The Walt Disney Co.’s 20th Century Studios opened “The Devil Wears Prada 2” in 4,150 locations in North America. Women made up about 76% of the ticket buyers, according to PostTrak exit polls; 74% said they would “definitely recommend” the movie to friends. Critics were a bit mixed on the sequel, which finds Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs working once more for Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly at the fictional “Runway” magazine in a much-depleted media landscape.

The movie cost a reported $100 million to produce — a significant boost from the first movie’s $35 million production budget. But as filmmaker David Frankel told The Associated Press recently, “As it turns out, you know, by the time you finish paying all the biggest movie stars in the world, you still end up with basically the same budget for making the movie as we did the first one.”

Stars Streep, Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci have been on a fashion-forward global publicity blitz for weeks, with glamorous stops in Tokyo, London and New York. Even Anna Wintour, the inspiration for the Prada-clad devil, has been involved this time, appearing with Hathaway on the Oscars stage and with Streep on the cover of “Vogue.”

The first movie opened in June 2006 and would go on to earn over $326 million worldwide, not adjusted for inflation. And perhaps more importantly, it firmly became part of the culture thanks in part to its ever-quotable likes (“gird your loins,” “groundbreaking,” “that’s all”). Legacy sequels are never a sure thing, but this time anticipation was high: According to Nielsen, streaming viewership for “The Devil Wears Prada” was up 428% from March 2026 to April 2026.

Second place went to Lionsgate’s Michael Jackson biopic “Michael,” which made $54 million in its second weekend in North America, where it’s playing on 3,955 screens. Its running worldwide total is already $423.9 million. Universal Pictures is handling the international release.

This weekend marks the start of Hollywood’s summer movie season, a crucial 18-week corridor that runs through Labor Day and often accounts for around 40% of the annual box office. There are often Marvel blockbusters programmed as the season's kickoff, but the combined power of “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Michael” wasn't a shabby substitute.

“This is a really solid weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketplace trends for Comscore. “It’s this irresistible combination that more than makes up for the fact that there’s not a Marvel movie to kick off the summer movie season.”

“Prada” alone actually did better business than last year’s summer kickoff Marvel movie, “Thunderbolts.” There were several other new films in theaters this weekend as well, including the Adam Scott-led horror movie “Hokum,” Andy Serkis’s animated adaptation of “Animal Farm” and the Aaron Eckhart- and Ben Kingsley-led survival movie “Deep Water.”

They all opened behind “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” which made $12.1 million in its fifth weekend, and “Project Hail Mary,” which made $8.6 million in its seventh weekend. Neon's “Hokum” led the newcomers with $6.4 million, rounding out the top five, followed by the very poorly reviewed “Animal Farm” with $3.4 million. “Deep Water” opened to $2.2 million.

In the top four movies, Dergarabedian has noticed a trend: “Over the past couple of months, moviegoers have really embraced pure, escapist entertainment,” he said.

The annual box office is currently running about 14% up from last year, with about $2.8 billion in domestic ticket sales to date.

Top 10 movies by domestic box office

With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

1. “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” $77 million.

2. “Michael,” $54 million.

3. “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” $12.1 million.

4. “Project Hail Mary,” $8.6 million.

5. “Hokum,” $6.4 million.

6. “Animal Farm,” $3.4 million.

7. “Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,” $2.2 million.

8. “Deep Water,” $2.2 million.

9. “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Tears of the Azure Sea,” $1 million.

10. “The Drama,” $908,303.

The iconic former United manager was at Old Trafford for the match, but left before kickoff.

A person with knowledge of the situation said the 84-year-old Ferguson was taken to the hospital as a precaution and was “okay.” The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

In 2018 Ferguson suffered a brain hemorrhage and underwent emergency surgery, before making a recovery.

Ferguson frequently attends home matches and was pictured on social media at the stadium earlier in the day.

The Associated Press has contacted United for comment.

Ferguson won 13 Premier League titles with United and two Champions Leagues during a trophy-laden 26-and-a-half years at the club. In total he won 28 major titles with United.

He retired in 2013 having won the last of his 13 league titles.

___

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

The Greek goddess stands on a pedestal, holding a golden apple bestowed on her for her beauty — a classic ideal of beauty as old as, well, ancient Greece.

But the idea of “Costume Art,” which examines the dressed body through centuries of art history, is not to celebrate the classical form. It is rather, says Andrew Bolton, longtime curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, to use that form as a launch pad.

“Now, we go through and reclaim the body,” he says, leading a reporter through the gleaming new Conde M. Nast galleries that the show will inaugurate.

The corpulent body. The disabled body. The pregnant body. The aging body. The new show, which gala guests will view before it opens to the public May 10, is the most consciously body-positive show the museum has attempted. Perhaps its most prominent feature is a group of new mannequins, based on real people with a wide variety of body types.

There is even, in the “aging body” section, an enormous gray hoodie, emblazoned with the phrase: “I’M RETIRED. (This is as dressed up as I get.)” Just in case you’re tired of the whole glittery glamour thing.

Bolton took The Associated Press through the exhibit late last week as a huge team of installers was busy hammering, nailing, posing and otherwise adjusting the 400 items on display. Here are some of the highlights.

A new space, giving fashion its due

Last year, the Met Gala, a fundraiser for the Costume Institute, brought in a record $31 million. That gargantuan sum alone — it grows every year — can explain why the museum has granted its only self-funding department some prominent new digs, fashioned from former retail space on the museum’s main floor, right off the Great Hall. “We're in the epicenter of the museum,” notes Bolton, with evident pride. It will house all future fashion exhibits, making them easier to reach for guests and enabling shows to last longer; “Costume Art” will be up for 8 months.

The universality of … diversity

The show travels through centuries of art history by pairing art objects with fashion garments, making the argument that not only is fashion art — that's indeed the gala dress code — but more profoundly, art is fashion. Its first main gallery bears the title “Bodily Being in its Diversity,” and begins with flowing Grecian-style gowns, paired with images on Greek vases or flasks. But the display soon veers from classic forms into those that fashion has traditionally ignored.

The pregnant body, unhidden

Bolton argues that the pregnant body has either been ignored or stereotyped in art. Here, he presents designers — often female, working in the late 20th century or later — who have explored and accentuated the expectant form. The so-called “pregnancy dress” from British designer Georgina Godley, which appeared in her 1986 “Bump and Lump” collection, is a straightforward celebration of the extended pregnant belly. It is paired with a rare (for the time) 1920 sculpture by French artist Edgar Degas, “Pregnant Woman” — a nude figure holding her belly and seeming to reflect on what's to come.

The corpulent body, unfettered

Garments on display here include the corsetry of designer Michaela Stark, who posed herself for three of the new mannequins. One of them displays the corsetry ensemble “Fat Not Fertile” — fighting the trope that a larger body represents reproduction and fertility. Stark uses corsets to bind the flesh and accentuate, not hide it — to “bring back power to the female form.” The ensemble is paired with an ancient marble statuette resembling the same body type.

The disabled body takes center stage

A striking subset of the Reclaimed Body section explores the disabled body, itself divided into different types of disability: physical, sensory and cognitive.

In one ensemble, a mannequin based on Paralympian athlete, model and actor Aimee Mullins wears a pair of Victorian-esque Alexander McQueen boots, which are really prosthetic limbs. The outfit is paired with a 1965 sculpture, “The Amputee,” by John Gutmann.

Irish disability activist Sinéad Burke, who was born with dwarfism, also posed for two mannequins. One wears a Burberry trench coat, cut down for length — and including part of a discarded sleeve, refashioned into a headpiece. The other is a Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren “Mickey and Minnie” dress, paired with an ancient Egyptian statue of a dancing dwarf.

Model and activist Aariana Rose Philip, who uses a wheelchair, also posed for a mannequin, placed in its own chair — wearing a pair of denim shorts and a shirt bearing the slogan: “Queer Capital.” The display is accompanied by a work from artist Lucy Jones, who, like Philip, lives with cerebral palsy.

Exploring a less visible disability is a coat by Scottish designer Nadia Pinkney, who paid homage in her “Remember Me Knot” collection to both her grandmother and great-grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s. The coat’s pattern — derived, according to curators, from brain scans — is meant to reflect the “physiological tangles” the disease inflicts on the brain’s structure.

It's paired with a lithograph by Willem de Kooning, whose own experience with Alzheimer’s affected his late-career work.

The vital body — colorful and bloody

The second main gallery is devoted not to diversity so much as commonality — those things that unite us all. Like aging, which the show seeks to reframe as “a mode of sophistication rather than biological decline.” And mortality. There’s also a whole bloody section on, well, blood.

This includes Westwood’s “Martyr to Love” evening jacket where shiny beads represent a muscled torso, and deep red beading portrays blood dripping from a wound. It is paired with German painter Albrecht Dürer’s “Man of Sorrows with Arms Outstretched.”

“Costume Art” opens to the public May 10 and runs through Jan. 10, 2027.

All crew on the unidentified northbound carrier were safe after the attack off Sirik, Iran, east of the strait, the monitor said. Iranian officials have asserted that they control the strait and that ships not affiliated with the United States or Israel can pass if they pay a toll.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, the first reported in the area since April 22, when a cargo ship reported being fired upon, the monitor said. The threat level in the area remains critical. Tehran effectively closed the strait by attacking and threatening ships.

Iranian patrol boats, some powered only by twin outboard motors, are small, nimble and hard to detect and have attacked several ships. President Donald Trump last month ordered the U.S. military to “shoot and kill” small Iranian boats that deploy mines in the strait.

The fragile three-week ceasefire appears to be holding, though Trump on Saturday told journalists that further strikes remained a possibility.

Iran makes new proposal to US seeking to end the war

Iran’s latest proposal to the United States wants issues between them to be resolved within 30 days and aims to end the war rather than extend the ceasefire, according to Iran’s state-linked media.

Trump on Saturday said he was reviewing the proposal but expressed doubt it would lead to a deal, adding on social media that “they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity, and the World, over the last 47 years” since the Islamic Revolution there.

Iran’s 14-point proposal also calls for the U.S. lifting sanctions on Iran, ending the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports, withdrawing forces from the region and ceasing all hostilities, including Israel’s operations in Lebanon, according to the semiofficial Nour News and Tasnim agencies, which have close ties to Iran's security organizations.

There was no mention in those reports, however, of Iran's nuclear program and its enriched uranium, long the central issue in tensions with the U.S. and one that Tehran would rather address later.

Iran sent its reply via Pakistan, which hosted face-to-face talks last month between Iran and the United States.

Pakistan's prime minister, foreign minister and army chief continue to encourage the U.S. and Iran to speak directly, according to two officials in Pakistan who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Also on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke with Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, who oversaw previous rounds of talks before the war.

Iran stands firm on Strait of Hormuz

Trump has offered a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, where about a fifth of the world’s trade in oil and natural gas typically passes, along with fertilizer badly needed by farmers around the world.

Iran's grip on the strait, imposed after the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, has shaken global markets.

Tehran “will not back down from our position on the Strait of Hormuz, and it will not return to its prewar conditions," Iran’s deputy parliament speaker said Sunday. Ali Nikzad, who has no decision-making power in parliament, spoke while visiting port facilities on strategic Larak Island.

The U.S. has warned shipping companies they could face sanctions for paying Iran in any form, including digital assets, to transit the strait safely.

Meanwhile, the U.S. naval blockade since April 13 is depriving Tehran of oil revenue it needs to shore up its ailing economy. The U.S. Central Command on Saturday said 48 commercial ships have been told to turn back.

“We think that they’ve gotten less than $1.3 million in tolls, which is a pittance on their previous daily oil revenues,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News on Sunday. He said Iran's oil storage is rapidly filling up and "they’re going to have to start shutting in wells, which we think could happen in the next week.”

Iran's currency continues to tumble

On Sunday, the second day of Iran's working week, the rial weakened further against the U.S. dollar. In Tehran’s Ferdowsi Street, the capital’s main currency exchange hub, the dollar was trading at 1,840,000 rials.

Analysts say there is a strong possibility the currency will slip further.

The rial was trading at 1.3 million to the dollar in December, a record low at the time, and triggered widespread protests over the worsening economy. Markets in Tehran remain unstable, with prices of some goods rising daily.

According to reports in Iranian media, several factories have not renewed contracts for workers after the Iranian new year in March, and significant numbers have lost their jobs.

Yousef Pezeshkian, the son and adviser of President Masoud Pezeshkian, wrote on Telegram that both the United States and Iran see themselves as the winner of the war and are unwilling to back down.

Nobel committee urges treatment for Iranian laureate

The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Saturday urged Iran to immediately transfer imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi for treatment by her medical team in Tehran after her health sharply deteriorated.

The committee said it was in touch with Mohammadi’s family and lawyer, and that the 2023 laureate’s life remains at risk.

The rights lawyer fainted twice in prison on Friday in the northwestern city of Zanjan, her foundation said, and was admitted to a local hospital. Her lawyers have said she is believed to have suffered a heart attack in late March.

___

Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

The service members are U.S. Army soldiers who went missing while on a hike, a U.S. defense official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the issue.

“They were not actively taking part in any training. The day’s exercises had concluded, and, from our understanding, they were out on a recreational hike,” the official said.

AFRICOM said the U.S., Morocco and other countries participating in the African Lion exercise have launched a search and rescue operation.

“The incident remains under investigation and the search is ongoing,” it said in a statement.

The incident happened on Saturday at about 9 p.m., the Moroccan military said, near the Cap Draa Training Area near Tan Tan, close to the Atlantic Ocean. The terrain is mountainous, a mix of desert and semidesert plains.

The search team includes helicopters, ships, mountain rescue units and divers, the defense official told the AP.

“The soldiers were last seen near ocean cliffs in the vicinity of the Cap Draa Training Area during scheduled training. When they did not return as expected, U.S. and Moroccan personnel immediately initiated a joint search effort,” the official added.

The war games exercise started in April and runs across four countries, including Tunisia, Ghana and Senegal. It is scheduled to end in early May.

The exercise began in Tunisia with active-duty members of different branches of the U.S. military, including the National Guard, Army Reserve, Air Force, and the Marine Corps.

In all, over 7,000 personnel from more than 30 nations are participating across the four host countries.

African Lion, which has been running since 2004, is the largest U.S. annual joint military exercise on the continent and usually features high-ranking military officials from the U.S. and its top African allies.

U.S. military officials have said the annual multinational engagement serves as a venue for strengthening regional security cooperation and refining the readiness of participating forces for global crises.

In 2012, two U.S. Marines were killed and two others injured during a helicopter crash in Morocco’s southern city of Agadir while taking part in African Lion.

Morocco is a major ally of the United States in a troubled region. Since 2020, military officers disillusioned with their governments’ records of stemming violence have overthrown democratically elected governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and began distancing themselves from Western powers.

———

Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria.

We’re waking up to another cool and crisp morning with low humidity with morning lows in the upper 40s and 50s.

By the afternoon, sunshine and a switch in winds from the south will help warm temperatures to the upper 70s and low 80s. The best part is that it comes with low humidity.

Heat on the way:

The heat and humidity return as a southeasterly wind takes over. Highs are expected to reach near 90 on Tuesday.

Planning your Monday - Make sure to dress your kids in layers - we’re starting in the 60s with a high in the 80s.

Next Cold Front:

A mid-week cold front will bring another chance for rain Wednesday through Thursday. We are still several days out, so stay connected for an updated timeline and impacts.

And a heads up, we’re tracking the chance for rain as we head into the weekend.

Heat Returns Swiftly:

Then we are tracking more rain midweek, so keep an eye on future updates from the KPRC 2 Weather Team.

Have you captured a dramatic rain photo or video? Share your weather moments with the KPRC 2 community through Click2Pins at Click2Houston.com/pins.

Highland Park will pull out of DART, according to election returns Saturday. It’s the first time any city has pulled up its stake in the agency since 1989 when Flower Mound and Coppell opted to leave.

Voters in Addison and University Park also weighed in on proposals to leave the system but chose to remain in the agency. This leaves 12 cities connected through DART.

Nearly 70% of voters in Highland Park decided to discontinue DART in the town, according to final but unofficial returns. The result was mirrored in Addison, where 70% voted to remain connected to the system; University Park was more narrowly divided, with 54% voting to stay.

DART will cease services in Highland Park on May 14, a day after the city council is scheduled to formally sign off on the election results, the agency said in a news release.

DART offers a mixture of rail and bus services across North Texas, however, rail does not reach every city paying into the system — including Highland Park. Officials and transit advocates say the exit leaves the state of public transit in North Texas weaker — at a time state transportation planners say Texas needs more public transit.

“The future of North Texas will be shaped by the cities that choose to move forward with DART,” Randall Bryant, chair of DART’s board of directors, said in a statement. “We are focused on expanding this system with partners who recognize that transit drives economic growth, connects people to opportunity, and strengthens communities.”

Highland Park’s exit means DART loses out on  $270 million in sales tax revenue over the next 20 years, according to the agency’s projections.

Saturday’s vote is the culmination of years of tension between the transit agency and some of its suburban members. Officials in the three suburbs have complained that, according to a consultant’s report, they pay too much in sales taxes to DART for how much they get back in bus, rail and other forms of transit service. They sought to eject themselves from DART and regain control over the money it sends to the agency, putting measures on Saturday’s ballot asking voters whether they should remain in DART.

Highland Park, a north central Dallas County suburb with nearly 9,000 residents, contributes about 1% of sales tax collections for DART. It’s one of the wealthiest cities in the area and in the fiscal year of 2023, it paid $6.3 million in sales tax to the agency but received $1.9 million worth in services. 

The vote will spur the closure of 15 bus stops in those cities, making it harder for people who rely on transit to access those parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth region. Highland Park, about four miles north of downtown Dallas, will also lose access to paratransit services provided by the agency for riders with special needs.

Trump started stoking interest in the extraterrestrial in February, directing federal agencies to release their records related to extraterrestrial life and UFOs. Since then, he has built suspense with tantalizing updates, teasing an imminent release of documents never before shared by the U.S. government.

“We’re going to be releasing a lot of things that we haven't,” Trump said Wednesday at a White House event celebrating NASA astronauts. “I think some of it’s going to be very interesting to people.”

Trump has relished in portraying himself as the president who spills the secrets. In the first week returning to office, he ordered the release of records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The disclosures revealed little beyond what was already known.

In the buildup to that release, Trump said “the American people deserve transparency and truth.” Now, as he turns to the sky, the president has struck a similar tone, suggesting answers to decades-old questions may be on the way. His February directive on social media called for transparency around "alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”

“The first releases will begin very, very soon,” he told supporters in April at a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix. “So you can go out and see if that phenomena is correct. You’ll figure it out.”

An expert cautions against raising expectations

Even before Trump's directive, the Pentagon was years into a process to declassify and release government documents related to UFOs, now often referred to as unexplained anomalous phenomena, or UAP.

Citing concerns over national security, Congress created an office in 2022 to investigate UAP and declassify as much material as possible. The office's 2024 debut report revealed hundreds of new UAP incidents but found no evidence that the U.S. government had ever confirmed a sighting of alien technology. A second report covering more recent sightings is expected to come soon.

That agency, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, is now working with the White House to release “never-before-seen UAP information,” according to a Pentagon statement.

The office's previous director, however, said Trump's promises were bluster, a “shiny object” to distract Americans from the war with Iran. Sean Kirkpatrick, a physicist and former career intelligence officer who led the office until 2023, said he has seen the government's records and believes there are no bombshell revelations to be found.

“Readers should not get their hopes up that there’s going to be some document with photos, interviewing the aliens when they came down,” he said. “Because that just doesn’t exist.”

Videos purporting to show alien technology tend to have mundane explanations, he said. Modern infrared cameras used by the U.S. military often capture jet engines and other hot objects in a long thermal bloom, which, Kirkpatrick said, explains viral videos of speedy, pill-shaped objects.

Pentagon not forthcoming on UAP reports, GOP-led panel says

On Capitol Hill, those types of videos have caught the attention of a small group of Trump-aligned Republicans who insist the Pentagon is holding back secrets.

The Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets has been conducting its own investigation into reports of mysterious aircraft near U.S. military installations, which the panel says pose a threat to national security and the armed forces.

Last fall, the task force heard testimony from current and former service members who described UAP encounters. In one case, a senior Navy officer said he was off the coast of California in 2023 when he saw a glowing “Tic Tac” shaped object emerge from the ocean and link up with three similar objects. They sped away in an instant, he said.

Trump's interest in the subject has energized congressional Republicans, including Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, an Air Force veteran who co-chairs the task force. Luna has criticized what she calls “less than adequate” transparency from the Pentagon.

In a March letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Luna demanded dozens of UAP videos identified by whistleblowers and labeled with names such as “Spherical UAP in clouds.” Her deadline for Hegseth came and went, and no videos were produced.

Trump's entry to the UFO fray drew applause from Luna, who last year told podcaster Joe Rogan that she has seen evidence of “interdimensional beings.” The Pentagon “can’t hide from our docs request anymore!” Luna said on social media after Trump's directive.

Vance professes to be ‘obsessed’ with UFO files

Trump appears skeptical about the existence of extraterrestrial life. Addressing the Turning Point USA crowd in Phoenix, he said, “I figured this was a good crowd because I know you people, you’re really into that. I don’t know if I am.”

Why he made the revelation at that event, held at a megachurch, is unclear. A day earlier, Trump had spoken in Las Vegas, not far from Area 51, a top-secret Cold War test site that has fueled UFO conspiracy theories.

Vice President JD Vance has described himself as “obsessed” with UFO files. In March, he said he has been trying to find time to investigate Area 51 since he took office.

“I’ve still got three more years as vice president,” Vance told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson. “I will get to the bottom of the UFO files.” Invoking his Christian faith, Vance said he believes sightings reported to be aliens are actually the work of spiritual demons.

Even before Trump tackled the topic, alien buzz was already in the air.

It's back in Hollywood with an upcoming Steven Spielberg movie, “Disclosure Day.” Former President Barack Obama made a splash in February when he declared on a podcast that aliens are real. He later clarified that he had seen no evidence but that “the odds are good there’s life out there.”

Trump is hardly the first president drawn to UFO mysteries. President Bill Clinton has said he once ordered a review of the Roswell Incident — something had crashed in 1947 at a New Mexico ranch and officials later said the debris was the remnants of a high-altitude weather balloon — around its 50th anniversary in 1997. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan claimed to have seen UFOs before their time in the White House.

The U.S. government has been investigating UFO reports since the 1940s, in part to determine if they represent advanced technology from competing nations or “evidence of off-world technology,” according to the Defense Department's 2024 report.

In online communities devoted to UFOs, some see Trump's promise as a step in the right direction; others believe it will come to nothing. For people who follow the topic closely, promises of big revelations have never lived up to the hype, said Greg Eghigian, a Pennsylvania State University professor who wrote a book on the history of UFO sightings.

“There is almost no satisfaction that is possible for many of the really die-hard folks,” he said. “So in a sense, I think disappointment can almost be guaranteed to be expected no matter what comes out of this.”

A nighttime drone strike sparked a blaze at Russia’s largest oil exporting port on the Baltic Sea, the port of Primorsk, according to Russian regional Gov. Alexander Drozdenko.

The port, operated by Russia’s state oil firm Transneft, is capable of handling hundreds of thousands of barrels per day. Primorsk, which was targeted multiple times in March, lies over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from Ukraine, between the Russian-Finnish border and Russia’s second-largest city of St. Petersburg.

Local Gov. Drozdenko said that the drone strike did not cause an oil spill, but gave no immediate further comment regarding casualties or damage.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian forces destroyed several military and other targets, while also inflicting significant damage on oil port infrastructure.

“One more Russian carrier of Kalibr missiles is out of action. Major General Yevhen Khmara reported on the successful destruction of targets in the Primorsk port," Zelenskyy wrote in a Telegram post on Sunday.

According to Zelenskyy, Ukrainian drones also hit a Karakurt missile ship, a patrol boat, and a tanker belonging to Russia's so-called shadow oil fleet, used to evade Western sanctions and price caps on Russian energy.

In a separate post earlier on Sunday, Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian forces had struck two more “shadow fleet” tankers near the entrance of the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.

“These tankers were actively used to transport oil. Now they won’t,” he said. He added the operation was led by the chief of Ukraine’s general staff, Andrii Hnatov.

Moscow did not immediately acknowledge Zelenskyy's claims regarding either strike.

Kyiv has recently stepped up its attacks on Russia’s oil export infrastructure. Ukrainian officials argue that oil revenue directly funds Moscow’s full-scale invasion of the country, now in its fifth year.

Drone strikes kill civilians near Odesa and Moscow

Elsewhere, two people were killed and three others wounded as Russian drones struck Ukraine's southern Odesa region overnight into Sunday, Ukraine's Emergency Service reported. It said the attack damaged three residential buildings.

The drones also hit port infrastructure, causing a fire that was later extinguished by emergency teams, the emergency service reported.

Nighttime Russian strikes also wounded six people in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine, the agency said. A passenger bus transporting 40 children was damaged, but no one inside was injured, it added.

In Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike west of Moscow killed a 77-year-old man, local Gov. Andrei Vorobyov reported on the Telegram messenger app. He said the fatal attack occurred near the town of Volokolamsk, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) from central Moscow.

Vorobyov added that six drones were shot down in the Moscow region, which surrounds but does not include the Russian capital. At least five more drones were downed on the approach to Moscow itself, according to mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

Separately, in Russia's western Smolensk region, a man, woman and child were injured after Ukrainian drone debris flew into an apartment block, according to local Gov. Vasiliy Anokhin.

Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Sunday that a total of 334 Ukrainian UAVs were downed overnight over Russia and occupied Crimea.

Also overnight into Sunday, Russia attacked Ukraine with 269 drones and ballistic missiles, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Ukrainian forces shot down and repelled 249 drones, while hits from ballistic missiles and 19 drones were recorded in 15 locations, the air force said in a Facebook update.

HiPP, which recalled some of its baby food jars in Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic after the case came to light last month, said in a statement Saturday it was “greatly relieved” by the arrest, and would provide further updates as verified details come in.

The Burgenland State Criminal Police Office, under the direction of prosecutors, said a probe was launched after poison turned up in a baby food jar purchased at a supermarket in the city of Eisenstadt on April 18.

It said the suspect was being questioned, and that no further details would be immediately provided. The Burgenland public prosecutor’s office has announced an investigation into suspected “intentional endangerment of the public.”

In an email to The Associated Press on Sunday, the Burgenland police office said the suspect was arrested in Salzburg state, to the west.

The Austrian Press Agency reported that an expert report on the toxicity of the poison was pending. A total of five tampered baby food jars were seized before they could be consumed, APA reported.

Authorities said previously they believe the tampering occurred in 190-gram (6.7-ounce) jars of baby food made with carrots and potatoes for 5-month-olds that were sold from SPAR supermarkets in Austria.

HiPP responded by recalling all of its baby food jars sold at SPAR supermarkets — which include SPAR, EUROSPAR, INTERSPAR and Maximarkt stores — in Austria as a precaution. Vendors in Slovakia and the Czech Republic also removed all of the brand’s baby jars from sale.

The company said the recall was not due to any product or quality defect on its part, and said the jars left its facility in “perfect condition.”

Police said a customer at the time of the discovery had reported that a jar appeared to have been tampered with, but no one had consumed the baby food.

Pfaffenhofen, Germany-based HiPP said it has been a “victim of extortion,” adding that an unspecified “blackmailer” sent a message to a shared mailbox in the case, prompting it to immediately inform police.

Ligon defeated Democrat Ron Angeletti, an educator and small-business owner who was the only other candidate on the ballot. The two are set for a rematch in November for a full four-year term. In the meantime, Ligon will serve the remainder of Creighton’s term, which runs until the start of the next legislative session in January.

The Republican captured 75% of the vote, according to final but unofficial results posted by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

“The voters of SD4 have delivered a clear message tonight. Conservative values and Republican dominance in Texas are alive and well,” Ligon said in a statement declaring victory 25 minutes after polls closed. “Democrats from Texas and all over the country threw everything they had at us. Democrat politicians were here today in full force, campaigning hard for my opponent. As if we had been flying the ‘Come and Take It’ flag – they tried – and they failed.”

Senate District 4 — which spans across Chambers, Harris, Jefferson and Montgomery counties — voted for President Donald Trump by a 34-point margin in 2024, making it one of the reddest seats in the upper chamber. It is considered a virtual lock for Republicans in November, even with midterm political headwinds that have left Democrats optimistic about flipping GOP legislative seats.

Although the district has not had representation since Creighton’s departure in October, the Legislature has not been in session during that period and is not scheduled to reconvene until January for the next regular session.

Disclosure: Texas Tech University System 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.

It turned out to be just enough.

After debuting in Game 4 following appendectomy surgery last month, the former MVP played some of the best playoff basketball of his career over the final four games of the series to lead the 76ers to a 109-100 Game 7 victory over a Celtics team that had looked like a potential NBA title contender.

The No. 7 seed’s reward is an Eastern Conference semifinals matchup with the No. 3 seed New York Knicks that begins Monday.

In leading Philadelphia to just its second road Game 7 victory ever and first since 1982 against Boston, Embiid finished with 34 points, 12 rebounds and six assists to become the first player in NBA history to score 100 points in a playoff series despite missing the first three games.

“Sometimes I’ve been in those positions where I’ve come up short,” Embiid said. “I’ve always said it, you can’t win alone. You need a team. ... The way we’re playing right now, we’re so in sync, offensively, defensively.”

He and Tyrese Maxey (30 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists) also became the third duo in league history to each have 25 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in a Game 7.

Maxey said this series demonstrated how he now knows when to be assertive and when to defer to Embiid.

“It’s a growth, because I had to learn when to be aggressive, when not to be aggressive,” Maxey said. “It got a little bit difficult in the middle of this season. I was basically being first option every single night. Then he comes back and I’ve got to find a way to do both. And he does a really good job of just keeping me engaged and keeping me confident and keep me like, ’Hey I need you to do what you do.'"

The 76ers will need everything Embiid gave and more to compete with a Knicks team that plays a much more physical game than Boston.

Nurse said he believes Embiid is up for the challenge. He was limping at times in Game 7 but then got extra treatment while on the bench just to be able to contribute late.

He had reason to be fatigued because even though nine 76ers players touched the floor in Game 7, only six logged double-digit minutes. Embiid played 39 minutes, tying his series high.

“He was doing everything he could to stay in the game,” Nurse said. “Obviously, we ran a lot of things through him and we did just enough.”

Nurse said being able to come out the hostile environment of TD Garden with a victory will serve his team well going forward.

“It’s really good for us to go through that and respond to it,” Nurse said. “It’s going to be like that in the playoffs. You’re going to be in tight games and it’s going to be super loud. ... And you just have to play through it.”

Nurse said he believes the difference was making Boston play halfcourt sets over the final three minutes after the Celtics were able to play in transition for about 12 straight minutes in the third and fourth quarters.

That’s a lesson he hopes can be applied to New York.

“In the last two (games) and portions of this one, we just guarded really well,” Nurse said.

While there was satisfaction in beating Boston, Embiid said they have loftier goals.

“One series. Got more to go,” he said.

___

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

Far from it.

For the 11th consecutive season, a road team has won a Game 7 in the NBA playoffs. Philadelphia did the honors on Saturday night, and on Sunday, the Orlando Magic and Toronto Raptors will look to join that club.

Orlando goes to Detroit, and Toronto goes to Cleveland to wrap up the first round. The winners of those games will meet Tuesday in Game 1 of an Eastern Conference semifinal series.

Sunday's schedule

— Game 7, Orlando at Detroit, 3:30 p.m. EDT (ABC)

Series: Tied, 3-3.

Odds: Detroit by 8.5.

The Pistons are playing a Game 7 for the 11th time and the first since 2006. The Magic are playing their fifth Game 7, the first since 2024.

— Game 7, Toronto at Cleveland, 7:30 p.m. EDT (NBC/Peacock)

Series: Tied, 3-3.

Odds: Cleveland by 8.5.

The Raptors are in their seventh Game 7 and first since 2020. The Cavaliers are in their ninth Game 7, their first since 2024.

Monday's schedule

— Game 1, Philadelphia at New York, 8 p.m. EDT (NBC/Peacock)

Odds: New York by 7.5 points.

It's the fifth time (including the Syracuse era for the 76ers) that the teams have met in a conference semifinal series. Philadelphia won each of the previous four, going a combined 14-2 in those games.

— Game 1, Minnesota at San Antonio, 9:30 p.m. EDT (Peacock/NBCSN)

Odds: San Antonio by 13.5.

Spurs beat the Timberwolves 3-1 in the first round of the 1999 and 2001 playoffs. The teams haven't had a playoff series since, until now.

Saturday recap

— 76ers 109, Celtics 100 to win series 4-3. Jayson Tatum didn't play.

Awards watch

A breakdown of this season's NBA awards:

— Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year: DeAndre Jordan, New Orleans.

— Hustle Award: Moussa Diabaté, Charlotte.

— Defensive Player of the Year: Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio.

— Clutch Player of the Year: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City.

— Sixth Man of the Year: Keldon Johnson, San Antonio.

— Sportsmanship Award: Derrick White, Boston.

— Most Improved Player: Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Atlanta.

— Rookie of the Year: Cooper Flagg, Dallas.

— Executive of the Year: Brad Stevens, Boston.

Among the announcements still to come:

— Most Valuable Player: Gilgeous-Alexander, Wembanyama or Denver's Nikola Jokic.

— Coach of the Year: Detroit's J.B. Bickerstaff, San Antonio's Mitch Johnson or Boston's Joe Mazzulla.

Betting odds

Defending champion Oklahoma City (-140) is favored to win the NBA title, oddsmakers say.

Entering Sunday, the Thunder were followed by San Antonio (+300), New York (+900), Detroit (+2000), Cleveland (+2200) and the Los Angeles Lakers (+3000). Philadelphia (+3500, from +10000 on Saturday) is next, followed by Minnesota (+15000). Orlando entered Sunday at +40000.

Philly has moved The Boss

The Flyers are in the second round of the NHL playoffs. The 76ers are in the second round of the NBA playoffs.

This is a great thing for Philadelphia — and a bit of a scheduling headache for the Sixers' home arena.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were supposed to play there on Friday, but that night will be Game 3 of Knicks-76ers. Springsteen's concert was moved to May 30, which will become the final night of his 20-stop tour.

He also is going to play at Madison Square Garden twice in the next two weeks, but those dates — May 11 and May 16 — won't conflict with any planned Knicks home games.

Key dates

— Monday and Tuesday: Conference semifinals begin.

— May 10: NBA draft lottery.

— May 10-17: NBA draft combine.

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

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

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

— June 23: Round 1, NBA draft

— June 24: Round 2, NBA draft

Quote of the day

"There’s two sides of every coin. When you go after greatness, you have to accept the other side of that." — Boston coach Joe Mazzulla, after the Celtics lost to Philadelphia in Game 7 of their East first-round series.

Stats of the day

— Even with Saturday's season-ending loss, Boston won 57% of its games this season when missing 30 or more 3-pointers. The rest of the league has won in that scenario 35% of the time this season.

— Philadelphia's Kyle Lowry has been part of two Game 7 road wins in his career. Both were at Boston — the 2023 East finals with Miami, and then Saturday night's victory.

___

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

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The fire is around McGowen Street and Scott Street. Roadways in the area are blocked off. Drivers should avoid the area and seek alternate routes.

Officials have not released information on whether anyone was injured, and the cause of the fire has not been confirmed.

This is a developing story. Updates will be added as new information becomes available from the scene.

Deputies were called a little after 1 p.m. yesterday to a shooting at a home in the 14200 block of Texarkana Street in the Cloverleaf area, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said.

When they arrived, investigators said they found an adult woman with a gunshot wound. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

In an update posted Sunday, Gonzalez identified the victim as Yanira Nafin, 39, and the suspect as Jose Arquimides Romero, 43, her common-law husband.

• MORE NEWS: Woman killed in hit-and-run crash near Bush Airport, police say

Gonzalez said detectives believe the shooting stemmed from a dispute at the home involving Romero’s complaints of back pain.

Authorities said three children were in the house at the time and were not injured after taking cover.

Authorities said Romero remained at the residence and was taken into custody. Harris County Sheriff’s Office homicide detectives charged him in connection with Nafin’s death, and he was booked into the Harris County Jail.

The investigation remains ongoing.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the man’s wife was in labor at a local hospital when she was informed of his death.

The Red Crescent said five people were hit by gunfire during an Israeli military operation. Nayef Firas Ziad Samaro, 26, was killed, according to the Health Ministry, and his body was brought to the hospital where his wife was giving birth. Additionally, a 12-year-old was shot in the shoulder, according to the Red Crescent.

The raid took place as schools were letting out for the day, in an area crowded with civilians, witnesses said.

Israel's military in a statement said it responded to a confrontation in the Nablus area in which several “terrorists” threw rocks toward soldiers. Soldiers fired and “several hits were identified.”

Palestinians, rights groups and international observers are warning about the worsening violence, where young Palestinian men are being killed with increasing regularity amid a broader climate of arson, vandalism and the displacement of farming communities near Jewish settlements and outposts in the West Bank.

At least 42 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the year, according to the United Nations humanitarian office. Armed settlers were responsible for at least 11 of those fatalities.

The Chambers County Sheriff’s Office said the roadway is now reopen.

ORIGINAL REPORT

CHAMBERS COUNTY, Texas - The Chambers County Sheriff’s Office says emergency personnel are responding to a major crash on I-10 westbound at the 813 mile marker near SH 61.

All westbound lanes are currently shut down while first responders work the scene. Traffic is being diverted to FM 1724.

Updates will be provided as more information becomes available.

“Neither side really wants to hear what I say," says Frazer, a professor of history and political studies at The Master’s University, a Christian school in Santa Clarita, California.

The founders, Frazer says, did not create a Christian republic. Several key founders either rejected core Christian doctrines or were vague enough to keep historians debating. For Frazer, that often disappoints audiences of his fellow Christians.

But, he says, nor were the founders a cluster of rationalist deists — believers in a God who set the universe in motion like a clockmaker and then left it alone — and anti-religious skeptics, as they are sometimes portrayed. That disappoints audiences who favor a high firewall between church and state. Most of the founders were religious in one form or another.

The long-running debate over the founders’ intentions about religion has been turbocharged with the approaching 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4. Amid the America 250 celebrations, some Christian activists and authors are redoubling claims that the U.S. had a Christian founding.

They have an ally in the White House.

President Donald Trump is promoting “ America Prays,” culminating in a May 17 gathering on the National Mall in Washington. Official participants include many Christian organizations and individuals, some who champion the idea of a Christian founding. Cabinet officials are issuing Christian messages in their official capacity. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proclaimed that “America was founded as a Christian nation … in our DNA.”

In short: The long-standing debate — secular government on one hand, faith on another — rages and matters still.

Countering the Christian nation narrative

Critics and advocacy groups are pushing back.

“Most — nearly all — serious historians agree that America was not founded as a Christian nation in any meaningful legal, philosophical, or constitutional sense,” says the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State. It decries efforts “to redefine America according to the Christian Nationalist disinformation and then reshape our law accordingly.”

Six in 10 U.S. adults surveyed say they believed the founders originally intended America to be a Christian nation, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report.

Why do the founders’ beliefs and intentions matter?

“Everyone’s looking for what we historians call a usable past,” says John Fea, author of “Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?”

“We go into the past looking for what we want in order to advance a particular political or cultural agenda,” says Fea, a fellow at the Lumen Center, a Christian research institute and study center in Madison, Wisconsin.

Advocates often skirt history's nuances. For example, public officials and others did indeed offer prayers on behalf of the new republic at important historical moments.

“But are those prayers the central part of the story of what happened when we, in the United States, declared independence?” Fea wonders. “Last time I checked, it was about taxation and representation and shutting down the port of Boston and all these more economic and political things.”

