-timer from Taylor Hall as the puck shifted cross-ice to his left side. Another came in the final seconds of regulation when he got his left shoulder on Staal's shot from the top of the crease.

“A hell of an effort,” Senators coach Travis Green said. “Playoffs are hard sometimes. Some of the games you lose, they sting. This one's going to sting.”

The Hurricanes appeared to have pushed through late in the first OT, with Jankowski skating in to pounce on a loose rebound and beat Ullmark on the left side with 2:42 left to send the home crowd into a frenzy. But officials reviewed the sequence and determined that Staal didn’t have possession and control of the puck as he entered the zone, coming as Martinook skated through the middle across the blue line for a 1-on-1 chance on Ullmark.

That sequence ultimately led to a hooking penalty on Warren Foegele, with Carolina scrambling an extra attacker and getting Jankowski’s offside-overturned score and then Martinook's penalty shot.

“Hockey’s crazy, sports are crazy,” Martinook said. “Being able to score after that, I’ll tell my grandkids about that one, that’s for sure.”

The Senators played without defenseman Artem Zub, who left Game 1 with an undisclosed injury. He had been considered a game-time decision.

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

The Texans’ wide receiver is participating in the offseason conditioning program that launched Monday, lifting weights and working out alongside his teammates.

Sidelined after a devastating injury that involved a dislocated knee, torn anterior cruciate, medial collateral and lateral collateral ligaments while catching a touchdown pass against the Kansas City Chiefs in December 2024, Dell is officially on the comeback trail.

Dell is making tangible progress.

Texans coach DeMeco Ryans emphasized how proud he is Dell and how hard he’s working to get back. Nonetheless, the focus is on the big picture. The Texans won’t be rushing back Dell.

They want him to be fully healthy before they clear him for football practice. He won’t be pushed back into organized activities until he’s ready.

“Tank has been around, working out all throughout the offseason while no one else was here,” Ryans said. “Tank has been here working, grinding in the background. I’m excited to see Tank when it is his time to get back out and play football, as is everybody here. We all love Tank. We’ve seen the ability that he has, the big playmaking ability.

“Nobody loves Tank more than me. I’m hopeful that we can get him back to playing, back to the level that he was playing. But I think it’s also, we know how devastating of an injury that was for Tank. So, I’m proud of the young man. For him just working in the background, working in silence to be back here working out with the guys and having that opportunity to go play again.”

Texans general manager Nick Caserio said last week that the team will evaluate where Dell stands after spring workouts to determine his activity level at training camp. He was noncommittal on a timeline.

“With Tank, honestly, it’s probably a day-to-day, we’ll kind of see where he is,” Caserio said. “Probably have a better idea as we get through the spring of what his availability is going to be in training camp. He’s been here pretty religiously, since he’s been able to do more once he’s gotten out of the rehab stage.”

Dell has fought through all of the doubt and frustration of an injury that interrupted the dynamic start to his NFL career, leaning on faith, hard work, family, friends and coaches like Ryans to remain positive and optimistic.

Dell called it the hardest year of his life.

The Texans are optimistic about Dell’s medical outlook. Dell has posted several workout videos showing himself cutting and catching passes and lifting weights as he works his way back from the injury.

Do the Texans need to hold Dell back?

“With Tank, he has outstanding energy,” Ryans said. “Always big, bright smile. He’s always eager to go. You always have to pull him back when he needs to be pulled back. But our team has done a great job, our sports performance team, they’ve done a great job of individualizing a plan for each player. Tank’s no different.

“Tank falls in that category where he has an individual plan that he’s working on. Our team does a great job of just remaining consistent and understanding the big picture. Everybody’s excited. Offseason program, we start, but we don’t play football today. So, there is a process, there is a long-range view that we’re working to get Tank back to playing football.”

Caserio emphasized they won’t hesitate to draft a wide receiver, but that decision won’t be determined by how Dell is doing.

“As far as a receiver position, if there is a receiver that we like that we feel we want to add to the team then we’re going to take him independent of what’s going on,” Caserio said. “In the end, the competition will sort itself out. DeMeco and I talk about this all the time. Get them in the building, they’ll figure it out. Not us.

“Ultimately, it’s going to be up to the performance of the players. We try to stay true to that and not get so, ‘Well, we have this.’ Well, honestly, that could change in a heartbeat. You always want to be prepared and have some contingencies in place, but I would say a person’s individual situation doesn’t necessarily correlate to, well, we have to draft this over here. If you draft it, you draft it.”

Dell is looking forward to making a healthy return and get back to playing the game he loves.

“What I’ve been through is something that taught me to be humble and just keep working, I’m back, I’m feeling good right now,” Dell said while hosting a shopping spree at Academy Sports and Outdoors for athletes from Boys & Girls Club of Greater Houston in honor of National Women’s and Girls Sports Day. “Once the season comes, I’m gonna cook up.”

Running free, catching touchdown passes, bolting past coverage.

That’s the vision for Dell. The comeback trail is being paved month by month for Dell as he continues to strengthen his surgically repaired knee after a devastating knee injury a year ago that sidelined him for the entire season.

Dell tried to make a return for the end of the season as the Texans made another playoff run that ended in the divisional round, but it was regarded as too soon for him to get back out there.

“I was making a push, I wanted to be out there with the guys,” Dell said. “Last year, that football season alone, was the hardest year of my life. Just sitting out of football for a year straight. Been playing football since I was five and that was my first year I ever had to sit out of football so that was hard. I tried to make a push back, it didn’t go as planned. I got time now and I’ll be ready.”

Dell is rehabbing from injuries sustained while catching a touchdown in December 2024 against the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium.

“He worked very hard,” Texans general manager Nick Caserio said last season. “I think our performance group, they do a really good job. I would anticipate him being available for the offseason and then really April, May and June we’ll probably have a better idea. Knowing Tank, he’s probably cautiously optimistic that he’s going to be able to go out there and be Tank Dell.

“I think everybody is hoping that’s the case, but you never know. None of us control injuries and what happens. but I think everybody is rooting for Tank. He’s worked very hard and had a great attitude. I’m excited to see him out there moving around. Nobody is more excited than he is, so it will be good once we start getting on the field and getting on the grass to see what that looks like.”

When Dell got hurt, Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud was inconsolable as he burst into tears. It was a traumatic experience for Dell and his best friend.

Stroud supported Dell, just as Dell is now behind the embattled former NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year after he had five interceptions and five fumbles, and seven total turnovers in two playoff games. The Texans’ season ended in a loss to the New England Patriots as Stroud threw a career-high four interceptions in one half at Gillette Stadium.

Stroud was the subject of heavy criticism locally and nationally and on social media with lots of cruel jokes and commentary surrounding one of the most successful young quarterbacks in the league.

“In every way possible, like he was there for me,” Dell said of his support for Stroud. “People can say what they want about seven, you know. They sitting on the couches just typing on the computer, typing on their phones. But everybody knows who seven is.

“Especially in the facility, we know who he is. And when we get back out there with him, it’s going to be special. So, we can let them say what they want about him.”

Dell had a good time supporting the athletes from Boys & Girls Club of Greater Houston.

“It’s fun,” Dell said. “My sister used to do sports and I just know how she felt about sports. So, it’s fun to just see them have a future in sports. I feel like it’s a good thing and I’m excited.”

One of the biggest elements that the Texans’ offense was missing all season: the presence of a dangerous slot receiver.

That’s because Dell missed the entire season.

Dell tried to make it back for the end of this season, but the plan was always for him to spend the season sidelined after undergoing several surgeries to repair a dislocated knee.

Now, Dell is poised to make a healthy comeback for the 2026 season. He has remained in good spirits throughout a long, grueling rehabilitation process.

“Very supportive, you know, from top to bottom,” Dell said. “Everybody in the facility, from the coaching staff to even our cooks in the facility, everybody was supportive of me. Praying for me, of course, keeping me in their prayers, and especially my teammates and my closest people.”

The Texans missed the spark Dell provides to the offense with his outstanding route running skills and explosiveness after the catch.

He has caught 98 career passes for 1,376 yards and 10 touchdowns in 25 career games.

The knee injury marked the latest adversity for Dell whose dynamic rookie season was ended prematurely by a broken fibula that required surgery to repair the damage. Months later, Dell was the victim of a gunshot wound in his leg during a mass shooting in Florida while attending a party as an innocent bystander.

Then, he injured his knee in Kansas City after taking over as a starter when Stefon Diggs tore his anterior cruciate ligament and caught 51 passes for 667 yards and three touchdowns.

Stroud, coming off an erratic performance in the playoffs against the Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers, is thrilled to have one of his best friends back for next season.

“Tank is a brother of mine, somebody who’s like blood to me,” Stroud said. “To see what he’s gone through the last two years has been heartbreaking and he’s been through a lot. But I know he’s grown a lot as a person and as a young man, especially as a man of God. So, I’m proud of him. The smile he continues to have on his face is contagious.

“I think for him too, being here every day putting in the work and putting his best foot forward in some situations that were out of his control, I think is amazing to see him do that. So, I’m super proud of him and I can’t wait to get him on the field. You all know the connection we have.”

Dell is inspirational to his teammates, including Pro Bowl wide receiver Nico Collins.

“Yeah, man, you know, Tank, he wants to be out here,” Collins said this past season. “We got to continue to keep his spirits up, tell him we out here for you. Be in his corner no matter what. You know, like nobody want to miss the game you love. It’s heartbreaking, it’s crushing when you can’t be out there with your brothers.

“You see them every day and you’re like, dang, I miss you bro, you know what I’m saying. We know in spirit he’s getting better, so we’re going to go out here keep spinning it for him and make plays for him and keep his spirits up. We going to pick up where we left off. He’s in great spirits, though.”

• ‘Encouraging and uplifting,’ how presence of injured wide receivers Tank Dell, Stefon Diggs fired up Texans in win
• Sources: Texans’ Tank Dell tore medial collateral, lateral collateral, as well as ACL, dislocated knee, meniscus damage

PREVIOUS: A crushing blow for Texans: Tank Dell suffers ‘significant’ knee injury, a dislocated knee cap, team upset, emotional

“You all know the connection we have and I know he’s getting his No. 1 back, so he’s happy about that,” Stroud said of Dell wearing his college jersey next year after wearing No. 3 previously. “I’m happy for him to get Uno back. So, we’re going to be coming back trim and I can’t wait to get my brother back on the field. I think our connection, hopefully our chemistry picks right back up where we left off.”

Aaron Wilson is a Texans and NFL reporter for KPRC 2 and click2houston.com

Owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week announced the newspaper's sale to a nonprofit foundation that said it was committed to keeping it open. A news outlet that predates the U.S. Constitution was due to close on May 3, which would have made the Steel City the nation's largest community without a city-based paper.

Weeks earlier, the alternative Pittsburgh City Paper, whose staff learned on New Year's Day that it was closing after 34 years, roared back to life under new ownership.

They were rare positive developments for a local news industry that has seen its share of the opposite over the past two decades — newsrooms shuttered or thinned out, journalists thrown out of work, consumers drifting away. No one is pretending that a true turnaround will be easy in Pittsburgh. One thing that may help is that the city faced a news abyss and was forced to prepare for it.

“It's human nature that sometimes you have to be shaken a bit to realize what's important in your life,” said Halle Stockton, co-executive director and editor-in-chief of the digital news outlet Public Source.

The many incarnations of the Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh Gazette was born on July 29, 1786, the first newspaper west of the Allegheny Mountains. It went through several names with the expansion and contraction of a newspaper market that supported seven at the beginning of the 20th century. There was The Commercial Gazette, the Gazette-Times and, briefly, the Pittsburgh Gazette and Manufacturing and Mercantile Advertiser.

A consolidation caused by the closing of the Pittsburgh Post in 1927 made it the Post-Gazette, which has remained its name for 99 years.

It had a solid reputation, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 2019 for its coverage of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. “The Post-Gazette is really the paper of record for this city,” said Kevin Acklin, chief of staff to a former Pittsburgh mayor and former president of the Penguins hockey team. The other longtime “paper of record,” The Pittsburgh Press, closed in 1992 after a Teamsters Union strike.

Labor woes marred the Post-Gazette's last few years as well. Much of the staff was on strike between 2022 and 2025, though the newspaper limped along. Its owner, Block Communications, Inc., announced the closing on the same January day that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected its appeal of a ruling on health benefits seen as favorable to former strikers.

Since then, rumors about its future ebbed and flowed. Acklin worked this winter with other investors to buy the newspaper, but a potential deal fell through when Block insisted the union not be part of it.

To anyone watching closely, a clue to the newspaper's future was revealed across town in mid-March.

“You thought we were dead and gone, didn't you?” Ali Trachta, top editor at the Pittsburgh City Paper, wrote on the outlet's revived website. “So did I. But, to be honest, only very briefly.” She announced that the paper was returning to cover community news, politics, the arts “and the creative, weird and uniquely Pittsburgh stories” that have defined it since its founding in 1991.

A new nonprofit, Local Matters, led by a former engineering manager at Apple, had gathered investors to buy the City Paper. It would return to printed editions on a monthly basis and was launching a membership program for readers to pledge support. Most of its staff would return. The paper used to print weekly until its previous owner in 2025 said it would shift to only four printed editions a year.

That former owner? Block Communications.

A new nonprofit enters Pittsburgh's civic arena

When Block announced its sale of the Post-Gazette last week, it was also to a nonprofit. The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which publishes the digital success story The Baltimore Banner, bought the Post-Gazette even though Block said it was not the highest bidder. Many in Pittsburgh feared it would be sold to a hedge fund notorious for stripping newspapers of resources.

Does that make Block, long seen as a villain in the local journalism industry, a hero in this story?

“For better or worse, the Blocks will never get credit for that," said Andrew Conte, a journalism professor at Point Park University who runs Pittsburgh's Center for Media Innovation. “But it does seem like they made an effort to come up with the best outcome they could as they were leaving Pittsburgh. They could have just walked away and said, ‘You know, we’re done.'”

Now the work begins. Venetoulis officials did not return inquiries from The Associated Press. The institute's benefactor, hotel magnate Stewart Bainum Jr., has said that he plans to invest $30 million in both the Banner and Post-Gazette over the next five years. The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh said it hopes to be part of the process of rebuilding. Whether the union will be invited is uncertain.

“This is going to be one of the most closely-watched newspaper acquisitions in years,” said Tim Franklin, founding director of the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. “Can a money-losing newspaper with serious labor strife be saved and resurrected as a non-profit? If Stewart Bainum and his team pull this off — and I hope they do — it could be a model for the nation.”

Anticipating a Pittsburgh without the Post-Gazette, other news sources in the city had begun making plans to fill gaps in the marketplace, and they're not necessarily changing them because of the sale.

Another area newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, will reinstate a Sunday print edition in Pittsburgh on May 9. It had stopped printing in the city a decade ago. The Trib is also going ahead with adding about a dozen new journalists to boost its coverage of business, health care, transportation and education, said Jennifer Bertetto, its CEO. Based in Greensburg, 30 miles to the east of Pittsburgh, some city residents view the Trib as an outsider.

Stockton's Public Source, launched in 2011 primarily as a home for investigative news stories, is widening its outlook. The outlet has also convened town halls over the past few months for residents to talk about what they want in local news, and published a list of 40 to 50 small news outlets in the region that focus on subject areas like the arts and business, or different neighborhoods and towns.

People less engaged in news were looking for new ideas. “People are actively interested in where they get their information and who they can trust for it,” Stockton said. “So we're leaning into that.”

With their careers in limbo the past several months, Post-Gazette content editor Erin Hebert and photographer Steve Mellon were among several journalists meeting regularly as the Pittsburgh Alliance for People-Empowered Reporting, or PAPER, seeing if they could create a digital news site. Hebert said it hasn’t been decided what will happen now with those plans.