Church and state in the new nation

Historian Mark David Hall argues that Christianity did strongly impact the founding. While core founders did not hold traditional Christian beliefs, he contends many other founders did, and that this shaped their thinking about how to form the new republic.

“There’s plenty of evidence Christianity had an influence,” says Hall, author of “Did America Have a Christian Founding?”

He says founders’ attention to human dignity harmonizes with the Bible’s teaching of humanity created in God’s image. The system of checks and balances — to prevent the concentration of power — reflects teachings about human sin that would have permeated a largely Protestant culture, he says.

He also notes that some early presidents and Congresses issued proclamations for prayer and thanksgiving, though some drew opposition and controversy. Some states sponsored churches for decades after the country's Constitution was ratified, indicating the founders did not believe religion should be absent from public life.

They believed that faith was important in forming moral, responsible citizens of the new republic. They promoted “toleration without eliminating the importance of real religious commitment on the part of differing adherents,” Frazer wrote in his book, “The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders.”

There is no reference to any specific religion in the Constitution beyond the date — “in the year of our Lord” 1787. It forbids religious tests for officeholders. The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights guarantees religious freedom and forbids “establishment” of a national religion.

Twentieth-century Supreme Court rulings applied the First Amendment to the states on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from denying citizens’ rights. The court cited founder Thomas Jefferson’s metaphor of a “wall of separation between church and state.” Courts have since wrestled with how to apply that principle in areas such as school prayer, healthcare, labor law and crosses on public lands.

Frazer argues that the Bible is not cited as a source for any governing principles in the documented proceedings of the Constitutional Convention or in the influential Federalist Papers, which advocated for the Constitution. He says the founders drew on influences such as Enlightenment thinking on such concepts as human equality, accountable government and freedom of religion. Early critics of the Constitution faulted it for lacking religious content.

The Declaration of Independence does have religious language, declaring that rights come from the “Creator.” It appeals to “divine Providence” and to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

Thomas Jefferson and other founders — adroitly, Frazer says — used terms acceptable to Christians as well as followers of other religious and philosophical movements.

America's complicated religious history

Even the seemingly straightforward question, “Did the founders intend America to be a Christian nation?” raises questions: Who were the founders? When was the actual “founding”?

Some see the founding as the original colonial settlements — a century and a half before 1776. Colonial charters for Massachusetts Bay and Virginia declared the spread of the Gospel as a fundamental purpose. Puritan Boston endeavored to be a Christian “city upon a hill.”

In practice, the religious nature of the colonies varied. They had economic and territorial ambitions alongside heavenly ones. State religious persecution of religious minorities in Virginia and Massachusetts drew pushback.

The religious values of a colonial system that decimated Native communities and imported enslaved Africans has also come under enduring scrutiny.

Decades before the American Revolution, an evangelical revival known as the Great Awakening reached many colonists. Church membership and attendance declined steadily throughout the 18th century, according to studies, even as the colonies remained mostly Protestant.

The Protestant label also covered a range of beliefs, as some churches shifted toward Unitarian views that esteemed Jesus as a prophet or sage, not divine.

By the Revolution, rationalistic approaches to religion strongly influenced many college-educated and propertied elite men, such as those who produced the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, Frazer wrote. So did Freemasonry, a fraternal order based on beliefs in a universal God and morals.

Some founders were devout Christians such as John Jay, Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry. Others believed in God but not in Jesus’ divinity, including key founders like Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The enigmatic Washington kept active in his Episcopal church but avoided sacraments and also was an active Freemason. He spoke about God in terms most people at that time could accept, such as “Providence” or “Supreme Ruler.”

Challenging misconceptions about deist founders

But contrary to popular belief, most founders were not deists.

Frazer instead describes many founders as “theistic rationalists.” George Washington believed that divine “Providence” saved his life in battle and intervened on America’s behalf. He was far from alone.

“They did believe in an active God,” Frazer says. “Therefore, prayer matters, because there’s someone listening.”

Even the skeptics thought religion was important in forming virtuous citizens. Franklin donated toward building projects for various churches and a synagogue in Philadelphia. Many scholars believe the First Amendment created a sort of religious free market in which Christianity and other faiths have flourished to this day.

At speaking engagements, Frazer hands out a flyer with 12 points on why the Christian America view is dangerous for both church and state.

“It’s mostly dangerous for Christianity,” Frazer contends. By claiming people or ideas as Christian if they aren’t, it “muddies the waters in terms of what Christianity is all about.”

___

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.

Now, the 57-year-old Texan is hoping to get some relief.

Haines is among more than 1,500 property owners who filed a federal lawsuit arguing the moratorium enacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention violated the Fifth Amendment by unlawfully denying them compensation. Plaintiffs range from those who lost thousands of dollars to one who lost over $14.5 million.

After initially losing in the Court of Federal Claims in 2022, the plaintiffs won on appeal and are now in settlement discussions with the Justice Department. Landlords are hoping to recoup as much as $1.5 billion — a fraction of what the industry lost.

“It’s important for us to stand up when a group like the CDC unilaterally, functionally, decides that they have a right to oversee our business,” said Haines, who owns three rental communities with 240 units in Arlington and Irving, Texas.

“What I hope that we will accomplish and, to some extent, we already have, is vindication for ourselves,” he said. “But what’s more important to me is that hopefully my investors will recover some of that money that they should have had coming in over the last six years.”

The federal eviction moratorium lasted from September 2020 through July 2021, and was among the pandemic's most divisive policies. It ended after the Supreme Court ruled the CDC lacked authority to impose the ban without congressional authorization.

The Justice Department, responding to Associated Press questions about the landlords' case, said it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Landlords say moratorium was bad for business

Moratoriums were also imposed in 43 states and scores of cities, which lasted longer than the federal ban because states and cities have broader regulatory powers than federal agencies like the CDC.

Landlords say the bans devastated their businesses. Unable to collect rent, many were forced to take on debt, lay off staff, delay repairs and, in some cases, sell their property. They say the impact lingers, with longer delays for evictions, tighter screening for riskier tenants and growing numbers of owners getting out of the rental business altogether.

Tenant advocates counter that eviction bans were a lifesaver. They credit them with keeping millions of tenants housed during the pandemic and slowing the spread of the coronavirus. They also argue landlords were already paid — in the form of tens of billions of dollars in rental assistance.

From the moment the pandemic hit, Haines said he knew he was in trouble: Many tenants lost their jobs, so he didn't require new leases and tried to be flexible with those who couldn't pay.

But when the moratorium took hold, it was the biggest threat he'd faced in 30 years in real estate.

“It was terrifying,” Haines said. “We knew almost immediately that we were going to a massive deficit in cash flow that we probably weren’t going to be able to cover.”

A survey by the National Rental Home Council, a trade association, published weeks after the federal moratorium ended, found that half of small landlords had tenants who missed rent and a third sold or planned to sell properties. The moratorium and backlog of eviction cases cost owners $57 billion, according to the lawsuit, with more than 10 million delinquent renters in just the ban's first four months.

“Public health measures like this, they may be well intentioned,” said Creighton Magid, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “But when the government imposes this type of moratorium, the financial burden should be borne by the government, not individual property owners.”

Liz Leone, who has 52 apartments in Las Vegas and is part of the lawsuit, said the moratorium almost forced her out of business. She lost over $250,000, she said, and borrowed $60,000 from the federal Small Business Administration “just to keep my nose above water.” She's still paying it off.

“I was definitely questioning whether I would survive,” said Leone, who's been in the business for 35 years. "You delay all the expenses you can, but we still had to pay our property taxes. We still have to pay our utilities. ... So that’s what you did: I borrowed.”

Moratorium prevented homelessness

Housing advocates maintain the policy kept families housed, noting a significant spike in evictions after the moratorium ended.

Eviction bans "were a powerful intervention to keep people in their homes,” said Kathryn Leifheit, assistant professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and lead author of a study published in April in the medical journal JAMA Network Open that found homelessness rose 11% in a typical state in 2022, and would have increased 20% without state eviction moratoriums.

That was the case for Dulcee Barnes. The 28-year-old and her two roommates lost their restaurant jobs in Miami during the pandemic. Two months behind on rent, they would have been evicted if not for the moratorium.

“It gave us breathing room. It took away the fear of having to possibly pack up within 24 hours and live in somebody's car or couch surfing," she said.

Landlords already got paid

Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project, a tenants' rights nonprofit, disputed that landlords suffered significant losses, saying they were able to collect rent and sell their properties during the moratorium.

They also benefited from $46.5 billion in federal emergency rental assistance, which the Eviction Lab at Princeton University found in April was largely targeted to areas where landlords filed the most evictions before the pandemic.

Landlords said rental assistance never fully compensated them for their losses, contending programs were often mired in red tape and poorly run. States were slow to spend the money, struggled to set up programs and, in the case of Arkansas and Nebraska, didn’t accept all federal funding.

Landlords also complained some tenants took advantage of the moratorium to live rent free. “They were doing things like buying cars,” Leone said. “They didn’t have to pay rent, and here I was driving a car that was 18 years old.”

Lingering effects of moratorium

Despite the moratorium ending five years ago, landlords say fallout from the policy remains. They are taking fewer risks and being more cautious about renting to tenants with checkered rental histories.

Rick Jones, vice chairman of Management Services Corporation, which owns 4,000 apartment units in Virginia and is party to the lawsuit, said that's partly due to increasing fraud. Applicants fake employment records and payroll checks, he said, adding: “There are companies that just advertise really creating a whole new identity for you.”

“Most property owners and managers realize that it’s more important to keep that unit vacant than to put a bad resident in. That’s probably what the eviction moratorium reinforced,” said Jones, whose company lost more than $230,000 in unpaid rent during the pandemic.

“When you have somebody that’s bad and you can’t get them out, you’re helpless."

Haines said he's increased tenant screenings and turns away some low-income applicants he might have accepted before the pandemic. That's partly because evicting a tenant takes months longer than before the pandemic, he said.

“It’s done more harm," he said, to low-income people "that we might have considered leasing an apartment to that now we simply can’t take the risk.”

Patrol officers at George Bush Intercontinental Airport responded around 1:30 a.m. this morning to a call about a pedestrian in the roadway near 6500 Will Clayton Parkway. When they arrived, officers found a major crash involving an adult female pedestrian.

The Houston Police Department said the case is being investigated as a failure to stop and render aid. Investigators believe the first vehicle, described by a witness as a white vehicle, struck the pedestrian and fled the scene.

• MORE NEWS: HPD creates first tactical unit built to support patrol using drones, tools, specialized backup

A second driver then hit the pedestrian and drove over her, police said. That driver later returned, realized it was a person, stopped, turned on hazard lights and waited for officers. Police said there were no signs of intoxication.

The pedestrian was described as white or Hispanic woman and has not been identified. She was pronounced dead at the scene by the Houston Fire Department. Investigators said it’s not clear whether she was a tourist or traveling through the area.

Anyone with information on this incident is asked to contact the HPD Vehicular Crimes Division at (713) 247-4072 or Crime Stoppers at (713) 222-TIPS.

He just didn’t yet know her name.

“He goes, ‘you know the young girl from ‘House of the Dragon’? The young queen or princess? That’s how I picture it, like a young punk rock girl who is just totally badass and tough,’” Safran told The Associated Press. “I was like, yeah, that sounds fantastic, and we haven’t seen that before.”

Milly Alcock, now 26, had just started to break out playing Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (later portrayed by Emma D’Arcy) in the “Game of Thrones” prequel, when she got a request for a self-tape for the secretive Supergirl project. Alcock had been working in her native Australia since she was a teenager, but her world was suddenly getting bigger very quickly.

A few weeks later, she was summoned for a screen test (her first ever). She boarded a 24-hour flight from Sydney to Atlanta and gave it her best shot.

“I kind of had a feeling, I remember I like got back to my hotel room and I like sat down and I was like, ‘Oh, this is gonna, something’s gonna happen,’” Alcock said. “I just had like an intuition that like, this is going to be a very exciting challenge if it goes in my favor.”

‘This is crazy, what have I done?’

Ten days later, Gunn texted her an article in the trade publication Deadline: “‘Supergirl’: New Woman Of Steel Is ‘House Of The Dragon’s’ Milly Alcock.” No phone call. No context. And all she could think was, “This is crazy, what have I done?” A few days later, she was back on that 24-hour flight to film her cameo in “Superman.”

And things have not slowed down. If shooting the film was a marathon of stunts and action and emotion, the promotion of new DC’s second major film is going to be its own non-stop ride.

When Alcock spoke to the AP earlier this month, she had just arrived in Las Vegas from Kyoto, where she was filming another movie, and on just two hours of sleep had to muster the energy to get up on stage in front of thousands of movie theater owners to hype “Supergirl,” which is out June 26.

“It’s a really original and unique take on a superhero movie,” Safran said. “I think it’s just a great movie for audiences. It’s not just for superhero fans.”

‘She’s just that girl’

The character might be less widely known than her famous cousin, but the response to her appearance in “Superman” was encouraging.

“She’s in the ‘Superman’ movie for, you know, 12 seconds, yet one of the things audiences wanted to see ... more of was her,” Safran said. “And Milly in real life, she’s just that girl … she is authentically a badass.”

Perhaps part of the intrigue is that she’s not straightlaced Superman, who got to be raised by loving and gentle parents on Earth. Supergirl saw her planet destroyed and everyone she knew killed and had to fend for herself.

Directed by Craig Gillespie, best known for two other films about complicated young women, “I, Tonya” and “Cruella,” this film finds the jaded Kara on an intergalactic odyssey with Krypto the Superdog and a young woman seeking revenge against the murderous Krem of the Yellow Hills.

“Kara surprisingly reminded me a lot of myself, which I never thought I would get from playing like a superhero, from playing someone who isn’t human. There’s a lot of humility in her and that kind of made me fall in love with her immediately,” Alcock said. “Sometimes you can get swept up in what other people expect, and then you kind of lose your intrinsic you-ness. And that’s why people hire you in the first place, because of what you bring to something just innately being who you are.”

‘Why would someone have a toy of my face?’

Alcock didn’t grow up a big film fan, but in acting found a lifeline and an outlet to communicate feelings that she struggled to in real life. It helps her exist as a person, she said.

Recently, Alcock has been living in London, where she said she has a great group of friends, none of whom are actors. And she’s adjusting to the reality that her face is going to be everywhere for a bit.

“It’s been kind of disorientating,” she said. “I do this job because it gives me the ability to disappear. So then to like suddenly be so visible and so exposed is a very vulnerable experience. I’m just trying to learn how to deal with that relationship. But I mean, it’s exciting. Of course it’s exciting. But like anything exciting, it’s also terrifying.”

When she was on the “Superman” set, she remembered talking to David Corenswet briefly and realizing that they had very different perspectives about the experience.

“I remember him being like, ‘We’re gonna have action figures, isn’t that cool?’” she said. “And I was like, ‘That’s so weird. Why would someone have a toy of my face?’”

The performance followed similar shows by Madonna in 2024 and Lady Gaga last year, which also were attended by huge crowds that danced on the sprawling sands. For Shakira, it was part of her “Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran,” or “Women No Longer Cry,” world tour named after her 2024 album.

Shakira's set kicked off around 11 p.m., more than an hour after the scheduled slot, to her fans screaming with excitement and frantic applause as skywriting drones flew overhead, spelling out in the sky, “I love you Brazil” in Portuguese.

The megastar spoke fondly about the first time she came to Brazil, some three decades ago.

“I arrived here when I was 18 years old, dreaming about singing for you,” Shakira told the crowd shortly after coming on stage. “And now look at this. Life is magical.”

The much-loved pop star sang fan favorites such as “Hips Don’t Lie,” “La Tortura” and “La Bicicleta." She ended with “BZRP Music Sessions #53/66,” which followed her separation from Spanish soccer player Gerard Piqué.

She also took the time to celebrate women’s resilience during the show. “Us women, every time we fall we get up a little wiser,” she said.

One of the first places where Shakira became successful

Rio Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere said on X that 2 million people attended the performance. “The She-Wolf made history in Rio,” he posted, referring to Shakira's 2009 hit.

When Shakira first performed in Brazil in the 1990s, she established an amazing connection with the Brazilian public, according to Felipe Maia, an ethnomusicologist pursuing a doctoral degree in popular music and digital technologies at Paris Nanterre University.

That success in Brazil “has a lot to do with the fact that she comes from Colombia, a country whose culture has many similarities with Brazil,” Maia said, adding that Saturday’s performance “crowns the relationship she has had with Brazil for a very long time.”

Erica Monteiro, a 38-year-old accountant, said she has listened to Shakira since childhood.

“For me she represents the strength of our Latino community,” Monteiro said ahead of the concert. “We’re treated as if we were inferior but in fact we have much more strength.”

Heading home after Saturday's show, Hellem Souza da Silva said Shakira's performance, like Bad Bunny's concerts in Sao Paulo in February, helped consolidate Brazil's Latino identity.

These artists “are making it clear that Brazil, Puerto Rico, Colombia and other countries are part of Latin America. And that America is not the United States,” she said.

Crowds started piling onto the beach Saturday morning to nab a good spot for the show. Street vendors sold sweet corn and other Brazilian snacks, bottled water and caipirinhas, the popular Brazilian cocktail, but also toilet paper, deodorant and even bags of sand for concertgoers to stand on to get a better view of the stage set up opposite Copacabana Palace, a historic luxury hotel.

Street vendor Simone Paula da Cunha arrived on the beach on Friday evening, hoping to sell all the beer and water bottles she had bought ahead of the show and make about $100 in all.

Despite being tired, da Cunha was excited at the prospect of seeing Shakira live. “I remember her from when she still had black hair,” she said. “I'm a huge fan of hers.”

An effort to boost the city's post-Carnival economy

The free concerts are part of City Hall's attempt to boost economic activity after Carnival and New Year’s Eve festivities and before the monthlong Saint John’s Day celebrations in June.

“For us, parties are serious business. Because parties generate jobs, income, development, and identity for the city,” Cavaliere, the mayor, said on Wednesday as he presented the city’s operational plan for the event. “Our investment in this show will give us a financial return 40 times greater,” he said.

Shakira’s performance could generate around 777 million reais (around $155 million), according to a study by City Hall and Riotur, the municipality’s tourism company, thanks to the influx of tourists and cash spent in restaurants, hotels and shops.

More tourists headed to Rio in the month of May in the years with shows — 2024 and 2025 — compared to 2023, according to City Hall data. In 2024, the growth was 34.2% on May 1, just ahead of the concerts, compared to the previous year. In 2025, the increase was 90.5% compared to 2023.

Ahead of Shakira’s performance, Airbnb said in an April 22 statement that it was seeing an increase in guests expected to travel from different parts of Brazil, Latin America and even European capitals such as Paris and London.

Wanderson Andrade, a 30-year-old architect, said he flew in especially for the show from the city of Goiana in central Brazil on Saturday and planned to fly back the following day.

“I tried to get tickets to see her in Brazil last year but I didn't succeed,” said Andrade, whose first tattoo is a wolf in honor of Shakira. “Today is a dream come true.”

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

Benavidez put on a show with Alvarez sitting ringside on Saturday night, moving up 25 pounds in weight and dominating former sparring partner Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez.

He twice sent Ramirez to the canvas, including knocking him out at 2:59 of the sixth round to win the WBA and WBO cruiserweight titles and become the first boxer to win championships at 168, 175 and 200 pounds.

Benavidez (32-0, 26 knockouts) not only remained undefeated, but showed why he was a -600 favorite over Ramirez (48-2, 30 KOs).

Ramirez was taken to a hospital to receive a head scan, according to Jane Murcia, communications director for Golden Boy Promotions.

“He’s in good spirits and has a swollen eye,” Murcia said. “There’s no determination of a fracture at this point.”

In the co-main event, WBA super middleweight championship fight, Jaime Munguía (46-2, 35 KOs) upset title holder Armando Reséndiz (16-3, 11 KOs) by winning a resounding unanimous decision. Reséndiz was a -200 favorite, but Munguía — the former WBO junior middleweight champ — was the aggressor from the start and won by scores of 117-111, 119-109 and 120-108.

“It feels great to have this championship belt with me, but this is just the beginning," Munguía said. "I’m excited for what comes next. We are ready for big challenges and great fights.”

Benavidez has chased Canelo with hopes of setting up a showdown, but Alvarez never agreed to it and it has been looking unlikely to happen.

Maybe now it's different, and Benavidez didn't waste the opportunity to make the case yet again.

“I see Canelo in the building. Let me just ask the fans this. Do you guys want to see Canelo versus David Benavidez?" the man known as “The Mexican Monster” asked, drawing a roar from the crowd.

“Enough said. That means we can’t leave that fight on the table. I have respect for Canelo. He’s a great champion. I’m a great champion, too. Let’s do it.”

Benavidez said he would be willing go back down in weight to make it happen.

“I’m still champion at 175," Benavidez said. “I’m champion at 175 and 200. So if they want to come get it at 175, let’s get it at 175.”

Boxing fans, or least those who support Benavidez, haven't forgotten how Canelo has yet to take on the match. Alvarez, wearing a black Munguía T-shirt, was booed all three times he was shown on the large video board. Benavidez, who was born in Phoenix and lives in Miami, later was cheered while shown going through prefight preparations.

He then gave his fans plenty more to cheer about and they reciprocated by regularly chanting his nickname “Monstruo” in the Cinco de Mayo weekend showcase fight.

Benavidez, even when being backed down by Ramirez, delivered his signature rapid-fire combinations, usually pelting his opponent's head. A right hand to Ramirez's head in the fourth staggered him, and Benavidez went for the knockout but settled for the knockdown at the end of the round when Zurdo went down to his left knee.

Then two rounds later, Ramirez again went to a knee. This time, the fight was over.

“We came up together," Benavidez said. "We came up sparring together. I got him ready for his world championship fights. He got me ready for my world championship fights. I just want to say I love Zurdo Ramirez, but, you know, it is what it is in here. There’s only one ‘Monster.’”

And now the 29-year-old Benavidez can make a credible argument after dominating the 34-year-old Mexican that he one of the sport's best pound-for-pound boxers if not right at the top.

The statistics underscored how much Benavidez owned the fight.

According to Compubox, he landed 151 punches at a 46.2% to 89 for Ramirez, who reached his target on 19.8% of attempts. The power punches were 137-64 and the percentage 56.8-27.7.

“I knew I wasn’t going to be able to overpower him because it was my first time coming up to 200 pounds," Benavidez said. “So I knew I had to use the gifts that God gave me: speed, power, movement, punch selection and IQ. That’s exactly what I did.”

___

AP boxing: https://apnews.com/boxing

The shelves once laden with goods during his childhood sat nearly empty in late April, with barely anything to offer the 5,000 clients who depend on the state-run store for subsidized food.

Government ration books that once provided for a healthy diet and kept families fully fed for a month are now shrinking.

As the economy collapses and prices soar, a growing number of Cubans find themselves unable to afford alternatives to state-run stores and struggle to subsist on meager salaries in a socialist country of nearly 10 million where basic goods increasingly are sold in U.S. dollars.

“No Cuban can truly survive on the products from the ration book anymore,” Amate López said.

‘Living

off air’

Revolutionary leader Fidel Castro established the ration book — “la libreta”— in the early 1960s. It offered heavily subsidized goods ranging from milk to fish and even cigarettes. Cubans knew their assigned bodega would be stocked with everything they needed by the first of the month.

The ration book shrank during the “Special Period,” when Soviet aid plummeted in the 1990s and deprivation hit Cuba. During that time, Cubans lost an average of 5% to 25% of their body weight, according to one study published in a medical journal, with goods including bread, milk, eggs and chicken in scarce quantities.

Even so, many Cubans who lived through that period say the current situation is worse.

Amate López recalled that his assigned bodega was so full decades ago “you could barely walk.”

It’s now an empty room with dusty old posters detailing the prices and amounts of nearly two dozen goods no longer available, including yogurt, pasta and bars of soap. Two industrial freezers once packed with meat and chicken serve only to keep Amate López’s water bottle cold. In April, the only items he had available to sell were rice, sugar and split chickpeas.

Cuban teens turning 15, a landmark birthday in Latin America, used to receive cake and several cases of beer. Now they only get 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of ground beef. The government recently opted to celebrate those turning 65 by awarding them sardines, a bar of soap and a package of toilet paper. But Amate López said he doesn't have those items.

Havana resident Ana Enamorado, 68, said she only was able to buy split chickpeas and 2 pounds (1 kilogram) of sugar at her assigned bodega in April.

She struggles to buy the remaining basic goods at small, privately owned stores known as “mipymes” with her salary and pension totaling some 8,000 Cuban pesos ($16) a month.

A carton of 30 eggs costs roughly 3,000 pesos ($125), 2 pounds of meat hash are nearly 900 pesos ($37) and 1 pound of cornmeal is roughly 200 pesos ($8).

“There’s hardly anything in the ration book,” she said. “We’re practically living off air.”

Her lunches and dinners are a rotation of rice, seasoned ground meat and cornmeal, or sometimes nothing at all. She recalled once upon a time being able to eat pork, lamb, fricassee, fried plantain slices and red beans and rice.

“Now we have to cut back, have one meal a day and live on memories,” Enamorado said.

Subsidizing people in need instead of goods

Cuba imports up to 80% of the food it consumes, including goods offered at state stores that are increasingly unavailable given a lack of government resources.

“They just don’t have the money to do it anymore,” William LeoGrande, a professor at American University who has tracked Cuba for years, said about the government running out of funds. “Things come in an ad hoc way.”

LeoGrande said the government “bungled” the 2021 merging of two Cuban currencies and the resulting inflation has persisted because the state spends far more money than it takes in.

The government has to stop printing money and balance its budget without drastically cutting social services, a challenge since the bulk of state funds is spent on health, education, social welfare and food imports, he said.

“Any major cuts in state spending are going to have a profound social impact, which is why they haven’t done it,” LeoGrande said, adding that the government’s investment in tourism is “way higher” than the demand for tourism, which has plummeted.

In recent years, Cuba’s government has talked about subsidizing people in need instead of goods. That would free up money to import fuel, medicine and other items, LeoGrande said.

But many Cubans still depend on their ration books while the island's crises deepen as severe power outages, petroleum shortages and a U.S. energy blockade persist.

Cuban comedians have spoofed the ration book, creating a character named “Pánfilo" who sings a rhyming chorus in a recent video posted online: “Place the notebook in a cemetery, because it's ready to be buried.”

Struggling to buy basic goods

On a recent sunny afternoon, Lázaro Cuesta, 56, stood in line to receive a daily allowance of two small bread rolls for him and his wife.

“Before it was 80 grams and cost 5 (Cuban) cents. Now it’s 40 grams and costs 75 cents,'' he said. “And the quality is worse.”

Cuesta works in food preparation and earns 6,000 Cuban pesos ($250) a month. His wife, a retired nurse, receives 4,800 pesos in monthly pension. They also receive $200 a month from her brother and daughter who live abroad.

The remittances allow them to eat avocados, eggs and red beans and rice, Cuesta said.

“If not for the remittances,” he said as he grabbed his neck with his right hand, “hang yourself.”

Roughly 60% of Cubans on the island receive remittances, but Rosa Rodríguez, 54, of Havana is not one of them.

“Everything is scarce here — everything — even that wretched bread they give us,” Rodríguez said. She earns 4,000 Cuban pesos ($8) a month, which she said isn’t a bad salary for Cuba, but “no matter how hard you work, it’s simply not enough.”

Rodríguez said the only product she obtained at her assigned bodega in April was a donation of 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) of rice, while she struggles to buy other basic goods.

“If you buy beans, then you can’t buy sugar,” she said, noting that most of her salary is spent on a large carton of eggs. “If I retire, I die.”

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

Jackson Blake also scored for Carolina, and Frederik Andersen stopped 19 shots for his second shutout of these playoffs and seventh in his postseason career.

Game 2 of the series is Monday night in Raleigh, with Carolina yet to trail in any of its five postseason games so far after jumping to a 2-0 first-period lead in this one.

“We had a good start, obviously,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “That’s what won the game.”

Carolina closed a first-round sweep of Ottawa last weekend, then had an extended break while the Flyers battled to push past Pittsburgh in overtime of Game 6 on Wednesday night. That led to rest-versus-rust conversations about how the Eastern Conference’s top seed would start Saturday night.

Instead, the Hurricanes pounced from the opening puck drop, a departure from how all four regular-season meetings went to overtime or a shootout.

Stankoven scored in each of the four wins against the Senators, then scored on a redirect from the slot just 1:31 in.

“I think you’re just trying to get it off quick,” Stankoven said. “Obviously, it’s nice to have that confidence that comes with putting the puck in the net, and yeah, you just kind of build off of it.”

Blake followed at 7:30, splitting two defenders as he entered the zone and charging in to slip a puck behind Dan Vladar.

That was more than enough offense on this night with the Flyers struggling to apply much pressure on Andersen — who opened the Ottawa series with a shutout, too.

“We definitely came ready to play,” Andersen said.

Philadelphia started its first postseason since 2020 by battling through Pittsburgh to close out a six-game series in overtime on Cam York’s Wednesday night winner. But the Flyers sputtered from the start, managing just nine shots on goal through two periods and being outshot 3-2 on their four power plays for the night.

Otherwise, they struggled to find much open ice with Carolina’s aggressive style closing in rapidly to shut down lanes toward Andersen or for the pass.

“We talked about it, we just didn’t live it on the ice,” Flyers coach Rick Tocchet said, pointing to a need to react quicker against Carolina’s pressure. “We weren’t quick enough for their speed. ... It’s a good baptism how some of our players are going to have to play.”

By the final 10 minutes, the game had turned testy with players having to be separated multiple times. That included 10-minute misconduct penalties on Philadelphia’s Trevor Zegras and Nick Seeler, along with Blake and Shayne Gostisbehere for Carolina.

Both teams were down key players. The Flyers didn’t have regular-season goals leader Owen Tippett because of an undisclosed injury, while the Hurricanes were missing defenseman Alexander Nikishin after he suffered a concussion in Game 4 against Ottawa.

Carolina veteran Mike Reilly drew in for Nikishin and had the primary assist on Stankoven’s first goal and the secondary assist on Blake’s score.

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

Embiid finished with 34 points, 12 rebounds and six assists. Tyrese Maxey added 30 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists. VJ Edgecombe scored 23 points and Paul George had 13.

Philadelphia, the No. 7 seed, will visit No. 3 New York on Monday night in Game 1 of the second round.

The Sixers franchise, including its time as Syracuse Nationals, improved to 2-10 in road Game 7s. Its only other win came in 1982 at the Boston Garden. It's a small measure of revenge after Boston blew out Philadelphia in Game 7 in the second round of the 2023 playoffs.

“We had a chance to beat them three years ago, didn’t do it. We came in and got it done," Maxey said.

Embiid, who debuted in Game 4 after recovering from appendectomy surgery, is the first player in NBA history to score 100 points in a playoff series despite missing the first three games. He and Maxey also became the third duo in league history to each have 25 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in a Game 7.

Jaylen Brown led Boston with 33 points and nine rebounds. Derrick White had 26 points, including five 3-pointers. Neemias Queta finished with 17 points and 12 rebounds. The Celtics struggled from the 3-point line for the third straight game, finishing 13 of 49.

Brown said Embiid changed tenor of the series.

“He put a lot of pressure on us,” Brown said. “We didn't really have the answers for him.”

Boston coach Joe Mazzulla shrugged off any notion that his team was too dependent on 3s in the series.

“I love the looks that we got. I love the process that we had.. But I hate the result," Mazzulla said.

The second-seeded Celtics made their earliest exit from the playoffs since the 2020-21 season. Boston fell to 32-1 when leading a series 3-1.

The Celtics played without Tatum after he was ruled out about 90 minutes before tipoff with left knee stiffness. Brown said he didn’t find out until about 45 minutes before the game.

“Nobody told me anything. But my mindset was the same,” Brown said.

Philadelphia led for all but 31 seconds in the game, increasing a five-point halftime edge to 18 points in the third quarter. It was down to 13 at the start of the fourth and Boston opened the period on a 16-4 run to pull within 92-91.

The 76ers were leading 101-98 when Maxey got free for a layup with 1:15 remaining. Boston missed its next four shots and Philadelphia pushed it to 105-98 on a pair of free throws by Maxey.

Mazzulla said Tatum came to the team facility Saturday with knee discomfort, and the medical team decided for him not to play. Tatum briefly left Game 6 in the third quarter for unspecified treatment to his left calf. Mazzulla downplayed the significance, saying initially Tatum would play in Game 7.

With Tatum out, Mazzulla made radical changes to the starting lineup, opting to start Baylor Scheierman, Luka Garza and Ron Harper Jr. alongside Brown and White.

It was the first time that group started together this season and the Celtics quickly fell into a 9-0 hole. Philadelphia led by 15 in the first quarter and 32-19 when it ended.

Unlike in their losses in Games 5 and 6, the Celtics weren’t as quick to fire up 3s, instead opting to attack the interior of Philadelphia’s defense to get easier looks.

Boston started the second on an 18-4 run to take its first lead of the night, 37-36, on a 3-pointer by Payton Pritchard. The 76ers led 55-50 at halftime.

___

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

The Narges Mohammadi Foundation said the Nobel Prize laureate had two episodes of complete loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis.

Earlier Friday, Mohammadi had fainted twice in prison in Zanjan in northwestern Iran, according to the foundation. She was believed to have suffered a heart attack in late March, according to her lawyers who visited her a few days after the incident. At the time, she appeared pale, underweight and needed a nurse to help her walk.

The hospital transfer comes “after 140 days of systematic medical neglect,” since her arrest on Dec. 12, the foundation said.

“This transfer was done as an unavoidable necessity after prison doctors determined her condition could not be managed on-site, despite standing medical recommendations that she be treated by her specialized team in Tehran,” the foundation said.

Help may be little too late, family says

Mohammadi’s family had advocated for her transfer to adequate medical facilities for weeks.

The foundation, quoting her family, said her transfer Friday to a hospital in Zanjan was “a desperate, ‘last-minute’ action that may be too late to address her critical needs.”

Mohammadi's brother Hamidreza Mohammadi, who lives in Oslo, Norway, said in an audio message shared with The Associated Press by the foundation that her family is “fighting for her life.”

“My family in Iran is doing everything they can. But the prosecutors in Zanjan are blocking everything,” he said.

On March 24, Narges Mohammadi’s fellow inmates found her unconscious, her lawyers said she told them during the visit a few days later. Upon later examination at the prison’s clinic, a doctor told her that she probably had had a heart attack. She had chest pain and breathing difficulties since.

Her legal representative in France, Chirinne Ardakani, said at the time that Mohammadi had been denied transfer to the hospital or to visit her cardiologist. A prison official was present throughout the brief visit by Mohammadi’s lawyers.

Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023

Mohammadi, 53, a rights lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 while in prison, was arrested in December during a visit to the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad and sentenced to seven more years in prison.

Her family said in February that her health was worsening in prison, in part because of a beating she endured during her arrest in December. He said multiple men hit and kicked her in her side, head and neck. The Nobel committee condemned the “ongoing life-threatening mistreatment” of Mohammadi in a statement in February.

“In recent days, her blood pressure has experienced severe fluctuations, going very high and low, and today she suddenly fainted due to a sudden drop in blood pressure,” her lawyer Mostafa Nili posted on X.

At first, the prison doctor injected Mohammadi with drugs but she refused to be transferred to a hospital, demanding to see her cardiologist. A few hours later, Mohammadi fainted again. This time a neurologist ordered her immediate transfer to a hospital, the lawyer added.

Mohammadi was urgently transferred to the hospital and admitted to the cardiac care unit, “but her blood pressure continues to fluctuate severely,” Nili wrote. He said a medical official in Zanjan recommended a one-month suspension of her sentence for treatment, but the public prosecutor in Zanjan referred the matter to his counterpart in Tehran.

Prior to her arrest Dec. 12, Mohammadi had already been serving a sentence of 13 years and nine months on charges of collusion against state security and propaganda against Iran’s government, but had been released on furlough since late 2024 over medical concerns.

Continued her activism on furlough

During that furlough, Mohammadi kept up her activism with public protests and international media appearances, including demonstrating in front of Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, where she had been held.

In February, a Revolutionary Court in Mashhad sentenced Mohammadi to an additional seven years. Such courts typically issue verdicts with little or no opportunity for defendants to contest their charges.

Mohammadi suffered multiple heart attacks while imprisoned before undergoing emergency surgery in 2022, her supporters say.

In 2023, Mohammadi became the fifth laureate to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison, further amplifying her voice in support of widespread protests that swept Iran after the death the year before of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by the country’s morality police for not properly wearing the mandatory headscarf.

Her selection enraged Iran’s hard-line Shiite theocracy, which increased her prison time and later sent guards to rough her up along with other prisoners who were protesting inside Evin Prison.

Yet Mohammadi remained defiant, even issuing boycott calls for the 2024 election that President Masoud Pezeshkian won. She maintained that one day Iran’s government would change due to popular pressure.

“I’m just glad I don’t have to answer that question anymore," DeVaux said to a rousing round of applause.

DeVaux joined Jena Antonucci, with Arcangelo in the 2023 Belmont, as the only women to train the winner of a Triple Crown race. She was just the 18th woman to saddle a horse in the Derby in its 152-year history, and the gravity of the situation came into focus for her days earlier when she saw a young girl on the backstretch and realized the impact she is making.

“It really is an honor to be able to be that person for other women or other little girls to look up to,” DeVaux said. “You can dream big, and you can pivot. You can come from one place and make yourself a part of history.”

DeVaux credits growing up with seven brothers and two sisters for her toughness. After winning the Derby on her first try eight years after starting her own stable, she thanked her husband for inspiring her to give it a chance.

“I didn’t believe,” DeVaux said. “I started my career here 22 years ago as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed exercise rider. And I would not believe that I would be sitting up here today. Never in my life did I think I would.”

It came with a lot of hard work. DeVaux fielded questions this week about Golden Tempo's cracked heels, and she downplayed concerns. She put a lot of time into getting the colt into form, trying blinkers and other things to get the son of Curlin to focus.

Jockey Jose Ortiz even described Golden Tempo as lazy. But Ortiz showed what he and the horse could do Saturday, winning the Derby for the first time in his 11th try — and doing so in impressive fashion.

Ortiz navigated past 17 other horses around the final turn and made a hard charge down the stretch. With a crowd of more than 100,000 watching and roaring at Churchill Downs, Golden Tempo passed morning line favorite Renegade — ridden by brother Irad — just before the wire to win the 1 1/4-mile race in 2:02.27 at odds of 23-1.

Their parents were there to witness it.

“I get to ride it almost every year, but to get to win it, it’s just special,” said Ortiz, who also won the Kentucky Oaks on Friday aboard Always a Runner. “I just wish my grandpa was here, but I know he’s looking from heaven. Just very happy that I get my goal, my life dream goal achieved.”

Golden Tempo paid $48.24 to win, $19.14 to place and $11.90 to show. Renegade paid $7.14 to place and $5.46 to show. Ocelli — who didn’t get into the field until Thursday when Brad Cox’s Fulleffort was ruled out — paid $36.34 to show after going off at 70-1.

“He gave me a really good run and proud of his effort,” Ocelli jockey Tyler Gaffalione said. "We were just not able to get the job done but hats off to the winner and runner-up. They ran huge races.”

The 152nd Kentucky Derby went on with just 18 horses following a scary incident before the race. Great White was a late scratch by track veterinarians after flipping and throwing his jockey.

Great White’s trainer, John Ennis, confirmed to The Associated Press that the big gray gelding and jockey Alex Achard were fine.