Conte can walk a few blocks from the university to show office space set aside for journalists from small, local publications. He hopes to convince the Tribune-Review to print a periodic insert featuring the best reporting from these outlets.

Talk to someone young, and the challenge is obvious

A clue to the challenge faced by news organizations in 2026 is obvious when speaking to students in Conte’s journalism class. When they're asked how many had checked the Post-Gazette's website that morning, only a couple of hands tentatively go up.

Sites like Instagram or TikTok are often their destinations for news. It’s more convenient and without pay walls, said Gabriela Wait. The journalism students know to check with more reliable sources if they’re not sure they can believe what they see. Many of their friends don’t.

Makenna Smith recalled her grandparents and parents reading newspapers when she was growing up, keeping them informed and entertained. Few people her age have the same habit.

A study released earlier this month by the Pew Research Center showed that public interest in news is a problem for all ages. Pew found that 37% of Americans in 2016 said they followed local news very closely. That dropped to 21% in 2025.

To Conte, that reinforces the need for news organizations to cooperate. A former Trib reporter, he recalled his paper's bitter competition with the Post-Gazette.

“Literally, they were trying to kill each other,” he said. “I don't think any of us want to go back to a point where we're doing that. We've evolved. We're trying to work together. Even if we're competing for scoops and clicks and dollars, there's also a benefit to having us get around the same table once a month.”

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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

McCollum led a late surge that was almost for naught when he missed two free throws with 5.6 seconds remaining. The Knicks rushed the ball up the court without any timeouts left, but Mikal Bridges missed a jumper as time expired.

“It’s a long game,” McCollum said. “You’ve got to play to zero.”

The Hawks had trailed the whole second half and were down 12 after three quarters. Atlanta chipped away and a basket by McCollum gave the Hawks a 101-100 lead — their first of the series in the second half — with 2:09 to play. He made another for a three-point lead, and after Jalen Brunson tied it with a 3-pointer, McCollum answered with another jumper to make it 105-103 with 33 seconds to play.

Jonathan Kuminga added 19 points off the bench and Jalen Johnson scored 17, including a basket with 10 seconds left for a four-point lead for the No. 6 seeds, who host Game 3 on Thursday.

Brunson had 29 points for the Knicks and Karl-Anthony Towns added 18.

The Knicks are trying to reach the second round for a fourth straight season, their longest stretch since the 1991-92 to 1999-2000 seasons, and seemed well on their way.

“This is a game we should have won,” New York's Josh Hart said. “In the playoffs you can’t give away games.”

The Knicks had been 40-1 in the postseason since the advent of the shot clock in 1954-55 when leading by 12 or more after three quarters. The only loss was when Reggie Miller scored 25 points in the fourth for Indiana in Game 5 of the 1994 Eastern Conference finals.

Towns, who had four points in the first half, scored 14 in the third quarter as the Knicks extended the lead to 78-64. They were still ahead by eight with under five minutes remaining.

But their young players who sparked the Hawks' surge after the All-Star break finally made some plays before McCollum — ignoring profane jeers after he and Jose Alvarado went nose-to-nose and were each given technical fouls in the third quarter — then closed it out.

McCollum was acquired from Washington in the January trade for Trae Young, the Hawks star who was a former playoff villain at Madison Square Garden. He filled the role perfectly Monday, outplaying Brunson in the second half and stealing a game that looked lost.

Hart had 15 points, 13 rebounds and six assists.

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The procedure will be performed Wednesday at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in Los Angeles, and Díaz is not expected back until the second half of the season.

The Dodgers placed the 32-year-old right-hander on the 15-day injured list and recalled left-hander Jake Elder from Triple-A Oklahoma City. Elder, was acquired from the Washington Nationals on April 1 for cash, has allowed two runs in 5 1/3 innings this season with Oklahoma City.

Díaz is 1-0 with a 10.50 ERA, 10 strikeouts and four saves in five opportunities over seven appearances. He gave up three runs without recording an out in Sunday's 9-6 loss at Colorado. He has allowed three earned runs in each of his past two appearances.

“It gives other guys opportunities, but losing your closer is a big loss,” manager Dave Roberts said after the Dodgers beat the Rockies 12-3 on Monday night. “Other guys are going to have to step up. Fortunately for us, we’ve got a lot of depth and we’ve got some other guys who should be coming here in the next few weeks.”

The Dodgers signed the three-time All-Star to a three-year, $69 million deal last December after he opted out of the final two years and $38 million of his contract with the New York Mets.

The two-time defending World Series champion Dodgers split their four-game series at Colorado. Their seven-game trip continues with a series at San Francisco that starts Tuesday.

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

There is a case to be made that Pope Leo XIV, the careful, reserved, Midwestern Augustinian, found his voice on his epic trip through Africa, blasting the “handful of tyrants” and “chains of corruption” that have held parts of the continent hostage for centuries.

But the fact is, Leo has been preaching this kind of message for a while now, including in the context of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. It just took U.S. President Donald Trump’s unprecedented broadside and Vice President JD Vance's claims of theological superiority for many people to pay attention, especially American Catholics.

“Yes, Pope Leo might give the impression that he is engaging, in his quiet way and with authority, and this is how it looks to the world press and social media,” Cardinal Michael Czerny, a top Vatican official and aide to Leo, told The Associated Press.

“But in fact the Holy Father’s homilies and talks in Africa have been prepared, well in advance, in terms of the local African reality and the church," Czerny said. "So, if they seem relevant to the current wars, controversy, this reminds us of Jesus saying, ‘Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear!’”

Leo tried to make that point when he came to the back of Air Pope One on April 18, en route from Cameroon to Angola, and complained that “a certain narrative” had taken hold suggesting he was in a feud with Trump over the Iran war and his peace messages in Africa were directed at the president.

Leo insisted his words about tyrants and the religious justification for war had been wrongly interpreted and he was referring only to the African context, and to a separatist conflict in western Cameroon, in particular.

The thin line of the pope's explanation

But Leo also was trying to have it both ways. Yes, he was talking about the separatist conflict at a peace meeting in Bamenda. Yes, he was preaching the Gospel message of peace and fraternity. But he also has been talking about Trump, a lot.

“That distancing of Pope Leo from some interpretations was really a move to de-escalate a very dangerous situation,” said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of theology at Trinity College Dublin. “Because the Vatican needs the United States to restore some kind of peaceful — not order — but a horizon of peace, a hope of peace.”

Leo criticized Trump, directly, before he got to Africa. And in one remarkable comment two weeks ago, he encouraged the faithful to contact their congressional representatives to demand an end to the war.

The headline from the April 7 encounter outside Leo's country house in Castel Gandolfo was that Leo had called Trump’s threat to annihilate Iranian civilization “truly unacceptable.”

But the more significant message followed. “I would invite the citizens of all the countries involved to contact the authorities, political leaders, congressmen, to ask them, tell them to work for peace and to reject war,” Leo said.

Faggioli termed the comment “the Vatican’s nuclear option,” making a direct appeal to U.S. voters to take a stand, because it genuinely feared Trump was about to take the Iran war in a vastly more catastrophic direction.

What came before Leo's unprecedented appeal

The Holy See had never resorted to such a directly political message from a pope even at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when a Catholic president — John F. Kennedy — was on the verge of a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union, Faggioli said.

At that moment, Pope John XXIII did make a public appeal — his famous Oct. 25, 1962, radio address — with a strong, direct plea for peace including to “those who have the responsibility of power” to “do everything in their power to save the peace.”

The pope also sent private letters to Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and worked behind the scenes through diplomatic channels to de-escalate the situation. But he didn't urge U.S. voters to essentially choose which Catholic to listen to: their president or their pope.

“What is at stake now is that at a time of war, loyalties of Catholics are tested in a particular way,” Faggioli said. He added that however the situation ultimately resolves itself, the tension will complicate any future political aspirations of Catholics seeking high office, whether Vance on the Republican side or California Gov. Gavin Newsom on the Democratic side, as long as a U.S.-born pope is still in Rome.

Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the Global Catholic Research Initiative at the University of Notre Dame, said Leo has consistently operated “on a higher plane” but American Catholics are used to church discussion of morality in the context of sexuality, gender and abortion, and it's jarring to process foreign policy through a moral lens.

“So JD Vance can say the pope should stick to morality," she said, “but war and peace are ancient moral issues.”

The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, the under-secretary in the Vatican’s culture department, said Leo is continuing in the tradition of popes past to preach the Gospel message of peace. What has changed, he said, was how Trump reacted.

“The strong reaction arrived from America," he said. "It was America that reacted to Leo’s words, and not vice versa.”

Even with his direct comments about Trump, Leo was not engaging in an attack, Spadaro said.

“It’s very dangerous to imagine that the pope is fighting with Trump, because it means demeaning the pope to a level of contrast, one against the other, which Trump may want but that the pope has no intention of doing," he said.

New role, same Leo, Vatican official says

Spadaro added that from his perch, Leo hasn't changed at all from when he was known as Robert Prevost, the Chicago-born missionary priest.

“I see the Prevost I’ve always seen,” Spadaro said. “Let’s say it’s the backdrop that has changed, so his calm yet very direct style stands in stark contrast to a chaotic scenario, and that’s why it’s striking.”

For better or worse, the incredible saga of Trump, the war and geopolitics seems far removed from Leo’s day-to-day ministering to his flock in Africa, who have turned out in droves to welcome the American pope in each stop on his four-nation tour.

The polyglot pope has made it easy for them to hear his words, delivering speeches, homilies and prayers in the languages of the faithful: French in Algeria, English and French in Cameroon, Portuguese in Angola and, starting Tuesday, Spanish in Equatorial Guinea.

Lucineia Francisco left her family behind on Sunday so she could see Leo at the Shrine of Mama Muxima, Angola’s most popular pilgrimage destination. Some 30,000 people turned out for Leo’s rosary prayer.

“My kids were crying to come, but I said no,” Francisco said. “This is a spiritual journey that I’m really going to face on my own.”

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

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This version corrects the title for Rev. Antonio Spadaro, the under-secretary in the Vatican’s culture department

Evan Mobley had 25 points and eight rebounds for the Cavaliers, who had at least three players score at least 25 points in a postseason game for the second straight season and fourth time overall.

“They threw the kitchen sink at us, gave us a lot of different looks and (we) kept our poise,” Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson said. “Donovan and James closed it for us, but I thought our defense kind of forced them to go small. This is what the playoffs are about. They came at us hard and we responded.”

Cleveland — which never trailed — has won 12 straight playoff games against Toronto, tying the NBA postseason record for consecutive wins against an opponent. The streak began in the 2016 Eastern Conference finals, when the Cavaliers took the final two games. Cleveland swept Toronto in four games in the second round in 2017 and '18.

The Cavaliers also have 12-game winning streaks against Detroit and Atlanta, while the Los Angeles Lakers had a 12-game run against Seattle from 1980 through '89.

Scottie Barnes led Toronto with a playoff career-high 26 points. RJ Barrett had 22 points and nine rebounds.

The Raptors had 16 fast-break points after being held to a season-low three on Saturday. But Toronto committed a season-high 22 turnovers that led to 22 Cavaliers points.

“The only time the game got away was when we made a lot of turnovers. We played super hard, we adjusted to how the game was going, and did certain things that helped us,” Barnes said.

The series shifts to Toronto for Game 3 on Thursday night.

Harden had four assists to move into seventh place on the playoff career list with 1,139. He also had five steals, the fourth time he’s had at least that many in a playoff game.

A driving layup by Barnes got Toronto within 99-90 midway through the fourth quarter. Mitchell responded with seven straight points to put it away.

The Cavaliers had a 73-57 advantage midway through the third quarter before the Raptors countered with a 16-6 run.

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

“Braylon, he’s not here,” she recalled one of her students saying Monday.

Braylon Snow, who just turned 5, was one of seven siblings who were fatally shot Sunday by their father in an attack that also killed their cousin. The shooting rattled classrooms in Shreveport where teachers like Hall on Monday came face-to-face with distraught parents and a messy stew of emotions.

In Hall's classroom at Johnnie L. Cochran Head Start, it's likely students noticed Braylon's absence immediately. Each day, Hall instructs her students to look around for friends who aren't there.

“When they come back tomorrow, we can tell them, ‘Hey, we missed you, we’re glad you’re back'” she tells them.

But Hall wasn't ready to tell the students that the boy she described as a “cool little dude” wasn't returning. She kept circle-time moving. Numb and heartbroken, she lasted until noon and then went home.

“I’m no good to my babies right now because I just feel like I need to be in a moment of silence and just pray,” she said.

Preschool comes to an end

At Head Start, preparation's for next month's graduation ceremony have been in full swing. Hall, an organist and pianist at her local Baptist church, wrote a song for the ceremony.

Students, who dress in caps and gowns for the festivities, have been busy learning the words, excited about the prospect of starting kindergarten in the fall. Hall was working hard to make sure they were ready.

Just last Thursday, she pulled Braylon's mother aside during morning drop-off, boasting that Braylon was writing his first and last name. Braylon also was getting so independent, squirting syrup for his pancakes onto his plate by himself. He didn't even need a reminder to wash his hands.

“Braylon doesn’t give me any problems,” she told his mother.

Braylon greeted Hall — known to her students as “Mrs. Hall” — each day with a small wave.

As the year progressed, she nudged more gap-toothed smiles from him. He loved his time on the playground — playing chase, tag and even partaking in "a little wrassling.” She laughed as she remembered it.

“He was for the majority of the time kind of a quiet little soul in the classroom," she said. "When he did get a little extra energy or something, it was just a joy to see him smile and laugh."

News of the shooting emerges

But then came Sunday. After church, she went to her mother's house. It was then that she stumbled across an article about the shooting.

The number of victims was so high she struggled to comprehend it. Then she learned Braylon was among the victims. She also knew one of his brothers. He had been a Head Start student at the school last year.

“I just broke down and just started crying,” she said.

The same thing happened Monday morning at drop off when she locked eyes with a parent. Neither could say anything; the preschoolers were all around them.

“I just immediately broke down,” she said. So too did the parent and a teacher's aide.

She is relying on her faith now. She prays for the dead, for the families and also for the teachers.

“And I’m just praying for all the educators that were connected to these children because it’s tough because my parents’ babies, they become my babies. And I treat them like they’re my own. So I’m just really praying that he sustains us all during this time.

“Just give us that strength."

Hours later, the team released footage of Stroud running sprints with the same steadfast, locked-in look. Stroud also appeared to be in optimal condition, lean and moving fast.

Throughout the past few months, the Texans have repeatedly emphasized that the former NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year is locked in and focused on the task at hand.

After a rocky playoffs that included a career-high four interceptions in an AFC divisional round loss to the New England Patriots, Stroud is determined to deliver a season and postseason filled with winning performances.

Consider Texans coach DeMeco Ryans impressed with Stroud.

C.J., he shows up here, he’s looking like he’s in great shape," Ryans said as the Texans opened their annual offseason conditioning program. “He’s revved up. He’s ready to go. It all starts with your mindset, how you’re attacking the offseason. C.J. is going to attack it the right way, so I’m excited to see him continue to work, continue to grow as a player, as a leader.

“He’s eager to do that. It’ll be an exciting offseason for him just to be here putting in the work, continuing to put in the work because he’s been working. Right after the season he has been dedicated himself to working, doing things the right way. When you see a young man working the way he’s working, I know what that looks like on the other side and its only positive things that can come from that.”

Phase 1️⃣ Day 1️⃣ pic.twitter.com/MedOsjl7qs

— Houston Texans (@HoustonTexans) April 20, 2026

The Texans exercised a $25.9 million fifth-year club option to secure Stroud through the 2027 season.