Great White became the fifth horse scratched this week and the second Saturday. Silent Tactic was ruled out Wednesday, Fulleffort on Thursday and Right to Party on Friday, with Great White, Ocelli and Robusta getting in. The Puma was out, less than 12 hours before post time, because of a swollen leg from a skin infection, but it was too late to replace him.

Following Golden Tempo's victory in the $5 million Run for the Roses, the immediate question was whether he would run back in two weeks in the Preakness Stakes on May 16. After two of the previous four Derby winners did not participate in the Preakness, DeVaux said it would be determined in the coming days.

“We’re going to let him decide that,” DeVaux said. “We’re going to have to allow him to tell us, because the horse is first. We’re not here for ourselves. We’re not here for our egos. We’re here for the horse.”

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

It was the third time in major league history that a team had walked that many batters consecutively — and the first time in more than four decades, according to the Elias Sports Bureau and Sportradar.

Pittsburgh also was at bat when Atlanta walked seven straight in the third inning on May 25, 1983. The only other time it happened was on Aug. 28, 1909, when the Chicago White Sox issued seven straight bases on balls to the Washington Senators.

The string of free passes resulted in the Pirates scoring five runs in the inning without a hit. Starter Rhett Lowder issued the first three walks before he was pulled.

“No excuses for that,” Lowder said, according to MLB.com. “I just didn’t really have anything today. I was trying and just couldn’t get back in the zone.”

Lowder walked Brandon Lowe with one out and the bases empty. After he walked Bryan Reynolds and Ryan O'Hearn, the Reds replaced him with Connor Phillips, who also could not find the strike zone.

Phillips walked Nick Gonzales, Marcell Ozuna, Horwitz and Konnor Griffin to force in four runs, exiting after throwing five of his 21 pitches for strikes.

“Just getting on base any way possible,” O'Hearn said in a televised postgame interview. “Walks, hits, whatever it takes. Our guys know what they’re doing up there. So, proud of the offense.”

Sam Moll came in and induced Henry Davis' RBI fielder's-choice grounder, then retired Oneil Cruz on a tapper fielded by catcher Tyler Stephenson.

Lowder, who took the loss, allowed eight runs in 1 1/3 innings to raise his ERA from 3.18 to 5.09. Entering Saturday, he had not pitched fewer than five innings or given up more than four earned runs in six starts this season.

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

“I know Andy well, and he is always a Vote we can count on because he knows what it takes to GET THINGS DONE,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Barr is facing former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron in the May 19 Republican primary, and would have faced entrepreneur Nate Morris. In a Truth Social post just before his endorsement of Barr, Trump announced that he'd asked Morris to “step aside” from the race to join his administration as an ambassador.

“Nate is a terrific businessman and strong MAGA Warrior,” Trump wrote, adding that he'll announce Morris' specific role soon. Shortly after, Morris posted on X that he was proud to be part of the Trump administration and, in another post, endorsed Barr.

All three Republicans coveted the president's endorsement — and boasted frequently of their Trump loyalty — in the conservative state, where Trump won 64% of the vote in the 2024 presidential race.

It isn’t the first Senate primary where Trump has endorsed or teased an endorsement, and he’s been using his influence to continue shaping the Republican Party.

In Louisiana, Trump backed Sen. Bill Cassidy’s challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow. Cassidy voted to convict the president during his 2021 impeachment trial after the Jan. 6. attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In Texas, the president has dangled a possible endorsement in the primary between Sen. John Cornyn and challenger Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, but he hasn’t announced anything.

In Kentucky, Barr said he was honored to have Trump’s endorsement, adding in a statement that he’ll stand with Trump “100% to deliver for Kentucky and to keep Making America Great Again.”

A consultant for Cameron’s campaign, Brandon Moody, said in a texted statement, “Congrats to Mitch McConnell for getting his guy,” but did not explain further.

The Democratic field in Kentucky includes former state lawmaker Charles Booker and former Marine pilot Amy McGrath. McGrath beat Booker and several other candidates in the 2020 Democratic primary to face McConnell.

Democrats have not won a U.S. Senate race in Kentucky since 1992.

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This story has been updated to correct that McGrath won the 2020 Democratic primary, not Booker.

The Pentagon on Friday had initially announced it would pull some 5,000 troops out of Germany, but when asked Saturday about the reason for the move, Trump didn't offer an explanation and said an even bigger reduction was coming.

“We’re going to cut way down. And we’re cutting a lot further than 5,000," Trump told reporters in Florida.

Earlier on Saturday, Germany's defense minister appeared to take in stride the news that 5,000 U.S. troops would be leaving his country.

Boris Pistorius said the drawdown, which Trump has threatened for years, was expected, and he said European nations needed to take on more responsibility for their own defense. But he also emphasized that security cooperation benefited both sides of the trans-Atlantic partnership.

“The presence of American soldiers in Europe, and especially in Germany, is in our interest and in the interest of the U.S.,” Pistorius told the German news agency dpa.

The plan faces bipartisan resistance

The planned withdrawal faced bipartisan resistance in Washington, with swift criticism from Democrats and concern from Republicans that it would send the “wrong signal” to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine recently entered its fifth year.

Trump's decision comes as he seethes at European allies over their unwillingness to join his campaign with Israel against Iran. He has lashed out at leaders like Merz, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Merz last week criticized the war in Iran, saying the U.S. is being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and calling out Washington’s lack of strategy.

In another sign of friction, Trump accused the European Union of not complying with its U.S. trade deal and announced plans to increase tariffs next week on cars and trucks produced in the bloc to 25%, a move that would be particularly damaging to Germany, a major automobile manufacturer.

At least one EU lawmaker called the tariff hike “unacceptable” and accused Trump of breaking yet another U.S. commitment on trade.

US increased troops after Russian invasion of Ukraine

A pullout of 5,000 soldiers from Germany would amount to about one-seventh of the 36,000 American service members stationed in the country. The Pentagon offered few details about which troops or operations would be affected. When contacted after Trump's announcement of more cuts on Saturday, the Pentagon did not offer any additional details and referred back to its earlier statement.

The withdrawal of the 5,000 troops is scheduled to take place over the next six to 12 months, according to the Pentagon. Trump previously said he would pull 9,500 troops from Germany during his first term, but he didn’t start the process and Democratic President Joe Biden formally stopped the planned withdrawal soon after taking office in 2021.

More broadly, around 80,000-100,000 U.S. personnel are usually stationed in Europe — depending on operations, exercises and troop rotations. The U.S. increased its European deployment after Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022. NATO allies like Germany have expected for over a year that these troops would be the first to leave.

Pistorius, in his comments to dpa, said, “We Europeans must take on more responsibility for our security,” while stressing recent efforts by Germany to boost its armed forces, accelerate procurement and develop infrastructure.

NATO spokesperson Allison Hart, in a post Saturday on X, said the trans-Atlantic alliance was “working with the U.S. to understand the details of their decision on force posture in Germany.”

“This adjustment underscores the need for Europe to continue to invest more in defense and take on a greater share of the responsibility for our shared security,” she added, noting “progress” toward a target among NATO allies to each invest 5% of their economic output to defense.

A ‘thorough review’ prompted drawdown decision

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement that the “decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground.”

A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said the branches of the U.S. military didn’t have prior knowledge of the decision to draw down the 5,000 troops and learned about it “in real time.”

In response, the Defense Department reiterated that it conducted a thorough review of its force posture in Europe.

“The decision to withdraw troops in Germany follows a comprehensive, multilayered process that incorporates perspectives from key leaders in EUCOM and across the chain of command,” acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez wrote in an email, using the abbreviation for U.S. European Command.

Most U.S. troops in Germany come from the Army and Air Force.

Germany hosts several American military facilities, including the headquarters of the U.S. European and Africa commands, Ramstein Air Base and a medical center in Landstuhl, where casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were treated. U.S. nuclear missiles are also stationed in the country.

Withdrawal of 5,000 troops — the size of a brigade combat team — from Germany would likely have limited impact on combat power, but “in terms of messaging of U.S. commitment though, it’s very different,” another U.S. defense official said.

The only permanent brigade combat team in Germany is the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, alongside an aviation brigade and other assets, which is considered to have an important role in America's — and NATO's — ability to deter threats.

GOP lawmakers voice concern about withdrawal plan

After swift pushback from Democrats on Friday, Republican leaders of both armed services committees in Congress said Saturday they were “very concerned” about the troop withdrawal.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama said the decision risked “undermining deterrence and sending the wrong signal to Vladimir Putin.”

They also said the Pentagon had decided to cancel the planned deployment of the Army's Long-Range Fires Battalion. Parnell's statement made no mention of that.

Wicker and Rogers said any significant change to the U.S. force posture in Europe warrants review and coordination with Congress.

“We expect the Department to engage with its oversight committees in the days and weeks ahead on this decision and its implications for U.S. deterrence and trans-Atlantic security,” they said in a joint statement.

They also noted that Germany has heeded Trump’s call to shoulder more of the burden of defense spending in Europe, while giving U.S. forces access to its bases and airspace in the war against Iran.

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Burrows reported from London and Grieshaber from Berlin. Associated Press writers Ben Finley and Michelle L. Price in Washington and Jamey Keaten in Lyon, France, contributed to this report.

It's the third consecutive pole for the current Formula One championship leader, who blocked Max Verstappen from taking the top starting spot at Miami International Autodrome for a third straight year.

Mercedes has dominated the competition this season, with George Russell winning from the pole in the season-opening race, then Antonelli winning from the pole in the two grands prix that followed. F1 then had a five-week break when a pair of races in the Middle East were canceled because of the war in Iran.

All teams made upgrades to their cars during the break, but after Russell was fourth and Antonelli sixth in Saturday's sprint race, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff acknowledged “we are a little out of sync with our upgrades compared to other teams.”

Antonelli recovered by qualifying and turned a lap at 1 minute, 28.653 seconds to beat Verstappen of Red Bull for the pole.

“Obviously a difficult start of the day with the sprint where it didn't go our way, but super happy with the recovery,” Antonelli said. “We will do our best this week and obviously it's been a little bit more difficult for us.”

Verstappen earned his best starting spot of the season as Red Bull has seemingly improved with its car upgrades. The four-time world champion — a two-time winner at Miami — had qualified sixth in Australia, eighth in China and 11th in Japan.

His best finish of the season so far was sixth in the Australia season opener, and the Dutchman has been so frustrated with the current car regulations that he's talked about potentially leaving F1.

He was all smiles after his qualifying result.

“For sure the car has not been great in the previous races and from my side I never felt comfortable with the layout of the car,” Verstappen said. “I think over the those last few weeks the team has been pushing to try to bring upgrades to the car and making me feel more comfortable with a lot of things in the car and it really pays off.

“I feel more in control of the car again and I can push a bit more. To be on the front row is way better than I expected heading into the weekend.”

Charles Leclerc, who was third in the sprint race, qualified third for Ferrari. Lando Norris, the reigning world champion and defending Miami Grand Prix winner, qualified fourth for McLaren after winning the sprint race from the pole.

Russell was fifth, Lewis Hamilton of Ferrari was sixth and Oscar Piastri of McLaren was seventh after finishing second in the sprint race.

Both of the Cadillac drivers failed to advance out of the first round in the team's first race in the United States. Despite major upgrades made to the new car during the five-week break between the Japanese Grand Prix on March 29 and Miami, Valtteri Bottas qualified 20th and Sergio Perez was 21st.

Only Gabriel Bortoleto qualified below them, last in 22nd, because of an issue that caused his Audi to catch fire.

F1 and the FIA governing body moved the start time of Sunday's race up by 3 hours to 1 p.m. EDT because of heavy rain expected in Miami. Most of the drivers have been concerned since Thursday about the forecast, which calls for thunderstorms. The race must be paused if there's lightning in the area because conditions must be clear enough for a medical helicopter to operate when cars are on the track.

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

“I’ll let you know about it later," he said before boarding Air Force One, adding that “they’re going to give me the exact wording now.”

Shortly after speaking to reporters, Trump posted on social media about the new proposal, saying he “can’t imagine that it would be acceptable in that they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity, and the World, over the last 47 years.”

Two semiofficial Iranian news outlets, Tasnim and Fars, believed to be close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, said Iran has sent a 14-point proposal via Pakistan in response to a nine-point U.S. proposal. Iran's state-run media have not reported on the new proposal. Pakistan has hosted previous negotiations between Iran and the United States.

Trump rejected a previous Iranian proposal this week. However, conversations have continued, and the three-week ceasefire appears to be holding.

The U.S. president also has floated a new plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, where about a fifth of the world’s trade in oil and natural gas typically passes.

Imprisoned Iranian activist's health worsens

The health of imprisoned Iranian rights lawyer Narges Mohammadi was at “very high risk," her foundation and family said Saturday, adding that Iran 's Intelligence Ministry was opposing her transfer to Tehran, Iran's capital, for treatment by her own doctors.

Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in her early 50s, was urgently transferred to a hospital in Zanjan in Iran's northwest on Friday after a cardiac crisis and fainting. Her family has said her health had been worsening in part from a beating she received during her December arrest.

Medical teams in Zanjan have requested her records before performing any treatment, while recommending that she be transferred to Tehran, her foundation said.

But her Paris-based husband, Taghi Rahmani, said the Intelligence Ministry opposed the transfer for angiography, or imaging of the blood vessels. He spoke in a voice message shared with The Associated Press by the foundation.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee in a statement urged Iranian authorities to immediately transfer Mohammadi to her medical team, saying her life is in their hands.

“She has the mental resilience for imprisonment, but her body does not have the readiness. The Ministry of Intelligence wouldn’t even mind if (she) died,” her husband told Sky News.

He added that their children hadn't seen Mohammadi for over a decade, since 2015.

Before her arrest on Dec. 12, Mohammadi already had been serving a sentence of 13 years and nine months on charges of collusion against state security and propaganda against Iran’s government, but had been released on furlough since late 2024 over medical concerns.

Her legal team is pursuing the matter with the General Prosecutor’s office, the foundation said.

The US warns shipping companies about possible sanctions

The U.S. has warned shipping companies they could face sanctions for paying Iran to pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz, adding pressure in the standoff over control of it.

Iran effectively closed the strait by attacking and threatening ships after the U.S. and Israel launched a war on Feb. 28. Tehran later offered some ships safe passage via routes closer to its shore, charging fees at times.

The U.S. on Friday warned against transfers not only in cash but also in “digital assets, offsets, informal swaps, or other in-kind payments,” including charitable donations and payments at Iranian embassies.

The U.S. has responded with a naval blockade of Iranian ports since April 13, depriving Tehran of oil revenue it needs to shore up its ailing economy. The U.S. Central Command on Saturday said 48 commercial ships have been told to turn back.

Iran hangs two men convicted of spying for Israel

Iran on Saturday said it hanged two men convicted of spying for Israel.

The judiciary's news outlet, Mizanonline, said Yaghoub Karimpour was accused of sending “sensitive information” to an officer in Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, while Nasser Bekrzadeh allegedly sent details about government and religious leaders as well as information about Natanz. The city is home to a nuclear enrichment facility bombed by Israel and the U.S. last year.

Iran has hanged more than a dozen people over alleged espionage and terrorist activities in recent weeks. Rights groups say Iran routinely holds closed-door trials in which defendants are unable to challenge the accusations they face.

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El Deeb reported from Beirut and Anna from Lowville, New York. Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price and Collin Binkley in Washington and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

The team announced the news about 90 minutes before the start of the winner-take-all first-round matchup between Boston and the Philadelphia 76ers.

“He just came in today with knee discomfort. The medical team and myself decided for him not to play,” coach Joe Mazzulla said during his pregame meeting with reporters.

With Tatum out, Mazzulla made radical changes to the starting lineup for Game 7, opting to start Baylor Scheierman, Luka Garza and Ron Harper Jr. alongside Jaylen Brown and Derrick White. It is the first time that group has started together this season.

Tatum averaged 23.3 points, 10.2 rebounds and 6.8 assists through the first six games of the series, while shooting 52.2% from the field and 36.5 from the 3-point line.

Tatum briefly left Game 6 in the third quarter for unspecified treatment of his calf. Tatum, of course, is just 22 games into his return from the torn right Achilles tendon injury he suffered in last season’s playoffs.

The Celtics downplayed the situation, with Tatum saying afterward that his leg was only feeling “a little stiff.” He said following a quick assessment and some time on the exercise bike he didn’t return because the game was out of hand and the starters had already been pulled.

But he was a late addition to the injury report on Saturday, listed first as questionable when the 1:45 p.m. report was released.

Tatum's return to action was carefully managed during the regular season, beginning with a slow ramp up of his minutes. He also was not allowed to play in both games of a back-to-back.

But he's had a lot less rest over the last three playoff games, playing every other night.

Saturday marks the 67th game this season that Tatum has not played.

This will be the fifth time that the 76ers have played against Boston this season with Tatum sidelined.

“Obviously, it will change the matchups and things like that,” 76ers coach Nick Nurse said. “Obviously, they played the majority of their season without him, and played very, very well. So, I think they've got enough games under their belt and have guys they trust and rely on and all that kind of stuff.”

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

Cruz told the audience of conservative Christians that the Republican party is “winning historic victories” under President Donald Trump’s second administration. “We have won more victories than at any time since we have been alive,” he said, pointing to low immigration crossings at the southern border and a federal ruling on Friday banning abortion pills to be mailed to patients, a major victory for anti-abortion groups.

The senator’s presence in Iowa is significant since it is where the first presidential nominating contests happen in the country, but he didn’t tease plans of running.

Instead he used his speech to address anti-Semitism and blamed Democrats for it.

“About 10 years ago, anti-Semitism began rising on the left and the Democrat Party leadership looked the other way and hoped it would go away,” Cruz said. “I truly believe this is an existential crisis and here’s why: Anti-semitism is a gateway drug to anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism.”

The senator called out two former Trump supporters: Tucker Carlson and former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have both become some of the president’s most vocal critics. He called them “self-appointed, outspoken influencers who are pushing anti-Ssemitism on the right” who have “lost their ever-loving minds.”

Cruz won the famed Iowa Republican Caucus in 2016, narrowly beating Donald Trump at the onset of an intense series of contests in which he would ultimately come in second to the eventual president. As a first-term, 45-year-old senator at the time, Cruz barnstormed the Hawkeye State by building out a massive field operation, visiting each of the state’s 99 counties and earning the endorsement of influential Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vaander Plaats.

The Texan was the first major Republican candidate to launch a presidential bid in 2015 and went on to win 11 states in the primaries. Cruz’s run catapulted him to national fame, buoyed by his close association with the Tea Party wing of the Republican grassroots base, appeal to evangelicals and a significant donor network.

A decade later, Cruz is now a bearded third-term senator with powerful insider status — chairing the Senate Commerce Committee — while retaining his grassroots connections, co-hosting the most popular podcast among politicians. Speaking to the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition in the suburb of Clive, Cruz did not discuss his 2016 victory in the state.

Cruz’s name is frequently discussed as a potential 2028 contender, alongside Trump Cabinet members including presumed frontrunners Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The upcoming presidential field will be the first without Trump since 2012. That presents an opportunity for the GOP to chart a course beyond the president who has thoroughly remade the party since his first term.

Friday’s visit was Cruz’s first to an early state — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada, which hold presidential nominating contests first in the primary calendar — since his Senate re-election in 2024. He was scheduled to appear at Iowa Republican Attorney General Brenna Bird’s annual Barn Bash outside of Des Moines in August but was unable to attend.

Leading up to the 2016 election, Cruz began making stops in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina as early as 2013. He spoke at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s spring kickoff — the same annual event as Friday’s — in 2015, shortly after launching his presidential bid.

The family of late owner Peter Seidler formally announced the deal Saturday. The sale must still be approved by Major League Baseball.

The deal with private equity billionaire Feliciano and his wife took shape last month at an MLB-record valuation of $3.9 billion. The Padres' announcement of the deal didn't give specifics on the members of the investor group or the purchase price.

“The Padres are more than a baseball team; they are a unifying force in San Diego, rooted in community, connection and belonging,” Jones and Feliciano said in a joint statement. “As life and business partners, and as a family, we are honored to lead this next chapter together. We have worked hard for everything we have achieved, and we have built it together. We see that same spirit in this team and its fans, and we know what it takes to win. We are committed to showing up, listening and earning the trust of this community while building on the strong foundation established by the Seidler family.

“This is about more than baseball — it’s about boosting the pride, energy, and connection that define the Padres, investing in community, deepening belonging and ensuring this team remains accessible and endures for generations. We are all in — with the goal of bringing a World Series championship to San Diego.”

Seidler’s family began to explore a sale of the Padres last November, two years after the death of the popular Peter Seidler, who became the Padres' primary owner in 2020. His brother, John Seidler, has served as the Padres’ chairman since his death.

“When I became control person, my goal was to continue building on our recent success in pursuit of a World Series championship for the city of San Diego and our faithful fans,” John Seidler said in a statement. "As I pass the baton to Kwanza and José, I do so with full confidence that they share that vision as well as the Padres' deep commitment to San Diego. It’s what the team, our fans and the community deserve. Our family loves this team.”

Peter Seidler joined the Padres' ownership group in 2012 when John Moores sold the team for $800 million to a group headed by Ron Fowler. Seidler took over and immediately endeared himself to San Diego's fans with his aggressive financial backing of general manager A.J. Preller, who built a team that has reached the playoffs in four of the past six years.

The Padres have been a hot ticket for several years as San Diego's only team in the four biggest North American sports leagues, ranking second in the majors in attendance last season. Preller's roster is off to another strong start this season, sitting second in the NL West at 19-12 heading into a home game against the Chicago White Sox on Saturday night.

Jones and Feliciano already got a start on their new endeavor last month when they traveled to Mexico City to watch the Padres' international series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. The couple was spotted sitting with Padres CEO Erik Greupner.

Feliciano will become the second Latino owner in baseball, joining Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno. Latino and Hispanic players comprise roughly 30% of major league rosters.

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

The bombshell indictment against the 10 has shaken Mexico's political establishment.

In a short video announcement at midnight on Friday, Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya, the highest-ranking official named in the indictment, denied accusations that he protected the Sinaloa cartel and helped it smuggle vast quantities of drugs into the U.S. in exchange for political support and millions of dollars in bribes.

“My conscience is clear,” said Rocha, 76, a longtime ally of influential former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “To my people and to my family, I can look you in the eye because I have never betrayed you, and I never will.”

But he said he would take a temporary leave of absence from the position he has held for six years to defend himself against what he called the “false and malicious” allegations and cooperate with the Mexican government's investigation.

Juan de Dios Gámez Mendívil, the mayor of the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacán named in the indictment, also said he would take leave and denied the charges. Another defendant and member of the ruling Morena party, Sen. Enrique Inzunza, said he would continue serving in the Senate while defending himself from the accusations.

In a special vote Saturday, the state's local congress appointed as interim governor Yeraldine Bonilla Valverde, an ally of Rocha who previously served as the state's secretary of government. It approved Rocha's leave of absence for a period of 30 days.

As serving governor and mayor, Rocha and Gámez Mendívil had enjoyed immunity from criminal prosecution. But in leaving their posts even temporarily, the officials lost their blanket protection from prosecution, Arturo Zaldívar, a former Mexican Supreme Court justice who now advises Sheinbaum, posted on X.

“They can be detained like any person,” he wrote.

The president wants the trials held in Mexico

Sheinbaum has struggled to strike a balance between the interests of her progressive Morena party and pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to step up the fight against cartels.

In a nod to her party’s vow to stamp out corruption, Sheinbaum said she wouldn’t defend anyone found to have committed a crime.

But she vigorously defended Mexico's sovereignty, saying that if federal authorities uncovered “irrefutable” evidence linking the 10 indicted officials to cartel crime, the accused would be tried in Mexico, not the U.S. — a move that risks backlash from an American administration that has threatened military action against cartels on Mexican soil.

“We will never subordinate ourselves because this is a matter of the dignity of the Mexican people,” she said Friday.

Many Mexicans living cartel violence almost daily in Sinaloa said on Saturday that they welcomed news of the U.S. indictment and their governor's resignation as a step toward accountability.

“We are in an ungovernable state where the same party and the same governor essentially gave free rein to what has become a violent situation," said Raquel Campos, a 35-year-old doctor in Culiacán. “Unfortunately it was another country that had to take action.”

No arrests till the investigation is over

Pending investigation, the Mexican attorney general’s office said it would not arrest Rocha or the other accused officials, as requested by the U.S.

Rocha, a point person for the hands-off “hugs not bullets" approach to dealing with organized crime that López Obrador pioneered and Sheinbaum has since ditched, insisted in the video that the indictment represents a political attack on Morena.

“I will not allow myself to be used to harm the movement to which I belong — one that has improved the lives of millions of Mexican men and women,” he said.

Born in the same town as the notorious Mexican drug kingpin “ El Chapo,” Rocha has found himself embroiled in similar scandals before. In 2024, he was named in a published letter written by a then-Sinaloa cartel capo who was kidnapped by leaders of a rival faction and handed over to U.S. law enforcement. In the letter, the capo said that he was on his way to meet Rocha when he was abducted.

“It's an open secret,” Sergio Estrella, 42, a shopkeeper in Culiacán, said of the alleged collusion between drug kingpins and senior officials. “The government needs to take a different tack, to recognize how deeply drug trafficking is embedded in politics.”

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DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Associated Press journalist Aarón Ibarra in Culiacán, Mexico, contributed to this report.

It didn't seem to matter, either.

Young is still in full control at Trump National Doral, after his round of 2-under 70 on Saturday got him to 15 under for the week. He had a six-shot lead over a group that includes top-ranked Scottie Scheffler into a potentially rainy final round Sunday.

“No lead is safe out here,” Young said. “I’m going to go try to execute my plan as if I’m right around the lead or just trying to have a good day out there, not necessarily with any thought toward where I’m at in the tournament.”

Young had four birdies and two bogeys on Saturday.

“The tournament’s in his hands right now,” said Scheffler, who shot a 3-under 69 to get to 9 under — but hasn’t been able to close the gap on Young. “I can go out and have a really good round, and if he has another really good round he’s going to be a tough guy to catch. All I can do is go out and try and have a great round and see where that leaves me.”

Si Woo Kim (69) and Kristoffer Reitan (69) also were 9 under. Ben Griffin 68), Nick Taylor (72) and Matt McCarty (69) were 8 under.

Catching Young will be tough in any conditions.

And nobody knows what awaits players Sunday at Doral.

A lot of rain is expected on Sunday — more than an inch, according to some forecasts, with heavy downpours predicted for the afternoon — the tournament moved up its schedule for the final round in an effort to beat the worst of the weather.

Players will go off in threesomes, from split tees, with everyone starting between 7:30-9:40 a.m. It's unknown if President Donald Trump — the course owner — will publicly appear in the final round. He was expected to be at the course Sunday, though that was before the schedule for the final round changed.

Young shared the lead through three rounds at the Masters — tying for third at Augusta National after Rory McIlroy beat him by two shots. McIlroy had a six-shot lead after two rounds there and got caught, a lesson that'll be in the back of Young's mind Sunday.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to forget,” Young said. “But it won’t change really how I play, especially the front nine. I may be a hair more conservative in a place or two, but with the weather looking the way it does, that would be how I would be playing anyway.”

Scheffler beat Young by five shots in that final round at the Masters. He'll need to do better than that at Doral if he's going to win on Sunday.

But the way he finished Saturday might have made his comeback chances a bit of a boost.

The 18th at Doral basically is two different holes — a brutal par 4 for those who don't have enough distance for a 300-plus-yard carry over water and into a wider portion of the fairway, and a slightly less brutal par 4 for those who can get it out there. Scheffler is one of those who don't have problems reaching the better spots of that fairway, and he took full advantage of that on Saturday.

His approach from 172 yards stopped 4 feet from the cup. He made the birdie — just the ninth of the week at the finishing hole.

“Just ended up in a good spot and really nice 9-iron in there to finish off,” Scheffler said. “It’s always nice to have a little tap in at the last.”

Young actually had a closer approach on the 18th, but his shot from about 165 yards was 60 feet below the hole. His birdie putt was about 8 feet short, but he saved the par to preserve the six-shot edge.

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

Instead, a top Justice Department official insisted the ruling wasn't binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.

By February, the district court judge, Sunshine Sykes, was fed up. Sykes, a nominee of President Joe Biden, accused Trump officials in a ruling that month of seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers,” adding that they could “only do so in a world where the Constitution does not exist.”

Hardly isolated, the case illustrates a broader pattern of defiance of lower court decisions in President Donald Trump's second term.

The failure of Trump officials to follow court orders has been highlighted most notably in individual immigration cases. But a review of hundreds of pages of court records by The Associated Press also shows an extraordinary record of violations in lawsuits over policy changes and other moves.

In the second Trump administration’s first 15 months in office, district court judges ruled it was violating an order in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including mass layoffs, deportations, spending cuts and immigration practices, the AP’s review of court records found. That’s about one out of every eight lawsuits in which courts have at least temporarily blocked the administration’s actions.

The Republican administration's power struggle with federal courts — which is testing basic tenets of U.S. democracy — reflects an expansive view of executive authority that has also challenged the independence of federal agencies, a president’s ethical obligations, and the U.S.’s role in the international order.

Judges find widespread noncompliance

The violations in the 31 lawsuits are in addition to more than 250 instances of noncompliance judges have recently highlighted in individual immigration petitions — from failing to return property to keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.

Legal scholars and former federal judges said they could recall at most a few violations of court rulings over the full four-year terms of other recent presidential administrations, including Trump's first time in office. They also noted previous administrations were generally apologetic when confronted by judges; the Trump administration's Justice Department has been outright combative in some cases.

“What the court system is experiencing in the last year and a half is just qualitatively completely different from anything that’s preceded it,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University who studies federal courts and is tracking litigation against the Trump administration.

Though Trump officials eventually backed down in about a third of the 31 lawsuits, legal experts say their treatment of court orders poses serious dangers.

“The federal government should be the institution most devoted to the rule of law in this country,” said David Super, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University. “When it ceases to feel itself bound, respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country.”

The White House’s aggressive policy moves have prompted a barrage of lawsuits — more than 700 and counting.

The administration has gotten a boost from higher courts

The AP’s review also found that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, overruled the district courts and sided with the White House in nearly half of the 31 cases. Critics say those decisions are emboldening the administration to ignore judges' orders.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the higher courts had overturned “unlawful district court rulings.” The administration will “continue to comply with lawful court rulings,” she added in a written statement.

“President Trump’s entire Administration is lawfully implementing the America First agenda he was elected to enact,” the statement said.

Among other instances of noncompliance, judges found the White House defied rulings when it deported scores of accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, withheld billions of dollars in foreign aid and failed to restore programming at the Voice of America. The three cases date to the first few months of the new administration, but judges have continued to find violations since then, including in two cases in April.

“The danger is that this gets normalized,” said JoAnna Suriani, counsel at the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, which is tracking noncompliance cases. The group is also involved in litigation against the administration.

‘Ham-handed.’ ‘Hallucinating.’ Judges have also been scathing

In October, U.S. District Judge William Smith took little time to conclude Homeland Security officials were flouting one of his orders. Smith, a nominee of George W. Bush, had blocked them from making billions of dollars in disaster relief funding to states contingent on cooperation with the president's immigration priorities.

DHS responded by keeping the immigration requirement on some grants, but making it contingent on a higher court overriding Smith’s injunction. The judge called the move “ham-handed” and said DHS was trying to “bully the states.”

In a case over the suspension of refugee admissions, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden nominee, accused the Justice Department last May of “hallucinating new text” in an appellate court order and “rewriting” it to achieve the government's preferred outcome.

In four additional cases the AP reviewed, judges stopped short of a clear written finding of noncompliance but still criticized the administration’s response to their orders.

Of the judges who have confirmed violations, 22 were appointed by Democratic presidents and 7 by Republican presidents.

Former federal judges Jeremy Fogel and Liam O’Grady said judges are losing trust in the integrity of the Department of Justice.

That’s making them “more aggressive in accusing the government of bad faith,” said O’Grady, who along with Fogel is now part of the nonpartisan democracy group, Keep Our Republic.

Fogel said judges are also getting frustrated.

“They make orders and the orders don’t get complied with and then they have to inquire why the orders are not being complied with, and that’s where it gets very mushy and very political,” he said.

Plaintiffs in an education case raise alarms

In Eureka, California, school administrator Lisa Claussen is worried about the impact on her students’ mental health if a judge does not find the Education Department in violation of a court order on federal grants.

Grant money allowed the school district in the poor coastal community in Northern California to hire more than a dozen psychologists and social workers to help students struggling with drug use and suicidal thoughts.

Education officials in the Trump administration told schools in California and other states last year that it was discontinuing the grants; the administration opposed diversity considerations in the grant process.

U.S. District Judge Kymberly Evanson blocked the move permanently in December, but California and 15 other states now say the administration is making an end run around her injunction by imposing new rules, including an initial limit of six months of funding.

Attorneys for the Education Department said they wanted to see whether schools were making progress on performance goals before releasing additional funds. The judge's order did not block the six-month limit, they added in a court filing.

Evanson, a Biden nominee, has yet to rule.

In the absence of a one-year funding guarantee, Eureka City Schools and other districts say they have already issued layoff notices to mental health providers or eliminated positions.

“We have many kids who don’t trust adults for very good reason and to be able to just swipe this grant like they’re doing ...” Claussen said in a phone interview, her voice trailing off. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

Justice Department pushes back

In court filings, Justice Department attorneys have generally disputed accusations the government was not complying. They have argued over the meaning of words, cited favorable appellate court rulings and said they were acting outside the scope of the court’s order, among other legal maneuvering.

Outside of court, Trump and White House officials have railed against federal judges. Vice President JD Vance has even suggested the president could ignore court orders.

Will Chamberlain, senior counsel with the conservative legal advocacy group The Article III Project, said many of the judges who have found violations are ignoring laws that clearly prohibit their rulings.

Trump officials are “generally complying, appealing and winning,” he said. “If they were defying orders left and right, they’d be losing them.”

Critics say the higher courts are excusing noncompliance

In March, a federal appeals court ruled Sykes, the judge in California, had likely exceeded her authority in requiring bond hearings nationwide and blocked her February decision.

The outcome was not unusual.

In 15 of the 31 lawsuits the AP reviewed, an appellate court or the Supreme Court either allowed the administration's underlying policy, limited the district court's efforts to correct or punish the noncompliance, or both.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized her fellow justices after one such ruling.

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” she wrote in June in a dissent joined by the court's two other liberal justices. “Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

___

Associated Press writer Michael Casey in Boston contributed.

The incident comes four days after the four-time All-Star came off the 10-day injured list after fouling off a pitch and breaking his left big toe on April 11 in another game against the Twins.

X-rays showed no new fractures, and its not any worse than it was, manager John Schneider said after the game. He had already planned to give Springer an off day on Sunday.

Springer was hit by an 88 mph slider from Connor Prielipp and immediately went to the ground in pain. After being tended to by a couple of trainers for a few minutes, Springer gingerly walked off the field and was replaced by Jesús Sánchez.

In his sixth season with Toronto, the 36-year-old Springer is hitting .212 with two home runs and seven RBIs in 66 at-bats across 18 games.

The MVP of the 2017 World Series with Houston, Springer is in the final season of a $150 million, six-year deal with the Blue Jays.

___

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

He missed a 12-foot birdie putt and settled for a tap-in par on the par-5 8th hole Saturday — and that was the first par of his day at Trump National Doral, after an opening seven-hole stretch that featured an eagle, four birdies and two bogeys.

He began the day with a 9-foot putt for eagle at the par-5 opening hole, and his wild beginning was underway. The rest of his opening seven holes:

— No. 2, missed 15-foot par putt, bogey.

— No. 3, made 3-foot birdie putt.

— No. 4, missed 12-foot par putt, bogey.

— No. 5, 86-yard chip stops 8 inches from hole, birdie.

— No. 6, made 6-foot birdie putt.

— No. 7, made 4-foot birdie putt.

Going back to Friday, it was actually nine consecutive holes without a par for McCarty — who finished bogey-bogey in the second round.

He wound up shooting a round of 3-under 69, with just six pars for the day. He was at 8 under for the week going into Sunday's final round.

“Kind of roller coaster early,” McCarty said. “I played really solid.”

Even with all the everything-but-pars excitement to McCarty's round Saturday, he wasn't anywhere near close to a record for the most holes to begin a round without a par.

Since the tour began keeping such records — ShotLink didn’t start until 2004 — that record belongs to Per-Ulrik Johansson, who began his first round at the 2004 Valero Texas Open with 12 consecutive non-pars. Johansson started with a birdie, then made five bogeys, then two birdies, then a bogey, then a triple-bogey, then a birdie and finally one more bogey to start his round.

McCarty started Saturday's round in 12th place, eight shots back of leader Cameron Young. His start in the third round briefly got him as high as a tie for second.

___

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

It happened a little after 1 pm on Texarkana Street.

In a post on X, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez stated that one person has been detained in what appears to be a domestic violence incident.

@HCSOTexas deputies responded to a shooting at a residence located at the 14200 block of Texarkana. Upon arrival, units found an adult woman with a gunshot wound. The woman was pronounced deceased on-scene. Preliminary: the shooting is possibly linked to domestic violence. One… pic.twitter.com/DKBdex7Q7P

— Ed Gonzalez (@SheriffEd_HCSO) May 2, 2026

The sheriff also stated that three children were in the home but not injured during the shooting.

This was far too big and far too significant for Al-Shaair to not speak from the heart.

Authentic and introspective, the Texans’ hard-hitting middle linebacker and emotional leader of the top-ranked defense in the NFL wears his feelings on his sleeve. He doesn’t hold back, whether it’s delivering his trademark punishing tackles or in deep conversations. Al-Shaair provides his genuine thoughts and leaves no doubt about his convictions.

During a watershed, life-changing moment for Al-Shaair and his family as he celebrated a three-year $54 million contract extension that includes $32.5 million fully guaranteed in new money and $45.75 million total guaranteed, the Pro Bowl selection reflected on the hard moments of the past.

Growing up in Tampa, Fla., Al-Shaair and his family experienced homelessness after a fire cost them their home. Al-Shaair grabbed his seven siblings to save them. Their last semblance of stability melted down to soot and ashes.

Raised by his mother, Naadhirah Lennon, Al-Shaair and his siblings dealt with significant hardships. They moved into a budget, extended-stay motel. Al-Shaair didn’t want recruiters to know about his circumstances, so he preferred college football coaches to meet with him away from the motel, including Florida Atlantic assistant coach Nick Caley, who’s now the Texans’ offensive coordinator.

Poverty-stricken and dealing with housing issues and low on food, Al-Shaair took custody of his younger brothers while attending Florida Atlantic on a football scholarship to bring them along with him. Through it all, Al-Shaair and his family stuck together and had each others’ back. Especially his mom.

“The last person I want to thank, I saved for last because I don’t know if I’m going to cry or not and I don’t want to cry, is my mother,” Al-Shaair said Friday at Reliant Stadium while looking directly at his mom. “I wouldn’t be the man that I am if it wasn’t for you. Everything that I am, is because of you. To be a single mother of one child is tough. Two children, that’s tough. Three, four, five, we’re talking about eight children. Regardless of the outcome of the circumstances that we were in, you believed in me to play football before I believed in myself.

“I am no one, I am nothing if I don’t have you and if I didn’t have you through all those years getting me to this point. Every conversation we had. Even to this day, I have to talk to you when anything is going on in my life. You’re my best friend. You mean the world to me and I can’t repay you enough for the things you’ve done for me. Truly, truly, truly, truly, truly grateful for you and I love you.”

As much as Al-Shaair has dealt with tough times, those experiences only strengthened his resolve.

From his time as a hungry teenager to tearing his anterior cruciate ligament during his final college season, to going undrafted, to being signed by the San Francisco 49ers as a free agent on the recommendation of assistant Chris Kiffin, one of his recruiters at Florida Atlantic along with Caley and Roc Bellantoni, to learning the pro game from DeMeco Ryans, his position coach with the 49ers and a former Pro Bowl linebacker, the journey has never been easy for Al-Shaair. That’s what makes this even more satisfying for him.

It was all truly earned, never given for the Texans’ Walter Payton award winner.

“I love that, I think it inspires people,” Lemon told KPRC 2. “I hope it inspires people and gives them hope that I, too, can get through the trials I’m going through at that time.”

And that’s why Al-Shaair, a devout Muslim, delivered a strong message of gratitude. He quoted a verse from the Quran: ‘With hardship comes ease. Not before or after, but almost simultaneous.’

As Al-Shaair discussed the various trials and adversities he’s experienced, he didn’t speak about them with regret.

If anything, he was glad for what he has and what he endured.

After watching your childhood home burn to the ground, or injuring his knee as a senior and watching his draft stock plummet to, now, becoming an anchoring force as a team captain of the top-ranked defense in the NFL and a leader in the community, his rough upbringing gave him invaluable perspective and resolve.

“I’m truly, truly grateful,” said Al-Shaair while thanking Cal McNair and Hannah McNair, Ryans, defensive coordinator Matt Burke and linebackers coach Bill Davis, his longtime agent Jason Chayut of Sportstars and his extended family. “It really does feel surreal. Everything that I went through to be at this point. I wanted to be here. I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I couldn’t see myself going anywhere else.

“I’m grateful to my agent, Jason Chayut for taking a chance on me back when I was coming out of college with a torn ACL and not pretty, not the hottest linebacker you want to get. He took a chance on me and we’ve worked together now going on eight years, four different contracts later. I see you like family. My family, they’re my support system and they love me regardless of how many tackles I make or what I do. I wouldn’t be able to be here without them.”

Growing up in Tampa, Al-Shaair endured strife and it created gratitude for whatever he did have. He once gave his last $50 to a college student he felt like was in a greater need than him.

It was his grandfather, James Tokley Sr., a poet laureate who instilled wisdom and confidence in Al-Shaair and his name. Al-Shaair means ‘Son of a Poet’ in Arabic.

It was his mother who first allowed him to play football. He wanted to be a Pop Warner player. As a middle school student, he got in an Oklahoma drill. Relatively inexperienced at the time, Al-Shaair got flattened by and older, larger player.

Initially, Al-Shaair told his mother that he didn’t want to keep playing if he couldn’t be the best. She encouraged him to stick with football. She gave him the confidence to fail or succeed as long as he applied his best self to the task at hand.

“When I was growing up in Tampa, I begged her to let me play and she didn’t want me to play because she didn’t want to see me get hurt,” Al-Shaair said. “We were staying in a motel at the time, ‘I promise you, if you let me play football I’m going to make it to the NFL, I’ll take care of our family one day.’

“I had no clue if I was ever actually going to be able to do it or not. I never saw it done. I didn’t think stuff like that happened to people like me, in my life and my situation. So, to sit here years and years later, to be actually living that out is absolutely amazing. All praise to Allah. It’s nothing but God’s mercy and God’s grace that I’m ever here and able to say that.”

The contract isn’t only about money and the value that Al-Shaair provides in the locker room.

It’s a display of respect, just like the fact that Cal McNair and Hannah McNair and their son, Calhoun, attended the press conference and posed for photos with Al-Shaair and his mother, along with defensive coordinator Matt Burke and teammate Jamal Hill.

“I just wanted to be myself: be authentically me,” Al-Shaair said. “Obviously, as a football player on the field I try to show the abilities that I have to be a tone-setter. Get guys organized, lined up, communication, all those different things. Off the field, just connecting with the guys, understanding that the relationships that you build, it makes you push a lot harder when you are doing it for your brothers.

“Truthfully, I just wanted to be authentically myself and I always felt like if I got the opportunity to be at a place and show everybody who I was, then things would go well for the team and myself. I’m grateful for that.”

An $18 million average per year compensation boost from 12th in linebacker average per year compensation to third in the NFL behind the San Francisco 49ers’ Fred Warner ($21 million) and the Baltimore Ravens’ Roquan Smith ($20 million). Previously, Al-Shaair was at $11.3 million in terms of average per year.

Texans general manager Nick Caserio and Chayut worked on this contract for three months.

The deal includes $35.25 million fully guaranteed for skill, injury and salary cap in terms of new money and $45.75 million total guaranteed.

After recording a team-high 103 tackles, a career-high two interceptions and a career-high nine passes defensed, Al-Shaair isn’t resting on his laurels. He wants to keep improving and he wants the Texans to get even better on defense and as a team after three consecutive AFC divisional round defeats.

And, yes, he still has a motivational chip on his shoulder as a former overlooked rookie free agent.

“Truthfully, I carry it with me every day,” Al-Shaair said. “I think that it’s just a part of who I am. I think it’s a part of my life. Me, my story in the NFL, I think is a reflection of my story throughout my life. Going through different hardships, having all the weight of the world on your shoulders, feeling like, ‘Man, like there’s no way you’re going to make it out of this situation.’

“Somebody like Chris, he was assistant defensive line coach at the time, it’s like you getting up there talking about a linebacker from Florida Atlantic with a torn ACL talking about you promise he’s going to make the team. You’re almost putting your own job on jeopardy for me. So that type of just character from people who cared about me to speak on my behalf like that. I have a million people that have done that for me, so I’m just grateful.”

An emotional and introspective Azeez Al-Shaair after #Texans contract extension @KPRC2 https://t.co/AO1UItQLOZ pic.twitter.com/NgFM7Usquj

— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) May 1, 2026

The deal for Al-Shaair follows other big deals for defensive standouts Will Anderson Jr. (three years, $150 million extension as the highest paid non-quarterback in NFL history) and Danielle Hunter (one-year, $40.1 million guaranteed extension).

“You start with the person, a theme of these contracts we’ve been giving out as an organization to reward the type of people we want to represent the team and this building,” Burke said. “He’s probably at the forefront of all that. Just an unbelievable human being. You see there’s ownership here, there’s players here, there’s offensive coaches, defensive coaches, community relations people, the people he connects with in the building is really impressive. It always starts with the person.”

True to form, Al-Shaair was working out at Reliant Stadium as a fixture in the Texans’ offseason workout program when he got the good news from his agent.

He was late for Davis’ position meeting because the deal was being finalized.

“Billy is my guy, but I get in the meeting and he’s like, ‘Oh man, oh man, what are you coming in late for?’” Al-Shaair said. “He’s just giving me a hard time. I’m just cheesing the whole time. I’m not even listening to half the stuff he’s saying, I’m just like, ‘Uh huh. Uh huh.’ I’m just smiling. I just couldn’t stop smiling.

“I tried to call my mom, she was asleep. By the time I got to talk to everybody and everythig, it didn’t feel real, truthfully, until today. There’s no way it’s real. I did sign it, so it is official. If something happens to me now, take care of my mama for me. That’s where I was at.”

Al-Shaair drew heavy criticism for a concussion-causing hit on a late sliding Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence a year ago and served an NFL suspension. He and the Texans took exception to the language in a disciplinary letter from NFL executive Jon Runyan and defended his character. During that time, Al-Shaair was open and forthright about his emotions as he revealed that he was in a dark place at that time and briefly contemplated walking away from the game.

The attacks on his character and being called a dirty player, or racist and anti-Muslim remarks on his social media pages, yes, it bothered him greatly.

And the Texans, especially a fired-up Caserio, stuck up for Al-Shaair and defended him passionately.

“When I reflect back to that time, it was a really challenging time in my life just trying to navigate through how I could be in a situation where people are attacking me as a man, my character for something that I did on the football field that happens in a split-second,” Al-Shaair said. “People get into car accidents and it’s like, ‘You’re at fault, it happened so fast.’ When all that stuff went down, to see the way people were talking about me as a person and as a player, it hurt because I just felt like everything kind of came crumbling down and it wasn’t a reflection of who I see myself as or who I try to be.

“I was truly broken. My heart was broken; my mother could tell you. Everybody who is here that I interacted with could tell you, I was in an extremely, extremely low, dark place. I was dealing with all the off-the-field stuff and the stuff with the Trevor Lawrence stuff and the suspension and all of it, and people pretty much going for my character. I really leaned in on all these other people who did more than their job required them to do to try to make sure I was in a good place mentally. I’m so just grateful.”

Al-Shaair has built a special relationship with the McNair family and their son, Calhoun.

He’ll never forget how they stood behind him during the Lawrence controversy.

“This family has been like my own family,” Al-Shaair said. “I always tell them, ‘You didn’t have to put yourself in front of a speeding bullet for me.’ I feel like the way that they had my back and every chance that they had to speak on my behalf, speak to my character, every time they saw me just pouring into me, trying to make sure I was doing well. Cal told me his father told him, ‘You can never go wrong doing what’s right.’

“That’s something that I think I’ll probably keep with me for the rest of my life. There was countless conversations that I had with them that just reassured me as a person because obviously there’s a business side to this and then there’s a personal side.I’m just grateful that I’m here and I have the relationship that I have with them. Calhoun, [Cal McNair’s] son, I tell him he’s like my nephew.”

Al-Shaair, named the Texans’ annual Media Good Guy award winner last season, is willing to delve into a variety of topics, including his Muslim faith and wide-ranging philanthropy, along with football strategy, offering a window into the game.

It’s a two-way street of mutual respect and understanding.

“I appreciate you guys,” Al-Shaair said. “I think everybody has a job to do. Every time I talk to you guys, I’m trying to do my job to the best of my ability. You’re dedicated to what you gotta do equally as I’m dedicated to what I do. And I think you understand, this is a profession that we all take serious. Everybody has their aspirations and what they’re trying to accomplish.”

“For me given as much of the insight as I can give, being around you guys all the time, knowing the personalities, knowing the different stories that you guys have written, how far you guys have come individually in your own journeys to get here, it’s no different than me as a player. It’s not that hard. I’m definitely grateful for you guys giving me this. I appreciate the work that you guys do for us as well.”

When Anderson got his blockbuster deal, no one was happier for him than Al-Shaair.

They’ve bonded over faith and their love for football.

“He truly is like a little brother to me,” Al-Shaair said. “Truthfully, he is a great human being and I think that is the biggest thing for me. I value character more than I value abilities. I will talk to the janitor for 45 minutes or I will talk to Hannah or Cal for 45 minutes. I value the character. I am so grateful that I have him in my corner because the way we lean in on each other, especially throughout the season when we are kind of having our own moments of rough patches.

“People look to us for leadership so it is hard because you feel like you can’t show that you are going through something all the time because everybody else on the team is looking to you for that inspiration. We actually lean in a lot on each other to kind of be that therapist for each other to make sure like, ‘Hey, are you good?’”

That’s who Al-Shaair is, in a nutshell.

#Texans Pro Bowl linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, an emotional moment, as he was presented annual @PFWAwriters Media Good Guy award. Always insightful, available and a true professional@A_train2_ @KPRC2 @crownawards @Djbienaime pic.twitter.com/ijo9sHjEOm

— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) December 31, 2025

He thinks about other people, including Palestinian children affected by the conflict in Gaza. He regularly hosts child amputees receiving medical treatment in Houston at football games. He advocates for victims through the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and My Cause, My Cleats. He uses his platform to highlight the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, stating that being Muslim drives his view that all people should be seen equally. He was fined by the NFL in January for wearing a ‘Stop the Genocide’ message on his eye back during a playoff game.

“One thing that I also love from me being Muslim, what you learn is that in Islam, there’s no person, all you guys in this building right now, nobody’s better than the next person in here,” Al-Shaair said. “I’m no better than anybody else because of how much money I’m getting, because of what career I have, vice versa. The only thing that you’re judged on is the intention in your heart.

“I think that’s what I try to do. Be really insightful, be really detailed on how I’m interacting with people and be authentic. I think that’s the biggest thing because at the end of the day, we’re all human.”

The Houston chapter of @PFWAwriters voted and named Azeez Al-Shaair the 2025 Media Good Guy Award winner!

The award is given annually to those who best exemplify professionalism and exceptional cooperation with the media at large. pic.twitter.com/8fqaaWZyCE

— Houston Texans PR (@TexansPR) December 31, 2025

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

But if you’ve been snagged in their now-defunct flight schedule, here are some things to know on how to get home, and get whole.

“Rescue fares,” reduced prices for new flights

Many airlines that used to compete with Spirit are now parachuting in with deals to save their travelers. Airlines including American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, Frontier Airlines and Southwest Airlines are capping or reducing ticket prices for people to book new flights.

There is a limited window for this deal, which prioritizes now-stranded travelers who need to find a new way to their next destination.

For example, Southwest’s offer is only available in person at an airport ticket counter through Wednesday, May 6, according to industry trade group, Airlines for America and the U.S. Department of Transportation. United, meanwhile, is allowing such bookings for up to two weeks, which can be accessed online.

For those who were planning to fly Spirit and now need to find an alternative to the ultra low cost carrier, American, Allegiant, Frontier and Delta advertised reduced fares on the same routes Spirit once flew.

Many company announcements include maps showing where its routes overlapped with Spirits, which can help narrow the search to find a comparable flight.

“Spirit Airlines played an important role in expanding access to affordable travel and bringing more low fares to more people,” said Bobby Schroeter, Frontier’s chief commercial officer. “We recognize this is a difficult time for their customers and team members.

Get your money back in refunds

Spirit Airlines said they were prepared for an “orderly wind-down” of its operations, and that it will automatically process refunds for any flights booked on a credit or debit card.

Travelers who booked through third-party travel agencies should direct refund requests to those agents.

Anyone else who got their reservation through vouchers, credit or points will have to wait and see though Spirit’s bankruptcy process.

If there are questions about whether your money will make a safe landing back to your wallet, there are other ways to try to claw back your cash for the Spirit flight not taken.

The DOT suggests contacting your credit card company and exercising your rights under the Fair Credit Billing Act, by requesting a “chargeback” for services not rendered.

If you purchased travel insurance or it is included in your credit card’s policy and perks, call them to see if they cover “insolvency” or “service cessation.”

The last resort would be filing a bankruptcy claim but officials warn this route eats up time and money, and ultimately may only result in a partial refund.

The National Consumers League warned travelers to keep all documentation to prove they were booked for Spirit flights, including receipts, booking confirmations, cancellation notices, and any correspondence with the airline. The nonprofit watchdog organization also urged those affected to act immediately as credit card and insurance companies may have strict deadlines that can be time-sensitive.

“Not all Spirit customers should assume a refund will automatically appear,” said John Breyault, the league’s vice president of public policy, telecommunications, and fraud. “When an airline shuts down this suddenly, it’s up to travelers to take proactive steps to have the best chance of getting their money back.”

Expanding capacity and perks

American and United both said it is trying to adjust its fleet so it can help more stranded passengers. American said it is looking into tapping larger planes and United said it is potentially adding additional flights on routes where they overlapped with Spirit.

“We are reviewing opportunities to add additional capacity, including utilizing larger aircraft on critical routes — to support as many affected passengers as possible,” American said via an Airlines for America statement.

Southwest also said it will offer a status-match, by honoring Spirit’s Silver and Gold status members with its own A-List program.

The car rental company Hertz is also advertising deals for alternative transportation, offering one-way vehicles and up to 25% off for those find “the road might be the fastest way home in scenarios like this one.”

I’m an employee. Get me out of here.

Spirit crew members who are stuck at their destination should be granted airline travel benefits, including spare jump seats where available on most major carriers.

American said: “We will provide transportation for Spirit team members who have been displaced on a work trip,” according to an Airlines for America statement.

The DOT also said the other companies are offering preferential interviews to help expedite the job search for former Spirit pilots, flight attendants and other employees. American said it will be setting up recruiting events for those former employees.

The video clip posted on the department's YouTube page Friday shows officers confronting Anthony Griffin after he had randomly slashed three people at the 42nd Street-Grand Central subway station, which connects to Grand Central Terminal.

The uniformed officers, identified in the video as detectives Ryan Giuffre and Anthony Manetta, are seen encountering the 44-year-old as he walks up a stairwell holding a large knife at around 9:40 a.m. on April 11.

They order Griffin to drop the weapon multiple times, but Giuffre draws his gun as Griffin continues to hold the knife high near his head.

Griffin then retreats back down the stairs but starts moving toward the officers with the knife still overhead when they start to pursue him.

“Nobody wants to hurt you,” Giuffre says in the video. “We can talk about it. Get down. Get down. Dude, I’m not going to ask you again. Please. Please. Please. Get down!”

But Griffin continues shouting and moving erratically toward the officers with the large blade raised up.

“I don’t want to be here. Shoot me,” he says at one point. “I am Lucifer," he says at another.

Giuffre then fires two shots at Griffin, who immediately drops to the ground. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at the time of the incident that the officers ordered Griffin to drop the knife at least 20 times but he refused to comply.

“Our officers were confronted with an armed individual who had already injured multiple people and was continuing to pose a threat,” she said. “They gave clear commands. They attempted to de-escalate. And when that threat did not stop, they took decisive action to stop it and to protect New Yorkers on one of the busiest train platforms in the city.”

The three stabbing victims — an 84 year-old male, 65-year-old male and 70-year-old female — sustained injuries including “significant lacerations to the head and face” and a skull fracture, though the wounds were not considered life-threatening, Tisch said.

The ultralow cost airline that once operated hundreds of daily flights on its bright yellow planes and employed about 17,000 people said it had “started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately.”

Although Spirit had gone bankrupt twice before, the company said high oil prices, which have been rising because of the war with Iran, made it impossible to stay aloft.

The airline said on its website that all flights have been canceled and customer service is no longer available. Some passengers arrived Saturday for flights and were stunned to find them canceled, while workers learned overnight they were out of jobs.

“We are proud of the impact of our ultra-low-cost model on the industry over the last 34 years and had hoped to serve our guests for many years to come,” Spirit's announcement said.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday that Spirit had a reserve fund set up for customers who bought directly from the airline to get refunds. People who bought from third-party vendors like travel agents would have to seek refunds from them.

Duffy said United, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest were offering $200 one-way flights for people who had Spirit confirmation numbers and proof of purchase for a limited time. Other airlines would also help Spirit employees who might be stranded, as well as offering them a preferential application process as they look for work.

Spirit said in a statement it was working to get more than 1,300 crew to their home bases and that the final Spirit flight landed at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport from Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

The company advised customers that they could expect refunds but there would be no help in booking travel on other airlines.

The Trump administration had considered a government bailout for the cash-strapped business to keep it from going under, but a deal was not reached. Of the potential bailout, Duffy said Saturday “we often times don’t have half a billion dollars laying around.”

President Donald Trump had floated the idea of a bailout last week after the airline found itself in bankruptcy proceedings for the second time in less than two years with jet fuel prices soaring because of the Iran war.

‘They got you there’

Five Spirit flights were still showing as “on time” on Saturday morning on the departure board in Atlanta. A trickle of passengers who hadn’t heard the news were still showing up.

“What!?” exclaimed Taylor Nantang as she, her husband and four children arrived for a Saturday afternoon Spirit flight from Atlanta to Miami for a spur-of-the-moment vacation. The family had driven down from Tennessee to the Atlanta airport.

“So the whole airline at every airport is out of business?” asked Nantang. “Oh my, that’s crazy.”

Other passengers wondered whether the airline would still answer its customer service phone, or when the refunds for canceled flights might arrive on their credit cards.

Joshua Sigler, who had bought a ticket Friday for a flight Saturday to Miami, said he would just return home after learning of the cancellation, rather than try to take advantage of deals other airlines were offering to stranded Spirit passengers.

He said he had gotten no communication from Spirit, which he had flown multiple times in the past. “They get you there,” he said of past flights. “It was cheap.”

‘Boo-hoo crying’

Former Spirit flight attendant Freddy Peterson was on a Spirit flight from Detroit that arrived in Newark around 11 p.m. Friday. He said that despite rumors flying on social media Friday, things seemed kind of normal, with more than 200 passengers on the plane.

“All our aircraft were packed,” he said.

Peterson, 60, said he set his alarm clock for 3 a.m. Saturday to check the company website at the hour of the rumored shutdown and learned all Spirit flights were canceled. He said Delta Air Lines brought him and another flight attendant back to Atlanta on Saturday morning, with Peterson leaving from there to drive to his home in Shellman in southwest Georgia.

“I’ll probably do the boo-hoo crying and all that other stuff once I get in my car."

Peterson said he had been a flight attendant with Spirit for 10 years and the company has “done wonders for me.” He said the airline’s reputation for bargain basement chaos was largely undeserved, but he did fault management for not communicating with the employees in the closing days, saying a promised employee town hall was canceled.

Bailout fizzles

As late as Friday afternoon, Trump had said his administration was looking at a bailout for Spirit and had given the budget carrier a “final proposal” for a taxpayer-funded takeover.

Spirit proudly disrupted the penny-pinching portion of the airlines industry with its no-frills, low-cost flights and provocative ads like its “Check Out the Oil on Our Beaches” campaign after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, referencing suntan oil, but alluding to the crude spilled on the Gulf Coast.

However, Spirit has struggled financially since the COVID-19 pandemic, weighed down by rising operating costs and growing debt. By the time it filed for Chapter 11 protection in November 2024, Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.

The budget carrier sought bankruptcy protection again in August 2025, when it reported having $8.1 billion in debts and $8.6 billion in assets, according to court filings.

White House blames Biden

The White House had blamed President Joe Biden's administration for Spirit’s tenuous financial situation. Biden, a Democrat, opposed a proposed merger between Spirit and JetBlue in 2023. On Saturday, Trump administration officials took to social media to amplify voices of conservative critics who faulted Biden for Spirit’s demise.

On Saturday, Duffy blamed Biden as well as his predecessor Pete Buttigieg.

“Many at the time said that this was a disaster. This merger should have been allowed,” he said.

Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the Trump administration also bears responsibility, arguing that the airline’s current crisis reflects a chain reaction of policy missteps rather than a single decision. He pointed specifically to Trump’s decision to strike Iran as “bad foreign policy," saying the conflict drove up jet fuel prices and Spirit's operating costs.

“They were already in trouble,” DeHaven said, describing the situation as “a compounding effect in terms of policy.”

Supporters of a rescue including labor unions representing Spirit’s pilots, flight attendants and ramp workers said a collapse would put thousands of Americans out of work and hurt consumers by reducing airline competition and increasing airfares. About 17,000 jobs could be impacted, according to Spirit lawyer Marshall Huebner.

Budget-conscious and leisure travelers would likely feel Spirit’s absence the most, especially in places where the airline has a big footprint such as Las Vegas and the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

The carrier flew about 1.7 million domestic passengers in February, roughly half a million fewer than during the same month a year earlier, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Spirit also has sharply reduced its capacity, with about half as many seats available this month than in May 2024.

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Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Amy reported from Atlanta. Catalini reported from Morrisville, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writer Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed.

Access Now, the New York-based advocacy group that organizes the annual gathering, said late Friday it had canceled the RightsCon summit in Zambia that was due to take place next week after the Zambian government initially said it was postponed.

Access Now said it had been informed by Zambian officials that the government had been pressured by China over the conference “because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person.” Access Now said it pushed back on any move to exclude delegates from Taiwan.

“We believe foreign interference is the reason RightsCon 2026 won’t proceed in Zambia,” Access Now said in a statement.

“What the government wanted from us in order to lift the postponement was conveyed to us informally from multiple sources: … we would have to moderate specific topics and exclude communities at risk, including our Taiwanese participants, from in-person and online participation.”

The Zambian government earlier announced it was postponing the conference because it wanted information on the themes and topics of discussion to ensure they aligned with the country's “national values, policy priorities and broader public interest considerations.”

Zambia has strong political and economic ties with China, largely through Chinese mining interests in the mineral-rich southern African nation.

RightsCon is an annual conference focused on human rights and technology and deals with issues like internet censorship, electronic surveillance and cyberwarfare. More than 2,600 participants were due to attend in Zambia, with another 1,100 attending online, Access Now said. They represented more than 150 countries.

Last year’s summit was held in Taiwan.

Taiwanese Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-jing said in a statement on Facebook on Saturday that the cancellation of the summit showed China’s unease over “the ideas of freedom, democracy and rule of law that Taiwan and RightsCon represent.”

Human Rights Watch said Zambian authorities should explain their actions.

The move by the Zambian government came just a week after Taiwan claimed that Beijing intervened to stop Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te from visiting another southern African country, Eswatini on April 22.

Lai's visit to Eswatini, the only African nation that maintains formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, was called off after the Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles were pressured by China to withdraw permission for Lai's plane to fly over their territory, Taiwan said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry praised the actions of the three nations and said their “adherence to the one-China principle is in full compliance with international law.”

China claims self-ruled Taiwan as its breakaway province, to be retaken by force if necessary, and prohibits countries it has diplomatic relations with from maintaining formal ties with Taipei. China has significant influence across Africa.

Taiwanese leader Lai made a surprise announcement on Saturday that he had arrived in Eswatini after the first visit was called off. This time, Lai had not announced publicly that he was traveling.

Taiwan “will never be deterred by external pressures,” Lai wrote on X.

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AP journalist Johnson Lai in Taipei contributed.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

Over to you, Manchester City.

In one of its most dominant performances for weeks, Arsenal overpowered Fulham in a 3-0 win on Saturday that transferred the title-race pressure to second-place City.

All of the goals came in the first half, with Viktor Gyokeres scoring twice and setting up the other for Bukayo Saka.

City has two games in hand, the first coming at Everton on Monday. Significantly, Arsenal now has a superior goal difference of 4 compared to City in a title fight that could yet come down to that tiebreaker if both teams win all of their remaining matches.

Arsenal has three left — West Ham away, Burnley at home and Crystal Palace away — in an easier run-in on paper than City's.

“We never stopped believing," Gyokeres said. “We’re not going to.”

Arsenal wrests back title momentum

It was only 10 days ago that City ended Arsenal's 200-day stay at the top of the league to become, for many, the title favorite.

Pep Guardiola's team hasn't played in the league since and the momentum might just have swung Arsenal's way after its wins over Newcastle last weekend and now a Fulham team which arrived at Emirates Stadium with aspirations of qualifying for a European competition.

Saka, making his first start in six weeks after an Achilles injury, set up Gyokeres for a ninth-minute tap-in before the roles were reversed in the 40th. Gyokeres held up the ball and slipped in Saka, who drove home a finish inside the near post.

Gyokeres grabbed his second goal — and 21st of the season in all competitions — by heading home Leandro Trossard's cross in first-half stoppage time.

West Ham loses and gives Tottenham hope

A blow for West Ham. A boost for Tottenham.

West Ham's survival bid was damaged by a 3-0 loss at Brentford, for whom Brazil striker Igor Thiago — with a penalty for his 22nd goal of the season — was among the scorers.

It meant West Ham stayed two points above Tottenham, which is in third-to-last place — the final relegation spot.

Spurs, who played in the Champions League this season and have been in the top flight since the late 1970s, visit Aston Villa on Sunday and then there are three more rounds remaining.

Brentford climbed to sixth place, seven points behind fifth-place Aston Villa. The top five qualify automatically for the Champions League.

Newcastle's losing run ends

Newcastle eased some of the pressure on manager Eddie Howe by beating Brighton 3-1 to end a four-match losing run in the league.

“It’s been hard for my family because they see the intimate side of me behind closed doors," Howe said. “I haven’t been a bundle of joy the past few weeks.”

William Osula and Dan Burn were Newcastle's scorers in the first half before Jack Hinshelwood replied for Brighton after the break. Harvey Barnes scored Newcastle's third in stoppage time.

Brighton dropped to seventh place, a point behind Brentford.

Another red card for hair-pulling

There have been three red cards for hair-pulling in the Premier League this season. Twice, the recipient of the pull has been Tolu Arokodare.

The Wolverhampton striker had his hair tugged by Sunderland defender Dan Ballard, resulting in another sending-off for an infringement that has become an increasingly common sight in soccer over the past year.

Sunderland was leading 1-0 at the time through Nordi Mukiele's header at a corner. Santiago Bueno equalized for already-relegated Wolverhampton, the league's last-place club, and it finished 1-1.

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Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80

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

Attendance is down significantly this year with the arena only a little over half full, but still no other corporate meeting can come close to matching the crowds at Berkshire's Woodstock for Capitalists. For years, more than 40,000 attended to listen to the 95-year-old Buffett and — before his death in 2023, Buffett’s longtime partner Charlie Munger was always part of the fun. Buffett gave up the CEO title in January, but he remains chairman and did make a few comments during the meeting.

Berkshire's businesses were the focus, but timely topics like the Iran war and the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence also came up.

Vice Chairman Ajit Jain said Berkshire would be willing to insure ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz if the price was right and the U.S. Navy escorted those ships.

Jain said he believes there is enough capacity across the insurance industry to take on that risk and there is definitely a need for it because that waterway is the path for so much of the world's oil supply.

“The short answer is it depends on the price,” Jain said.

Abel said the war in the Middle East is definitely creating challenges for Berkshire's businesses because oil is such a fundamental input, but he's confident that the managers will find a way to deal with that.

“We very quickly move to what is the best solution for our customers,” Abel said.

Honoring Buffett's contributions

Saturday’s meeting began with a video tribute to Buffett beginning with a clip showing the standing ovation Buffett received last year after he surprised shareholders by announcing that he would step down.

Abel then announced the symbolic move of retiring jerseys with Buffett’s and Munger’s names on them that will hang in the rafters of the arena.

Buffett again praised Abel and said he's glad that he made the decision to promote him now.

“He’s very, very smart about businesses,” Buffett said during a live interview that aired during the meeting. And Abel is close to earning his American citizenship after growing up in Canada. He has been with Berkshire more than 25 years.

Buffett complained that too many people treat the stock market like a casino and gamble with their investments. He said the world would work better if more people treated each other well.

“If the whole world lived by the golden rule then it would be such a more wonderful society,” Buffett said.

Easing the transition to Abel

Signs of the transition were peppered throughout the 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall where Berkshire companies sold their products. A caricature of Abel playing his favorite sport of hockey is front and center on commemorative boxes of See’s Candy. At the Pilot Travel Center booth, pictures of Abel and Buffett are plastered on a semitrailer truck windshield, but Abel is in the driver’s seat. And shareholders lined up to buy a Squishmallow version of Abel to go with the latest versions of the popular Buffett and Munger stuffed dolls.

“Sadly we miss Warren and Charlie and that show which was fun, but it’s a business meeting for a lot of us and hearing what the businesses are doing is what it’s all about,” investor Chris Bloomstran, who is president of Semper Augustus Investments Group said.

Also, many people travel to Omaha primarily to meet up with like-minded value investors, who practice the approach that Buffett employed, and attend some of the investment conferences and meetings that are scheduled around Berkshire’s shareholder meeting.

“That’s why I’m really here, really here is to network with other people,” said Bob Robotti, who runs his own investment company.

Focusing on Berkshire's businesses

Abel opened the meeting with a detailed discussion of how Berkshire's biggest businesses are performing. He gave a granular explanation about the performance of Berkshire’s insurers, its BNSF railroad, utilities and manufacturers. He talked about how Berkshire is using artificial intelligence “to solve problems at our companies.”

But Abel also used a deepfake video of Buffett asking a question about Berkshire's long-term prospects at the start of the Q-and-A session to highlight some of the cyber challenges and risks AI presents.

“It's scary,” Buffett said later in the meeting. For example, AI could easily create an extremely convincing fake version of the leader of a country with nuclear weapons, he said.

Abel stressed over and over that Berkshire's basic approach that trusts CEOs to manage the day-to-day operations of their companies will not change, and he won't feel pressured to spend the company's nearly $400 billion in cash prematurely.

“One of our greatest strengths at Berkshire is patience and being disciplined at allocating our capital,” Abel said. “We’re not anxious to deploy capital into subpar opportunities.”

Enduring culture at Berkshire

The CEOs of Dairy Queen, See’s Candy, Jazwares and Brooks Running all said very little has changed since Abel was promoted other than they now report to NetJets CEO Adam Johnson who is overseeing 32 retail and service businesses.

“I think this is a very deeply rooted culture that Warren has created, and I believe the transition to Greg is going to be rooted in those values that Warren has for 60 years instituted and will continue,” Brooks CEO Dan Sheridan said.

For years Buffett always said he was having too much fun running Berkshire to ever retire, but once the shock of his announcement in the final minutes of last year's meeting wore off, the company’s executives quickly agreed this plan for the transition was better because Buffett can still be around to advise Abel.

"That’s the greatest combination right now, to be able to have that transition in leadership where Greg and Warren can still work together,” DQ CEO Troy Bader said as his staff sold Dilly Bars to shareholders.

Striving to improve

Abel is known to be a more demanding and hands-on boss than Buffett ever was, but he does that by challenging Berkshire’s CEOs to strengthen their competitive advantages while taking care of their customers. Abel asks tough questions and offers advice that his CEOs appreciate, but he doesn’t tell them exactly what to do.

And with Buffett remaining Berkshire’s chairman and its largest shareholder it’s unlikely that Abel will make any drastic changes.

Robotti said the performance of Berkshire’s businesses should be much more important to shareholders than the entertainment value of the annual meetings.

“My hope and expectation are they’re picking people who have competency in running a business and not necessarily public speakers and presenters,” Robotti said.

Berkshire said Saturday morning that its profits more than doubled in the first-quarter to $10.1 billion, or $7,027 per Class A share, as the value of its investments grew and most of its businesses improved.

Berkshire’s massive cash pile continues to grow, and it hit $397.4 billion at the end of the first quarter.

Most of Berkshire’s varied businesses reported better operating earnings this year. The insurance unit that includes Geico reported an underwriting profit of $1.7 billion, up from $1.34 billion last year. Profits also grew somewhat at BNSF railroad and Berkshire’s utility and manufacturing companies.

But Abel acknowledged there is more improvement needed — especially at BNSF, which lags behind most of the other major freight railroads.

The airline’s abrupt wind-down leaves two big questions for many Houstonians: Why did this happen? and What do I do now — as a passenger or an employee?

Below is what Spirit and federal officials have said about refunds and next steps, plus guidance and support information shared by unions representing Spirit workers.

View this post on Instagram

Why Spirit shut down

Spirit, known for its bright yellow planes and ultra-low fares, said it had started an “orderly wind-down” of operations.

According to an Associated Press report, the Trump administration considered a government bailout for the financially struggling airline, but no deal was reached. Spirit has faced deep financial trouble since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the AP report notes Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.

• RELATED: Spirit Airlines goes out of business after 34 years, ending operations immediately

Spirit entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2024, and later sought bankruptcy protection again in August 2025.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also delivered a blunt warning for customers:

“If you have a flight scheduled with Spirit Airlines, don’t show up at the airport. There will be no one here to assist you.”

What passengers should do right now

Spirit says all flights are canceled and customer service is no longer available. KPRC 2 reporter T.J. Parker was at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport Saturday morning, where travelers with tickets were surprised to learn of the airline’s closure.

If you paid Spirit with a credit or debit card

Spirit says it will automatically process refunds for flights purchased through Spirit using a credit or debit card, returning the money to the original form of payment.

• Refund status: Spirit directs customers to check refund status through its MyTrips page.

If you booked through a travel agent

Spirit says passengers who booked through a travel agent should contact the travel agent directly to request a refund.

If you used a voucher, credit or Free Spirit points

Spirit says compensation for trips booked using other methods — including vouchers, credits or Free Spirit points — will be determined later through the bankruptcy court process.

Spirit also says it is not able to offer cash refunds for unused vouchers.

Rebooking and extra costs

Spirit says it cannot rebook customers on other airlines.

The airline also says it’s not able to reimburse incidental travel costs connected to canceled trips, such as emergency hotels or replacement flights. If you purchased travel insurance, Spirit recommends checking with your insurer.

Free Spirit loyalty points

Spirit says Free Spirit points are no longer redeemable and cannot be transferred to another airline or loyalty program. The airline says the future of the loyalty program will be decided later through the bankruptcy process.

Lost baggage and lost-and-found items

Spirit’s restructuring site points customers to a report portal to check the status of lost checked baggage and lost and found items.

Still have questions?

Spirit says customers can contact its claims agent, Epiq:

• Email: SpiritAirlinesInfo@epiqglobal.com
• Phone (U.S./Canada toll-free): (855) 952-6606
• Phone (international): (971) 715-2831

What Spirit employees can do — and where to find support

Spirit employed about 17,000 people, and unions say workers are now left looking for answers about pay, benefits and what comes next.

IAM Union: Support for ramp workers and push for what workers are owed

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) called the shutdown “devastating” and blamed “corporate mismanagement and poor financial stewardship.”

In a statement sent to KPRC 2, the IAM said it is activating Employee Assistance Program (EAP) representatives to provide confidential support and resources for IAM-represented ramp service employees and their families.

The union also urged Spirit’s leadership and the bankruptcy court to ensure workers receive what they are owed:

• Severance
• Back pay
• Benefits

AFA-CWA: Flight attendants told they’ll be returned home; union updates ongoing

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) said Spirit would permanently cease operations at 3 a.m. Eastern on May 2, 2026.

In an update, Spirit’s AFA leadership told flight attendants:

• Crew Scheduling will contact every flight attendant in the operation
• Flight attendants will have hotel and/or flights home accommodated
• Workers should monitor their @spirit.com email for updates and travel arrangements
• The union will provide ongoing updates and take questions through its resources page

AFA also said its Employee Assistance Program remains available:

• AFA EAP: (800) 424-2406

Help for stranded customers and workers

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said several airlines — including United, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest — were offering $200 one-way flights for a limited time for customers who could confirm a Spirit confirmation number and proof of purchase, according to the AP report.

Duffy also said other airlines would help Spirit employees who might be stranded and offer a preferential application process.

And for Ryan Reynolds, it was tough to stomach.

“I am completely gutted by today’s result but incredibly proud of our season,” the actor wrote on X after the Welsh club he co-owns missed out on a place in the playoffs in the second-tier Championship by drawing 2-2 with Middlesbrough in a dramatic final round of the regular season on Saturday.

That allowed Hull to jump ahead of Wrexham and into sixth place — the fourth and final spot in the playoffs — courtesy of a 2-1 win over Norwich in a match played at the same time.

The winning goal for Hull, by Oli McBurnie in the 67th, appeared to be scored from an offside position but there are no video reviews in the English Football League.

It ended Wrexham’s unprecedented run of three straight promotions under its famous owners — a streak that began by getting out of the fifth tier in the 2022-23 season and has been documented in the globally popular, Emmy Award-winning “Welcome to Wrexham” series.

Still, seventh place marked the Wrexham's highest finish in its history, bettering the 15th position it achieved in the second tier in the 1978–79 season.

“We’ve come a long way in five years and this was the best result in our 150+ year history,” Reynolds wrote alongside a graphic that showed how Wrexham has risen from the National League. “More to do. But for now, we have so much to be proud of, Reds.”

Elsewhere, Ipswich secured the second automatic promotion spot behind champion Coventry — and an immediate return to the Premier League — by beating Queens Park Rangers 3-0.

Ipswich is owned by U.S. investment group Gamechanger 20 Limited and counts pop star Ed Sheeran as a minority shareholder.

Joining Hull in the playoffs, which begin next week and are over two legs, are Millwall, Southampton and Middlesbrough.

Millwall will face Hull, and Southampton will meet Middlesbrough.

Best-ever finish by Wrexham

It was a memorable campaign by Wrexham in its first season in the second tier since the 1980s.

However, the short-term pain was acute, and Wrexham's players sat on the ground and looked disconsolate after the final whistle — even though the Hull-Norwich match hadn't finished.

Wrexham started the day in sixth place, ahead of Hull on goal difference, and conceded in the fourth minute to Middlesbrough, only to score through Josh Windass and Sam Smith for a 2-1 lead by the 41st.