Although the Texans are not expected to engage with Stroud in long-term contract negotiations this year necessarily, they are expected to try to extend Stroud next offseason depending on how he does this season.

“I don’t really think that affects his future,” Texans general manager Nick Caserio said. “He’s our quarterback. We’ve said that from the beginning. I think that was really more of a procedural thing. I don’t want to say it was a no-brainer, but it was kind of a no-brainer, so we’re glad he’s here.

“Again, it’s more of a part of the process. So, we’re excited about his offseason. I think he’s had a good approach, had a good attitude here. I think he’s put a lot of work in from March and April. I’m so excited to have him around here in the spring and I’m excited to keep moving forward.”

Previously at the NFL scouting combine in February, Caserio threw cold water on unfounded trade speculation surrounding Stroud.

Stroud was named in trade rumors previously dismissed by KPRC 2 as completely unfounded. Stroud will remain the Texans’ QB1 going forward.

While the Texans aren’t engaging in contract negotiations at this time, they can shift that approach anytime. Ideally, they would be happy to reward Stroud provided he proves himself this season after being intercepted a career-high four times in an AFC divisional round loss to the New England Patriots.

“It’s moronic,” Caserio said in response to a question from KPRC 2. “We’re not trading him. He’s our quarterback. He’s going to be playing quarterback for the Houston Texans in 2026. Anything beyond that, you guys can speculate on that, but we’re not trading C.J. Stroud.”

Stroud has been the subject of heavy criticism since that game. However, the organization has had his back. It was an uncharacteristically sloppy performance from Stroud, who completed 64.5 percent of his throws as he passed for 3,041 yards, 18 touchdowns and eight interceptions while missing three games due to a concussion.

A former Pro Bowl selection who declined an alternate invitation to the Pro Bowl, Stroud has passed for 10,876 yards, 62 touchdowns and 25 interceptions in three NFL seasons.

Stroud led the NFL in touchdown to interception ratio with a 23:5 clip as a rookie, passing for 4,108 yards.

“He’s been a good player, and won a lot of football games,” Caserio said. “Quarterback is the hardest position to play in sports. He had some ups and downs. That’s natural for a position, but, overall, he’s had a pretty significant impact on what we are as a program. He’s not going anywhere.

Since the playoffs, the Texans and Stroud have taken several steps to move on from the New England game.

The steps include adjusting his offseason approach, improving the supporting cast on offense, and making a coaching change. Jerry Schuplinski has been named quarterbacks coach, replacing Jerrod Johnson.

“C.J. is a young quarterback,” Ryans said during NFL meetings at the Arizona Biltmore. “Being early in his career, he’s gained a ton of valuable experience, including in the playoffs. It hasn’t gone as we would like it to there. You always want to win it all.

“But when you go through those difficult moments, those tough times, you learn from them. I know C.J. has learned from those moments. Now, we’ve got to go out and improve and show it on the field. The way he’s attacked the offseason, working hard, throwing every day, staying dialed in. I’m excited to see how that translates into a really great year for us.”

Without getting into specifics about future plans, the McNair family made it clear how highly they value All-Pro defensive end Will Anderson Jr. in advance of his record-setting $150 million contract extension and Stroud.

“We’ll let DeMeco and Nick make the football decisions there, but they’re exciting, really good young players,” Texans chairman and CEO Cal McNair said. “We hope to have them around for a long, long time.”

PHOENIX -- #Texans Cal McNair and Hannah McNair on potential long-term deals for Will Anderson Jr., C.J. Stroud: 'Exciting, really good players, we'll hope to have them around a long, long time. .. It's a good problem to have when you have so many guys you want to keep under… pic.twitter.com/WunQinzX0g

— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) April 1, 2026

A year from now, cornerback Kamari Lassiter and safety Calen Bullock will be eligible for extensions. Both were named Pro Bowl alternates after the 2025 season.

“It’s a good problem to have when you have so many guys you want to keep under contract,” Hannah McNair said. “If we keep drafting the way we do, this is going to be something we talk about every year.”

Aaron Wilson is a Texans and NFL reporter for KPRC 2 and click2houston.com

The 19-year-old Martone became the sixth-youngest player in NHL history to score in each of his first two playoff games when he beat Stuart Skinner deep into the second period to put Philadelphia in front. Garnet Hathaway added a short-handed goal a few minutes later, and Luke Glendening chipped in an empty-netter late in the third.

Vladar made it stand up as the red-hot Flyers, who needed a scorching finishing stretch just to reach the playoffs, frustrated the suddenly offensively challenged Penguins all night.

“He’s been like that all year for us,” Philadelphia coach Rick Tocchet said of Vladar. “Guys enjoy playing for him.”

Game 3 is Wednesday night in Philadelphia.

Pittsburgh, the NHL's third-highest scoring team during a resurgent regular season, again struggled to get pucks on net against Vladar. The Penguins, who had just 17 shots in a Game 1 loss on Saturday night, vowed to come out with more jump.

While Pittsburgh controlled long swaths of the game after another slow start, including sustained pressure in the third, it could not find a way to slip the puck past Vladar.

“(We) should be frustrated, we just lost two games at home,” Pittsburgh coach Dan Muse said. "But with frustration it’s how are you going to respond. ... Nobody is happy. Nobody should be.”

The 28-year-old Vladar, who had never won a playoff game in his six-year career before this series, held firm as the Flyers headed home with momentum.

Pittsburgh shuffled its top two lines midway through the game looking for a jolt. While it created more opportunities, it did not result in more goals. The Penguins went 0 for 5 on the power play to fall to 0 for 7 with the man advantage during the series.

Stuart Skinner made 20 saves for the Penguins, including a couple of breakaways that could have broken things open, but it wasn't against the young Flyers, who seem to be gaining confidence with each passing game.

Martone, who was playing collegiately at Michigan State last month, scored his fifth goal in 10 games as a pro when a rebound off a Travis Konecny shot came right to his stick. Martone powered it into the open net to put Philadelphia in front with 6:21 to go in the second.

“I made this jump because I believed I could help this hockey team,” Martone said. "I hopped on a moving train and it’s been good ever since.”

The Flyers were on the penalty kill just over four minutes later when they doubled their lead. Owen Tippett fought off a pair of Penguins to keep the puck in the Pittsburgh zone and then fed Hathaway, who deposited it into the open net on a night the only place Philadelphia dominated was the scoreboard.

“Sometimes in the playoffs you have to win those ugly games,” Tocchet said. "It was an ugly game for us. ... Sometimes you’ve got to win games like that.”

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

“I felt like I was back in the Northwest League,” manager John Schneider said before Monday night’s series opener against the Los Angeles Angels. “But we made the best of it, we all got here safe, and we’re ready to go.”

Schneider said he was informed by Blue Jays traveling secretary Rodney Hiemstra of the mechanical problem at about 4 p.m. on Sunday, as the Blue Jays were finishing a 10-4 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“There was an issue with the joystick, which is pretty important — apparently, it’s used for takeoffs and landings,” Schneider said. “So the options were to get a new plane, which would have had to fly down from Vancouver and wouldn’t have landed until 10 p.m., or drive. We took a team vote, and the team voted to bus.”

While pitcher Dylan Cease, who was Monday night's scheduled starter, flew commercial from Phoenix to Orange County, the team had to unload all the luggage and food from the charter plane and drive it all back to Chase Field. There, it was loaded onto three buses — two for players and one for the rest of the traveling party of about 40, which included the coaching staff.

“The math was a little off,” Schneider said. “It worked out way better for the players, but there was a whole lot of doubling up for us. I had my own two seats, and I still had cases of water around me, and you feel bad reclining on people.”

Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer was on the losing side of the vote — he preferred the team fly to Orange County — but the veteran right-hander was still able to find some humor in the situation.

“I got reprimanded by Max for electing to travel that way,” Schneider said as he showed reporters a letter Scherzer printed out for the manager. “So we’re going to go to a trial in kangaroo court.