Middlesbrough hit back immediately with a 43rd-minute equalizer but Wrexham finished the stronger, squandering a string of great late chances for a winner that would have secured a playoff place on goal difference.

In the end, Wrexham finished two points behind Hull.

“This squad as it stands, with a preseason together, will be even stronger next year," said Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson, who oversaw a summer spend of around $40 million last year.

“Of course we’ll always look to add to that to try and give ourselves an even better chance ... we know where we’d like to strengthen and what we need to improve on. We’ll do that and we’ll make this squad as strong as we possibly can to mount a challenge next year."

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

Zanardi’s family announced his death on Saturday, saying that he passed away on Friday night.

“Alex died peacefully, surrounded by the affection of those closest to him,” the family said in a statement without providing a cause of death.

In 2020, Zanardi was seriously injured in a handbike accident after crashing into an oncoming truck during a relay event in Tuscany. Zanardi suffered serious facial and cranial trauma in the crash and was put in a medically induced coma.

Nearly 20 years earlier, Zanardi lost both of his legs in an auto racing crash.

"Italy loses a great champion and an extraordinary man, capable of turning every challenge of life into a lesson in courage, strength, and dignity,” Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni said on X.

“Alex Zanardi knew how to bounce back every time, facing even the toughest challenges with determination, clarity, and a strength of spirit that was truly exceptional,” Meloni added. “He gave all of us much more than a victory: he gave hope, pride, and the strength to never give up. ... Thank you for everything, Alex.”

Zanardi won two championships in CART — 1997 and 1998 — in the United States before a brief return to Formula One. He returned to America and was racing in Germany in a CART event in 2001 when both of his legs were severed in a horrific accident the weekend after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. CART raced only because the series was already in Germany at the time of the attacks and could not return to the U.S.

After the 2001 crash, Zanardi was in a coma for three days and his heart stopped at least once.

NASCAR driver Max Papis, who knew Zanardi from childhood in Italy, recalled visiting his friend in the hospital, where Zanardi glanced at Papis’ new shoes.

“He said, 'Look at the positive side of this. For a long time I will not have to spend money buying those,’” Papis said.

During his recovery, Zanardi designed his own prosthetics — he joked that he made himself taller — and learned to walk again. He then turned his attention to hand cycling and developed into one of the most accomplished athletes in the world. He won four gold medals and two silvers at the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics, competed in the New York City Marathon and set an Ironman record.

When he won a Paralympic race in 2012 at Britain’s Brands Hatch circuit where he had competed as a young driver, Zanardi celebrated the full-circle moment by holding his bike aloft one-handed as he sat on the track.

“Probably a lot of people watching me doing (this) to some degree against all odds maybe they are going to say, 'Bloody hell, if Zanardi did this, I can try. I can try,’” he told The Associated Press at the time. “A good attempt always brings a result.”

His spirit, will, and determination gave the beloved Italian a larger-than-life persona. When he returned to the U.S. in 2019 to compete for BMW at the Rolex 24 of Daytona without his prosthetics, he was the most revered driver in a field that included F1 champion Fernando Alonso.

Drivers from around the world sought out Zanardi for photographs and were transfixed as he told elaborate tales of his adventures in the nearly two decades since many had seen him.

Zanardi used specially adapted cars with hand controls for gas and brake to take up racing again after the 2001 accident — and well enough to win races in various series.

Stefano Domenicali, the president and CEO of F1, said he was “deeply saddened by the passing of my dear friend,” calling Zanardi “truly an inspirational person, as a human and as an athlete.”

“He faced challenges that would have stopped anyone, yet he continued to look forward, always with a smile and a stubborn determination that inspired us all,” Domenicali added. “While his loss is profoundly felt, his legacy remains strong."

Zanardi's death came on the same day — May 1 — that fellow driver Ayrton Senna died in a crash during an F1 race in Imola in 1994.

The International Automobile Federation (FIA) said on X that Zanardi’s racing career and “journey from life-changing accident to Paralympics gold medalist made him one of sport’s most admired competitors and an enduring symbol of courage and determination.”

Noted for his infectious smile and fanciful storytelling, Zanardi was praised by Pope Francis after his 2020 crash as an example of strength amid adversity. Francis penned a handwritten letter of encouragement assuring Zanardi and his family of his prayers.

Zanardi’s family added that it “thanks everyone who is sharing their support right now and asks for respect during this time of mourning.”

The funeral will be held Tuesday in Padua.

A moment of silence was observed in Zanardi's honor before Saturday's F1 sprint race in Miami Gardens, Florida. Also, the Italian Olympic Committee called for a minute of silence to be observed at all sports events in Italy over the weekend.

Zanardi, who was born in Bologna, is survived by his wife, Daniela, and son, Niccolò.

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AP Auto Racing Writer Jenna Fryer in Miami Gardens, Florida, and AP Sports Writer James Ellingworth in Düsseldorf, Germany, contributed to this report.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

Charles Leclerc was third for Ferrari in the 19-lap preview of Sunday's race at the Miami International Autodrome around the Hard Rock Stadium.

“It was a good race, nice to be back on the top stair even if it was a sprint," said Norris, who won from the pole. "It was hot out there, it was sweaty. I was trying to find that balance of pushing but also staying relaxed and not making mistakes.”

McLaren, like most teams, used a five-week break caused by race cancellations in the Middle East because of the war in Iran to make upgrades to its cars. The changes for the reigning world champion team clearly showed it has closed the gap on Mercedes, which has dominated so far this season.

The Formula 1 season ahead of Miami had been a clean sweep by Mercedes as George Russell and Kimi Antonelli combined to win the first three grand prix races and the sprint race in China. Russell won in Australia, while Antonelli won in China and Japan to take the lead in the world championship driver standings. Russell won the sprint race in China.

The Mercedes duo was blocked from the podium in Miami as Russell finished fourth and Antonelli was sixth after a five-second penalty for exceeding track limits dropped him behind Max Verstappen in the final finishing order.

“We know that we are a little out of sync with our upgrades compared to other teams. We were hoping we were going to be able to hold on to our advantage, and in terms of pure lap times, we were close to the pace at the front in the sprint," Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said. "This season is going to be a pure development race and whoever brings a few tenths before their competitors will gain an advantage.”

Verstappen was fifth for Red Bull and Lewis Hamilton for Ferrari was right behind him but finished seventh. The two had an early race incident in which Hamilton was ordered to give Verstappen his position back after passing him.

Cadillac, in its first event in the United States, was at the back of the field with drivers Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas finishing 16th and 18th in the 22-driver field.

Norris, the reigning F1 champion, won the sprint race at Miami for the second consecutive year.

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

Saif Abukeshek, a dual Spanish-Swedish citizen of Palestinian origin, was detained for questioning in Israel on Saturday along with Thiago Ávila of Brazil. A legal aid group said both men had launched a hunger strike.

Dozens of other activists were picked up by the Greek coast guard following the Israeli action and taken to the island of Crete.

“This is a case of illegal detention in international waters, outside the jurisdiction of Israeli authorities. I have made this clear to my Israeli counterpart,” José Manuel Albares said in an interview with public radio.

An Israel-based legal advocacy group, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, or Adalah, said it had visited the two men at a detention site in the Israeli port city of Ashkelon. It said both reported being on a hunger strike after allegedly being repeatedly beaten while in custody.

“Adalah maintains that the treatment of the two activists, including the use of isolation, prolonged blindfolding and physical beatings, constitutes a grave violation of international law,” the group said.

In an online post, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Abukeshek and Ávila were being questioned for possible links to the armed group Hamas. It said the two men had been granted consular visits.

Abukeshek’s detention has further strained relations between Israel and Spain, which has been an outspoken critic of the war in Gaza and formally recognized Palestinian statehood in 2024.

On Friday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez took aim at his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, while speaking at a campaign event for upcoming regional elections in southern Spain.

“Now that Netanyahu has taken foreign citizens, including a Spanish national, and brought them to Israel, I have a few things to say to Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Sánchez said to applause from supporters of his Socialist party.

“First, Spain will always protect its citizens. Second, we will always uphold international law — and this is yet another violation of it,” he said. “And third, we demand the release of the Spanish citizen who has been illegally detained by the Netanyahu government.”

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Hazboun reported from Jerusalem. Renata Brito in Barcelona, Spain contributed.

Israel’s military on Saturday issued a new warning for residents of nine southern villages to evacuate. Israel and Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group have kept up their attacks despite a ceasefire in place since April 17.

In the border village of Yaroun, Israel’s military used bulldozers to destroy parts of a Catholic convent that had been empty as a result of the latest fighting.

“What we heard is that it was destroyed with bulldozers,” said Gladys Sabbagh, the superior general of the Basilian Salvatorian Sisters. Sabbagh told The Associated Press that the convent included a school that had been closed since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, as well as a clinic that was recently moved to the nearby village of Rmeich.

She described the convent as a small compound housing just two nuns, who left because of the war. Sabbagh did not have further details as Yaroun’s residents have been displaced.

Catholic Church disputes Israeli military's version

The Israeli military issued a statement saying that as the army was destroying Hezbollah infrastructure in Yaroun, a house that had no religious signs was damaged. It added that as soon as the military knew it was linked to a church, soldiers “prevented any further damage from being done.”

The military added that Hezbollah used the compound in the past to fire rockets toward Israel on several occasions. It added that the military does not strike religious institutions intentionally.

The Catholic Church in Lebanon rejected claims that the compound was used for military purposes.

“We are against all practices against places of worship and churches. These are places to spread peace, love and education,” said Rev. Abdo Abou Kassm, director of the Catholic Center for Information. “These are not military bases.”

The demolition at the convent came days after images of an Israeli soldier wielding an ax against the fallen statue of Jesus on the cross in the southern Lebanese village of Debel had sparked widespread condemnation, in Lebanon and internationally.

Israel says it's targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and members

In other parts of southern Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes and Hezbollah attacks continued.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported an airstrike on a car in the village of Kfar Dajal killed two people, while another hit a home in the village of Lwaizeh, killing three. Two others were killed in a strike on the village of Shoukin, it said.

Israel’s military Arabic-language spokesperson, Lt. Col. Ella Waweya, posted on X that the Israeli air force carried out about 50 airstrikes over the past 24 hours targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and members.

Hezbollah said that it attacked with a drone Israeli troops who gathered on Saturday inside a house in the coastal village of Bayed.

Over the past weeks, the Israeli army has been leveling neighborhoods in towns and villages near the Lebanese-Israeli border. The military says it destroys buildings that were used as outposts by the Iran-backed group.

The Israeli military released a new video that it said shows Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon being blown up. The video, released Friday, shows soldiers holding an Israeli flag and walking among the destruction of a soccer stadium in the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil. The military said on its website that the air force “destroyed the town’s stadium after it was discovered to be booby-trapped.”

The latest war between Israel and Hezbollah began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, two days after the United States and Israel launched a war on its main backer, Iran. Israel has since carried out hundreds of airstrikes and launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, capturing dozens of towns and villages along the border.

Since then, Lebanon and Israel have held their first direct talks in more than three decades. The two countries have formally been in a state of war since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. A 10-day ceasefire declared in Washington went into effect on April 17. The ceasefire was later extended by three weeks.

The Health Ministry said that since the war began two months ago, 2,659 people have been killed and 8,183 wounded.

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Associated Press writer Ibrahim Hazboun in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Once worth as much as roughly $5.5 billion on the stock market, the airline known for its bright yellow planes said Saturday it had shut down after its final flight departed from Detroit and landed safely in Dallas.

“For more than 30 years, Spirit Airlines has played a pioneering role in making travel more accessible and bringing people together while driving affordability across the industry,” CEO Dave Davis said in a statement.

The announcement comes after two bankruptcy filings in as many years that allowed Spirit to repay lenders. That was followed in recent months by a final, mad-dash scramble to save money by cutting routes, squeezing concessions from unions and pursuing a potential financing deal with the Trump administration that could have provided a lifeline had it panned out.

But in the end, higher jet fuel prices triggered by the Iran war drained cash from the business at an accelerating pace, forcing it to call it quits.

“This is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted," Davis said.

From chartered tours to unbundled fares

It began as Charter One Airlines, which ran vacation tours in the early 80s, then grew in popularity and profits two decades later with no-frills “unbundled” fares allowing travelers to forgo basic services — bag handling, seat selection, even the printing of tickets — or pay extra.

Proudly penny-pinching and irritatingly so for many passengers, Spirit was for years run by the famously frugal Ben Baldanza, who ordered his burgers plain, bristled at paying extra for pickles he didn't want, and flew in the same cramped seats as his customers. He was unapologetic about the airline’s nickel-and-diming them, saying the issue wasn’t that Spirit was cheap, but that passengers were seeing an itemized bill for the first time — and didn’t like it.

For all the complaints, though, Spirit’s model became so influential that giant airlines with decades more operating history and global destinations found they had to follow suit by slashing prices and introducing “basic economy” fares.

On its final day of operations, Spirit had safely flown more than 50,000 passengers, a company spokesperson said. The airline was also working to get more than 1,300 crew members back home. About 17,000 employees — some with more than 25 years at the airline — learned Friday they had lost their jobs, many finding out through media reports, the spokesperson said.

In a memo Saturday to members, the Spirit flight attendants union acknowledged the end of the airline and the toll on workers.

“While the country has had a blast making Spirit the butt of the joke, we’ve built a strength together that could withstand anything that anyone throws at us," it said. “And that is no joke.”

The provocation playbook

Despite its abrupt end, Spirit left behind a reputation that was impossible to ignore.

Kendria Talton, who flew Friday on Spirit from Dallas to Atlanta with her daughter for a dance competition, arrived at the airport Saturday trying to find a new way home.

Talton said she had flown Spirit multiple times because of the price. “Other than that, I mean nobody even likes Spirit,” she said. “They’ve always talked about Spirit for years.”

A key part of that image came from its bold, over-the-top ads that some critics slammed as tasteless and indeed sometimes backfired.

After the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, the company ran a “Check Out the Oil on Our Beaches” ad, playing on the double entendre of suntan oil and the real black stuff.

Next up was a “Weiner Sale” after New York Congressman Anthony Weiner was caught in a sexting scandal, an ad that also included the line, “fares just too hard to resist.” Later came its infamous “MILF Sale,” referring to “Many Islands, Low Fares,” but also referencing, with a wink and a nod, to the sexual acronym.

Ironically, Spirit was also taken down by its own success as more traditional airlines mimicked its offering and began to steal its customers with their own low fares.

The unraveling

Spirit had been struggling with losses for years, but its going-out-of-business announcement still came as a shock.

Just a few months earlier this year, Spirit said it would likely emerge from its second bankruptcy in the late spring or early summer after striking a preliminary deal with lenders.

Then the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran four days later, sending global crude prices soaring above $100. Gasoline prices followed closely behind and jet fuel prices more than doubled in some markets.

Spirit struggled especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, amid rising operational costs and its mounting debt. By its first Chapter 11 filing in November 2024, Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.

University of Houston student Angelina Deruelle, 23, was at Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport on Friday, Spirit’s final day of operations, after her flight to Texas was canceled. She said the loss of the airline as an affordable travel option would be difficult to accept.

“I feel like Spirit is just affordable, simple, nothing too fancy," she said. "It’s just like home.”

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Associated Press journalists Jeff Amy in Atlanta, Michelle Chapman in New York and Daniel Kozin in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

Police said the wreck happened around 9:30 p.m. on Friday, in the 6300 block of East Orem Drive.

Investigators said a silver Nissan Rogue SUV traveling westbound hit a puddle of water just before the crash site. Police said the vehicle then struck a curb. A witness later told investigators they saw the vehicle hit the water and the curb, but did not see whether it spun out.

A separate driver stopped and called for medical help, but did not render aid, police said.

Houston Fire Department crews arrived, attempted lifesaving measures and pronounced the driver dead at the scene, investigators said. No passengers were seen and the driver was believed to be the sole occupant.

Police said the driver was a 30-year-old man. His identity had not been released.

Unionized workers are employed on a huge number of massive data center projects and scrambling to recruit new apprentices to feed the explosive demand.

They've also become an ally of tech giants and tech-friendly government officials, echoing the talking point that the United States is in a critical national security race with China for AI superiority.

Unions are a visible force in helping counter fierce opposition in communities and hostile legislation in Congress and legislatures, often aligning with traditional Republican pro-business constituencies and forcing Democrats to choose between them and progressives who want to take a harder line.

Unions have aggressively answered complaints about data centers in ways that executives at tech giants and the development firms rarely do, unafraid to bluntly confront concerns about energy and water shortages, rising electric and water bills, or noise and quality-of-life objections.

“When people say, you know, ‘data centers are the root of all evil,’ we’re just saying, ‘look, they do create a hell of a lot of construction jobs, which we live and work in your communities,'” said Rob Bair, president of the Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trades Council.

Instead of “being just a blunt ‘no,'” Bair said, communities should figure out what they need and ask the tech companies for it — such as improvements to the project's plans or millions of dollars for local schools. “If you don’t ask, you’re never gonna get,” he said.

Data centers a boon for unions

With data center construction accelerating, unions are expanding training centers and seeing their ranks grow faster than many union leaders have ever seen.

Unions in a number of states are reporting skyrocketing man hours, apprentice classes doubling in size and training centers undergoing expansions in anticipation of more work coming.

Data centers consume at least 40% of work hours done by members of the Columbus-Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council, a top official, Dorsey Hager, estimated. It's at least 50% for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 26 in metropolitan Washington, D.C., spokesperson Don Slaiman said.

The umbrella North America’s Building Trades Unions said it hit a record number of members and apprentices in 2025.

The organization's president, Sean McGarvey, compared it to the build trades' expansion in the 1950s. He attributes today's growth to data centers, power plants and legislation under former President Joe Biden that subsidized the construction of semiconductor and electric vehicle battery factories, energy efficiency projects and grid transmission improvements.

Data centers' voracious energy needs are setting off a power plant construction boom and delivering a one-two punch of new life to unions whose members also build and maintain boilers, ductwork, pipelines and other power infrastructure.

The Boilermakers Local 154, whose members have watched power plants shut down in southwestern Pennsylvania, went from recruiting zero apprentices for four years to now assembling a class of over 200 — and they need more, union official Shawn Steffee said.

For their part, tech giants say they need to train hundreds of thousands more workers in skilled trades. They are spending tens of millions of dollars on training programs, including partnerships with unions that they hire to build their multibillion-dollar projects.

“Across the country, highly skilled union construction workers are laying the foundation for the AI economy,” Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, said in a joint statement in March with McGarvey's organization.

Google said the majority of labor used to build its data centers is unionized, and pointed to a $10 million grant to a union-backed electricians training program that it said would help expand the electrician workforce pipeline by 70%.

'The data centers would still be getting built'

Mark McManus, the general president of the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters, whose members work on pipelines, data centers and power plants, acknowledged criticism that organized labor is getting in bed with the richest, most powerful companies in the world.

But he rejected it as unrealistic.

“If we chose as a union to have a moratorium on building the data centers because we didn’t believe it was right for America, the data centers would still be getting built,” McManus said. “They’re not stopping because of organized labor.”

His union has a strong relationship with tech companies, is hitting all-time highs in membership and, based on an internal survey, has members working on over 90% of the data center projects in the United States.

“That’s a market share that we don’t have in a lot of other industries,” McManus said. “So it’s pretty near and dear to us.”

It's difficult to pin down exactly how many data center projects involve union labor. An Associated General Contractors of America survey late last year suggested that the labor composition of data center construction likely mirrors the makeup of commercial construction, which is roughly one-third union, an AGC spokesperson said.

Showing up in towns and statehouses

National unions have negotiated labor agreements on major projects, including an Oracle and OpenAI Stargate campus in Michigan and the “Project Blue” data center campus in Arizona, with more in the works.

When Gov. Josh Shapiro stood with Amazon executives to announce that the tech giant would spend $20 billion on two data center projects in eastern Pennsylvania, Bair stood with them.

“This is really unique, what we’re building here in this commonwealth. People coming together with common purpose to get stuff done,” Shapiro said.

In statehouses, unions have worked against Maine's since-vetoed proposal for a statewide data center moratorium; standards proposed in Illinois, including requiring data centers to supply their own energy; and an end to Virginia's sales tax exemption that helped make it the world's biggest data center destination.

Pennsylvania state Sen. Katie Muth said it has been difficult to collect support from fellow Democrats for her legislation to regulate data centers when it is competing with union-backed legislation that she views as weaker.

“The unions don’t want to promote anything that would impede data center development,” Muth said.

Union representatives have made their presence felt at packed council meetings in municipal buildings from St. Louis to Spring City, Pennsylvania.

Sometimes it's not in a good way.

Speaking to the City Council in Joliet, Illinois, Alicia Morales complained that union members — who sat in the front row holding “vote yes for union jobs” signs — had been disrespectful and “bullied a lot of people” entering the meeting.

Sometimes, union representatives are the only people in a packed municipal meeting room to speak in favor of a project.

“I just want to commend you guys, thanks for being the adults in the room,” Chuck Curry, the president of Ironworkers Local 395, told City Council members in Hobart, Indiana, at a January meeting on an Amazon data center. “Knowing the tax structure, knowing business, that most of the people here don’t know.”

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Follow Marc Levy at http://twitter.com/timelywriter

Today’s Forecast: As soon as you step outside, you’ll feel the aftermath of the front - lower humidity and our morning lows in the 50s.

Daytime highs climb to the 70s Saturday and Sunday will deliver another taste of beautiful spring weather, with 50s in the morning and afternoon temperatures climbing to the upper-70s.

Friday’s Storm Reports:

Friday’s storms produced hail from pea to golf ball-size and heavy rain leading to ponding and flooding across the Houston area. Some areas have picked up more than 4 inches of rain!

So the next question? When is it going to rain again?

We’re going to enjoy sunshine the next couple of days with rain and humidity making its way back into the forecast by mid-week.

And how long are we going to enjoy our cooler morning lows? We’re waking up in the 50s this weekend but by Thursday, we’re waking up in the lower 70s as the humidity returns again. For context, today’s high is 74.

Heat Returns Swiftly:

Enjoy the lovely patio weather because heat and humidity return early in the week. Then we are tracking more rain midweek, so keep an eye on future updates from the KPRC 2 Weather Team.

Have you captured a dramatic rain photo or video? Share your weather moments with the KPRC 2 community through Click2Pins at Click2Houston.com/pins.

Seven people were also wounded in the attack, regional head Oleksandr Prokudin said. Hours later Russia attacked another minibus in Kherson, wounding the driver, he said.

Meanwhile, along the northern border with Belarus, Ukraine recorded “rather unusual” activity on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram on Saturday. Without elaborating, he said activity was seen on the Belarusian side of the border and that Ukraine would act if matters escalated.

“We are closely documenting and keeping the situation under control. If necessary, we will react,” he said.

Belarus, a close ally of the Kremlin, has allowed Russia to use its territory as a staging ground to send troops into Ukraine and to host some of Moscow’s tactical nuclear weapons.

On Ukraine's Black Sea coast, a Russian strike damaged port infrastructure in the city of Odesa. No casualties were reported.

Ukrainian civilians have endured relentless air assaults since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor more than four years ago. U.S.-brokered talks between Moscow and Kyiv over the past year have brought no respite, with Russia rejecting Ukraine’s offer of a ceasefire, and in recent weeks the Iran war has diverted international attention from Ukraine’s plight.

Meanwhile, on the roughly 1,250-kilometer (750-mile) front line, Russia claimed Saturday it had taken control of the village of Myropillia in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region.

It was not possible to independently verify the battlefield claims, and Ukraine did not immediately comment.

In Russia, local officials in the Krasnodar region said that a fire that broke out Friday following a Ukrainian strike on an oil terminal in the Black Sea city of Tuapse was put out on Saturday.

Ukrainian drones have hit the oil refinery and export terminal in Tuapse on four occasions in just over two weeks, sparking fires that prompted local evacuations and sent up massive plumes of smoke.

Ukraine has escalated its long-distance strikes against Russian oil facilities in an effort to slash Moscow’s oil exports, a key source of funding for its grinding invasion of Ukraine. But the economic impact is so far unclear, as the rise in oil prices from the Iran war, and a related easing of U.S. sanctions, have helped replenish the Kremlin’s coffers.

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

She is trying to be the first Democrat in 20 years to win the office in a state that has become dominated by Republicans. Her presumed opponent, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, has national name recognition and a personal fortune that he is plowing into his campaign.

But Acton's most formidable obstacle may be a ghost from her recent past: the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acton, a physician, was Ohio's public health director when the coronavirus hit the United States in early 2020, causing a wave of deaths, anxiety and social disruption. As the government took aggressive action to combat it, Acton became a household name throughout Ohio.

Six years later, the orders Acton signed at the urging of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to battle the virus — closing schools, shuttering businesses, restricting sporting events and suspending voting in the 2020 primary — are drawing fresh attention as she runs for the state’s top office and have become a central line of criticism from Republicans.

During campaign rallies, Ramaswamy has accused Acton of spreading dangerous “COVID ideology.” Her campaign said it does not think voters will buy it.

“Dr. Acton is proud of the work she did alongside Governor DeWine to put public health over politics, save lives and keep Ohioans safe,” her campaign spokesperson, Addie Bullock, said in a statement. “It is unfortunate that Vivek Ramaswamy wants to play politics on this issue.”

Choosing ‘liberty’ or ‘lockdowns’

Wearing a white medical coat, Acton was a fixture at daily COVID-19 briefings with DeWine that were highly anticipated events watched in households across the state. Day after day, she calmly explained the virus’ trajectory, the grim march of hospitalizations and deaths, and reassuringly provided tips on how Ohioans should handle themselves.

“Ohio, don the mask, don your cape,” Acton said at the time, asking ordinary people to act like superheroes.

In Ohio and elsewhere, the social trauma from the pandemic has yet to fully heal. It has changed how millions of people in the United States view vaccines, how deeply government should interfere in daily life and even whether people can trust government health officers.

The below-the-surface skepticism, which continues even as concerns over contracting the virus have faded, has emerged as an unusual storyline in the race for governor.

Ramaswamy, the front-running Republican, is airing ads capitalizing on lingering anger over the election order that Acton issued for DeWine. At Republican events around the state, mention of Acton’s name elicits loud boos.

“Are we choosing freedom or are we choosing Fauci?” asked Zac Haines, a Republican campaigning for the state Senate, in a reference to former national infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci as the candidate warmed up a recent Ramaswamy fundraising crowd. “Are we choosing liberty or are we choosing lockdowns?”

A hero to some, a villain to others

At Democratic events, Acton carries the air of the cult hero who, back in 2020, inspired a Dr. Amy Acton Fan Club with its own yard signs, a bobblehead doll and a proposal to honor her with a state holiday.

Campaigning this year, she seems to tread cautiously when discussing her time as Ohio's health chief, sometimes avoiding use of the words COVID-19 or coronavirus.

“I had the honor and the privilege, the privilege, of serving in a very tough moment,” she told a Democratic crowd in southwest Ohio in March. “I'm proud of Ohioans, because together we flattened that curve, we saved a lot of lives.”

Ohio ranked 22nd among the states in its per capita death rate from the virus during the pandemic's first year, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Acton, who left the job halfway through 2020, does not dwell on what happened after the government imposed restrictions: the mutiny against DeWine over business closures and health mandates, the legislation by Republicans to limit the governor's powers and the protesters, some of them armed, outside her house.

At a recent States Forum symposium in Columbus, where people from across the political spectrum were brought together to try to find common ground within the “ Make America Healthy Again" movement, Acton said she had worked for or advised five different governors.

“So I’ll work with anyone who wants to solve a problem rather than make one,” she said, “which is what Ohioans are longing for.”

While he has endorsed Ramaswamy, DeWine denounced the campaign's ad against Acton for suspending the 2020 primary.

“I told her to issue the health order,” the governor said. “The decision was mine.”

Ramaswamy is dodging his own pandemic ghosts

Ramaswamy and another prominent Republican running in this year’s midterm elections have their own ties to Ohio's pandemic response.

As CEO of Roivant Sciences, the biotechnology research company he founded in 2014, Ramaswamy “worked with the lieutenant governor as an adviser on COVID-19” during 2020, he wrote in a 2021 op-ed. The lieutenant governor at the time, Republican Jon Husted, is now a U.S. senator running for reelection. He was a regular participant alongside Acton and DeWine at Ohio’s daily virus briefings.

A Roivant subsidiary, Genevant Sciences, also played a “fundamental role” in the global pandemic response, according to a March news release. The statement announced a $2.2 billion settlement with Moderna over its unauthorized use of Genevant’s and Arbutus Biopharma’s patents in its COVID vaccines.

During the pandemic, Ramaswamy, whose wife is a physician, supported vaccines. He received one himself and advocated mask-wearing, although he said he never supported governments mandating either.

One of Ramaswamy’s companies, Datavant, even pushed for a national COVID registry that would be used to allow the small segment of the population that was gradually gaining natural COVID-19 immunity to “get back to normal life” while facilitating the rest continuing to be “segregated.”

Yet since he entered politics for the 2024 presidential race, Ramaswamy has taken steps to distance himself from those days. In early 2023, he stepped down from the Roivant board and paid an editor to scrub a reference to his service on Ohio’s “COVID-19 Response Team” from his Wikipedia page. He called it a simple correction, saying the panel never met.

His campaign referred questions about his time at Roivant to the company, which did not respond to an email seeking comment.

In an interview, Ramaswamy said both his support for a COVID registry and his talks with Husted involved “getting the economy going again.” While calling his position on the virus “nuanced,” he said he intends to hold Acton accountable for the decisions to shutter Ohio businesses and schools and to suspend voting in the 2020 primary, which eventually was conducted by mail balloting.

“As a decision maker, you have to weigh the costs and benefits of your actions,” he said. “You can’t be unmoored from the data.”

It was a moment that set him on a path to become a civil rights lawyer and one of the first Black lawmakers elected in the state since Reconstruction.

Blackmon was part of a generation of Black Americans across the South who fought in courtrooms and in the streets to dismantle barriers to voting and achieve political representation in a region scarred by the legacy of slavery and its aftermath.

One of the crown jewels of that struggle, the Voting Rights Act, was hollowed out this week by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court's conservative majority said states should not rely on racial demographics when drawing congressional districts, a ruling that opened the door to transforming how political power is distributed and making it harder for minorities to get elected.

The majority opinion described racism as a problem of the past. Others saw the decision as another example of its resurgence — “a defibrillator to the heart of Jim Crow," as one Louisiana politician put it.

Blackmon's son, Bradford, a 37-year-old state senator in Mississippi, said how the political lines are drawn "shapes who has a real chance before anyone ever votes.”

"It’s just sad that we made progress and then they are always trying to roll it back when it shows that minorities are making more progress than I would guess that those in charge think that they’re allowed to make," he said.

The elder Blackmon, now 78, said he was resigned to the reality that the fight of his youth is not over.

“It’s just another cycle — an ongoing struggle without a foreseeable ending,” he said.

A legacy at risk

The case, involving a challenge to Louisiana's congressional map, clarified how the Voting Rights Act can be used to contest district lines that may weaken the voting power of Black residents.

For many Black Americans, the decision was a death knell for a cherished pillar of the Civil Rights Movement. Before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black voters in the Deep South had no guarantee of equal access to the ballot. Within a year of its passage, more than 250,000 Black Americans had gained the right to vote. By 2024, nearly 22 million Black voters were registered nationwide, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The United States is now witnessing the unraveling of nearly a century of organizing, civil disobedience and personal sacrifice by ordinary people who helped build Black political power to heights unseen since Reconstruction. Veterans of the voting rights movement — people who bled with John Lewis on the 1965 march in Selma, Alabama, that became known as Bloody Sunday or marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — are seeing those hard-won victories stripped away from their descendants.

“I’m the first generation of Americans born with equal rights,” said Jonathan Jackson, a Democratic congressman from Illinois who is the 60-year-old son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the late civil rights leader. Jonathan Jackson said the idea that his children could grow up with fewer protections was “surreal and devastating.”

For Charles Mauldin, who was beaten by law enforcement as a teenager on Bloody Sunday, the ruling reflects a skirmish that was never as settled as some hoped.

“I’m disappointed but not surprised,” said Mauldin, 78, of Birmingham, Alabama. “They’ve been chipping away at the 1965 Voting Rights Act for the last 60 years.”

Who holds power now

In Louisiana, younger Black politicians say the high court's ruling could reshape not just who wins elections, but whether candidates can compete at all, particularly in down-ballot races that often serve as steppingstones to higher office.

Davante Lewis, a 34-year-old Democrat who serves on the state’s utility regulatory board, said he expects districts could be redrawn in ways that make it harder for candidates like him to win.

“They can target my communities … to ensure that I can’t get to an elected office,” said Lewis, who one of several plaintiffs in the original Louisiana gerrymandering case that went to the Supreme Court.

Jamie Davis, a Black farmer in northeast Louisiana and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, said the decision risks discouraging voters already skeptical that their voices matter.

“I want to be optimistic, but how can you be optimistic when voter turnout in the past election cycles has been really low,” Davis said.

Tennessee is among the states bracing for new redistricting efforts. State Rep. Justin Pearson, who represents Memphis and is running for Congress, said people who struggled to pass the Voting Rights Act are “shocked and devastated that they’re having to relitigate the same fights that they fought 60 years ago.”

But he also predicted that efforts to reduce Black representation could “reinvigorate a civil rights movement in the South that demands equal representation, that demands fairness, that demands justice and equality.”

Supporters of the Supreme Court ruling said it reinforces a race-neutral approach to redistricting and they say political lines should not be drawn primarily based on race.

Mississippi state Rep. Bryant Clark said that view ignores how race and party align in the state. In Mississippi, where most Black voters are Democrats and most white voters are Republicans, he said the two are often indistinguishable.

“It’s just a roundabout way to basically legalize racially discriminatory redistricting in the state,” Clark said.

In 1967, his father, Robert Clark Jr., became the first Black lawmaker elected to the Mississippi Legislature since Reconstruction.

With Black residents making up about 38% of Mississippi’s population, Edward Blackmon Jr. said the current maps allow Black voters to elect candidates in some districts while keeping Republican majorities intact across much of the state.

He said lawmakers have little incentive to change that balance because moving Black voters into more districts would make those seats less reliably conservative and force candidates to compete for a broader electorate.

“Where do you think the population goes? They don’t just disappear,” Blackmon said. “What incumbent wants that type of district right now?”

Fight continues

Blackmon was raised in Canton, “when Jim Crow was in full bloom.”

Black children attended separate schools, and during cotton-picking season, classes let out early as rickety trucks with wooden sides arrived to take students to the fields, where they spent hours working.

At home, he watched those inequalities play out in quieter ways.

His father, a World War II veteran who left the sharecropping farm where Blackmon’s grandfather had worked, struggled to find steady work in Mississippi after returning from military service and becoming involved in civil rights organizing. He eventually left for New York to make a living — part of a generation of Black veterans who faced barriers to jobs and opportunities their white counterparts received.

Blackmon remembers sitting nearby as his father and other community leaders gathered on the porch, talking late into the night about forming a local NAACP chapter.

“It was embedded in my memory and experience that it was worth the struggle,” he said.

When the Voting Rights Act passed, it did not immediately change those realities. In places like Canton, federal officials set up registration tables on downtown streets so Black residents could sign up to vote without facing harassment or intimidation from local authorities.

In the years that followed, Blackmon and other lawyers used the law to challenge at-large election systems that prevented Black communities from electing candidates of their choice. Cities and counties were forced to redraw maps into single-member districts.

When those districts still diluted Black voting strength, activists returned to court.

“Without the Voting Rights Act, Mississippi would look so much different than it looks now,” Blackmon said.

___

Willingham reported from Boston, Brook from New Orleans and Amy from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Kristin Hall and Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee, and Safiyah Riddle and Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.

Who’s eligible / where the election is

Senate District 4 includes all of Chambers County and parts of Galveston, Harris, Jefferson, and Montgomery counties. In Harris County, the Clerk’s Office says registered voters in the Spring, Kingwood, Atascocita, or Humble areas should check their sample ballot to confirm they’re eligible for this election. Harris County has more than 221,000 voters in the district.

Where to vote

Voters should use a polling place in the county where they are registered (Chambers County and parts of Galveston, Harris, Jefferson, and Montgomery counties). A full list of Election Day polling locations is included at the end of this article, or you can visit the county webpage to check locations and times.

• Chambers County
• Galveston County
• Harris County
• Jefferson County
• Montgomery County

Harris County is operating 27 vote centers today. Eligible voters can vote at any vote center in the county. You can also check locations at HarrisVotes.com, including estimated wait times.

What to bring

Acceptable photo ID Texas law requires one of the following:

• Texas Driver’s License (DPS)
• Texas Election Identification Certificate (DPS)
• Texas Personal Identification Card (DPS)
• Texas Handgun License (DPS)
• U.S. Military ID with photo
• U.S. Citizenship Certificate with photo
• U.S. Passport (book or card)

Mail ballot drop-off (hand-deliver)

In Harris County, voters may hand-deliver their mail ballot today at 1019 Congress Street in Downtown Houston, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. A valid photo ID is required.

If you requested a mail ballot but want to vote in person

If you decide to vote in person instead, you must surrender your mail ballot at the vote center. If you don’t have it, you can still vote in person, but you’ll need to cast a provisional ballot under the Texas Election Code.

More information For updates and election resources, visit HarrisVotes.com and follow @HarrisVotes on social media.

Voting locations

Chambers County

• Chambers Health Services — 102 Chambers County Airport, Anahuac, TX 77514
• Juanita Hargraves Memorial Library — 108 Fear Rd, Winnie, TX 77665
• Barbers Hill ISD, Community Elections Center (Entrance 32) — 9650 Eagle Drive, Mont Belvieu, TX 77523
• Judge Larry Cryer Annex Building — 7711 Highway 146, Baytown, TX 77523

Galveston County

• Joe Faggard Com Center — 1750 Hwy 87, Crystal Beach, TX 77650
• Galveston CO Courthouse (2nd Floor) — 722 Moody Ave, Galveston, TX 77550
• Galveston CO Justice Ctr (1st Floor Break Rm) — 600 59th Street, Galveston, TX 77551
• Moody Methodist Church (Fellowship Hall) — 2803 53rd Street, Galveston, TX 77551
• Historic Galveston Water & Electric Light Comm. Center — 715 30th St., Galveston, TX 77550
• GISD Administration — 3904 39th Street and F 1/2, Galveston, TX 77550
• Seaside Church — 16534 Termini–San Louis Pass, Jamaica Beach, TX 77554
• High Island ISD Gym — 2113 6th Street (Gym), High Island, TX 77623
• Hitchcock City Hall — 8102 Hwy 6, Hitchcock, TX 77563
• Galveston CO MUD 12 (2nd Floor) — 2929 Hwy 6, Bayou Vista, TX 77563
• San Leon Fire Station — 337 12th Street, San Leon, TX 77539
• JP Court, Precinct 1 (Bayshore Annex Breakroom) — 4500 10th Street, Bacliff, TX 77518
• Nessler Center (Surf Room) — 2010 5th Ave North, Texas City, TX 77590
• Gal CO Records and Election (Suite 1152) — 10000 Emmett Lowry Exp, Texas City, TX 77591
• Carver Park Comm Room (Thomas Carter Rm) — 6415 Park Ave, Texas City, TX 77591
• La Marque Comm Room — 1109 B Bayou Road, La Marque, TX 77568
• La Marque Fire Station — 5715 Texas Ave., La Marque, TX 77568
• First Baptist Friendswood (Rm 209) — 209 S. Friendswood Dr., Friendswood, TX 77546
• Dickinson Community Ctr — 2714 Highway 3, Dickinson, TX 77539
• Dickinson City Hall (Room 2) — 4403 Highway 3, Dickinson, TX 77539
• Sant Fe ISD Museum — 13304 Highway 6, Santa Fe, TX 77510
• Village on the Park (Town Hall) — 400 E. Parkwood, Friendswood, TX 77546
• Kemah Comm Center (Room 1) — 800 Harris, Kemah, TX 77565

Jefferson County

• Marion & Ed Hughes Public Library (Meeting Room) — 2712 Nederland Ave, Nederland, TX 77627
• DeQueen Elementary (Fifth Grade Hall) — 740 DeQueen Blvd, Port Arthur, TX 77640
• Jefferson County Sub-Courthouse (Foyer) — 525 Lakeshore Dr, Port Arthur, TX 77640
• El Vista Community Center — 615 Ellias Street, Port Arthur, TX 77640
• Port Acres Elementary (Main Hallway) — 5900 Jade Ave, Port Arthur, TX 77640
• Port Arthur Library (Lucy Stiefel Gallery) — 4615 9th Avenue, Port Arthur, TX 77642
• R.L. Gabby Eldridge Center — 5262 S. Gulfway Dr, Sabine Pass, TX 77655
• Travis Elementary (Library) — 1115 Lakeview Ave, Port Arthur, TX 77642
• Jefferson County Courthouse (Lobby) — 1085 Pearl St, Beaumont, TX 77701
• Precinct 1 Service Center (Front Conference Room) — 20205 W. Hwy 90, China, TX 77613
• Ray Chesson Office Building (Courtroom) — 19217 FM 365, Beaumont, TX 77705

Harris County

• Comfort Suites Baytown (Meeting Room) — 7209 Garth Road, Baytown, TX 77521
• Crosby Branch Library (Meeting Room) — 135 Hare Road, Crosby, TX 77532
• Crosby High School (Competition Gym) — 333 Red Summit Drive, Crosby, TX 77532
• Cypresswood Elementary School (Gym) — 6901 Cypresswood Point Avenue, Humble, TX 77338
• Dueitt Middle School (Small Gym) — 1 Eagle Crossing Drive, Spring, TX 77373
• First Baptist Church Huffman Youth Center (Youth Center) — 25271 Farm to Market 2100 Road, Huffman, TX 77336
• George H W Bush Community Center (Room 209) — 6827 Cypresswood Drive, Spring, TX 77379
• Harris County Attorney Conference Center (County Conference Center Room I, Meeting Room 109) — 1019 Congress Avenue, Houston, TX 77002
• HC Public Library Kingwood Branch (Meeting Room) — 4400 Bens View Lane, Kingwood, TX 77339
• Hidden Hollow Elementary School (Multipurpose Room) — 4104 Appalachian Trail, Kingwood, TX 77345
• Humble ISD Board Business and Technology Center (BBTC) (Boardroom) — 20200 Eastway Village Drive, Humble, TX 77338
• Kingwood Community Center (Auditorium) — 4102 Rustic Woods Drive, Kingwood, TX 77345
• Kingwood Park High School (Lower LGI – North Parking Lot Entrance) — 4015 Woodland Hills Drive, Kingwood, TX 77339
• Kreinhop Elementary School (Gym) — 20820 Ella Boulevard, Spring, TX 77388
• Lemm Elementary School (Cafeteria) — 19034 Joan Leigh Drive, Spring, TX 77388
• Lone Star College North Harris (CSTTC Building Room 101 / CSTTC Building Room 103) — 2700 W W Thorne Drive, Houston, TX 77073
• Maplebrook Elementary School (Cafeteria) — 7935 Farmingham Road, Atascocita, TX 77346
• Oak Forest Elementary School (Humble ISD) (Multipurpose) — 6400 Kingwood Glen Drive, Atascocita, TX 77346
• Pine Forest Elementary School (MultiPurpose Room) — 19702 West Lake Houston Parkway, Atascocita, TX 77346
• Ponderosa Elementary School (Gym 202) — 117202 Butte Creek Road, Houston, TX 77090
• San Jacinto Community Center (Grand Assembly Room) — 604 Highland Woods Drive, Highlands, TX 77562
• Shadow Forest Elementary School (MultiPurpose Room) — 2300 Mills Branch Drive, Kingwood, TX 77345
• Timber Lane Community Center (Meeting Room A/B) — 1902 Naplechase Crest Drive, Spring, TX 77373
• Vera Brummet May Community Center (Room 118) — 2100 Wolf Road, Huffman, TX 77336
• West Campus Gym (Gym) — 24403 East Lake Houston Parkway, Huffman, TX 77336
• Willow Creek Elementary School (Humble ISD) (MultiPurpose Room) — 2002 Willow Terrace Drive, Kingwood, TX 77345
• Woodland Hills Elementary School (Cafeteria) — 2222 Tree Lane, Kingwood, TX 77339

Montgomery County

• North Montgomery County Community Center — 600 Gerald Street, Willis, TX 77378
• Lone Star Community Center (not the Lone Star Convention Center in Conroe) — 2500 Lone Star Parkway, Montgomery, TX 77356
• West Montgomery County Community Development Center — 31355 Friendship Drive, Magnolia, TX 77355
• East Montgomery County Fair Association Building — 21675A McCleskey Road, New Caney, TX 77357
• Magnolia Event Center Annex (New Location) — 11731 FM 1488, Magnolia, TX 77354
• Central Library (Main Early Voting Polling Place – Limited Ballots) — 104 I-45 North, Conroe, TX 77301
• George and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Library (New Location) — 8125 Ashlane Way, The Woodlands, TX 77382
• Spring Creek Greenway Nature Center — 1300 Riley Fuzzel Road, Spring, TX 77386
• East Montgomery County Community Development Center — 16401 First Street, Suite 100, Splendora, TX 77372
• Election Central — 9159 Airport Road, Conroe, TX 77303

But the budget carrier ceased operations on Saturday after reaching an impasse with an administration that increasingly sees the government as an activist investor that will shape the path of the U.S. economy.

While Trump has long railed against Democrats and other opponents as communists — the antithesis of the free market ethos that helped America grow into a superpower — he has taken a shine to the government owning some of the means of production since he has been back in the Oval Office.

Trump sees opportunities in preserving legacy brand companies such as Intel and possibly making a tidy profit for Uncle Sam. The Republican president views the investments as critical for economic security and emblematic of his own dealmaking skills, overturning what had been GOP dogma that government should avoid picking winners and losers.

In the case of Spirit, a cash-strapped budget airline that faced surging fuel costs caused by the Iran war, Trump told reporters on Friday that the government would buy a stake in the company “ only if it’s a good deal.” His objection to a bailout was not ideological as much as it was about the upside.

“If we can help them, we will,” Trump said. “But we have to come first.” Trump did not immediately address the shutdown of the carrier.

He had compared the potential acquisition to an earlier move to buy a stake in Intel. Trump has watched the computer chip manufacturer's stock closely. “I’m very proud of that Company in that I am responsible for making the United States of America over 30 Billion Dollars in the last 90 days on that stock alone," Trump posted on social media this week.

Committed to government stakes in companies

Communism wields big influence in countries such as China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba, where governments play a central role in providing goods and services. The ideology has morphed over its history from the premise that government should own all property to a system in which the government might own or control major companies.

In the United States, major government interventions in the private sector have been unusual outside of a recession. Trump aides say his interventions are necessary to compete against China's industrial heft, yet the president has frequently tethered corporate America to his administration.

He has used his tariffs to solicit foreign investments and claimed that he controls how the money is being spent. The government has a “golden share” to limit what Japan's Nippon Steel can do after buying U.S. Steel. His administration brokered an agreement to take a cut of computer chip sales to China by Nvidia and AMD.

Under Trump, the government has invested in rare earths company MP Materials to break China’s control of the metallic elements needed for smartphones, autos and other technologies. Add to that agreements for stakes in Lithium America, Trilogy Metals and Vulcan Elements as well as preferential financing for Westinghouse and ReElement Technologies.

The administration backed off ending the government conservatorship of the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Trump says they are worth more now because he held on instead of privatizing the companies in his first term. “If I would have sold it, I would have felt like a schmuck," he said Friday.

He is accessible to CEOs, speaking regularly on the telephone with them, yet he also can be demanding of them to support his agenda. He has told Walmart to not raise prices because of his tariffs and suggested he would favorably “remember” companies that decline to seek refunds after the Supreme Court ruled his tariffs were illegal.

Logic and ego seen in Trump's moves

To critics, Trump’s desire to fund and hold ownership stakes in private business is a byproduct of an id in overdrive.

“This is entirely a reflection of a transactional-minded president who wants unilateral control of the economy,” said Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “At the end of the day, it is about power, it is about leverage and it is about control.”

Others see some logic in competing against Chinese manufacturers that can churn away without regard to profits, undercutting factories in other industrialized nations and putting America’s preeminence as a military power and technological innovator at risk.

The investment in Intel was "a strategic move, necessitated by the growth of China as an economic peer and rival,” said Sujai Shivakumar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

“The key point is that we should not sacrifice our national economic and industrial framework in the name of ‘free markets’ or other ideologies,” he said. “Pragmatism, in various forms of industrial and innovation policy, have always been a feature of our economic system since the very beginning of our republic.”

Republicans traditionally shunned picking winners and losers

During the 2024 campaign, Trump portrayed the administration of Democrat Joe Biden as communist and socialist.

“We will cast out the communists,” Trump said at an April 13, 2024, speech in Pennsylvania. “We will liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all.”

Biden often stressed his belief in the power of free markets to help the middle class and he believed his efforts to raise corporate tax rates would help achieve that. “I’m a capitalist,” he said in his last State of the Union address, saying he was not opposed to companies making profits. “That’s great — just pay your fair share in taxes,” he said.

The Biden administration extended loans and grants to chipmakers and sought to leverage the government’s role as a customer of American businesses. But a key difference was that the investments were based on laws passed by Congress.

Trump's unilateral approach is more nimble, his White House argues, saying that funding for his investments come from sources previously approved by Congress.

Trump specifically took loans and grants from Biden's 2022 CHIPS and Science Act and converted them into a $11.1 billion purchase of Intel stock. In his 2025 address to Congress, Trump called the CHIPS Act a “horrible, horrible thing” and suggested the Republican majorities claw back funding to pay down the budget deficit.

With Spirit Airlines in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, his administration had been weighing a $500 million deal that would have given the government a stake in the Florida-based discount airline. Other budget carriers have been interested in similar packages.

That possibility drew objections from Republicans such as Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Trump had told reporters in the Oval Office that he wanted to save the jobs at Spirit Airlines and that "when the prices of oil goes down, we’ll sell it for a profit.”

Government investment can help to even the playing field for American companies competing against subsidized foreign businesses, said Monica Gorman, a managing director at Crowell Global Advisors who helped lead manufacturing and industrial policy in the Biden White House.

But Gorman said that it was unclear whether the Trump administration had fully grasped the risks of “making some bad bets.” She stressed the importance of formalizing the process through legislation instead of relying on Trump’s whims.

“Congress really needs to step in and design a legislative framework for U.S. industrial policy that governs equity stakes as well as other mechanisms such as loans and grants,” she said. “All of these are important tools in the U.S. industrial policy toolkit, but we need more guidance on when and how to use them.”

The shower will peak Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Viewers from the Southern Hemisphere typically see 50 meteors per hour during the peak, but the interfering moon could cut that number by half. In the north, skywatchers will likely see fewer than 10 per hour.

“For us in the Northern Hemisphere, it's not going to be as impressive,” said Teri Gee, manager of the Barlow Planetarium in Wisconsin. “The farther south you are, the better you'll see it.”

Meteor showers happen when the Earth charges through trails of debris left behind from comets or asteroids. Those bits collide with Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds, producing streaks of light that are also known as shooting stars.

On any given night, a handful of stray meteors are visible under dark skies. Meteor showers yield a more exciting show and happen at predictable times every year.

Most meteor showers are caused by leftovers from comets, and the Eta Aquarids feature debris from one of the most well-known. Halley's comet passes by Earth about every 76 years on its trip around the sun. It'll next swing by in 2061.

To glimpse these meteors, it's best to go outside just before dawn. Venture away from city lights and tall buildings to get a clear view of the sky. In this case, it might also help to find a spot that blocks the luminous waning gibbous moon, which will be 84% full.

Bring blankets and lawn chairs. Avoid looking at your phone and give your eyes time to get used to the darkness. Look to the east in the vicinity of constellation Aquarius and bright star Eta Aquarii.

“You're looking for bright streaks that appear in the corner of your eye for a fraction of a second,” said astrophysicist Nico Adams with SSP International, a nonprofit that promotes STEM education.

There's no better way to enjoy the show than to experience it firsthand, Gee said.

“It almost feels like you're discovering it yourself,” she said.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Keir Starmer said he would always defend the right to protest, but said there may be instances where some marches protesting the war in Gaza should be banned. He suggested that repeated pro-Palestinian marches have had a “cumulative effect” linked to the rise in antisemitic incidents in the U.K.

“When you see, when you hear some of those chants — ‘globalize the intifada’ would be one I would pick out — then clearly there should be tougher action in relation to that,” Starmer told the BBC. The Arabic word intifada is generally translated as “uprising.”

A 45-year-old man was charged Friday with attempted murder after two Jewish men were stabbed and wounded Wednesday in Golders Green, a London neighborhood that's an epicenter of Britain's Jewish community. Police called the attack an act of terrorism.

It was the latest in a string of incidents including recent arson attacks on synagogues and other Jewish sites in the British capital.

The U.K.'s most senior police officer warned Friday that British Jews are facing their greatest ever threat, and blamed social media for making antisemitism more mainstream than before.

Mark Rowley, the head of the Metropolitan Police, said British Jews are now the target of every extremist group spreading hate.

“The ghastly fact is that Jews are on everybody’s list, all of those hateful groups, whether you’re extreme right, whether you’re extreme left, whether you’re Islamist terrorist, whether you’re right-wing terrorist, and some hostile states as well now with some sort of Iranian-related threats," he told The Times. "There’s a ghastly Venn diagram that they’re at the middle of.”

Britain’s official terror threat level was raised from substantial to severe after Wednesday’s stabbing attack. Severe is the second-highest on a five-point scale and means intelligence agencies consider an attack highly likely in the next six months.

The government said the change was not due solely to the Golders Green attack but also due to increased danger “from Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorist threat from individuals and small groups based in the U.K.”

The number of antisemitic incidents reported across the U.K. has soared since the attack by Hamas-led militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, according to the Community Security Trust charity. The group recorded 3,700 incidents in 2025, up from 1,662 in 2022.

Trump had threatened to withdraw some troops from the NATO ally earlier this week after Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized Washington’s lack of strategy in the war.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that the “decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground.”

Germany hosts several U.S. military facilities, including the headquarters of its European and Africa commands, Ramstein Air Base and a medical center in Landstuhl, where casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were treated. U.S. nuclear missiles are also stationed in the country.

The number of troops leaving Germany would be 14% of the 36,000 American service members stationed there.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called it “foreseeable” that the U.S. would withdraw troops from Europe and Germany, while he sought to stress mutual benefit from the U.S. military presence on the European continent.

“The presence of American soldiers in Europe, and especially in Germany, is in our interest and in the interest of the U.S.,” Pistorius told the German news agency dpa, while adding that European allies needed to adjust their defense postures — and were doing so.

“We Europeans must take on more responsibility for our security,” he said, stressing recent efforts by Germany to boost its armed forces, accelerate procurement and develop infrastructure.

News of the troop withdrawal drew swift pushback from Democrats in Congress as well as a hawkish Washington think tank. They said the move will benefit Russian President Vladimir Putin and weaken U.S. security interests.

The withdrawal “suggests American commitments to our allies are dependent on the president’s mood," said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"The president should immediately cease this reckless action before he causes irreversible consequences for our alliances and long-term national security,” Reed said.

Bradley Bowman, a scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the U.S. military's presence in Germany and elsewhere in Europe “not only strengthens deterrence against additional Kremlin aggression but also facilitates the projection of American military power into the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Africa.”

Trump ignored questions from reporters about the withdrawal on Friday as he boarded Air Force One in Ocala, Florida, following a rally to tout his economic agenda.

Trump made a similar threat in his first term, saying he would pull about 9,500 of the roughly 34,500 U.S. troops who were then stationed in Germany, but he didn’t start the process and Democratic President Joe Biden formally stopped the planned withdrawal soon after taking office in 2021.

The mercurial U.S. leader has mused for years about reducing the American military presence in Germany, and has railed against NATO for its refusal to assist Washington in the war, which began on Feb. 28 with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

Trump wrote Wednesday on social media that the U.S. was reviewing possible troop reductions in Germany, with a “determination” to be made soon. On Thursday, he was still thinking about Merz, posting that the German leader should “spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine” and “fixing his broken Country” than concerning himself with Iran.

American allies in NATO have braced for a U.S. troop withdrawal since Trump took office, with Washington warning that Europe would have to look after its own security, including that of Ukraine, in the future.

Depending on operations, exercises and troop rotations, around 80,000-100,000 U.S. personnel are usually stationed in Europe. NATO allies have expected for more than a year that the U.S. troops deployed after Russia launched its all-out war on Ukraine in February 2022 would be first to leave.

Ed Arnold, an expert in European security at the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, in London, said Europe is more concerned about issues like a U.S. redeployment of Patriot missile systems and ammunition from Germany to the Middle East.

In October, the U.S. confirmed that it would reduce its troop presence on NATO’s borders with Ukraine. The move to cut 1,500-3,000 troops came on short notice and unsettled NATO ally Romania, where the military organization runs an air base.

——

Madhani reported from West Palm Beach, Florida. Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed.

Eight seasons later, he not only finally helped the Sabres get back there, but was a key factor in the franchise winning its first postseason series in almost two decades.

Buffalo's 4-1 victory over the Boston Bruins on Friday night wrapped up a 4-2 series victory, securing it a spot in the second round for the first time since 2007.

As the final seconds ticked off the scoreboard, Dahlin took a few extra moments to let it all sink in.

“It was unreal,” said Dahlin, who had a goal and three assists in the series. “I like how we attacked this series as a team. A lot of experienced guys. Playing the way we did all series, it’s pretty cool. We have good things ahead. We can learn a lot from this."

What's ahead is a matchup with either Montreal or Tampa Bay after the Lightning’s 1-0 overtime road win Friday night to force a Game 7.

After watching his team endure the disappointment of a Game 5 overtime loss at home, coach Lindy Ruff could tell they were a little uneasy. After all, Buffalo’s entered that game with a lineup that didn’t have a lot of experience, with just 10 players having previously appeared in an outing with a chance to eliminate an opponent.

But Ruff made his team a promise.

“I told them, ‘We’re going to win the game.' I told them, ‘We’re going to win the series,'" Ruff said. "We've got to do some things better, but we are going to win the game.”

Friday's win marked the second time in franchise history that the Sabres have won their first three road contests of a playoff year. They last did it in 1983 at Montreal (two games) and Boston (one game).

For other veteran players like Alex Tuch, there are loftier goals on his mind.

“For me it’s been five long years of waiting for something special to happen. We’re hoping it’s just the start,” he said. We’re one round into the playoffs and in our eyes we haven’t done anything yet. ... We’re hoping it’s a long road ahead for us. It’s going to be a grind each and every day and we’re going to have to be ready for it.”

Goaltender Alex Lyon played in five of the six games in the series, one more than he did when he was with Florida during the 2022-23 season when it lost to Las Vegas in the Stanley Cup Final.

He allowed just five total goals in his appearances in the series with the Bruins. It is the fewest goals allowed in any five-game span in the playoffs by a Sabres netminder ever.

Lyon believes this team's youth is becoming a positive.

“We're learning every game. That's kind of what's bonded us,” Lyon said. “I find that we're just learning how to handle different situations and kind of learning on the fly.”

Ruff’s only regret is that the Sabres’ home fans couldn’t watch them clinch this series on home ice.

“Would have really liked this game to be in Buffalo,” Ruff said. “It wasn’t. But it would have been special to have this game there.”

___

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

But instead of feeling sorry for themselves, the Lakers banded together to fight through the adversity and beat the Houston Rockets in six games to move on to face top-seeded Oklahoma City in the Western Conference semifinals.

Los Angeles has advanced to the second round for the first time since 2023 when it lost to Denver in the West final.

LeBron James had 28 points in Game 6 on Friday night and the Lakers used a tenacious defense to hold the Rockets to their fewest points of the season in the 98-78 victory.

“It speaks to his greatness,” Redick said. “To me, he’s had the greatest career of any NBA player. You can argue all you want and I really don’t care to postulate on who’s the greatest of all time, but he’s one of, if not the greatest of all time.”

“And for him to do it again and answer the bell again, it’s really -- it’s baffling in some ways,” Redick continued.

Los Angeles raced out to a 3-0 lead in the series before losing two games to force Game 6 in Houston against a Rockets team that was missing Kevin Durant for five of six games.

The Lakers played the entire series without Doncic, but Reaves returned for the last two games to help them advance.

There was a chance their series with the Thunder would have started Sunday. But Game 1 was pushed back until Tuesday night when the Raptors beat the Cavaliers 112-110 in overtime thanks to RJ Barrett’s 3-pointer in the final seconds to force Game 7.

“Thanks to Toronto,” James said. “Thank you, RJ Barrett. Appreciate it. Haven’t seen a shot in Toronto like that since Kawhi (Leonard).”

The 41-year-old James was thrilled to get a couple of extra days to rest and recover after averaging 38.5 minutes a game for his injury-plagued team in this series.

“Heck yeah,” he said. “I can go on the golf course now. That’s what I’m thinking about.”

He said he’d start delving into preparation for the Thunder by Sunday.

“It’s the defending champion,” he said. “So, it’s a tall task.”

And the Thunder will be plenty rested after finishing their sweep of Phoenix on Monday night.

Redick credited the leadership of not only James but fellow veteran Marcus Smart for helping steady his team after the injuries to Doncic and Reaves, who combined to average more than 56 points in the regular season.

“For us to be written off a few weeks ago and to win a playoff series is a big deal,” Redick said. “And it just speaks to the character of our team and the leaders of our team that they didn’t let go of the rope.”

Smart, who is in his first season with the Lakers, is so proud of the Lakers for fighting through the injuries to win this series. And he thinks that togetherness will help them as they continue their postseason run.

“It means everything,” he said. “It shows our resilience and it shows the belief that we have our next man up… and it just shows that no matter how depleted we are, we’re always going to go out there and compete and give it everything we got.”

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

The attacks are aimed at slashing Moscow’s oil exports, a key source of funding for its grinding invasion of Ukraine. But the economic impact is so far unclear, as the rise in oil prices from the Iran war, and a related easing of U.S. sanctions, have helped replenish the Kremlin’s coffers.

Still, the range of the attacks and their environmental impact is bringing the war home to ordinary Russians far from the front lines.

Oil spilling onto the street

Ukrainian drones have hit the oil refinery and export terminal in the Black Sea town of Tuapse on four occasions in just over two weeks, sparking fires that prompted local evacuations and sent up massive plumes of smoke. The town is roughly 450 kilometers (280 miles) from the front lines.

In a video posted by local Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev after the third attack on April 18, an emergency official said boiling oil products had spilled onto the street, damaging cars.

Ukraine said Thursday that it hit an oil pumping station in Russia’s Perm region, more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) from Ukraine, two days in a row. Russian media reported the attacks, though Perm Gov. Dmitry Makhonin said only that drones had hit industrial facilities.

Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea, one of Russia’s largest oil and gas export terminals, was hit three times in the space of a week in late March. It is more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) away from Ukraine.

In a broadcast several weeks later, regional Gov. Alexander Drozdenko declared that the area around St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, was a “front-line region” due to aerial threats.

Ukraine says the attacks have cost Russia billions

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has compared such strikes to the international sanctions on Russia. They are seen as even more crucial now that Moscow is collecting windfall profits from the global energy crisis linked to Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Zelenskyy said Friday that Russia has lost at least $7 billion since the start of the year as a direct result of attacks on its oil sector. Earlier in the week, he said Ukrainian intelligence indicates a drop in exports from key oil ports such as Ust-Luga and Primorsk.

Drone strikes have also disrupted Russia's oil refining capacities, while sanctions make it difficult to acquire replacement parts, experts say.

But the full economic impact remains unclear as Russia benefits from the Mideast crisis.

Russian crude and oil product exports rose by 320,000 barrels per day month-on-month to hit 7.1 million in March, the International Energy Agency said. Rising prices meant that oil export revenues almost doubled, from $9.7 billion to $19 billion. It is unclear whether April's strikes will disrupt that trend.

“U.S. action against Iran has saved both the Russian oil sector and the federal budget from a crisis that was clearly developing in late February,” said Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro-Advisory Ltd. Consultancy.

The damage to Russia’s oil infrastructure has meanwhile been far less significant than the massive explosions would suggest, he said.

“If you hit an oil tank, particularly an oil tank that’s not full, the vapors ignite and you get the flames. So it looks very spectacular.” But that only delays deliveries by a couple of days, he said.

“It’s much less damaging than hitting the pump stations or the compressors or the loading infrastructure. And that appears to be well protected. The tanks are not.”

Long-range drones stretch Russia's defenses

The ability to strike key infrastructure deep inside Russia has highlighted Ukraine’s growing military capabilities and put pressure on Moscow’s overstretched air defenses. It has also forced more Russians to confront the consequences of a war their government claims to be winning.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry says its forces have more than doubled the range of their deep-strike capabilities since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The increased range also allows drones to attack locations from different directions, complicating countermeasures.

“Drone attacks have so far been a very successful case of leveraging simple technologies and domestically assembled technology to attack Russia in places that, at the start of the war, they just would have never expected to be attacked,” said Marcel Plichta, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews.

“This capability just didn’t exist” four years ago, he said.

There could be long-term consequences

Russian officials are usually reluctant to comment on deep strikes.

But the Tuapse attacks and the images that followed gained traction in Russian media. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of “serious environmental consequences” while insisting things were under control.

Officials warned that high levels of benzene, a carcinogen found in oil products, had been recorded in the air while fires burned and urged residents to limit time outdoors.

Residents also widely reported “black rain,” oily droplets falling on their skin and clothes. Local news outlets posted images of stray dogs and cats with their coats stained gray. Oil spills along the coastline have coated birds and fish, and Russian media recently circulated images of beached dolphins.

Those images are shocking to Russians accustomed to vacationing on the Black Sea coast.

Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of the Russian environmental group Ecodefense, said there could be long-term consequences for human health and the region’s ecosystem.

“There is a lot of oil in the sea,” he said. “In the next few years, every storm will be bringing more oil pollution onto the coast.”

There has not yet been a public backlash to the strikes, as authorities wage a crackdown on dissent. But that could change as the damage spreads.

“I think a lot of people understand that there is a very big difference between what Putin says and what regional authorities are saying, and what’s really going on,” Slivyak said.

Vegas will face Anaheim in the second round. The Ducks advanced Thursday night with a 5-2 home victory over Edmonton in Game 6.

The Golden Knights have surged since John Tortorella took over as coach from the fired Bruce Cassidy, closing the regular season 7-0-1 after the change. They ripped off three straight wins after Utah took a 2-1 series lead.

“This is what I hoped for,” Marner said. “There’s a lot more work to keep going.”

Marner had two goals and five assists in the series. Friday was the first multi-goal playoff game for the Vegas forward since April 20, 2023, against Tampa Bay.

“It was his best game of the series. He just looked comfortable,” Tortorella said.

Brett Howden opened the scoring with his fourth goal of the series, all coming over the last three games. Colton Sissons added a third-period goal for Vegas soon after Utah’s Kailer Yamamoto cut it to 2-1. Cole Smith capped the scoring with an empty-netter on the heels of Marner converting a power play for his second goal.

“We’ve been here before,” Vegas captain Mark Stone said. “We don’t have the panic. Maybe some teams do. We can calm ourselves pretty quickly.”

Karel Vejmelka made 21 saves for Utah. The Mammoth led in the third period in each of the first five games before trailing the whole way in Game 6.

“I didn’t have that in my bingo card,” Utah coach Andre Tourigny said. “I was really confident we would go to Vegas tomorrow.”

Howden scored with 4:58 left in the first period. Marner’s shot went to the right of the goal and rebounded out front for Howden to put a wrist shot home.

On Wednesday night in Game 5, Howden scored the winner in the Golden Knights’ 5-4 double-overtime victory. Vegas also won 5-4 in overtime in Game 4 after getting two goals from him in regulation.

Marner made it 2-0 with 45 seconds left in the second after Vegas had the puck in Utah’s end for more than two minutes. He blasted a slap shot from the top of the right circle off Ian Cole’s knee and into the net.

“I’ve had a couple opportunities in that same area that I had just missed on,” Marner said. “That’s why I just decided to quickly wind one up and see if I could get a clapper through.”

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

With their season on the line, the Rockets fell flat, scoring a season-low 78 points in a 98–78 blowout loss.

“Everyone’s disappointed,” head coach Ime Udoka said in the postgame press conference. “That was not what we expected coming into the game tonight — or the series in general.”

Lakers star LeBron James led all scorers with 28 points, while Rui Hachimura added 21. Amen Thompson paced the Rockets with 18.

“I really wanted to win,” Thompson said after the loss. “I didn’t even have thoughts about after... I’ll be thinking about this all summer.”

The Rockets’ previous season low in scoring was 91 points, making Friday’s performance a new low in their final game of the year. Their 78-point total also tied for the fifth-lowest single-game output in the NBA this season.

“We didn’t make shots,” Rockets guard Reed Sheppard said after the game.

It was hard to ignore the gaps in the Rockets’ offensive firepower, with Kevin Durant sidelined by an ankle injury sustained in Game 2, and both Fred VanVleet and Steven Adams out for the season.

“We cannot think about that stuff,” center Alperen Şengün said. “You’ve got to fight with whoever is on the court. Obviously, I was upset losing Fred and Steven… but you’ve got to learn.”

After the final buzzer, Rockets players were emotional as their season came to an end sooner than anyone in the building had hoped.

Players described a somber locker room, with hugs, words of encouragement, and jersey exchanges.

“Nobody was ready for [the season] to be finished,” Şengün said. “We win together, we lose together, and we stay together… We have a big summer ahead of us.”

That summer could include roster changes, as the Rockets face difficult questions about their future.

Tari Eason, who is entering free agency, expressed uncertainty about his future in Houston, saying, “God knows.”

When asked about preparing for next season, Udoka said, “I’ll get to it ASAP.”

Josh Norris added an empty-netter. Alex Lyon finished with 25 saves.

The 4-2 series victory is the latest milestone for Buffalo, which saw the end of its 14-year playoff drought by capturing its first Atlantic Division title. The 2007 season was also the last time the Sabres advanced to the second round. They lost in the conference finals that year.

“It's one step in the right direction. That's it,” Tuch said.

Buffalo will play the winner of the Montreal-Tampa Bay series in the second round. That series will go to seven games after the Lightning's 1-0 overtime win Friday night in Montreal.

“I think Part A is getting to the playoffs. Part B is trying to have success once you get there,” coach Lindy Ruff said. “We talked about what a challenge it was going to be to try to take out a good team. And Boston's a good team. ... I thought our guys dug in and gave us a heck of a game tonight.”

David Pastrnak scored the lone goal for the Bruins. Jeremy Swayman made 22 stops.

“Buffalo, there's a reason they won the division,” Pastrnak said. "A lot of skill and speed that's over there. Their (defense) is very active. So, yeah, they were better."

Tempers flared with 1:31 to play after Benson tripped Charlie McAvoy. McAvoy responded with a slash at Benson. Both were sent to the penalty box.

It ends a feisty series comeback for the Bruins after earning a playoff berth in their first season under coach Marco Sturm. Boston has lost its last six home playoff games.

Trailing 2-1 in the third, the Bruins picked up their attack and had something working in the Sabres’ zone. But Josh Doan poked the puck away to start a break. He was pursued by Pastrnak and McAvoy toward the corner, when Doan flipped it back to a wide-open Zach Benson, who beat Swayman.

The Sabres’ speed dominated in the early going.

That changed 1:54 into the second period when a Buffalo turnover turned into a 2-on-1 break between Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha. Zacha passed to Pastrnak on the left side, and he fired it in from the faceoff circle to get the Bruins within 2-1. It marked his third goal in the series.

It was part of a second period that saw an increase in physical play that was mostly allowed by the referees. It included a more than nine-minute stretch without a stoppage of play.

The Sabres needed just 3:25 into the first period to open the scoring when Tuch guided in a touch pass in front of the net by Rasmus Dahlin.

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

In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey announced Friday that she is calling a special legislative session to begin Monday in hopes that the Supreme Court allows the state to change its U.S. House map ahead of the November midterm elections. In Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee also announced a special session for the GOP-controlled Legislature to break up the state's one Democratic-held House district, centered on the majority-Black city of Memphis.

Louisiana already has suspended its May 16 congressional primary to allow time for lawmakers to approve new U.S. House districts, though that is being challenged in court. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is pressuring other states such as Tennessee to also redistrict ahead of the midterm elections that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of the closely divided House.

Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to redraw U.S. House districts to give the party an advantage. Democrats in California responded by doing the same. Then other states joined the battle. Lawmakers, commissions or courts have adopted new House districts in eight states.

That total could grow following the Supreme Court’s decision that significantly weakened a provision in the federal Voting Rights Act.

Here’s a look at how some states are responding to the Supreme Court ruling:

Louisiana

Current House map: two Democrats, four Republicans

Early in-person voting was to begin Saturday for Louisiana’s primaries. But Republican Gov. Jeff Landry moved quickly Thursday to postpone the congressional primary while allowing elections for other offices to go forward.

A federal lawsuit filed later Thursday, on behalf of a Democratic congressional candidate and voter, asked a court to block Landry’s order and allow the House primary to occur as originally scheduled. Two more lawsuits asserting that the congressional primary should go forward were filed Friday in state court on behalf of voters who already had cast absentee ballots and several civil rights organizations.

Among other things, the lawsuits contend that Landry lacked authority to suspend the primary and that thousands of absentee ballots already have been mailed to people, with a substantial number filled out and returned.

District court judges in Baton Rouge late Friday denied requests in two of those cases to temporarily block Landry’s executive order.

Separately, a three-judge federal court panel that heard the case that was appealed to the Supreme Court also issued an order Thursday suspending Louisiana’s congressional primary.

Republican state House and Senate leaders said they are prepared to pass new U.S. House districts — and set a new primary election date — before their legislative session ends in a month.

Alabama

Current House map: two Democrats, five Republicans

The state’s primaries are set for May 19. But Alabama officials on Thursday filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court seeking an expedited review of a pending appeal in a redistricting case that could affect the election.

A federal court in 2023 ordered the creation of a new near majority-Black district in Alabama, resulting in the election of a second Black representative to the U.S. House. Alabama is under a court order to use the new map until after the next census in 2030.

An appeal pending before the Supreme Court argues that the map is an illegal racial gerrymander, a claim similar to that made in Louisiana.

The state is seeking to lift an injunction blocking the use of a 2023 map drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature that did not include the new district. The state is making a similar request for two state Senate districts impacted by a separate redistricting case.

Ivey said the special legislative session will focus on a contingency plan to have special primary elections in case the Supreme Court acts quickly enough to allow Alabama’s previously drawn districts to be used this year.

Florida

Current House map: eight Democrats, 20 Republicans

Hours after the Supreme Court’s decision, Florida’s Republican-led Legislature approved new U.S. House districts that could help the GOP win up to four additional seats in November.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called a special legislative session without knowing when the Supreme Court would issue its opinion in the Louisiana case. But DeSantis expressed confidence that the court would rule as it did. Among other things, the new map reshapes a southeastern Florida district that DeSantis said was created to help elect a Black representative in an attempt to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

A Florida constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2010 prohibits districts from being drawn to deny or diminish the ability of racial or language minorities to elect the representatives of their choice. DeSantis said he considers that amendment a violation of the U.S. Constitution. That question is expected to be decided by the courts.

Tennessee

Lee announced the special session in a statement late Friday afternoon, saying, “We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters.”

That came after a pressure campaign by Trump and other Republicans to reconfigure the state's 9th Congressional District. Republicans have always been checkmated by the Voting Rights Act in their desire to spread the district's Democratic voters around neighboring conservative districts and make it winnable, but the law may no longer be an impediment.

The candidate qualifying period ended in March, and the primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6. Democrats noted that in 2022 the state supreme court checked additional redistricting because it was too close to an election. They argued that the court is their best hope this time around too.

“We cannot keep doing things like this and calling ourselves a democracy, Democratic State Sen. Ramesh Akbari said at a news conference outside the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, which includes the structure of the motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

Mississippi

Current House map: one Democrat, three Republicans

Mississippi held its U.S. House primaries in March. But the Supreme Court’s decision could affect elections for other offices.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves announced previously that he would call a special legislative session to redraw voting districts for the state Supreme Court that would begin 21 days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Louisiana case. That would put the special session's start at around May 20.

A federal judge last year ordered Mississippi to redraw its Supreme Court voting districts after finding that they violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters. Mississippi lawmakers had been waiting on a decision in the Louisiana case before moving forward, but their legislative session ended in April.

Reeves said in his proclamation that the Supreme Court’s decision would provide guidance to lawmakers on whether “race-conscious redistricting” violates the U.S. Constitution.

Georgia

Current House map: five Democrats, nine Republicans

Early in-person voting began April 27 and continues for the next few weeks ahead of Georgia’s primary elections on May 19.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said it’s too late for Georgia officials to try to change congressional districts for this year’s elections, because voting already is underway. But he said the rationale in the Supreme Court’s decision “requires Georgia to adopt new electoral maps before the 2028 election cycle.”

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Associated Press writers Jeff Amy, Jack Brook, Travis Loller, Nicholas Riccardi and Kim Chandler contributed to this report.

An Associated Press review of court records shows Trump officials have also racked up an extraordinary record of defiance in a much broader set of lawsuits dating back to the first days of President Donald Trump's second term.

Since February 2025, district court judges have ruled the Republican administration was violating an order in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including cuts in federal funding, mass layoffs, deportations, and immigration practices.

These violations are in addition to more than 250 instances of noncompliance judges have recently highlighted in individual immigration petitions — from failing to return property to keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates.

Though Trump officials eventually backed down in about a third of the 31 cases, legal experts say their treatment of court orders damages the constitutional system of checks and balances.

“The federal government should be the institution most devoted to the rule of law in this country,” said David Super, a constitutional law scholar at Georgetown University. “When it ceases to feel itself bound, respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country.”

Here are some key takeaways from AP's report on these cases:

Trump's aggressive policy moves spark a barrage of lawsuits

The administration has already faced more than 700 lawsuits.

The AP reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents in noncompliance cases compiled by nonpartisan government watchdogs. It found additional cases by scouring media reports of violations and then verifying the findings with court records.

An unprecedented level of defiance

District courts have also found previous administrations in violation of their orders.

But legal scholars and former federal judges said they could recall at most a few cases over the full four-year terms of other recent presidents — including the first Trump administration and Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said district court judges were making “unlawful” rulings against Trump officials.

“President Trump’s entire Administration is lawfully implementing the America First agenda he was elected to enact,” she said in a written statement.

In court filings, Justice Department attorneys have generally disputed accusations the government was not complying. They have argued over the meaning of words, cited favorable appellate court rulings and said they were acting outside the scope of the court’s order, among other legal maneuvering.

Outside of court, Trump and White House officials have railed against federal judges, and Vice President JD Vance has even suggested the president could ignore court orders.

The effects have been far-reaching

The groups that say they’ve been harmed by the administration’s failure to comply with court orders are varied and include immigrants, nonprofits and journalists.

Among other instances of noncompliance, judges found the White House defied rulings when it deported scores of accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, withheld billions of dollars in foreign aid and failed to restore programming at the Voice of America. The three cases date to the first few months of the new administration, but judges have continued to find violations since then, including in two cases in April.