“I was like, ‘Max, why don’t you just buy a plane? You've got plenty of cash.’ Most of the guys who were playing (Monday night) wanted to get out of there.”

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

The crash, following an operation to destroy a clandestine drug lab in a rural area, has reignited a debate over the extent of U.S. involvement in Mexican security operations. Speculation was only fueled by Sheinbaum, local officials and the U.S. Embassy appearing to contradict each other and at times themselves, and offering sparse details about the U.S. officials who died.

“It was not an operation that the security cabinet was aware of,” Sheinbaum told journalists. “We were not informed; it was a decision by the Chihuahua government.”

It comes at a key moment for the relationship between the two neighboring nations as Mexico faces escalating pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump crack down on cartels and Sheinbaum underscores Mexico’s sovereignty.

Sheinbaum said her government would investigate the incident to ensure no laws were broken after the deaths on Sunday, adding that state governments must have authorization from Mexico's federal government to collaborate with U.S. and other foreign entities “as established by the Constitution.”

A mountainside car crash

Chihuahua Attorney General César Jáuregui said Sunday the officials died while returning from the operation to destroy labs of criminal groups. They were driving in the middle of the night through rugged mountain territory connecting Chihuahua to the state of Sinaloa, when the truck “appears to have skidded at some point and fell into a ravine, exploding.”

He said the four who died were two local Mexican investigative officials and two U.S. Embassy instructors who were participating in routine “training work.”

The U.S. Embassy on Monday declined to identify who the U.S. officials were or which entity of the U.S. government they worked for, but said the officials were “supporting Chihuahua state authorities’ efforts to combat cartel operations.” U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson expressed his condolences on social media but he and other officials provided few details of the incident.

Jáuregui said that the operation came following months of investigation by state prosecutors and Mexico's federal military, indicating there was at least some level of involvement in the operation from Sheinbaum’s security forces. Hours later, the Mexican Security Cabinet confirmed that the army and state prosecutor’s office carried out a joint operation over the weekend in Chihuahua dismantling drug labs in the same location, Morelos.

After locating the labs using drones, officials found tons of material to manufacture drugs but no people, who were likely alerted beforehand and fled, the prosecutor added.

The local official later backtracked and clarified to press that there “were no U.S. agents in the operation to secure the narco-lab," and said the embassy officials joined the group after the operation and were several hours away from where the action took place.

A resurfaced debate

Sheinbaum said her government would provide more information when it has more details, but insisted Monday that “there are no joint operations on land or in the air" in Mexico. She said there is only sharing of information between her government and the U.S., carried out within a “well-established” legal framework.

While U.S. officials’ training of Mexican security forces is common, their presence on Mexican territory has been the subject of ongoing debate, which has intensified after Trump’s military actions in Venezuela and Iran.

Trump has repeatedly offered to take action on Mexican cartels, intervention which Sheinbaum has said was “unnecessary. ” The Trump administration has already launched joint military operations in Ecuador, a country that has been roiled by violence by drug gangs in recent years.

Last year, Sheinbaum said the U.S. had conducted surveillance drone flights at Mexico’s request after a series of conflicting public statements on the issue, also sparking alarm among observers.

The most recent controversy surfaced in January over the detention in Mexico of former Canadian athlete Ryan Wedding, one of the United States’ most wanted fugitives. While Mexican officials claim he surrendered at the U.S. Embassy, U.S. authorities have described his capture as the result of a binational operation.

The recent debacle comes at a pivotal time in U.S.-Mexico relations. The second round of negotiations between the United States and Mexico on the United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, the USMCA, was slated to begin in Mexico City. The U.S. delegation is led by Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who was scheduled to meet with the president on Monday.

That same day, the Trump administration also announced it was imposing visa restrictions on family members of the Cartel de Sinaloa.

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

The swearing-in ceremony, held Monday evening at the Missouri City Community Center, drew such a large crowd that attendees lined up outside to enter, underscoring strong community interest in the department’s new leadership.

OUR FIRST REPORT: Troy Finner hired as Missouri City Police Chief nearly 2 years after HPD scandal, retirement

Missouri City Mayor Pro Tem Lynn Clouser, who served as master of ceremonies, described the event as a “momentous occasion” and highlighted the significance of the role in shaping the city’s future in public safety.

City Manager Angel Jones said Finner was selected following a nationwide search that drew more than 50 applicants. She said the city prioritized finding a leader with the experience and judgment to move the department forward while maintaining accountability and public trust.

Finner was formally sworn in by Missouri City Mayor Robin Elackatt, taking the oath of office alongside family members who joined him on stage for the ceremony.

In remarks following the oath, Finner thanked city leaders, law enforcement colleagues and his family, and emphasized his commitment to community-focused policing.

“My number one goal and priority is fighting violent crime,” Finner said. “But you do it in a way, best practices around the nation, building partnerships and trust.”

Finner also stressed the importance of community relationships, officer wellness and investing in youth programs, urging leaders not to cut resources for young people.

“Don’t cut back on the youth. They need us,” he said.

Speakers throughout the ceremony pointed to Finner’s decades of experience and leadership style centered on visibility, trust and engagement.

Houston Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castex-Tatum, who has worked alongside Finner, said his approach to policing goes beyond enforcement.

“It’s about relationship. It’s about trust. It’s about people,” she said.

Finner previously served as Houston police chief after being appointed by then-Mayor Sylvester Turner in 2021. He retired from that role in 2024.

Missouri City officials have said they conducted a thorough review of Finner’s background before selecting him to lead the department.

Mayor Elackatt said the city expects Finner to strengthen trust between officers and residents while advancing community-focused policing.

“With Chief Finner now leading Missouri City, I’m confident we will continue to strengthen that trust and raise the bar for excellence,” Elackatt said.

The ceremony ended with a reception and opportunities for community members and media to meet Finner, marking the beginning of what city leaders described as a new chapter for public safety in Missouri City.

The Monday decision by U.S. magistrate Elizabeth Chestney in San Antonio is a major development in the nearly year-long saga of the family who has for months raised alarms about the treatment at the facility, including medical neglect, rotting food, impotable water, and disrespect for their Muslim faith as they begged for their release. Last week the family’s lawyers said the mother was rushed to the emergency room, after months of suffering from an unidentified bump, which she feared may be cancerous due to her family history and possibly heightened by the lack of medical care at the detention center. 

“A federal court has ruled that the Trump administration is violating the Constitution by detaining the El Gamal family,” the family’s lawyer, Michigan-based Eric Lee, said in a statement. ”We feel vindicated, but despite the court’s ruling, the family has not yet been released. After 10 and a half months we demand the executive branch release them immediately.”

In a statement Monday evening, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson described the ruling as a judge wanting to “release this terrorist’s family onto American streets.” The spokesperson also said the agency would “continue to fight for the removal of those who have no right to be in our country, especially national security threats.”

Spokespeople for the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the immigration courts, did not immediately respond to questions.

A hearing before U.S. District Judge Fred Biery in San Antonio is scheduled for Thursday. The decision by the magistrate judge argues that the family is wrongfully detained, known in legal proceedings as a habeas petition. Such claims have escalated in recent months, specifically seeing a dramatic spike in the Western District of Texas overseeing both the Dilley facility and El Paso’s Camp East Montana that holds adults. 

The El Gamal family, who came to the U.S. on a tourist visa in 2022 and later applied for asylum, have been detained since last June after the father, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was charged with attacking mostly Jewish protesters in Boulder, Colo., accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at demonstrators supporting Israeli hostages. He allegedly wounded at least 29 people and an 82-year-old woman died from her injuries. The father, who pleaded not guilty, remains in federal custody on more than 100 charges related to the incident. 

His wife, who said she met her husband in an arranged marriage when she was young, and her five children, have not been charged with any crimes. They have repeatedly maintained that they did not know about Soliman’s plans and had an estranged relationship with him. The family has since disavowed the father and is no longer in contact with him, their attorney said, and his wife has filed for divorce.

Nevertheless when the family was detained last June, the White House tweeted, “Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon.”

The family garnered widespread public attention this year after their lawyers shared heartbreaking accounts in the children’s own words and drawings of the harm they said they were suffering at Dilley.

“We have been here for nine months. I really miss playing with my toys and my watch,” wrote the 9-year-old in accounts first shared with The Texas Tribune. “Please get us out of here.”

The 16-year-old wrote, “I have seen with my own eyes, food that has mold in it. I even saw food with actual worms.”

He described suffering from appendicitis, writing that he began feeling “severe abdominal pain” one morning and was unable to walk to the medical unit. Hours later, he was brought in a wheel chair to see a nurse who he said told him, “‘I can’t help you. Go and come back if you still have pain in 3 days.’” He said he threw up and only then was transferred to the emergency room.

Together, the children’s accounts offered a bleak view of life inside an immigrant detention facility, which generally is not intended for children. The Trump administration is appealing a decades-old federal court settlement to allow them to detain children, like the El Gamal siblings, for longer than 20 days, which according to the existing agreement is typically the maximum time kids held with their parents can be imprisoned. For more than a decade, medical experts and child advocates have testified about the long-lasting harm suffered by children when they are detained. 

Since the El Gamal family spoke out earlier this year, their attorneys said that conditions have deteriorated for them. The eldest sister, who last year was chosen as one of the “best and brightest,” students in Colorado and recognized by a picture with the mayor with a scholarship from the local paper, was separated from her mother and youngest siblings after telling reporters about their poor treatment. 

Their plight helped renew attention on the conditions at the controversial Dilley facility, which opened in 2014 under former President Barack Obama and has long been plagued with problems. Former President Joe Biden shuttered it in 2021 but President Donald Trump reopened it last year. 

The detention center, which has been the focus of mass media coverage and spurred nationwide protests, including in Texas, reentered the public consciousness earlier this year after photos of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, wearing a blue hat and Spider-Man backpack, went viral following his January arrest in Minneapolis. He and his father were sent to the Dilley facility, but following widespread public alarm, quickly released while their asylum cases proceeded in the courts. 

The majority of families detained at Dilley have not faced that same fate. Instead attorneys said they have suffered as bouts of measles spurred the facility into lockdown. Several children, lawyers and advocates said, have become so disillusioned that they attempted to self-harm. 

A 13-year-old friend of the El Gamal family, for example, was deported to Colombia earlier this year after attempting suicide, the family’s attorney said. He said he worried every day that one morning he would wake up to learn that one of the El Gamal children had suffered the same fate.

Monday’s ruling brings hope, but the family’s prospects are far from certain, Lee said. 

“We won’t rest until this innocent family is free,” he said, adding that the government “continues to detain them even though a court has held that their prolonged detention violates the Constitution.”

The violence reverberated across Shreveport a day after the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in two years. Schools brought in counselors for the victims' young classmates and community leaders called for a city-wide reckoning on stopping domestic violence.

“We cannot afford to wait until the next crisis,” said Caddo Parish Sheriff Henry Whitehorn. “We owe it to the eight children who were lost.”

The shooter, identified as Shamar Elkins, killed seven of his children and a nephew, police said. His wife and another woman were also shot and wounded.

Shooter ‘just snapped,’ brother-in-law says

Elkins had voluntarily checked into a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in January for just over a week for mental health treatment, said his brother-in-law, Troy Brown, who lived in the house with his wife, Keosha Pugh, and was at work during the attack. Elkins appeared “better when he came home,” he said.

Elkins' wife was seeking a divorce, which was causing him stress, Brown said. But everything seemed calm in the house when Brown left for work Saturday night, with the children playing games or watching TV.

“All I know is he just snapped,” Brown told The Associated Press. “If I wouldn’t have been at work, he was going to kill everybody in the house and that includes me."

Brown's wife, who made a series of frantic calls for help when the shooting started, and their 12-year-old daughter escaped through the home's roof, he said. His wife broke her pelvis after falling and has since had surgery, he said.

“She said she was running for her life,” said Lionel Pugh, an uncle of the two women shot. “The only ones he didn’t kill was the ones who got away.”

Elkins died after fleeing and a police pursuit. It was not clear whether he was killed by officers who fired or from a self-inflicted gunshot, Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith said.

Officials said the children who died — three boys and five girls — ranged in age from 3 to 11 years old.

Brown said his 10-year-old son, who loved to go outside and run around and play with friends, was killed.

“I'm never going to get to throw the football with him again," he said “I’m never going to get to hear him say, ‘Dad, can I get this bag of chips?'”

Elkins and his wife, identified by family members as Shaneiqua Elkins, were separating and had been due in court Monday, said Crystal Brown, a cousin of a woman shot in the attack. She said the couple had been arguing about the separation before the shooting.

Family members described Shaneiqua Elkins as a doting mother, who celebrated her children’s success in school.

“She raised those kids right,” Pugh said. “They were the center of her universe.”

Gunman had no recent arrests for domestic violence, police say

While the shooter did not appear to have a long criminal history, court records showed Elkins was placed on probation in 2019 after pleading guilty to illegal use of weapons. In that case, Elkins fired five rounds at a vehicle and told police that someone inside it had pulled a gun on him, according to a police report.

Based on Louisiana law, a person convicted of certain violent felonies — including illegal use of weapons — are banned from having a gun for at least 10 years after completing their sentence and probation.

Authorities said Monday that how and when Elkins got the gun is being investigated.

Louisiana, a reliably red state, has expanded access to guns in recent years. For years, Democrats in Louisiana have proposed bills to tighten gun control — or at least put “red flag” measures in place. But Republicans have routinely blocked such legislation.

Investigators were not aware of other domestic violence issues involving Elkins, said police spokesperson Chris Bordelon.

Elkins had served in the Louisiana National Guard from 2013 to 2020, said guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Noel Collins. Elkins held the rank of private and had no deployments, Collins said.

The violence started before sunrise Sunday

Authorities said the shooting erupted before dawn at two homes.

Elkins shot a woman in a neighborhood south of downtown, and opened fire a few blocks away at the home where the children were targeted, police said.

One of the victims, 5-year-old Braylon Snow, was getting ready for preschool graduation next month, said Laurance Guidry, president and CEO of Caddo Community Action Agency, which runs the Head Start program where Braylon was a student.

“They have the cap and gowns just like you would have when you were graduating from high school,” Guidry said.

Gov. Jeff Landry said during a news conference Monday that he thought he had seen evil up close after a truck attack last year on Bourbon Street left 14 dead. “But the tragedy that unfolded this weekend seems to have eclipsed that,” he said.

Landry announced that the foundation created by the state’s first lady will pay the children’s funeral expenses.

A relative says they were a joyful family

Francine Monro Brown, a cousin of Shaneiqua Elkins, said she would often see the children playing in the yard on Sunday mornings when she drove past the house on her way to church.

“Happy children, joyful children. Shaneiqua is a great mother, She provided a great home for the kids,” Brown said as she stood near a growing memorial of stuffed teddy bears, flowers and pink and blue balloons.

Betty Pugh, another cousin of Shaneiqua Elkins, said she was always with her children. “That was the way we were taught: to love our kids, to take care of our kids. And that’s what she did,” Pugh said.

The mayor of Shreveport, a city of about 180,000 residents in northwestern Louisiana, called it one of the city's worst days.

The shooting was the deadliest in the U.S. since January 2024, when eight people were killed in a Chicago suburb, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

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This story has been updated to correct that Shaneiqua Elkins' sister was not shot, she was injured escaping, and a second woman who authorities have not identified was also shot.

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Brook reported from New Orleans. Contributing were Associated Press reporters Gerald Herbert in Shreveport; Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; Jake Offenhartz in New York; and Hallie Golden in Seattle.

• Singer D4vd pleads not guilty to murder in death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez

Prosecutors say the case involves the prolonged abuse and killing of a child.

Burke was charged and arrested for the death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas.

Prosecutors said Burke killed Rivas on or about April 23, 2025.