Higher courts often sided with the White House

In 15 of the 31 lawsuits the AP reviewed, an appellate court or the Supreme Court either allowed the administration’s underlying policy, limited the district court’s efforts to correct or punish the noncompliance, or both.

Those decisions show lower court judges are overreaching, said Will Chamberlain, senior counsel with the conservative legal advocacy group The Article III Project.

Trump officials are “generally complying, appealing and winning,” he said. “If they were defying orders left and right, they’d be losing them.”

Critics say the higher courts are excusing noncompliance.

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in June in a dissent joined by the court’s two other liberal justices. “Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”

The first call came in from the 9200 block of Chimney Rock Road.

Authorities said witnesses reported seeing a person in the bayou. One of the witnesses reportedly shared a video of what appeared to be a woman in a white shirt struggling in the water.

Authorities say the water was moving at approximately 12 knots, which is enough for the average swimmer to be overcome by.

• Flood Watch continues for Houston as the final round of wave moves in tonight

Our crew at the scene spotted first responders towing a rescue boat to the bayou.

Rescue boats were also seen in the water at Almeda and MacGregor.

A Houston Police Department dive team has responded to assist the Houston Fire Department in the search. Drones are also assisting in the search.

HFD says they are searching the bayou spanning from where the first report came in off Chimney Rock all the way to Almeda Road in the Medical Center area.

The search has been suspended for the night.

Friday's unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in person and at clinics, overruling regulations set by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

The ruling, which is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, is the biggest jolt to abortion policy in the U.S. since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to enforce abortion bans.

In the ruling, Judge Kyle Duncan, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, agreed with the state of Louisiana's contention that allowing the drug to be mailed there makes moot the state's ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

“Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,’” the ruling states.

Mifepristone is involved in most abortions in the US

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to end early pregnancies. It is typically used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol.

Surveys have found that the majority of abortions in the U.S. are provided via pills and that about 1 in 4 abortions nationally are prescribed via telehealth.

One survey of abortion providers last year estimated that more women in states where abortion is banned obtained abortions that way than by traveling to other states.

Some Democratic-led states have laws that seek to protect providers who prescribe via telehealth to patients in places with bans.

That rise in prominence is why abortion opponents have targeted the pills in legislation and litigation.

Ruling goes against how courts usually view FDA decisions

There is little precedent for a federal court overruling the scientific regulations of the FDA, and it wasn’t immediately clear how quickly or completely the decision would impact mailing of the drug throughout the country.

Judges have long deferred to the agency's judgments on the safety and appropriate regulation of drugs.

FDA officials under Trump have repeatedly stated that the agency is conducting a new review of mifepristone’s safety, at the direction of the president.

The judges, all nominated by Republican presidents, noted in their ruling that the FDA “could not say when that review might be complete and admitted it was still collecting data.”

Because of rare cases of excessive bleeding, the FDA initially imposed strict limits on who could prescribe and distribute the pill — only specially certified physicians and only after an in-person appointment where the person would receive the pill.

Both those requirements were dropped during the COVID-19 years. At the time, FDA officials under President Joe Biden said that after more than 20 years of monitoring mifepristone use, and reviewing dozens of studies involving thousands of women, it was clear that women could safely use the pill without direct supervision.

GenBioPro, which makes generic mifepristone, said in a statement the court’s decision “ignores the FDA’s rigorous science and decades of safe use of mifepristone in a case pursued by extremist abortion opponents.”

The impact isn't just in states with bans

In a court filing, Louisiana’s attorney general and a woman who said she was coerced into taking abortion pills requested that the FDA rules be rolled back to when the pills were allowed to be prescribed and dispensed only in person.

A Louisiana-based federal judge last month ruled that those allowances undermined the state’s abortion ban but stopped short of undoing the regulations immediately.

Friday's ruling is in effect as the case works its way through the courts and extends beyond Louisiana and states with abortion bans.

Telehealth prescriptions have become common even in states where abortion is allowed — and the ruling blocks them there, too.

“This is going to affect patients’ access to abortion and miscarriage care in every state in the nation,” said Julia Kaye, an ACLU lawyer. “When telemedicine is restricted, rural communities, people with low incomes, people with disabilities, survivors of intimate partner violence and communities of color suffer the most.”

The National Right to Life Committee said the ruling “restores a critical layer of oversight" in women’s health.

“Women deserve better than an abortion-by-mail system that prioritizes ideology over safety," said Carol Tobias, the group’s president.

Next step could be an appeal to the nation's top court

Danco Laboratories, another mifepristone manufacturer and a defendant in the lawsuit, asked the appeals court Friday after the ruling to put its order on hold for one week to give the company time to “seek relief” from the Supreme Court. If the court does not grant the request, the company said it will file an emergency appeal with the high court.

The conservative-majority Supreme Court overturned abortion as a nationwide right in 2022 but unanimously preserved access to mifepristone two years later.

That 2024 decision sidestepped the core issues, however, by ruling that the anti-abortion doctors behind the case didn’t have legal standing to sue.

“I look forward to continuing to defend women and babies as this case continues,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, said in a statement.

Representatives for the FDA and the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday evening.

In the meantime, anti-abortion groups are celebrating Friday's ruling. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, applauded the ruling as “a huge victory for victims and survivors of Biden’s reckless mail-order abortion drug regime.” She also criticized the Trump administration for taking time to conduct its own review of mifepristone, saying its slow movement has forced states to take action.

“Women and children suffer and state sovereignty is violated every day the FDA allows abortion drugs to flood the mail,” Dannenfelser said.

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Associated Press reporters John Hanna, Matthew Perrone and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed.

“They went on a pretty big run there,” Banchero said. “And we didn't score.”

It truly might have been that simple.

The Pistons — facing elimination and down by 24 points, on the road, in the second half, and about to join an ignominious club of No. 1 seeds who were ousted from the playoffs by No. 8 seeds — pulled off a comeback for the ages in Game 6 of their Eastern Conference first-round series against the Magic.

The final score: Pistons 93, Magic 79.

“We weren't going to lay down,” Pistons guard Cade Cunningham said. “For anything.”

A breakdown of how the comeback — or the collapse, depending on one’s perspective — happened:

The basic numbers

— The score over the first 25 minutes: Magic 62, Pistons 38.

— The score over the final 23 minutes: Pistons 55, Magic 17.

— The score in the fourth quarter: Pistons 31, Magic 8.

— Orlando's shooting percentage in the fourth quarter: 5%. The Magic were 1 for 20.

— That was the worst shooting percentage by any team, in any quarter, since Washington shot 5% in the fourth quarter against Charlotte on Nov. 25, 2015. Put another way, it was the worst shooting performance in any quarter by an NBA team in the league's last 20,238 games.

Orlando's shooting drought

The Magic missed 23 consecutive shots from the field, the most by any team in a playoff game during the play-by-play era (which started with the 1996-97 season).

— Banchero and Desmond Bane were both 0 for 6.

— Jalen Suggs was 0 for 4.

— In all, eight Magic players missed a shot during the drought and 13 of the 23 misses were from 3-point range.

— Orlando led 70-54 when the run of missed shots started. Detroit led 89-75 when it ended. That's a 35-5 Pistons run.

— In game time, the missed-shot stretch took 13 minutes, 50 seconds. In real time, it was about 41 minutes.

What the Pistons did

Cunningham had seven field goals in the second half and Duncan Robinson had four for the Pistons in that span.

The Magic — as a team — had four baskets, in the entire second half. And Cunningham outscored the Magic in the second half by himself, 24-19.

“I mean, we just have amazing spirit and never quit," Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “This is a testament to what we’ve built.”

Detroit didn't exactly get red-hot; the Pistons shot 40% in the second half. But the defense and a dominant show on the glass — the Pistons outrebounded the Magic 35-17 in the second half — was more than enough.

The final word

“It keeps us alive. It allows us to fight another day. And now it's about us going and finishing the job. None of this stuff means anything if we don't go win Game 7. But we'll be back at home, we'll have a lot of energy in there, and these last two games have given us a lot of life.” — Cunningham, on what the comeback and having a chance to play Game 7 means.

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

The separatist fighters, meanwhile, said earlier in the day that they captured a strategic military camp in the northern town of Tessalit after the withdrawal of Mali's army and its Russian allies from there.

The claim by the Azawad Liberation Front separatist group was the latest setback for Mali’s ruling junta, which lost control of the major city of Kidal earlier in the week as part of the attacks that killed Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara.

Mali has been run by the military since a 2020 coup and has long suffered violence as jihadi groups expand in surrounding territories in the wider Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert, which is known as global hotspot for violent extremism.

The latest assault in the West African nation began Saturday after al-Qaida-backed Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, and the Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, partnered to target the main international airport in the capital, Bamako, as well as other Malian towns and cities in near-simultaneous attacks, with the fighters riding on motorcycles and trucks.

A statement from the public prosecutor at the Military Court of Bamako, which was read on state television on Friday, noted that investigations found “solid evidence regarding the complicity of certain military personnel” in the attacks, including serving and recently dismissed officers.

The officers participated in “the planning, coordination, and execution” of the attacks, the prosecutor's statement said, while also alleging the involvement of politicians, including Oumar Mariko, a prominent Malian politician in exile.

Malian army withdraws from a key town

Before the arrival of the FLA fighters Friday, the Malian army and members of Russia’s Africa Corp reportedly pulled out of the Tessalit military camp, which is strategically located near an airport and the border with Algeria.

Achafghi Ag Bouhanda, a top FLA commander, announced the capture of Tessalit in an online video verified by The Associated Press.

The AP could not independently confirm the situation at the camp. Malian authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

At least 10 locations have been attacked by the militants since the latest assault began, forcing Malian and Russian forces to withdraw from the key northern city of Kidal, which was once a stronghold of the separatists.

The junta has vowed to continue its aerial and ground offensive against the militants.

“Military operations will continue until the armed groups involved have been completely neutralized and security has been sustainably restored throughout the country,” Assimi Goita, Malian military leader, said on Tuesday.

Roads to Bamako are blocked

The jihadis have at various times in recent days blocked roads leading to Mali’s capital Bamako, further squeezing the city that already was facing a fuel blockade imposed by the militants late last year.

JNIM earlier this week announced it would enforce a total blockade of Bamako's four major routes, which had previously been partially blocked by the militants. Traffic leading to the city was disrupted Friday and there were reports of roadblocks. The partial blockade has forced some travel agencies to stop operating, travelers said.

“These days, traveling by road is a dangerous undertaking,” said Aminata Traoré, who travels between Bamako and the Sikasso region in the south of the country.

The president did not provide details but said an announcement could come later Friday or Saturday.

“We’re looking at it. If we could do it, we’ll do it. But only if it’s a good deal,” he said earlier Friday, speaking to reporters before departing the White House for Florida.

The possibility of a bailout first emerged publicly last week, when Trump floated the idea of the U.S. government offering Spirit a financial lifeline to help keep it from going out of business. Separately, a lawyer for the airline told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court that Spirit was in advanced talks with the government about a financing package.

The president suggested the government would be able to resell the airline known for its bright yellow planes and “no frills” service for a profit once oil prices driven up by the Iran war come down.

Lawmakers from both parties and some Trump administration officials have criticized using taxpayer funds to keep the ultra-low cost airline afloat. Speculation around Spirit's future has grown with every day that passes without a resolution and its operating expenses and debts mount.

A spokesperson for Spirit, headquartered in Dania Beach, Florida, declined to comment on ongoing discussions Friday and said “Spirit is operating as usual.”

Although travelers still could book flights on the airline's website Friday evening, customers flooded Spirit's X account with questions about upcoming flights and demands for refunds. Some U.S. airlines say they would step in to support Spirit customers if the airline goes under.

American Airlines said in a statement that it was capping main cabin fares for flights on Spirit routes where American also offers nonstop service. Budget carrier Frontier said in an X post that it was “ready to support customers who may be impacted if Spirit Airlines ceases operations."

Trump framed the possible federal intervention as an effort to preserve jobs but stressed that any deal must benefit the government.

“If we can help them, we will," he said. “But we have to come first.”

The size and terms of the deal have not been shared publicly. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, both reported an amount of $500 million that would give the government an option to acquire a sizable stake in the airline.

Supporters of a rescue — including labor unions representing Spirit's pilots, flight attendants and ramp workers — say a collapse would put thousands of Americans out of work and hurt consumers by reducing airline competition and increasing airfares. About 17,000 jobs could be impacted, according to Spirit lawyer Marshall Huebner.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said Friday in a post on X that if Trump wanted to help the airline, “it's in his hands.”

“Everyday Americans will hurt,” Nelson wrote, including consumers and the employees who stand to lose their jobs if Spirit shuts down.

Miami resident Caleb Euzebe, 27, who works at an insurance company, said he flies Spirit “all the time" and compared the carrier to “that reliable car that you have. It always gets you from point A to point B safely.”

Euzebe, who was at Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport after his Spirit flight to Houston was canceled Friday, said he supported the government stepping in if it meant saving jobs.

Spirit's employees have to “put food on the table, keep the lights on for their homes,” he said. "So if that means that bailing them out keeps these people working, I support 100%.”

Spirit has struggled financially since the COVID-19 pandemic, weighed down by rising operating costs and growing debt. By the time it filed for Chapter 11 protection in November 2024, Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.

The budget carrier sought bankruptcy protection again in August 2025, when it reported having $8.1 billion in debts and $8.6 billion in assets, according to court filings.

Shortly before, its parent company revealed in a quarterly report that it had “substantial doubt” about Spirit’s ability to stay in business over the next year, citing “adverse market conditions” — including weak leisure domestic travel demand and ongoing “uncertainties in its business operations.”

The company, Spirit Aviation Holdings Inc., struck a more optimistic tone earlier this year, saying in February it had reached a preliminary deal with creditors and expected to exit Chapter 11 in late spring or early summer. It pitched a “new Spirit,” — smaller and leaner, but still focused on low fares while adding more premium seating options.

Instead, the war that started days later when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran intensified the airline's cash flow problems. Rising jet fuel costs tied to the war added pressure across the industry, and Spirit's creditors last month expressed doubts about whether it could continue operating, raising the possibility of the airline being forced to sell off assets and shut down.

Gianfranco Finizio, a bankruptcy expert and partner at law firm Lowenstein Sandler, said Spirit’s situation reflected an unusually turbulent stretch for the airline, shaped in part by shifting signals from Washington.

He cited the Biden administration’s successful 2023 lawsuit to block Spirit’s merger with JetBlue, followed by mixed messages from the Trump administration about a potential rescue.

“The thought of there even being a bailout is unusual. It’s not something that happens in every day bankruptcy practice,” said Finizio, who is not involved in the airline's Chapter 11 proceedings.

"It's been a tumultuous couple of years and certainly a tumultuous couple of weeks for Spirit,” he said.

Budget-conscious and leisure travelers would likely feel Spirit's absence the most — especially where the airline has a big footprint, such as Las Vegas and the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

The carrier flew about 1.7 million domestic passengers in February, roughly half a million fewer than it did during the same month a year earlier, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. It has also sharply reduced its capacity, with about half as many seats available this month than in May 2024.

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Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Associated Press video journalist Daniel Kozin contributed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Detroit trailed by 22 at the half and Orlando's lead went to 62-38 early in the third quarter. The Magic looked absolutely poised to become the seventh No. 8 seed to eliminate a No. 1 seed in the first round.

And then everything went wrong for Orlando. Everything.

“Detroit grit,” Cunningham said. “That's what we've been talking about all year.”

The Magic became the first team since 1996-97 — when play-by-play began getting tracked digitally — to lose at home after leading by at least 24 points with a chance to win a series.

That number, and a whole lot of others, were just baffling. The Magic missed 23 consecutive shots from the field, Detroit went on a 35-5 run and just like that, the story of the game — and quite possibly the series — changed wildly.

“We took each possession at a time, both offensively and defensively, and tried our best to execute on every single possession," Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. "Every screening action, every rebound, all the small things. We went out and focused on that. And we put ourselves in position to win.”

Tobias Harris scored 22 points for Detroit, which will host Game 7 on Sunday. Paolo Banchero and Desmond Bane each scored 17 for Orlando, which is now 0-2 in closeout opportunities in this series and was again without injured forward Franz Wagner.

The first quarter was back and forth, Detroit leading 26-25 after those opening 12 minutes.

The second quarter: Magic 35, Pistons 12.

Orlando outscored the Pistons 17-0 from 3-point range and the free-throw line in that quarter, held Detroit to 2-for-11 shooting over the first 5:48 of the period and took a 60-38 lead into the half.

The 22-point halftime lead was the fourth-largest by a No. 8 seed over a No. 1 seed in this format. And there was never an instance of a No. 8 seed — at least in the play-by-play era, which started in 1996-97 — outscoring a No. 1 seed by 23 or more points in any quarter of a playoff game, either.

It seemed over. It was not. Because the third quarter: Pistons 24, Magic 11.

“When things get sideways, people splinter. And this group does the opposite," Pistons guard Duncan Robinson said. "It finds a way to just come together. There’s a lot of pride in that locker room, not wanting to go out like that.”

The tone was set for a comeback — an epic one — and when the night ended those who remained in Orlando's Kia Center booed as they departed for possibly the final time this season.

“We've got to go do it the hard way,” Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said.

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

“This filly was struggling,” Brown said. “Her career was really up in the air.”

After more than a month in a veterinary clinic and treatment with a hyperbaric chamber, she began her racing career in February. On Friday night, Always a Runner showed her toughness once again by winning the Kentucky Oaks against some of the best 3-year-old fillies around in the 152nd edition of the race and the first run under the lights in prime time at Churchill Downs.

“This filly is very resilient, very tough,” Brown said after winning the Oaks for the first time. “She didn’t have to be here today. She didn’t have to run again. She could have never run, easily. I’ve had it happen with several horses. The fact that not only did she overcome it and ended up here today as an undefeated horse in the Oaks is just remarkable.”

Ridden by Jose Ortiz, Always a Runner made a move around the final turn and needed every bit of the stretch to pass Bob Baffert’s Explora and and Michael McCarthy’s Meaning before the finish line of the 1 1/8-mile race.

Meaning was second by 1 1/4 lengths and Counting Stars third. Always a Runner finished in 1:48.62 and paid $13.04 to win, $7.46 to place and $5.44 to show.

“We were there every step of the way,” McCarthy said. “Kudos to Chad, that filly came running. We were second best.”

Always a Runner impressed Ortiz, who had never ridden her in a race before the Oaks — just a morning workout. She's now 3 for 3.

“Chad was very confident in her,” said Ortiz, who won five races on Friday at Churchill Downs. "He knew what he had. He told me, ‘Just go out there, get to know her in the work and you’re going to feel like a sports car, like she’s a Ferrari.’ And he was right. I loved the way she worked, and here we are. We won.”

Brown will try to pull off the Oaks- Kentucky Derby double on Saturday with Emerging Market, who also had pneumonia as a 2-year-old and has only raced twice. He has also never won the Derby.

“I stick with things that are working," Brown said. “So, two starts, we should be good.”

The first night Kentucky Oaks was one for the history books, but also took place in front of large swaths of empty seats. Many of the 100,000-plus fans who filled the grandstand and the track from the late morning through the afternoon had departed before sunset. The Oaks has typically been run before 6 p.m.

“For me it’s just a very long day,” Ortiz said. “It was just amazing. Good vibe. It’s for the public. If they have fun, it’s good to me.”

Brown lamented not being able to get presented with the trophy in the infield, the tradition for the Oaks and the Derby that was moved to the paddock because of the time. Other than that, he had no complaints.

“It was a really cool experience, and it’s nice to utilize this facility with the lights and all and I would definitely do it again. Obviously, my horse ran terrific,” Brown said. “(The ceremony) was the only negative. Everything else about it was an incredible experience today with this post time.”

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

Fake “product recall” text messages are becoming more common, designed to create urgency so you act quickly without thinking twice.

How the scheme works

It often starts with a text claiming something you recently purchased has been recalled due to a serious safety issue.

The message may appear legitimate — sometimes even referencing a real retailer or a recent purchase. But there’s a catch.

The link included in the message typically leads to a fake website built to steal your personal or financial information.

Experts say thieves time these messages strategically — often during busy shopping seasons or even months after major purchases — to make them more believable.

What you should do

The most important step? Pause.

• Don’t click links in unexpected or random text messages
• Go directly to the company’s official website or app to verify the claim
• Check legitimate recalls through Recalls.gov

Red flags to watch for

• Urgent language pushing you to act immediately
• Requests for personal or financial information
• Links that don’t match official company websites

Real companies will not ask for sensitive information or payments through a text link.

If you already clicked the link

If you interacted with a suspicious message, act quickly:

• Run antivirus software to check for malware
• Contact your bank if you entered any financial information
• Change passwords for any accounts you may have accessed

Leah Napoliello, VP of Investigations with the Better Business Bureau of Greater Houston warns that thieves may try multiple ways to compromise your information — from installing malware to collecting login credentials.

Report the scheme

If you receive one of these messages, report it to:

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consumer.ftc.gov/
• The Better Business Bureau www.bbb.org/local-bbb/bbb-of-greater-houston-and-south-texas

Bottom line

Don’t trust unexpected texts — even if they look real.

When it comes to recalls, always go straight to the source. Taking a moment to verify before clicking can help protect your money — and your identity.

The new rules also include significant changes to the much-criticized international film category, expanding eligibility to include films that won top qualifying awards from prestigious film festivals like Cannes, Venice and Toronto.

“As we do every year, we made a lot of, we think, really smart and progressive changes,” film academy CEO Bill Kramer told The Associated Press. “Obviously, as the academy becomes more global, we need to think about how we are inviting international films into the Oscars conversation.”

AI and the Oscars

As part of its annual review of Oscar eligibility rules, the academy is tackling one of the global filmmaking community's biggest concerns: generative artificial intelligence.

The new rules state that “the tools neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination” and that the academy and each branch “will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award.” They’re also reserving the right to request more information from the filmmaking team about the nature of the use of AI and “human authorship.”

“Humans have to be at the center of the creative process,” said academy president Lynette Howell Taylor. “As AI continues to evolve, our conversations around AI will do so along with that. But for the academy, we are always going to put human authorship at the center of our awards eligibility process.”

When it comes to the eligibility of performances, only roles “demonstrably performed by humans with their consent” will be considered. The organization declined to comment on whether the upcoming AI-rendered Val Kilmer performance would be eligible as the filmmakers have not yet submitted it for consideration.

A likeness is not an actor, for one, but it might also depend on how Kilmer is credited in the film: As Val Kilmer or something else? One could also take Andy Serkis as Gollum as an example of a human collaborating with technology for the final performance.

“We will review that on a case-by-case basis,” Kramer said. “We, like everybody in our industry and world, we will be assessing this every year.”

There is less ambiguity in the screenplay categories, where the rules state that “screenplays must be human-authored to be eligible.”

The film academy has often had to review its standards to meet the technological advances of the moment, whether it be sound, color or computer generated imagery (CGI).

Sweeping changes to international film eligibility

As its membership has grown much more international, there have been increasing calls for an overhaul to the international film category, which had been continually criticized as unjust, outdated and subject to political interference. That's led to independent and dissident filmmakers often pointedly not being submitted to represent the country they’re from.

Last year’s Palme d’Or-winner at Cannes, for instance, was “It Was Just an Accident,” from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, was not submitted as Iran’s official entry for the 98th Academy Awards, but France’s.

Under the new rules, “It Was Just an Accident” could be considered eligible because it won the top Cannes prize and not because a country chose to submit it. In addition to the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the Golden Lion at Venice and the Platform award at Toronto, other festivals with eligible qualifying awards will also include the Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear, the Busan International Film Festival’s best film award and the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize.

All the international films will also be credited as the nominee, not the country or region, and the award will be accepted by the filmmaker. The director’s name will also be listed on the Oscar plaque, “after the film title and country if applicable.”

“That really reflects our desire to honor the film’s creative team. That is how we approach other categories,” Kramer said. “And as we become more global, as the filmmaking community becomes more global. I think it’s really about a focus on the filmmakers and less a focus of the country.”

Actors can now be nominated for more than one award in a category

The acting branch is catching up with the rest of the academy in allowing an actor to be nominated for more than one performance in a single category. If, say, this year’s best actor winner Michael B. Jordan has two extraordinary leading performances in two different films in 2026, he could possibly get two best actor nominations.

This is standard practice in the other categories. In 2001, at the 73rd Oscars, Steven Soderbergh was nominated for best director for both “Traffic” and “Erin Brockovich,” winning the prize for the former.

And about those original songs in the end credits

The organization also clarified the eligibility of original songs used during a film’s end credits. For songs in which the first music cue plays over the end credits, that song must overlap with at least the film’s last 15 seconds before the credits roll in order to be considered eligible. This year’s original song winner, “Golden” was a key part of “KPop Demon Hunters” and used several times throughout the film.

“We never stop looking at ways to improve our eligibility process,” Taylor said.

The crash happened around 11 p.m. Thursday in Wimberley, a city about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Austin, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

“The pilot and four passengers on board were pronounced deceased on scene,” Sgt. Billy Ray told reporters.

Names of the victims were not immediately released by authorities, though the Amarillo Pickleball Club in Amarillo, Texas, said they were members who were flying to a tournament.

An unidentified woman wiped her eyes and fanned her face with her hands as she stood behind yellow police tape near the crash site Friday afternoon. A man consoled her.

The plane, a Cessna 421C, took off from Amarillo and was headed to New Braunfels National Airport, according to the flight history. Aerial photos posted online by the Austin American-Statesman showed the aircraft destroyed in a wooded area.

Ray said federal authorities were leading the investigation.

Stacey Rohr, who lives nearby, said she was in bed when she heard a crash and “felt everything vibrate.”

“It was so close I felt like it was the back of my place up in flames," said Rohr, who immediately called her landlord.

The players were heading to a pickleball tournament at the Cranky Pickle in New Braunfels, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of San Antonio, said Martin Robertson, head pro at the venue.

He said they canceled the tournament Friday and plan to say a prayer before they start Saturday and honor the players who died.

“We’re very heavy hearted, heartbroken from this," he said. "The pickleball community is very tight knit. Everybody knows everybody.”

Dan Dyer, president of the Amarillo Pickleball Club, said he’d played many games with four of the five people who were killed.

“I’ve handed them medals. They were excellent players. They were out to win some games," Dyer said. “Every weekend there are dozens of tournaments. Some people get the bug; others don’t. But once they do, they’ll travel for a tournament.”

Dyer said a second plane was traveling to the event from Amarillo at the same time. Authorities said it landed safely at the airport in New Braunfels.

“I haven't heard anything from him,” the pilot of the second plane said, according to Air Traffic Control audio.

A controller responded: "He started to move erratically and now his track is disappeared from the scope. So we want to make sure everything's all right with him.”

At least one pilot in the area confirmed the troubled plane's locator emergency device had emitted a distress signal. The controller called 911.

It was mostly cloudy in the New Braunfels area shortly before the crash and there was a thunderstorm two hours later, the National Weather Service said.

Wimberley, with a population of about 3,000, and New Braunfels, with a population of about 116,000, are tourist destinations in the Texas Hill Country.

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White reported from Detroit. AP reporters Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

Even as negotiations continue, Trump is claiming that the war has been “terminated” because of the ceasefire. The president also called the War Powers Resolution, which states Congress must declare war or authorize the use of force within 60 days, “unconstitutional.”

The resolution’s May 1 deadline is now set to pass without action, as lawmakers left town for a week on Thursday after the Senate rejected a Democratic attempt to halt the war for a sixth time.

Trump also said Friday that he will increase the tariffs charged on cars and trucks from the European Union next week to 25% after claiming without evidence that the E.U. was “not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal.” The U.S. and E.U. reached a trade deal last July that sets a 15% tariff on most goods.

Here's the latest:

Trump jokes that US Navy will take on Cuba on the way home from Iran

“Cuba’s got problems,” Trump said in one of several digressions in his Friday evening speech before the non-profit Forum Club of the Palm Beaches. “On the way back from Iran, we’ll have one of our big, maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier — the biggest in the world — we’ll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore, and they’ll say, ‘Thank you very much. We give up.’”

The Trump administration is in the midst of a monthslong campaign to press the Cuban government to make dramatic reforms. All the while, Trump has repeatedly threatened that the U.S. could take military action against the island to get what he wants.

Trump now speaking in West Palm Beach, Florida

The president is at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches Dinner, which is being held at the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.

“We’re joined tonight by a lot of my friends,” he said.

Trump owns Mar-a-Lago, his home and private club across the causeway in Palm Beach.

He also spoke a little bit about the war against Iran.

US to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany in next 6-12 months after feud over Iran war

Trump had threatened to withdraw some troops from its NATO ally earlier this week as he continues to feud with Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the U.S-Israel war against Iran. Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized Washington’s lack of strategy in the war.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that the “decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground.”

The U.S. has several major military facilities in Germany, including the headquarters for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command. The number of troops leaving Germany would be 14% of the 36,000 American service members stationed there.

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Court restricts abortion access across the US by blocking the mailing of mifepristone

A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the pill — one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. — be distributed only in-person at clinics.

Judges have long deferred to the Food and Drug Administration’s judgments on the safety and appropriate regulation of drugs. FDA officials under Trump have repeatedly stated the agency is conducting a new review of mifepristone’s safety, at the direction of the president.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed enforcement of abortion bans, prescriptions by mail has become a major way that abortions are provided — including in states where bans are in place.

“This is going to affect patients’ access to abortion and miscarriage care in every state in the nation,” said Julia Kaye, an ACLU lawyer.

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Trump opens event with older Americans in Florida by referencing shooting at Washington dinner he attended

Trump is visiting The Villages in central Florida, a community for older Americans, to talk about how his policies are helping them.

He said he loves Florida and was “thrilled” to be among the “great American patriots” of The Villages.

“Now, you know I shouldn’t be here,” Trump said, referencing what law enforcement authorities have said was an attempt on his life during a gala dinner in Washington last weekend.

Trump said he should be “indoors at a secure facility” and asked, “What’s more secure than The Villages?”

EPA says oil and gas producers can continue routine flaring at new oil wells

A Biden-era rule had set a May 7 deadline to halt routine flaring of planet-warming methane at new wells. However, the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it won’t make that change in response to concerns from energy companies.

Republican Rep. Julie Fedorchak of North Dakota hailed the new guidelines, which she said will allow continued production of up to 40,000 barrels of oil a day in her state.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat far more efficiently than carbon dioxide over the short term and is a major driver of climate change. Energy companies routinely flare, or burn, excess methane produced by oil wells because it’s less valuable than the oil.

Chinese envoy says ‘world is big enough’ for both US and China ahead of Trump’s visit to Beijing

Asked if the ongoing war between Iran and the U.S. will overshadow the upcoming Trump-Xi summit, China’s U.N. ambassador Fu Cong said the relationship between the two world powers “goes beyond” the issue of reopening the critical waterway.

“I think it is in the interest of both countries and both people — and I may say, to the entire world, of the people of the entire world — that China and U.S. maintain a steady and sound and sustainable relationship,” he told reporters at the U.N. headquarters in New York.

Fu added that there’s room for both on the world stage and that “it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game between the two countries.”

Trump contends hostilities with Iran have ‘terminated’

The White House asserted to Congress in a letter Friday that hostilities with Iran have “terminated” despite the continued presence of U.S. armed forces in the region.

The message from Trump effectively skirts a May 1 legal deadline for gaining approval from members of Congress to continue the war with Iran. That deadline was already set to pass without action from Republican lawmakers, who are deferring to the president.

The letter brings into stark relief the bold but legally questionable assertion of presidential power at the heart of Trump’s war, which he began without congressional approval two months ago.

He also made it clear in the letter that the war may be far from over.

“Despite the success of United States operations against the Iranian regime and continued efforts to secure a lasting peace, the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant,” the Republican president said.

US military reaches deals with 7 tech companies to use their AI on classified systems

Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, OpenAI, Reflection and SpaceX will provide resources to help “augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments,” the Defense Department said.

The use of AI can help the U.S. military reduce the time it takes to identify and strike targets on the battlefield, while aiding in the organization of weapons maintenance and supply lines, according to a report in March from the Brennan Center for Justice.

Friday’s announcement comes after concerns raised by a company not on the list, Anthropic, whose battle with the Pentagon to put up AI guardrails has spilled into court.

The tech company said it wanted assurances in its contract that the military would not use its technology in fully autonomous weapons and the surveillance of Americans. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the company must allow for any uses the Pentagon deemed lawful.

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Trump says after CENTCOM briefing that he has two options for Iran

Discussing a Thursday briefing with Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, Trump said the U.S. has just two options in Iran.

“I mean, do we want to go and just blast the hell out of them and finish them forever? Or do we want to try and make a deal? I mean, those are the options,” Trump said.

Asked if he wanted to pursue the former, Trump said: “I’d prefer not. On a human basis, I’d prefer not, but that’s the option.”

Trump said he believes Iran’s leadership has made some progress toward unifying around a resolution.

“They’ve made strides, but I’m not sure if they ever get there,” he said. “There’s tremendous discord, they’re having a tremendous problem getting along with each other in Iran.”

Trump dismisses war powers law as ‘unconstitutional’

Friday marked the 60th day since the White House notified Congress of its military operations in Iran, meaning Trump would have to withdraw forces or seek formal approval from Capitol Hill.

But the president said his predecessors have similarly not sought congressional approval for military action abroad, and he wasn’t going to be any different.

“Every other president considered it totally unconstitutional, and we agree with that,” Trump said at the White House as he departed for Florida on Friday.

He also agreed with an argument advanced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week that ceasefire days should not count as hostilities and thus not toward the 60 day limit.

A senior administration official says the U.S.’s military actions in Iran have effectively “terminated” since the April 7 ceasefire.

Meet Dr. Nicole Saphier, Trump’s third pick for US surgeon general

Trump dropped his pick for surgeon general Dr. Casey Means this week after it became clear she didn’t have enough Senate votes.

His new pick Dr. Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News Channel contributor, has promoted much of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda, including cutting ultraprocessed foods from diets and encouraging exercise.

But she has been a more vocal advocate for vaccination than Kennedy. She’s also criticized the administration’s handling of some issues as “embarrassing.”

“The more vaccine confusion we create, the more preventable disease we will see,” she said in September, urging the administration to get itself in order on the issue.

Trump sounds open to putting former 2024 GOP rival Ron DeSantis in his Cabinet

When asked Friday if he’d consider a Cabinet role for the Florida governor, who is term-limited and will be out of office in 2027, Trump responded by saying, “Well, I like him a lot.”

Trump’s team in 2024 was considering DeSantis as his defense secretary when then-nominee Pete Hegseth’s path to Senate confirmation seemed shaky.

Trump says he’s still looking at a taxpayer-funded takeover of Spirit Airlines

“We’re looking at it. If we could do it, we’ll do it. But only if it’s a good deal,” Trump told reporters on Friday as he prepared to leave the White House for a trip to Florida.

He didn’t offer any details about what proposal he was considering but said he’d like to save jobs at the airline. Trump said his administration gave Spirit “a final proposal” and would make an announcement Friday or Saturday.

“We’re looking at Spirit and if we can help them, we will. But we have to come first,” he said.

Trump says he’s ‘not satisfied’ with Iran’s latest proposal in negotiations to end the war

“They want to make a deal, I’m not satisfied with it, so we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters Friday at the White House.

Asked about what he sees as the proposal’s shortcomings, Trump said, “They’re asking for things I can’t agree to.”

The president said negotiations have continued by phone after he called off his envoys’ trip to Pakistan last week. He expressed frustration with Iran’s leadership, which he described as fractured.

“It’s a very disjointed leadership,” he said. “They all want to make a deal, but they’re all messed up.”

Some background on the 2025 trade deal between the US and EU

The 2025 deal was first cast into doubt after the U.S. Supreme Court this year ruled the Republican president lacked the legal authority to declare an economic emergency and charge tariffs on EU goods.

The initial agreement had been a tariff ceiling of 15% on goods from the EU, but the Supreme Court ruling reduced that to 10% as the Trump administration launched a new set of import taxes based on other laws. The Trump administration is in the middle of investigations on trade imbalances and national security risks to impose a new tariff regime, which could ultimately put the agreement with the EU in risk of violation.

The EU had said it expected the bilateral deal would save European automakers about 500 million to 600 million euros ($585 million to $700 million) a month.

The value of EU-U.S. trade in goods and services amounted to 1.7 trillion euros ($2 trillion) in 2024, or an average of 4.6 billion euros a day, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.

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Trump says he’ll place 25% tariff on autos from EU, accusing bloc of not complying with trade deal

It’s a move that could jolt the world economy at a fragile moment.

Trump said in a post that the EU “is not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal,” though he did not flesh out his objections in the post.

Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had agreed to the trade deal last July. It set a 15% tariff on most goods.

Bessent wants Americans to avoid easy-money traps and invest in financial literacy

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent winces at the allure of easy money — whether it’s lottery tickets, buy now, pay later loans or the promise of a crypto windfall — warning that the get-rich-quick mindset often leads Americans farther from financial stability, not closer to it.

“There are a lot of young people, mostly young men, going to blue-collar construction jobs, playing the lottery. It drives me crazy,” Bessent said in an interview.

“The best thing you can do is not play the lottery,” he said — rather, people should invest and “then watch it grow.”

Bessent spoke about the basics of building a workable budget and saving for the future at the tail end of Financial Literacy Month, an initiative the billionaire hedge fund manager has made a priority since joining Trump’s administration, driven by a childhood marred by poverty.

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King Charles III wins praise for deft handling of Trump on his US state visit

President Trump sang the praises of King Charles III after the monarch’s state visit this week. He even lifted some tariffs on Scotch whisky as a favor to the British monarch.

The king delivered a diplomatic master-class on the trip, mixing praise for his host with subtle criticism. It’s unclear, though, whether it will make a major difference to a trans-Atlantic relationship troubled by divisions over issues including the Iran war.

“In the short term probably yes, in the long term probably no,” said Kristofer Allerfeldt, a University of Exeter professor specializing in American history. But he said Charles had “definitely clawed back some of the prestige of the monarchy” in his homeland with his assured performance.

“He’s done us proud,” Allerfeldt said.

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Joe Biden endorses a former Atlanta mayor and White House adviser for Georgia governor

The former Democratic president is wading into the midterms, making his first political endorsement of the 2026 cycle by backing Keisha Lance Bottoms for the state’s top job.

Bottoms served as Biden’s senior adviser for public engagement after her tenure as Atlanta mayor.

In a one-minute video promoting her candidacy, Biden praised her track record as mayor and said “those same qualities that made her a great mayor made her invaluable to our administration — smart, focused, gets things done.”

“She handled it all with steady and thoughtful leadership,” Biden said in the video. “That’s the definition of battle-tested.”

After major enforcement operations, the Trump administration recalibrates its immigration crackdown

When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was questioned by senators during his confirmation hearing about his vision for implementing President Trump’s mass deportation agenda, he said his goal was to keep his department off the front pages of the news.

To some degree, he has. Gone are the social media video clips of now-retired Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino clashing with protesters. Mullin’s predecessor, Kristi Noem, made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In contrast, Mullin went to North Carolina to review hurricane recovery efforts.

The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to a centerpiece policy that helped bring Trump back to the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement. Despite that shift, the administration insists it’s not backing down from its lofty deportation goals.

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The 2023 rule allowed doctors to prescribe mifepristone remotely and the drug to be mailed to patients, including those in Texas from other states where abortion is legal. The 5th Circuit’s ruling Friday, stemming from a lawsuit in Louisiana, means mifepristone can only be picked up in-person from doctors or pharmacies. 