The complaint states the killing was intentional and carried out with “malice aforethought.”

It also alleges several aggravating circumstances that could increase penalties if proven in court.

Those include claims that the killing was:

• Committed for financial gain
• Carried out by lying in wait
• Done to silence a witness to a crime

Under California law, those factors can elevate the severity of the charge and potential punishment.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said prosecutors are looking to enhance charges based on these claims, in a press conference on Monday.

The complaint alleges that between September 2023 and September 2024, Burke engaged in three or more acts of sexual conduct and lewd acts involving the child.

It further states that Burke resided with or had recurring access to the victim, a key element in continuous abuse charges.

If convicted, the charge would require mandatory sex offender registration and carries the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence.

Accused of mutilating remains

A third charge alleges Burke mutilated the victim’s remains on or about May 5, 2025.

Prosecutors also allege he used a sharp instrument, which is considered a deadly weapon, in committing that act.

No bail recommended

Court records show Burke is currently in custody, with prosecutors recommending no bail.

The case was investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Robbery-Homicide Division.

If convicted on the charges, Burke faces significant prison time, including the possibility of death penalty.

Burke has not yet been indicted by a grand jury.

Attorney Kent Schaeffer, representing Burke’s family, sent the following statement:

“The Burkes are not surprised but are terribly disappointed that the District Attorney chose to charge David. Nevertheless they support and stand by him one hundred percent.”

According to court documents, Burke was the target of a grand jury investigation in February and his family members were called to testify but they were fighting it in Texas Supreme Court.

Defense attorneys Blair Berk, Marilyn Bednarski and Regina Peter stressed that Burke has only been detained under suspicion and they plan to vigorously defend his innocence.

A court date has been set for Thursday.

The charges revealed key details and were among the first concrete public moves made in a grisly and horrific case that had been under a largely secret investigation in the seven months since Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found dead.

The 21-year-old D4vd, whose legal name is David Burke, was charged with first-degree murder, lewd and lascivious acts with a person under 14 and mutilating a body, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said. A defense lawyer entered not guilty pleas to all counts on behalf of Burke, who made his first court appearance Monday. He appeared behind glass in a custody area, dressed in black. A judge said he would continue to be held without bail.

The girl's parents appeared at the hearing. They looked down as they entered the courtroom and sat in the audience. They did not speak to reporters outside court.

Alleged child sex abuse during a career on the rise

Authorities alleged the Houston-born alt-pop singer killed Rivas Hernandez to protect a career on the rise after she threatened to report their sexual relationship. His debut album, “Withered,” was released just two days after authorities said she was last known to be alive. She was reported missing by her family in 2024, when she was 13. That was her age when, according to allegations in a criminal complaint, the singer engaged in continuous sexual abuse of her for at least a year from September 2023 to September 2024. California law penalizes abuse of a child under 14 especially harshly.

Authorities, who described her Monday as a “runaway,” said Rivas Hernandez was 14 when she was killed with a sharp object on or around April 23, 2025, a day she was at Burke's house in the Hollywood Hills.

Prosecutors allege Burke mutilated her body about two weeks later.

The murder charges include special circumstances — lying in wait, committing crime for financial gain and murdering the witness in an investigation — that could carry the death penalty. Prosecutors haven’t announced whether they will seek it.

The witness Burke is alleged to have killed is Rivas Hernandez herself, who could have given testimony about the sex crime allegations.

Defense says D4vd ‘did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez’

“We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Rivas Hernandez,” lead defense attorney Blair Berk said in court. “We would like to have the evidence come into the light of day.”

Berk told the judge that after media reports of months of secret grand jury proceedings, she would like a public preliminary hearing to take place as soon as possible so a judge can decide whether there is enough evidence for trial.

Burke is entitled under California law to have the evidentiary hearing within 10 court days of his arraignment. Nearly all defendants waive their right to have it happen that fast, but he didn’t. A hearing to work out what will happen next was scheduled for Thursday.

“We’ll be very happy to put on the evidence that we’ve collected," said Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman, the lead prosecutor.

A missing child and the grisly discovery of a body

The case is a “a parent’s nightmare,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said at a news conference Monday announcing the charges.

The long-dead body of Rivas Hernandez was found inside a Tesla that was towed from the Hollywood Hills on Sept. 8, when Burke was on tour in support of his album. It was a day after she would have turned 15.

Her family had reported her missing from her hometown of Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles.

The singer had been under investigation by an LA County grand jury looking into the death. The probe was officially secret, but its existence — and Burke's designation as its target — was revealed in February when his mother, father and brother objected in a Texas court to subpoenas demanding they testify. The 2023 Tesla Model Y was registered in the singer’s name at their address, according to court filings. Authorities did not publicly acknowledge him as a suspect until his arrest Thursday.

Police investigators searching the Tesla in a tow yard found a cadaver bag “covered with insects and a strong odor of decay,” court documents said. Detectives partially unzipped the bag and found a head and torso.

Investigators from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office removed the bag and “discovered the arms and legs had been severed from the body,” according to court documents. A second black bag was found under the first, and dismembered body parts were inside it. No cause of death has been publicly revealed, and police got a judge to block the release details of the autopsy. The court order was expected to be lifted after the charges.

“I had the chance to meet with some of the family members of Celeste and their grief is incalculable as to what happened to their daughter,” Hochman said.

D4vd was a social media-savvy singer making breakthroughs

D4vd, pronounced “David,” gained popularity among Gen Z for his blend of indie rock, R&B and lo-fi pop. He went viral on TikTok in 2022 with the hit “Romantic Homicide,” which peaked at No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. He then signed with Darkroom and Interscope Records and released his debut EP “Petals to Thorns” and a follow-up, “The Lost Petals,” in 2023.

The Associated Press confirmed that D4vd was dropped by Interscope last year.

When the body was discovered, the singer continued his North American tour, but when reports of his possible involvement spread widely, he canceled the final two shows and a European tour that was to follow.

On April 11, about two weeks before the killing, he made his debut appearance at the Coachella music festival, where he talked to the AP.

“I was such an internet kid. The internet is really what I claim as my home,” he said. “My neighborhood was Instagram and the society was the internet.”

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AP Music Writer Maria Sherman in New York contributed to this report.

Burrows instructed lawmakers to study ways to strengthen child safety and accountability for virtual gaming, singling out Roblox, an online platform and community where people can play and design their own games. In a news release, he call Roblox a place where “exploitative content and nominal safeguards are exposing Texas children to ongoing endangerment.” The charge adds to a list of policy priorities Burrows has focused the House around ahead of next year’s legislative session.

“Turning an unspeakable act of violence, whose scars remain across the Uvalde community, into entertainment is a profound moral failure,” Burrows said in a statement. “The State of Texas demands accountability — not a system that profits from violence and provocation while exposing young minds to hateful content. Lawmakers cannot stand by while a platform aimed at children enables and monetizes this kind of abuse.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Roblox in November for allegedly exposing children to sexually explicit content and exploitation. The company has faced a flurry of lawsuits from states and local governments, including Los Angeles County, alleging child endangerment.

Burrows instructed the House State Affairs Committee to evaluate “content moderation practices, enforcement gaps and the adequacy of existing child safety protections, noting that nearly 40% of Roblox’s 144 million daily users are under the age of 13.

He directed lawmakers to recommend proposals to “enforce accountability that are unconstrained by federal preemption or immunity defenses,” assess the possible civil and criminal liability of third-party content developers on platforms like Roblox, study the potential applicability of age verification and parental consent laws to gaming platforms, and “determine the extent to which platforms prioritize user engagement over safety.”

Rep. Don McLaughlin, who represents Uvalde and was mayor of the city at the time of the shooting, thanked Burrows for “recognizing the seriousness” of child safety in a statement on Monday and condemned the Roblox simulation of the 2022 shooting.

“Turning the murder of innocent children and teachers into virtual content is beyond sick, and the fact that this kind of material can exist on a platform used by millions of kids is a staggering failure,” McLaughlin said.