The ruling will halt the estimated thousands of telehealth abortion pills that are provided per month to states that otherwise outlaw abortion, but it will also restrict its availability for other uses. Mifepristone, when used alongside misoprostol, is the most common way Americans end their pregnancies, including to manage miscarriages. Through 2024, 1 in 4 abortions were provided through telemedicine, according to the Society of Family Planning.  

Abortion advocates nationally decried the ruling as a crackdown aimed at restricting remote abortion access nationwide, particularly impacting states like Texas where mifepristone would not be available without telehealth services.

“Anti-abortion politicians know their policies are unpopular, so they are using every lever of government they can,” said Mini Timmaraju, CEO of abortion advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All. “Louisiana built this case on debunked, junk science. The safety of mifepristone has never actually been in question.”

The FDA approved mifepristone in 2000, a generic version of the drug in 2019 and a second version last October, and studies have shown the drug to be safe and effective. Texas has joined Florida in suing the FDA over its original approval of mifepristone, arguing that the agency did not conduct proper safety evaluations. 

Anti-abortion groups across the country, including the nonprofit Live Action, celebrated the ruling as a “major step toward justice” in permanently ending mail access to mifepristone and similar drugs.

“These drugs are designed to end the life of a preborn child, and they are now responsible for the destruction of millions of preborn lives, often behind closed doors with no doctor present,” Live Action Founder Lila Rose said in a statement.

Under House Bill 7, passed last year, doctors who prescribe or companies that distribute abortion-inducing drugs like mifepristone can be sued for up to $100,000. But 22 states where the medication is often prescribed have “shield laws,” which provide civil and criminal protections for healthcare providers who assist those in states like Texas with restrictive abortion laws. Pregnant people who seek out abortions or take abortion pills are exempt from litigation under the law.

It remains unclear how Friday’s ruling will affect lawsuits underway seeking to collect fines from out-of-state doctors who have provided mifepristone prescriptions, including three cases from Attorney General Ken Paxton against healthcare providers in California and Delaware. While the suit against the California doctor uses the new provisions under HB 7, the Delaware suit does not.

In a Monday statement announcing his death, Marvel described Conway as a legendary comic book writer with a prolific career. He died of pancreatic cancer on Sunday in Thousand Oaks, California, his wife, Laura Conway, told The Associated Press.

“From Spider-Man to the Avengers, Iron Man to Captain Marvel, Gerry Conway has deftly written almost every character in the Marvel Universe,” Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski said. "Gerry Conway’s legacy has made an undeniable and indelible impact on the Super Hero stories we know and love. He will be dearly missed.”

Tributes were also shared on social media.

“While many know his Marvel accomplishments ... Gerry’s contributions to DC were equally impactful and significant: shaping Batman, Superman, the Justice League of America, and co-creating Firestorm, Jason Todd and Power Girl and so many more,” Jim Lee, chief creative officer and president of DC Comics, said in an Instagram post. “Thank you, Gerry, for the worlds imagined and the heroes created.”

Conway was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 10, 1952. A lifelong fan of comic books, he started writing comic book stories as a teenager, and by the age of 19 he landed work on “The Amazing Spider-Man" — which Marvel's statement described as "the job that would change his life — and the comic book industry at large — forever.”

Conway's writing featured "pivotal moments” that redefined the series, Marvel said, such as the death of Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker's girlfriend. He also co-created the Punisher, a vigilante antihero known for the skull logo on his chest.

The skull imagery has been used by law enforcement in recent years, sparking controversy at times. Nearly a decade ago, Conway objected to police departments putting Punisher decals on their vehicles, saying in a social media post that the character was “a complex morally compromised anti-hero, not to be emulated by cops,” as reported the Syracuse Post-Standard.

Conway had a way of imbuing characters with nuance and emotional depth, Marvel said in its statement.

“Gerry Conway brought real stakes to his writing, able to weave together sensational super heroics with the human and relatable, and in doing so created some of the most memorable stories and characters of all time,” Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said.

Beyond the Spider-Man comics, Conway wrote for several other major Marvel titles, including “Fantastic Four,” “Thor” and “The Incredible Hulk.”

In a 1981 interview with The Comics Journal, Conway noted how comic books can appeal to both younger and older audiences.

"I'm writing for the youthful part of myself, the primitive part of myself,” he told the magazine. "If an adult likes the books it's because of a nostalgic feeling for that primitive, easy conceptualization of heroic purpose.”

He and his fans loved meeting each other, his wife Laura Conway said. At his last public comic book signing in February, “he was tired and in a lot of pain as the cancer was spreading, but he stayed an extra two hours to make sure every fan in line could get their book signed and have a moment to talk with him about comics,” she said.

“That’s the kind of person he was.”

Conway is survived by his wife and two daughters from previous marriages.

“Being separated from a soulmate is a unique kind of pain. But I’m grateful we found each other and for the time we had together, which changed both our lives,” his wife said.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Southern District of Texas Court on Thursday, accusing the company of gross negligence and trespassing for loud blasts caused by 11 rocket tests from April 2023 to October 2025. Because some of SpaceX’s tests involve 400-foot, two-stage rockets, with both stages capable of landing, tests sometimes subjected residents’ homes to multiple prolonged periods of damaging noise, according to the suit.

During the Starship rocket’s initial launch in 2023, the force of the 33-engine booster destroyed the launch pad and flung debris three quarters of a mile away, which the lawsuit said “violently illustrated” the rocket’s destructive power.

The suit asks for a jury trial to seek damages, court costs and attorney fees from SpaceX. The plaintiffs own 53 homes in Laguna Vista, Port Isabel and South Padre Island, including several couples who shared homes.

The suit does not name what specific damages residents’ houses sustained due to the repeated sonic booms, but does explain that the loud blasts can cause damage to walls, windows and roofs of homes.

SpaceX and Benigno Martinez, the primary attorney for the plaintiffs, did not respond to immediate requests for comment. SpaceX has not yet responded to the lawsuit in court, and there are no hearings for the lawsuit currently scheduled.

SpaceX has increased its footprint in the South Texas region significantly as it has ramped up the frequency of its rocket launches and size of its operations. Company employees helped found Texas’ newest city, Starbase, in May 2025, and the company was in talks with the Trump administration to swap land for 775 acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in December.

In 2025, the Federal Aviation Administration authorized SpaceX to launch rockets up to 25 times per year, five times more than was allowed the year before. SpaceX’s launches cause a closure of an 8-mile long beach that lies adjacent to its launch pad. The company is currently facing a separate lawsuit over how often it can close the beach to launch its rockets. Oral arguments for the case were heard by the Texas Supreme Court in March.

Korda only took advantage on two of the four par 5s at El Camaleon, and she had to scramble on the par-5 18th coming out of the right rough. But she had the right touch on a gap wedge from just over 50 yards to 4 feet to close out her round with a birdie.

That allowed her to catch Do, who had a fairway metal for her second shot into the par-4 ninth and finished with a bogey for a 69.

They were at 9-under 135,having faced a stronger wind than the morning wave from the day before on the course along the coast of the Caribbean Sea.

“Drive it straight, hit it close and make putts,” Korda said of the key to playing El Camaleon, the rest course that previously hosted PGA Tour and LIV Golf events.

Melanie Green, who shared the 18-hole lead with Do, had a slow start until making three birdies over her last six holes for a 70. She was one shot behind.

Minami Katsu of Japan had a 69 and was two shots behind.

Korda hit only seven of the 14 fairways, though she was rarely out of position and at times went with a fairway metal off the tee to avoid the bunkers. But she putted for her birdie on all but two holes and was steady over a few 4-foot par putts.

She also had a big following, only partially related to being the No. 1 player in women's golf with her wire-to-wire victory last week in The Chevron Championship for her second win this year, and her third career major.

She was playing alongside Gaby Lopez of Mexico, who shot 71 and was four shots behind.

“Playing with Gaby the crowds have been amazing to see the local support for her, ” Korda said. “And not complaining about where I am on the leaderboard. Playing some solid golf and playing in front of fun crowds, hometown crowds for Gaby is fun to see. Hopefully I can continue playing well, good golf going into the weekend.”

Do, the 36-year-old American, managed her 69 without making birdie on the par 5s. But her iron game gave her plenty of good looks for birdie, and she converted four of them.

She tied for ninth at the Riviera Maya Open a year ago, her only top 10 on the LPGA Tour.

“I put myself in that position last year here and so I think I’m going to be a little more prepared for it this year,” Do said. “I don’t think you’re ever very comfortable being in contention and leading, and so I’m going accept it and kind of just play within myself and feel the feels and kind of see what happens — just accept what happens.”

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

The two-time All-Star left midway through the second quarter of Toronto's 125-120 loss at Cleveland on Wednesday night. He scored one point in 11 minutes before departing.

Guard Jamal Shead started in Ingram’s place in Game 6.

The Raptors are already without guard Immanuel Quickley, who has missed the entire series because of sore right hamstring.

After averaging 21.5 points per game in the regular season, his first with Toronto, Ingram has struggled in the playoffs, averaging 12 in the five games against the Cavaliers. He's shooting 19 for 58 overall and 5 for 13 from 3-point range.

Cleveland leads the series 3-2 and can advance with a win Friday. The home team has won each of the five games in the series.

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

The company said more than 1,300 frontline workers and contractors are on standby to handle possible service interruptions and begin restoration efforts if needed.

• Flood and severe weather threat Friday

Officials said the Emergency Operations Center was activated ahead of the storms after continued monitoring of forecast conditions. Crews have also been pre-positioned across the system to respond quickly.

“Our crews are pre-positioned and ready to safely restore service in the event the forecasted severe weather impacts our system,” said Nathan Brownell, vice president of resilience and capital delivery and incident commander.

CenterPoint said it is coordinating closely with local emergency management partners as conditions develop.

Customers are encouraged to sign up for the company’s Power Alert Service to receive updates on outages and restoration efforts through phone, text or email.

Judge Dale E. Ho in Manhattan extended the status temporarily while a lawsuit seeking to preserve the protections plays out. In an emergency order, he wrote that people granted the status are ordinary, law-abiding people who the U.S. government had determined could face threats to their safety if they were returned to a country facing an ongoing armed conflict.

Amid its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has terminated Temporary Protected Status for people from nine countries, including Haiti, Venezuela and Ethiopia. Before Ho’s ruling, protections for Yemeni refugees were set to end on Monday, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

People with Temporary Protected Status are eligible to remain in the U.S., may not be removed from the country, and are able to receive work and travel authorization.

In his ruling, Ho criticized former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, saying Congress had established a process for Temporary Protected Status to be altered or rescinded, but she had not followed it.

He was particularly critical of a social media message she sent out in early December in which she said she had just met with President Donald Trump and was recommending a full travel ban “on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

On Feb. 13, he noted, Noem announced in a news release that Temporary Protected Status would be terminated for Yemen, finding that letting them stay in the U.S. was “contrary to our national interest.”

“TPS holders from Yemen are not ‘killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,’ ” Ho wrote at the start of his conclusion in his 36-page decision.

He noted that among 2,810 Yemenis who hold TPS status and another 425 who have applied were a pregnant 33-year-old Detroit woman due to give birth this month whose unborn child has a congenital heart condition that is not treatable in Yemen and a 50-year-old former human rights worker in Brooklyn who is a target of Houthi-aligned militias in Yemen.

“Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench," the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

“Allowing TPS Yemen beneficiaries to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interest," the department’s statement said, emphasizing that the Trump administration is “returning TPS to its original temporary intent.”

Razeen Zaman, director of immigrant rights at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, applauded Ho's ruling, saying that “the court has made clear that humanitarian statutes like TPS cannot be used as a deportation pipeline."

Zaman said in a release that Homeland Security had determined that it was unsafe for Yemeni refugees to return to their country “but terminated their protection anyway.”

Zaman said Ho's ruling "affirms that protection must be based on facts and conditions on the ground, not on the political appetite to end it.”

Noem announced her decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Yemen in February. The Department of Homeland Security on Friday said she had reviewed conditions in the country and consulted with government agencies before determining that Yemen no longer met the legal requirements for temporary status.

Yemenis praise ruling

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund included comments from several lawsuit plaintiffs in its press release heralding Ho's ruling.

One plaintiff identified by a pseudonym to protect his safety wrote that the people fighting to preserve protections for Yemenis were “doctors, engineers, and pilots like myself, and also drivers, deli workers, and countless other people who contribute meaningfully every day, supporting not just our own families but the broader fabric of society.”

He added that their presence "represents resilience, skill, and dedication — values that strengthen the nation as a whole.”

A woman also identified by a pseudonym called Ho's decision “a lifeline for my family.” She added: "It is the moment we finally breathed a sigh of relief after months of existential anxiety,”

Yemen was initially designated for Temporary Protected Status in 2015, about a year after the country’s civil war began.

As the war persisted, the Obama and Biden administrations extended the designation multiple times, most recently in 2024, when officials estimated that 2,300 Yemenis were eligible to reregister for protected status and that 1,700 Yemenis were newly eligible.

Ho cited other instances in which courts have recently permitted those who have fled other countries under various circumstances to stay in the U.S.

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Associated Press writer Larry Neumeister contributed to this report.

Mayor John Whitmire’s administration is proposing what it calls an “administrative fee” starting in 2027. The fee would begin at $5 per month for the first two years, then increase by $5 annually until it reaches $25 per month.

City officials stress this is not a traditional garbage pickup fee.

“We’re technically not charging a garbage fee,” said Steven David, the mayor’s deputy chief of staff. “We’re charging an administrative fee.”

City officials say their budget proposal is “the first step in creating long-term sustainability for Houston’s budget.” David said if the city accepts these proposals, it could address part of the city’s $100 million budget deficit.

“If we do nothing, we will see a budget gap of $209 million [for FY27],” David said. “The next year will be $334 million, the year after that’s $381 million, and the year after that’s $446 million.”

David stressed during the budget briefing with KPRC 2 News that if the city does nothing, the city would be in “layoff territory.”

“Can’t lay off police, can’t lay off fire, there’s laws against that. And solid waste is considered the most core function that we do inside the general fund,” he said. “So that means libraries close, parks close, we stop maintaining our parks, we layoff all of basically everybody.”

How the fee would work

Under the proposal:

• Residents would pay $5 per month in 2027 and 2028
• Starting in 2029, the fee would increase by $5 each year
• By 2032, households would pay $25 per month, which officials say reflects the full cost of service

City leaders say the gradual increase is designed to avoid “household shock” for residents who have never paid a direct fee for trash services.

According to the administration, the actual cost of providing solid waste services is already about $24 to $26 per household per month, roughly $25 when spread across Houston’s estimated 400,000 customers. For the first several years, the city plans to subsidize most of that cost using existing funds.

Why the city says it’s not a “trash fee”

Officials argue the distinction comes down to structure and scale.

They say the initial $5 charge is far below the true cost of garbage collection and is meant to cover administrative operations as the city transitions its solid waste department into a municipal utility under state law.

The administration also emphasized that Houston has historically funded trash services through general revenue rather than direct user fees.

The proposed plan does not currently include discounts for seniors or low-income households. It also avoids a “pay-as-you-throw” model used in other major Texas cities, where residents pay based on how much trash they generate.

Cities like Austin, San Antonio, and Fort Worth use tiered systems that charge more for larger bins or higher waste volumes. Houston’s approach, officials say, is intentionally simpler as the city works to stabilize and rebuild its solid waste department.

The proposal is still in the early stages and would need approval as part of the city’s budget process.

Houston has seen multiple incidents of street ponding and flooding, as multiple rounds of storms dropped over 4 inches of rain in some spots.

Continue to watch for street flooding and ponding if you have plans for Friday night.

Southeast Texas also experienced strong to severe storms that produced hail, strong wind gusts, and lightning.

The severe risk remains 1 out of 5, but the good news is that most of the energy continues to move south and east out of the Houston area.

When does the rain end?

Widespread rain will continue through the evening hours; still, watch out for an isolated, strong embedded thunderstorm.

As the night goes on, the rain’s intensity will weaken, and coverage will decrease as well. By 10 PM, most communities will be drying out.

The U.S. government detained and deported a 25-year-old man who says he’s a U.S. citizen to Mexico in April, after police stopped the vehicle he was riding in near Fredericksburg, then called immigration authorities when he couldn’t immediately provide identification or proof of citizenship.

Brian José Morales García, who says he was born in Denver but grew up in Mexico, was living and working in Texas at the time of his arrest. In an interview with The Texas Tribune, he said he repeatedly told police and immigration agents that he was a U.S. citizen and that he had a copy of his birth certificate and his Social Security card at home in Austin that he could show them, but was denied the opportunity.

Still, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is disputing that he is a U.S. citizen and claims he admitted to entering the country illegally.

On Friday, Morales’ attorneys filed a lawsuit on his behalf in a federal court in Austin, arguing that he was coerced into saying he entered the country illegally. The lawsuit is asking a federal judge to allow him to return to the U.S. using his birth certificate and to prevent immigration officials from deporting him again.

Morales, who doesn’t speak English and has dual citizenship in Mexico, was booked into the Gillespie County Jail before U.S. Border Patrol agents took custody of him.

He was held for five days and said he feared being detained for months, so he decided to sign documents agreeing to a quick deportation so he could rejoin his wife and newborn daughter, who live in Mexico.

“Eventually I told them what they wanted to hear because I wanted to speed up the process and return and see my daughter,” Morales said in an interview.

Morales and his lawyer provided the Texas Tribune copies of his Social Security card and his birth certificate, which shows he was born in Denver. They also shared a Denver hospital record showing that he was admitted to the hospital the day he was born.

A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which keeps records of births in the state, said the agency is prohibited by state law from providing or confirming the validity of anyone’s birth certificate.

The Tribune also reviewed Morales’ Mexican identification, which shows a different spelling of his first name and a different date of birth. His mother said that when she and her family returned to Mexico when Morales was 1 year old and registered him for Mexican citizenship, the clerk used the common Spanish spelling of his first name — Bryan — and changed his date of birth without checking his American birth certificate.

César Cuauhtémoc García-Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University and immigration attorney, said that it is common for dual citizens to have different versions of their names on different government documents.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement that on April 3 one of its troopers pulled over a pickup truck in Fredericksburg for a window tint violation. The trooper called Gillespie County Sheriff’s deputies and officers with the Fredericksburg Police Department to help translate for Morales and another passenger in the pickup.

Officers then called ICE agents, who asked officers on the scene to hold the men.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security disputed Morales’ citizenship claim, saying in a written statement that its agents “did NOT arrest a U.S. citizen.”

“Agents determined Morales-Garcia was illegally in the U.S. through record checks,” the statement said. “Morales-Garcia also admitted he is a Mexican national and he entered the country illegally. He was subsequently removed to Mexico on April 7.”

Morales said he initially told agents that he entered the country legally through a port entry in El Paso, but they again accused him of lying “and they told me I could go to prison, so I just told them I entered illegally.”

“They asked me how many miles away from the city and what date I entered, so at this point I was just making up numbers,” he said.

Homeland Security didn’t respond after the Tribune asked about Morales’ U.S. birth certificate, Social Security card and hospital records.

Univision was the first to report Morales’ arrest and deportation.

Starting a family in Denver before returning to Mexico

Morales’ mother, María del Socorro García, 44, said she and her sister moved from Mexico to Denver in 1999. She lived in an apartment complex and worked cleaning offices. She began dating a restaurant cook who lived in the same apartments, and two years later she gave birth to Brian. A year later they had another son, Miguel Morales García.

Socorro García said she returned to Mexico with her sons in 2002 because she wanted them to meet their grandfather, who had been struggling with diabetes. Her husband followed them later, and they agreed to stay and raise their sons in Mexico.

Miguel Morales, now 24, said when he became an adult he decided he wanted to know “his roots” and live in the country where he was born. He said he came to the U.S. three years ago with his Social Security card and told immigration agents that he didn’t have a copy of his birth certificate but that he was a U.S. citizen. After identifying him, immigration agents let him through, he and his mother said.

Once he reached Denver, he got a copy of his and his brother’s birth certificates and gave his brother’s certificate to him during a visit to Mexico.

In January 2025, a family friend who also has relatives in Denver drove Brian Morales from Aguascalientes to the border city of Ciudad Juárez, where they drove across the bridge into El Paso. Brian Morales said he showed U.S. Customs and Border Protection his birth certificate and they let them through.

“I wanted to come to the U.S. because I wanted to work and help provide for my wife who was three months pregnant at the time,” Brian Morales said.

He moved in with his brother, but said he struggled to find work in Denver and decided to move to Austin with a friend, where he found a job installing air conditioning units. He said his boss was driving him and another coworker to Fredericksburg for a job when they were pulled over.

Miguel Morales said his brother’s roommate called him in Denver with news of his brother’s detention by ICE.

“At first I thought, ‘Well he’s a U.S. citizen, they’re going to eventually release him,’” Miguel Morales said.

Miguel Morales said he didn’t learn his brother was in a detention center until an Univision reporter called him. He and his mother began to worry even more, he said, because he had read that people were suffering in detention centers.

“I got scared,” said Miguel Morales, who works as a cashier at a McDonald’s. “And in my case, I haven’t mastered speaking English yet, so I’m worried about … being questioned, too.”

Brian Morales said he was transferred to five different facilities before he signed the deportation papers and was placed on a plane to Mexico. He said he wants to return to the U.S.

“As a U.S. citizen, how can they treat me like this, just because I only speak Spanish?” he said. “I want them to take responsibility.”

Socorro García said she doesn’t understand why her son was detained and deported.

“I feel angry because he’s from there, so why was he so mistreated?” she said.

Report found U.S. officials detained 170 U.S. citizens

Morales’ deportation is evidence that the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown is leading immigration agents to racially profile Hispanic people and violate American citizens’ civil rights, said Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, Morales’ lawyer.

“If you think about what this case means for every single other person living in this country, we should all be afraid because no passenger in any vehicle who’s driving down the road in any part of the United States who is a U.S. citizen has any legal obligation to carry proof of their citizenship,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “The slippery slope is very obvious.”

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said in a statement that he’s advocating for Morales’ return to the U.S.

“His arrest and deportation are the direct result of Trump’s cruel and haphazard mass deportation campaign,” Castro said in a statement. “The Administration’s immigration policies continue to threaten our constitutional rights, and it should raise alarms for everyone — including U.S. citizens. My office is in touch with Brian’s attorney, and I will continue to push for his legal entry into the country. He belongs here.”

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the research arm of the U.S. Congress, found that immigration agents “arrested 674, detained 121, and removed 70 potential U.S. citizens” between 2015 and 2020, according to a July 2021 report.

A ProPublica investigation found more than 170 U.S. citizens were detained by immigration agents in the first nine months of President Trump’s second administration. The report didn’t identify anyone who was deported.

Late last year, ICE agents arrested 22-year-old Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, whose lawyers say is a U.S. citizen and provided ICE officials with her birth certificate showing she was born in Maryland. Homeland Security contested her citizenship, saying she entered the country illegally. She was held in an immigrant detention center for 25 days before she was released.

Recently, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a court order that during immigration stops, a person’s “apparent ethnicity” can be used by immigration agents as “a relevant factor” to question a person’s citizenship status. Kavanaugh wrote in his order that if the person is a U.S. citizen, “that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.”

Immigrant rights advocates and immigration lawyers warned that this ruling would lead ICE agents to racially profile people, including U.S. citizens.

“This administration’s disdain for our fundamental rights has no bounds,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a national immigrants rights advocacy group, said in a statement. “The continued examples of U.S. citizens being detained and deported are a built-in feature of” the Trump administration’s “mass deportation crusade and the culture that prioritizes speed and quotas instead of accuracy, accountability or dignity.”

There’s more than a few up-and-coming talents to get excited about in the movies this summer. The Associated Press spoke to 11 ones to watch.

Catherine Lagaʻaia, “Moana”

Catherine Lagaʻaia (“lung-uh-aye-uh”) found out she got “Moana” on a school day. It was around 8:15 a.m. and she’d just heard the best news of her life after a very stressful year of auditioning. But the celebration would have to wait: It was swimming carnival day and she was on deck for the 400-meter backstroke.

“I guess, like, the water vibes carried through,” said Lagaʻaia, 20, laughing.

Lagaʻaia, who is one of eight children, grew up around acting in Sydney, Australia. Her father played Captain Typho in the “Star Wars” prequels, she went to a performing arts high school and a lot of her siblings are in theater. Two of her sisters even auditioned for “Moana” alongside her, but she was just the right age at the right time, she said.

The animated film meant the world to Lagaʻaia, who is of Samoan heritage, and she’s acutely aware of the big expectations for the live action film (out July 10) — she has them for herself too.

“I felt a fair bit of impostor syndrome stepping into it,” she said. “I think we’ve made some great changes, and we’ve kept a lot of the stuff that holds the heart of the film the same.”

Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen, “Leviticus”

Teenage boys Ryan (Stacy Clausen, 21) and Naim (Joe Bird, 19) are drawn to one another in their backwater Australian community in “Leviticus,” the “conversion therapy” horror that broke out at the Sundance Film Festival. It hits theaters on June 19.

“It is about growing up queer and how the fear of growing up queer can block someone mentally from acting on their desires, and physically,” Clausen said. “But I think that there is something in it for everyone, like whether you’re LGBTQIA or not, it’s about love.”

They knew they had made something special, but it’s been affirming to see it resonate with audiences. When the trailer posted on YouTube, Bird noticed one commenter who wrote that they wished they’d had this film when they were younger.

“It just takes one person to be inspired, or you know say, ‘Oh, I wish I had a film like this’ to know that you’ve kind of done your job,” Bird said. “It’s all about connecting.”

Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, “Is God Is”

Aleshea Harris chose a two-time Tony-winner, Kara Young, and a relative newcomer, Mallori Johnson, to anchor the big screen adaptation of her Obie-winning play “Is God Is.” The story is centered on twin sisters searching for their abusive father, who burned and scarred them as babies.

Young plays Racine the Rough One; Johnson is Anaia the Quiet One. After fending for themselves their entire lives are set on an epic road trip and a journey of revenge and reckoning. It’s in theaters on May 15.

“Anaia depends a lot on Racine to protect her,” Johnson said. “I think that they’ve set up a dynamic since they were children … they have this kind of codependent relationship.”

And although both Young and Johnson are in different phases of their careers, their enthusiasm for the material, and getting to be part of it, is identical.

“Getting into the world of ‘Is God Is’ feels like an ancestral calling in some wild, beautiful, almost like indescribable way,” Young said. “It’s an epic road trip. It’s a Greek tragedy. It’s a love story between two sisters …. I lost my train of thought because I just got so hyped.”

Kane Parsons, “Backrooms”

Kane Parsons was a teenager when he was signed to direct his first feature, based on his viral YouTube series “Backrooms.”

The concept was inspired by an internet creepypasta that imagined never-ending expanse rooms and hallways full of fluorescent lights, old carpet and monotonous yellow paint; He took that idea and ran with it, creating unnerving videos from his bedroom with the help of the open-source 3D graphics software Blender. Soon both James Wan and Shawn Levy’s companies were interested in taking it to the next level.

In the film, out May 29, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a struggling furniture store owner who seemingly slips out of reality. Renate Reinsve co-stars.

“I don’t think of this as inherently horror-driven; it’s definitely not a building full of monsters,” Parsons, 20, said. “I’ve always been more interested in the sort of man looking in the mirror version.”

The bachelors, “72 Hours”

“SNL” cast members Kam Patterson, 27, and Ben Marshall, 30, play a couple of Gen Z guys on a bachelor trip, with Marcello Hernández, groom-to-be Mason Gooding and a middle-aged ad exec (Kevin Hart) who was accidentally added to the group chat in the new Netflix comedy “72 Hours” (streaming July 24).

“It was the most fun you could possibly have shooting a movie,” Marshall said.

Between goofing around in a mansion in New Jersey and hanging in Miami with Hernández, it was, Patterson said, like summer camp. And Hart was their de facto counselor. They teased Gooding about never having his shirt on, Marshall for being so uniquely bad at jet skiing and Patterson for that time someone left him with one of the production assistant’s walkie talkies and for 5 minutes he had an open mic to the entire crew. That energy continued when the cameras were on too.

“I don’t think we said one word that’s actually in the script,” Marshall laughed.

Patterson chimed in: “Not at all. We take that script and threw it out the window.”

The new assistants in “The Devil Wears Prada 2”

Call them the new Emilys. Or, maybe don’t. But there’s a new batch of smart, young things manning the desks at “Runway” in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” (now in theaters).

Simone Ashley, of “Bridgerton” fame, is Miranda Priestly’s first assistant Amari, who screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna didn’t want to be Emily 2.0.

“With Amari the comedy comes from, like, flick of the wrist kind of sassiness and her quiet confidence,” Ashley, 31, said. “Me and Aline kind of had this inside joke that Amari is like secretly the next Miranda.”

Comedian Caleb Hearon, 31, is Miranda’s second assistant, Charlie, who is not allowed to leave his desk. Ever. But he’s not mad about it: This is literally the dream.

“I really thought a lot about a guy like Charlie and what it would mean to him to be in this office and why he wouldn’t mind staying at the desk all day,” Hearon said.

And finally, there is Helen J Shen, 26, who after breaking out on stage in “Maybe Happy Ending” makes her big screen debut as Andy’s assistant, Jin.

Shen said she “was excited to see that the dialogue was so silly to me, but Jin doesn’t find it silly.”

“I felt like that was a fresh take on someone who knows exactly what they’re trying to do,” Shen added. “She has a lot of wonderful things under her belts, intelligence wise, and she’s just trying to like, show that and be as helpful to Andy as possible.”

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For more coverage of this summer’s upcoming films, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/movies

But that only covers a fraction of UNT’s projected $45 million budget shortfall that’s driven largely by declining international student enrollment and reduced state funding. Julie Elliot Payne, UNT’s assistant vice president of communications, said deans and division leaders are still weighing other potential cuts, though broad layoffs across the Denton school aren’t expected.

Records obtained through a public information request by The Texas Tribune show 44 professors, tenured administrators and other long-term instructors applied for buyouts during the application window that closed April 10. The records show four were denied because they did not meet eligibility requirements.

The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences had the most buyouts at 15, including six in English, three in economics and three in media arts.

Some of those departments are also affected by UNT’s academic program changes: English is absorbing the creative writing master’s program and losing the American studies minor, while media arts is losing a master’s program and an undergraduate certificate.

Two linguistics faculty members are among those leaving through buyouts as UNT is phasing out linguistics degrees and merging the department with World Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

The records do not identify faculty by name nor show whether they taught in a degree, minor or certificate program slated for elimination.

The College of Engineering had the second-highest number of buyouts with six, followed by the College of Information and the College of Public Affairs and Health Sciences with four each, and the College of Music with three.

To be eligible, the employees must have worked at UNT for at least 15 continuous years. Tenured faculty, administrators who also hold tenure, and some non-tenure-track faculty could seek the buyouts.

Tenured faculty and administrators taking the buyout will receive one year of base pay, while non-tenure track employees will receive six months. They must leave UNT by Aug. 31, and the university must pay them by Oct. 15, after the next fiscal year begins.

UNT officials said another round of buyouts is not planned and that some positions could be refilled if they advance the university’s strategic plan.

For journalism professor Tracy Everbach, who has taught at UNT for 22 years, the buyout offered a way out of a university she said has become increasingly hostile to academic freedom and faculty input.

Everbach said her concerns compounded over time — beginning with what she described as UNT’s overcompliance with the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at public colleges in 2023, continuing with the recent removal of artwork from campus exhibits, and culminating with the AI-assisted syllabus review that she said flagged her “Race and Gender in the Media” class.

Finally, the university’s announcement that it would cut or consolidate more than 70 degrees, minors and certificates reinforced her decision to leave. Faculty critics say those changes happened without meaningful input.

Everbach said she has taught “Race and Gender in the Media” nearly every fall and spring semester since 2009. The class, which enrolls about 95 students and is required for journalism majors, examines how people from different groups are represented in the media and teaches critical thinking, she said.

She informed students this week that she was leaving.

“They were very dismayed to hear that,” Everbach said. “They felt like that was one of the most important classes they had taken as college students.”

UNT has blamed the shortfall on a 45% drop in international graduate student enrollment and reduced state funding tied to enrollment. International students typically pay higher out-of-state tuition, so losing them can create a larger budget hole than losing the same number of Texas students.

To close the gap, university officials moved to cut or consolidate academic programs, left some positions vacant, offered buyouts and shifted more than 40 courses to a format in which students watch lectures online and meet in person for smaller groups, a model aimed at teaching more students without hiring more faculty.

The move to cut programs was not made lightly, UNT president Harrison Keller and Michael McPherson, provost and vice president for academic affairs, wrote in a March letter to university staff.

“While these decisions are painful, they are part of a broader effort to position UNT for greater long-term stability in an increasingly dynamic time for higher education,” the leaders wrote.

UNT is not alone in facing budget pressure as international enrollment has fallen amid heightened federal scrutiny and travel restrictions.

Since June, the University of Texas at Arlington has notified 49 employees they are being laid off, according to the Fort Worth Report. UT-Arlington saw a 30% drop in international graduate students in the fall.

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

A spokesperson for the DA’s office confirmed Teare sent a letter and the new guidance to law enforcement agencies earlier this week after several inquiries from local departments.

The guidance was necessary, officials said, because of a lack of ability to prove the origin of THC in vape pens based on current lab capabilities.

New guidance

Under the new guidance, the DA’s office says it will not accept charges for individuals possessing a vape pen believed to contain THC because local crime laboratories are not able to determine “if the THC in vape pen oil is derived from marijuana, hemp, or produced synthetically, making these products materially different from smokeable hemp flower and pre-rolled joints,” according to the document.

Under state law, hemp is excluded as a controlled substance, and hemp is defined as “the plant Cannabis sativa L and . . . extracts . . . with a delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis.”

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While local crime labs can determine whether THC is present in a vape, and the DPS lab can determine if delta-9-THC levels are above 1%, the DA’s office guidance indicates none of the local crime labs are able to determine the exact delta-9-THC concentration if it’s between 0.3% and 1%.

Since vape pens require liquid and the legislature did not define the meaning of the word “dry,” DA’s office general counsel Joshua Reiss said it presents a challenge for determining legally acceptable levels. He added that storing vape pens as evidence presents a risk to property rooms as the devices utilize lithium batteries and have caused fires in the past.

Legislation issues

In a letter to law enforcement agencies, Teare wrote that “recent changes in state law, combined with a rapidly evolving cannabis industry, have understandably led to confusion among officers regarding which THC-related and THC vape pen possession charges HCDAO will accept.”

A DA’s office spokesperson told KPRC 2 News they hope future legislation will create clarity.

What’s still accepted

In the same guidance document, the DA’s office indicates that agencies that seize vape pens from retail establishments “marketed as containing THC should seek charges at HCDAO.”

The agencies should also follow state requirements for disposing and destructing seized vape pens.

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Under this section of the state law, Reiss said testing is not required of the products, but it’s a class A misdemeanor if the products are marketed, advertised, offered for sale, or sold.

As part of the guidance, the DA wrote that it’s not designed to impact any school policies, reiterating that e-cigarette possession by minor remains a class C misdemeanor and any “school policies prohibiting e-cigarettes, including vapes by minors, are fully enforceable.”

Subject to change

The current guidance being offered is based on an analysis of laws and discussions with the Houston Forensic Science Center, Harris County Institute of Forensic Science, and the DPS Crime Laboratory Division, but the DA’s office indicates updated guidance could come as legal definitions and scientific methodologies continue to develop.

“We pledge to always work closely with law enforcement to investigate, charge, and prosecute serious drug-related crimes, and we remain particularly focused on dismantling organized gangs, stopping the trafficking and selling of lethal controlled substances,” Teare wrote in the letter.

Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, OpenAI, Reflection and SpaceX will provide their resources to help “augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments,” the Defense Department said.

Notably absent from the list is AI company Anthropic, after its public dispute and legal fight with the Trump administration over the ethics and safety of AI usage in war.

The Defense Department has been rapidly accelerating its use of AI in recent years. The technology can help the military reduce the time it takes to identify and strike targets on the battlefield, while aiding in the organization of weapons maintenance and supply lines, according to a report in March from the Brennan Center for Justice.

But AI has already raised concerns that its use could invade Americans' privacy or allow machines to choose targets on the battlefield. One of the companies contracting with the Pentagon said its agreement required human oversight in certain situations.

Concerns about military use of AI arose during Israel’s war against militants in Gaza and Lebanon, with U.S. tech giants quietly empowering Israel to track targets. But the number of civilians killed also soared, fueling fears that these tools contributed to the deaths of innocent people.

Questions about military use of AI still being worked out

The Pentagon's latest contracts come at a time of anxiety about the potential for over-reliance on the technology on the battlefield, said Helen Toner, interim executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

“A lot of modern warfare is based on people sitting in command centers behind monitors, making complicated decisions about confusing, fast-moving situations,” said Toner, a former board member of OpenAI. “AI systems can be helpful in terms of summarizing information or looking at surveillance feeds and trying to identify potential targets.”

But questions about the appropriate levels of human involvement, risk and training are still being worked out, she said.

“How do you roll out these tools rapidly for them to be effective and provide strategic advantage?” Toner asked, “While also recognizing that you need to train the operators and make sure they know how to use them and don’t over trust them?”

Such concerns were raised by Anthropic. The tech company said it wanted assurances in its contract that the military would not use its technology in fully autonomous weapons and the surveillance of Americans. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the company must allow for any uses the Pentagon deemed lawful.

Anthropic sued after President Donald Trump, a Republican, tried to stop all federal agencies from using the company’s chatbot Claude and Hegseth sought to label the company a supply chain risk, a designation meant to protect against sabotage of national security systems by foreign adversaries.

OpenAI had announced a deal with the Pentagon in March to effectively replace Anthropic with ChatGPT in classified environments. OpenAI confirmed in a statement Friday that it was the same agreement it announced in early March.

“As we said when we first announced our agreement several months ago, we believe the people defending the United States should have the best tools in the world,” the company said.

One company's agreement with the Pentagon included language that said there should be human oversight over any missions in which the AI systems act autonomously or semiautonomously, according to a person familiar with the agreement who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. The language also said the AI tools must be used in ways that are consistent with constitutional rights and civil liberties.

Those resemble sticking points for Anthropic, though OpenAI has previously said that it secured similar assurances when it made its own deal with the Pentagon.

The Pentagon's point of view

Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, told CNBC on Friday that it would have been irresponsible to rely on only one company, an acknowledgment of the friction with Anthropic.

“And when we learned that one partner didn’t really want to work with us in the way we wanted to work with them, we went out and made sure that we had multiple different providers,” Michael said.

Some of the companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, have long worked with the military in classified environments, and it was not immediately clear if the new agreements significantly altered their government partnerships. Others, such as chipmaker Nvidia and the startup Reflection, are new to such work. Both companies make open-source AI models, which Michael has described as a priority to provide an “American alternative” to China's rapid development of AI systems in which some key components are publicly accessible for others to build upon.

The Pentagon said Friday that military personnel are already using its AI capabilities through its official platform, GenAI.mil.

“Warfighters, civilians and contractors are putting these capabilities to practical use right now, cutting many tasks from months to days,” the Pentagon said, adding that the military's growing AI capabilities will “give warfighters the tools they need to act with confidence and safeguard the nation against any threat.”

In many cases, the military uses artificial intelligence the same way civilians do: to take on rote tasks that would take humans hours or days to complete, said Toner, of Georgetown University.

AI can be used to better predict when a helicopter needs maintenance or figure out how to efficiently move large amounts of troops and gear, she said. It can also help determine whether vehicles on a drone's surveillance feeds are civilian or military.

But people shouldn't become overly dependent on it.

“There's a phenomenon called automation bias, where people can be prone to assume that machines work better than they actually do,” Toner said.

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O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

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Follow the AP's coverage of artificial intelligence at https://apnews.com/hub/artificial-intelligence.